bean5302

Tender/tight upper back. Sounds minor.

Yep. Can't be reaching for that hammy like that. He's not ready, and everybody knows Royce will push through pain. Should be optioned back to AAA and give him at least a week off or suffer another 2 month loss after yet another major lower body injury causing more cascading issues. I can't think of a player handled more poorly by an organization.

With a .500 BABIP and a .105 ISO in Cedar Rapids, I left the 22 year old college slugger Amick off my top 20.

I'd still like to see 200 PA for McCusker before calling him up. He was not great last year in AAA, and getting a good sample size is important. McCusker is still making adjustments and progressing in St. Paul right now. I'd like him to be as good as he reasonably can be before the Twins call him up. The plate production for the Twins has been pretty miserable this year so I get the desire to see a huge bat in the lineup, but McCusker is going to be .150/.200/.350 with a 5% BB and 50% K rate at MLB if he's not ready.

Part 1: [Gleeman] Rocco Baldelli was talking about the importance of giving players days off to avoid wearing down. Then he turned to Justin Morneau in the back of the room and asked: "You ever play all 162?" "I played 163." Amazing flex. (Morneau played 163 in 2008 and was runner-up for MVP.) Part 2: There was basically no news on Miranda until he showed up in the Saints lineup on 5/9. He's 0-6 with a BB and 2 Ks right now.

.245/.321/.395 OPS .716 wRC+ 105 is really good for a guy with no defensive or base running value? He's sitting at 0.1 WAR, on pace for 0.3 WAR in a full season as a starter. Larnach's xwOBA is a little higher than his actual, but that's been the case every single year of his career so his productivity as a league average bat is right on point. Last year was the only year he's earned a starting roster spot. There isn't a ton different in his plate discipline, but a couple things are really sticking out. First, Larnach is struggling against fastballs which is shocking to see. Second, Larnach is hitting changeups, which is equally shocking. It's a 180* flip from his traditional results. He's also been trading fly balls for grounders. I'm not sure if this is a new approach, but it won't work if the tradeoff is hitting grounders off changeups than fly balls off fastballs.

The Orioles are at $165MM of payroll, up from $109MM last year, and up from $69MM the year before. They offered Burnes more money than Arizona, but Burnes wanted to play close to his home in Scottsdale. They tried to replace Corbin Burnes with Morton and Sugano. Sorry your guys are hurt. If the Twins lost Lopez to another team last year and watched Ryan and Ober go down with injuries, I'm pretty sure they'd be struggling this year.

I don't think it's fair to look only at drafting/int'l signings and development. I seem to recall 50% of a team's WAR should come from drafted/developed players under team control for sustainability. Of course, that means a guy like Buxton doesn't count even though he was home grown since he long passed the initial team control period. That said, trades and free agent signings are usually a big portion of mid-market team successes and the Twins have landed some significant contracts in that realm under Falvey. I do think it's fair to look at Falvey's front office and evaluate them based on facts and actual production rather than hopes and dreams. In this case, I'm just touching on the draft/development (probably most important IMHO) piece of a front office's job. Hopes and dreams and projections don't count. Royce Lewis absolutely has the talent to win an MVP and put up an 8 WAR season at shortstop; however, his unending injury history along with poor coaching and management have certainly damaged his production. Ceilings don't matter to me because, in professional sports you either win or lose.

Endless excuses and no data. Sounds about right. Resources? Try the very highest payroll in the AL Central over Falvey's time here.

Draft and development. No mulligans, no buts. Every team has their version of Joe Ryan they've watched grow. Either at the plate or on the mound. Cleveland 2024 Pos SP RP Draft Tot Percent 8.2 4.7 2.9 15.8 35.5 45% The Tampa Bay Rays are a truly... "unique" franchise. Virtually nobody on their roster was drafted/developed by them. There were only 2 bit players on their roster they drafted and developed themselves last year. Taylor Walls (SS) -0.2 WAR, drafted 2017, and Mason Montgomery (RP) 0.3 WAR, drafted 2021. The strategy used by Tampa is to draft tons of pitchers, develop them, get them to the big show and trade them for tons of prospects. Then fill out the roster holes with cheap, short term veterans. From a market efficiency standpoint, it's worked pretty well for the team; however, this model sucks as it's not expandable to other teams due to there being a finite supply of each component used to build the Rays' roster. I absolutely give credit to Falvey for implementing new technology and a greatly expanded analytics system. The actual results from his efforts, though are not as good as Bill Smith or Terry Ryan (development wise).

Matthews max velocity back up to 97.8mph yesterday. I'm glad to see it. I don't think it's any coincidence the velo returned, and so did a performance we've come to expect for Matthews. Makes me think this new found velocity might mean his stamina will need close monitoring as the season progresses. Nice to see Emma delivering with some power. It's a good sign. I dropped him all the way down to #8 on my prospects list a couple weeks ago as he hadn't hit a single homer in his first 100 PA in AAA. If Rodriguez can deliver as a power threat, it'll offset the likelihood he struggles as much as Julien. I think maybe 1 more status quo start, and it'll be time to replace Raya with one of our AA starters. Anybody else concerned about Jarret Worff's usage? He's already got 19.2 innings this year as a reliever, on pace for well over 80 innings this year. Lots of 2-3 inning relief appearances followed by 3-4 days rest. Glad to see his doing so well, but it seems like an abnormal usage.

Matthews' velo has been down a bit recently where he's been scuffling a lot. I'd imagine it's a few things at play. Trying to ensure he doesn't develop fatigue and wanting other pitchers to get some opportunities are probably top of the list. Matthews pitched 134.2 innings last year. 97.0 innings in MiLB (22.2 A+, 55.1 AA, 19.0 AAA) +37.2 innings in MLB 134.2 innings total.

Raya only had 1 game last year in AAA and he had control problems in AA. He's never been a dominant strikeout guy, and the way the Twins have handled him with the ultimate kid-gloves, it's tough to evaluate his results as a starter. I think Raya should probably transition to the bullpen at this point. Morris K% in AA last year? 25.2%. Raya? 24.8%. Raya ranked 40th among 101 pitchers with 50+ innings in AA in K percentage. Pretty middle of the road. People can talk about his age, I suppose, but he's now burning options in his 6th year in the organization, Raya is well beyond the development time for the typical upper end high school starter.

Mauer's a pretty unique example. Home town kid, first overall pick, first ballot HoF career with a brand new stadium hitting just as he was going to become a free agent. Even took a bit of a home town discount as I think the league estimates were more like $200MM+ for Mauer. The Red Sox were still willing to trade and take the entirety of Mauer's contract even after 2011. The contract is honestly from a different era of the game already as it's been 16 years now. The Twins tried to trade Buxton, they just didn't find any takers, and while his contract was lengthy, it was only $15MM/yr. There have been quite a few contracts similar to Buxton's before guys even start their MLB careers to immediately after their first season or two. Since that's happening, we haven't really seen what happens as those first contracts often buying out a couple years of free agency wind down. Will the teams try to keep their players or will they all sign with the Dodgers?

I haven't seen anything, but he played 2 games ago getting HBP at the very end of the game. Missed yesterday and today so far. He's not on the IL at the moment.

No, he's not. At least not historically. I've done the analysis of where guys like Lopez, Ryan and Ober historically rank in terms of ERA, FIP, xFIP. Stretch the starting pitching innings down to 70-90 to get your 150 starter sample. Over the course of full seasons, Lopez, Ryan and Ober typically fall into that 60-100 range. They're not #1's. Lopez has been back end #2-ish. Joe Ryan continues to evolve his repertoire and he's gotten truly excellent results in the first half. He's never had a good 2nd half in his career, and he's never qualified for a championship trophy (literally only missing it by 0.1 innings in 2023). Ryan's best season ever was 2024 where he pitched only 135 innings and ranked 55th in ERA for 156 starters with 70+ innings. 3 WAR doesn't get a top 30 pitchers in baseball title.

To be fair, Gasper only has 39 plate appearances this year in MLB and he's only had more than 3 PA in 4 games. His xwOBA looks rough as there haven't been many truly "hard hit" balls and no barrels, but his max EV is solid and so is his average exit velocity.

It looks more like they're mocking somebody who just took 17 attempts to parallel park.

Sometimes I feel that way, but in truth, I always like to see the team win. I even like it when players I don't think are probably MLB rotation caliber guys (Paddack) have a great game, haha.

Nice to see Rodriguez with the home run as it was his first in 129 plate appearances in AAA. It's also great to see Miranda back in the game. No info on him recently, but hopefully everything felt good swinging the bat in game. I think it's time to move Raya to the 'pen.

Definitely not a pushover division which is one of the biggest reasons the Twins needed to go for it last year. I think the AL East will bounce back a bit, but best division in the AL is possible for the central now that 3 teams are done with their rebuilds. The NL West is the best division overall. I think the NL East will be better than the AL Central by the end of the year as well.

Now over 8 years into his time with the Twins, Falvey's draft/development results seem to have stagnated. Dobnak gave Falvey an early return back in 2019 with a cup of coffee from Rooker and Jeffers added in 2020. After that, Larnach tacked on a little while Jeffers came into his own. Lewis, Wallner, Lee, etc joined the party, but of all the WAR generated by the Twins, the percentage coming from Falvey's drafted players hit a wall at about 25% as his position player results tanked. Compare the Twins to the Cardinals home grown drafted/developed players over the same time. I chose the Cardinals as they've got a comparable budget to the Twins as similar mid-market teams and they've had similar success. The Cardinals essentially went 20-40-60 over the past 3 years. Mabye the 65% this year is a bit high, but the trend is what I'd expect to see from a decent front office. For years I've taken flak for grading Falvey harshly on his draft success with various comments saying it takes more time to develop players. It doesn't take 9+ years... I didn't dive into this any further as this kind of stuff takes a lot of time, but it added to my perception that Falvey has failed as a GM. The trend I'd expect to see is by now the Twins would be getting at least 50% of their value from home grown talent. If a team can't draft and develop players to provide value (no excuses allowed after 8 years, thanks), the team will not be successful. Even large market teams need their draft pipeline to work as the Yankees proved when they tried to go all Free Agent many years ago. Twins Pos SP RP Draft Value Total Percent 2017 0 37 N/A 2018 0 27.9 N/A 2019 0.7 0.1 0.8 55.2 1% 2020 0.4 0.8 1.2 18.5 6% 2021 1.2 0.1 -0.3 1 28.8 3% 2022 2.3 1.8 -0.2 3.9 32.1 12% 2023 9.2 2.3 -0.1 11.4 44.6 26% 2024 6.2 3.4 0.1 9.7 41.6 23% 2025 0.5 1.2 0.3 2 8.6 23% Cardinals Pos SP RP Draft Value Total Percent 2017 0 40.7 N/A 2018 0 32.6 N/A 2019 0 36.1 N/A 2020 0 10.6 N/A 2021 0.6 0.1 -0.3 0.4 38 1% 2022 4.8 0.4 0.3 5.5 45.3 12% 2023 6.2 1.4 0 7.6 32.5 23% 2024 10.9 1.8 0.8 13.5 32.4 42% 2025 5.8 1.1 0.4 7.3 11.2 65%

Again, Chris Bassitt, best pitcher in all of MLB. Joe Ryan career. ERA = 3.84, FIP = 3.82, xFIP = 3.82. You. Joe Ryan superstar!!!! 2.93 ERA! Just ignore his first 4 years. This time it's for real!

It's true, Falvey's failed to deliver almost any substantial value through drafting and developing over his tenure. Doesn't mean it's supposed to be that way. Teams who cannot continually develop players fail. The Twins are failing, but Joe Ryan or Bailey Ober cannot carry this team.

And Chris Bassitt was the top pitcher in all of MLB through the first two weeks this year.... Joe Ryan hasn't worn out. Scouting reports catch up to this adjustments and his luck runs out so he gets clobbered in the 2nd half. Hopefully, this year will be different for him as I like watching Twins players succeed, but unfortunately for you and Joe Ryan, there has been a second half to the season since MLB started, and cherry picking only the parts you like doesn't invalidate the fact Joe Ryan's very best season was 3.1 fWAR. The average fWAR for even an All Star pitcher is 4.0. Cy Young candidates are generally around 6.0.