bean5302

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.

That's the worst idea possible IMHO. Ober's at the edge of sustainability right now with his 90mph fastball, and Ryan's value is the highest it's ever been. Both of those pitchers will be 30 next year and the Twins still have 2.5 years of team control. Trading 6 years of Festa or Matthews to keep 2.5 years of increasingly pricy Ober or Ryan who bring double the return at the moment? Either Falvey's development pipeline exists or it doesn't.

Paddack has negative value. Trading him sounds fine, but the Twins could only expect to get a little salary relief back or maybe a 40 man roster burden guy.

Duran has the highest velo in MLB. His "diminished" velocity is the same as it was in his rookie season and last year. I can see it now. Duran throws a 103mph fastball some game this year. Next game, he only hits 101. TD writers recap "Jhoan Duran's decreased velocity, and how he learned how to pitch with this crippling disability."

Top 30?? ROFL, this site...

Baseballtradevalues recently: Joe Ryan +68 Pablo Lopez +47 Bailey Ober +54 Simeon Woods Richardson +20 Chris Paddack -2 I'd prefer trading Ober as I don't think he's going to age as well as Ryan, but the Twins' rotational depth isn't nearly as strong as people seem to think. Matthews has dropped velo and is struggling recently. Raya needs to be moved to the 'pen. There rest of the AAA rotation is just not good enough to be in an MLB rotation. As far as the Orioles go, they're hosed already. 7.5 games back from the division and only a 7.2% playoff chance. They're 10 games under .500. One starter isn't going to fix that. Bradish is 2nd half at the earliest and Rodriguez isn't coming back any time soon since he's on the 60 day IL.

Here, I've made a chart which more accurately shows a timeline of how Miranda has performed using xwOBA in 10 game samples and his career with an MLB average line. The sustained dip from 120-160 games was when Miranda was playing with the shoulder injury which required surgery at the end of 2023.

I think it's clear with this front office and manager, both Julien and Miranda are pretty done with the Twins. To add some perspective to the chart in the article, but it's still a bad chart as it doesn't reflect time very well because of all the non-baseball months being smashed into it.

I'm not concerned about anything in here. Varland is a middle reliever, Stewart's sample size is impossibly small and Jax has proven he's got the stuff. Bader is a defensive specialist with a questionable bat, and that's why he took a $6MM deal. I'm not counting on his bat carrying the team.

Arraez's career xBA is .302. He knows exactly how to make the most of his swing.

Sabato is a non-prospect, but he looked just as good as Amick out of the gate. @Cody Schoenmann the reason you're taking so much flak is the SSS with a .500 BABIP and .105 ISO. Adjusting the BABIP down to a still aggressive .350, and the number of HBP from 6 to 2 (about the top 10% in MLB last year and add 1 BB to make up for the loss of 4 HBP)Amick's numbers drop to .237/.364/.342 OPS .706 wRC+ 100-ish. If we take the BABIP down to a more reasonable .300, we get to .203/.333/.308 OPS .641 wRC+ 80-ish. You're being way too aggressive on Amick's projections based on the outlier metrics and the SSS.

100 plate appearances is not nearly enough to warrant a call up. It wasn't for Brooks Lee last year when he utterly tanked at the MLB level, and it's not enough for McCusker to prove he's ready. He was average at the plate last year in AAA, and he was very raw for a high minors prospect when Twins brought him in out of Indy ball. The intensity of the judgement of player value based on SSSS around here is a little much. It's like being at the early season Wild games listening to fans screaming "shoot it!" every time a Wild player gets to the blue line. I'd expect these are the same fans are the ones who were screaming for Mickey Gasper and DaShawn Keirsey to get their chance to start on the 26 man throughout Spring Training.