bean5302

Fedko was totally overmatched by MLB pitching. Was he pressing? Maybe, but there was utterly no signs of an MLB caliber hitter there. I don't understand the investment of fans in Fedko. DaShawn Keirsey, Jr. is a perfect comp. He's currently in the ATL organization at AAA with a .262/.314/.367 wRC+ 80. The International League is utterly devoid of pitching, and the shiny stats down there often don't translate to MLB. Guys who make it at the MLB level rarely struggle for multiple years in the minors like Fedko and Keirsey did. Fedko made it to the big show against all odds and with dubious qualifications. I think that's pretty awesome for him.

3 is enough if you have 2 plus pitches. I think the Twins probably would like to see Quick actually having some command of his current pitches before adding more. At least I'd hope they didn't want another Marco Raya with 6 pitches that can't hit the strike zone. Quick doesn't have control or command. These are a couple typical at plate appearances. Quick will go 3-4 plate appearances in a row rarely hitting the zone, followed by 1-2 where he pounds the zone. It's impossible to tell how good his stuff is. ignore the egregious missed strike call in this one, but when you can't hit the zone, you're not getting the calls.

Culpepper's injury struggles over the past month have thrown a wet blanket over what seemed like an imminent call up. This front office is pretty random, but Ben Ross' production at SS and his time in CF may well have him as the next man up. Ross is a slightly younger Kyler Fedko, but one who can cover SS. Personally, I'd DFA Gray and call up Ross.

The "kid" has always creeped me out. These are grown adults. Like when Falvey called Kody Clemens a "kid" last year. Gross. Aside from that, "he's only 21" rings hollow. He was a high school draft pick and this is his 4th year in the system as a professional baseball player a Major League Baseball development program. Experience and age need to be evaluated together. The kind of experience and polishing of talent which happens in MiLB systems is superior to college programs. Winokur was good enough at Ft. Myers, but he didn't hit at Cedar Rapids across two years. The Twins are technically putting Winokur at SS 1/3 of the time because this front office doesn't care a bit about developing quality defense, he's in a "prove it" phase of his career. If he's able to hold his own at AA, he remains a lower level prospect. If he flops, he falls off the prospect radar.

While the play on words is crafty, you can leave a 26 year old and a 24 year old who barely held their own in Cedar Rapids last year off my radar. Wichita is in a rough state these days. There's not much to be excited about on that team right now.

I think it's a play on words "surging" players for the Wichita Wind Surge.

@DJL44 Good luck in your war against the TD Hype Machine hahah. Houston's only got 79 plate appearance in AA, but it's impossible to ignore he's turned a corner in plate approach and power production. His bat is much better than expected. Even comparing Houston's A+ and AA performances against what he was doing in Ft Myers last year, he's walking way more, he striking out less (at AA compared to A ball), and he's generating more isolated power. The BABIP isn't supported by the batted ball types I'm seeing, and his power production is still below average, but it's nice to see the production. He'll have substantial value even as a league average hitter.

The Red Sox are 1/2 a game back from the Twins in the Wildcard standings right now. Boston is one of 6 teams in the AL with a positive run differential at +26 compared to Minnesota's -16. The Red Sox feel like buyers to me. Story is nearing his return which is huge, and they're getting production from Seigler at 2B. You know who they could use? Trevor Larnach.

Comping Sabato (ACC) to Tinney (SEC) is somewhat fair when it comes to plate approach. Both were viewed as power tool players with questionable ability to hit breaking balls. That's kind of the end of the comp, though. Sabato was universally viewed as DH with major doubts he could stick at 1B. Carson Tinney is a catcher (who actually plays catcher unlike recent drafted "catchers" by Minnesota) The Twins have been reaching in recent years by drafting guys who barely play catcher and pretending they're catching prospects. Catcher is by far the hardest position in baseball to learn. Tinney is viewed as a good framer with a strong arm. His bat went on hiatus in the wood bat summer league, but he managed to throw out 30% of base runners at least. I think it's worth noting that Tinney would have been #1 overall if there weren't questions about him. It's exceedingly rare to have a prospect with no questions. The Bryce Harpers of the world are unicorns. His size is a detriment to sticking behind the plate as the weight is going to put a major strain on his legs, lengthen his pop time, and slow his quickness. At 6'4" and 240lbs, he'd be in a lot better position dropping 20+lbs.

I like Renfrow already having 5 pitches. Maybe I'm old school, but I see too many 1-2 pitch pitchers with a show-me changeup get drafted only to find out that "65 grade" plus pitch doesn't actually work against higher levels of competition, but their "45 grade" offering is MLB worthy. A pitcher who already has weapons in the arsenal to polish and develop under MLB-system coaching has a much higher floor.

The thing which is pretty exciting to me is the speed. Now up to 27.7 ft/sec, right on the cusp of 60 grade. Considering it's dragged down still from early season, Lewis is probably a little quicker than that right now. I think he's still a plate approach work in progress. the expected BA and xwOBA is low because he's still not taking walks and his line drive rate is very poor, but he's made a lot of adjustments in the last couple years. I'm hoping to see him catch up to 4 seam fastballs as the year goes on. If Royce can return to form, it'll be huge for the Twins.

Hey, I love the results. Doesn't change the fact he's not missing bats, and he's not generating pop ups despite being a fly ball pitcher.

Thanks for sharing your opinion that other people shouldn't have opinions. Since nobody should have an opinion about baseball here, did you join to discuss things like who makes the best corn dogs at the State Fair?

I like this choice. The Twins chose a bona fide catcher rather than an athlete who might be able to play catcher. Less hubris regarding a position the Twins are absolutely desperate to address.

I like the adjustments a lot! Video editing is far more tedious than people realize. To top it off, what makes content work on a site like Twins Daily will make it "not work" on a short clip consumption platform like TikTok. It forces 3x the amount of time investment into editing to have a multi-platform video. You did some impressively quick editing there. It can take me an hour or more to make significant edits, save, export, and upload a video. Then, if it's a longer video, waiting for youtube to finish the HD version can be a pain. I wind up watching it over and over again tinkering before I upload. My average 10-20min videos for youtube take 2+hrs to cut together. Shorter videos don't save a ton of time as much as people might think, either. Getting the video concentrated down to 30-120 seconds while sharing the meat of the content is incredibly difficult. Tons and tons of cutting and editing.

Gomez doesn't look sustainable at all to me. Mediocre walk and strikeout rates, combined with plenty of loud contact. I don't like FIP without considering the type of contact. FIP treats a 100mph exit velocity 400 ft warning track fly ball deep to center the same as a 20mph roller to the pitcher or a soft infield pop up. If xFIP is going to be way different than FIP, I want to see a high pop up rate, and that's not the case here. Tons of fly balls and not many popups. That's a recipe for a lot of home runs which is why his xFIP is 4.63. Even if I want to be generous and look to xERA, Gomez is at 3.50 with a 3.90 SIERA. He's due for major regression. He's not a prototypical closer candidate. Morris' raw stuff is beloved by Stuff+ and PitchingBot, but it certainly doesn't seem to fool hitters much. Contact rates are high, whiffs are low, and chase rates in general, are below average. Opposing hitters haven't been able to barrel his stuff, but they're not missing by much. The pop up rate is very poor, but he's insulated from a high HR rate by the fact he generates quite a bit of ground ball results. He's an xERA darling 2.98 and SIERA 3.37 likes him as a potential setup guy. xFIP is more pessimistic at a still decent 3.71 mark. Morris gets out ahead of hitters a lot so he should be able to finish them off easier. I think he could go either way. Honestly, it's tough to point to any Twins reliever being a trusted source of outs when it matters.

Our MLB philosophy has been driven by the way our front office values talent and the overall organizational strategy on how to win baseball games. That same philosophy is how MiLB baseball players get valued. Our MLB team is a result of our front office's strategy. Play terrible, awful, horrible defense so long as you can stand at 9 different positions and look like you might belong there before any batted balls happen. The ability to stand at random positions is where value comes from!!! Platoon bats give us an advantage because opposing teams cannot change pitchers. Switch hitters are always just as good from either side of the plate because... platoon splits are absolute! Change hitting philosophies every year after the weaknesses of the one size fits all philosophy from the previous year is exposed. Blame it on the hitting coach for teaching the strategy you directed. Relief pitchers are guaranteed. Any starter in the minors can instantly be an elite MLB reliever. Pitcher talent is the only thing which matters in MiLB. Polish is not needed. So long as they can get MiLB hitters out, it'll translate to MLB automatically. Drafting elite pitchers is a waste unless you mean to convert them to a reliever because you forgot you needed some of those after trading them all away. You can just draft an 89mph fastball college arm in round 12, teach them to throw 95 and they'll for sure be an ace. If you do make the mistake of drafting a rotation arm early, trade them to shore up your shortfalls in talent evaluation and payroll allocation to get a year or two of a good starter. In case it's not evident, I think our front office is devoid of wisdom in how to run a baseball team.

The information presented in the video would be more valuable slowed down with an added text explanation... and there's a lot of free music out there. Jr. Varsity high school band practice isn't the one I would have chosen, haha. Anyway, good stuff is presented. I've found Movavi to be inexpensive and pretty easy to use to create good videos with plenty of free audio. Since you might be using this for TD, I think it's more like $400 for a commercial license, though. Back to Roden. He's been swinging (2025-2026) at like 33% of pitches out of the zone and only 60% of pitches in the zone. Both well below MLB average. His contact rates for pitches outside the zone is pretty abysmal, but inside the zone it's very good. I think his plate adjustments are trying to make the absolute most of his talent. Polish has probably carried him as far as it can, we'll just have to see how he performs over the next 100-200 PA to get a better feel for whether his pitch recognition skills will be good enough for MLB.

Hopefully, Quick can bring back at least one to two more more lefty DHs who can also either stand at first base or a corner outfield spot.

The drafting/development philosophy focused on velocity might be hitting the end of the curve. It sure seems like velo is everything these days. Got a 98mph fastball and one other questionable pitch? Welcome to the upper minors.

The Brewers are drawing 32k per game x 81 games 2.6MM. They're not getting to 3MM unless they have a deep playoff run, which they very well may. They're on pace for 103 wins or so. The Twins are drawing 21k per game x 81 games 1.7MM and 25k over their past 10 home games (propped up heavily by the Dodgers series). They're on pace for 79 wins. The Rockies are drawing 28k per game x 81 games 2.3MM. They're on pace to win 65 games. They're probably the worst team in baseball over the past decade. They always draw well. Denver is a mid-market base. Drawing fans is about the game day experience.

Houston continuing to hold his own in AA is nice to see. If he can keep it up, I'd expect him to start 2027 in St. Paul. It's the kind of performance I think people hoped for from Noah Miller, who is back on a tear in AAA for the Dodgers after an ice cold month from late May to late June following an IL trip for a knee problem. Miller has clearly made a massive change to his game. He's looking like a legitimate MLB prospect again.

Interesting to see Hendriks still trying to make it back. He was wild in ST with the Twins, but after another lengthy build up with the Cubs, seems like his command was way better last night. Fastball has dropped further though. Hendriks was sitting 93-94mph in Spring Training with us, sat at 92-93mph last night against the Saints. Way off from his 97-98mph heyday, and his FB was a critical component to his success. That said, maybe enough left in the tank to get a call up somewhere and eat some middle innings like a Taylor Rogers?

Bradley. Not even a question. Jax is looking like he might stick as a starter, but he's got a long way to go to be as good as a starter as what Bradley is doing right now, and with much more team control

I never said a manager couldn't use talent improperly.