bean5302

Lewis is a Boras client, and it's clear he's a believer in himself. I can't see him taking a discount now that he's been healthy.

Since nobody who is or has been on the 40 man roster can be traded, the only trades worth potentially making are for swapping prospects. Prospects who are not and have not been on the 40 man this year. Meaning guys like Emma cannot be traded for MLB ready pitching, for example. That said, teams who would potentially trade MLB ready pitchers who are not on the 40 man are the same teams who wouldn't trade for a prospect. So basically, trades are out. DFA's of players who haven't established themselves as quality players? We don't have any of those who are regularly receiving playing time so it doesn't help.

Zoll failed to address the major roster construction problem at the deadline which is consistent with the lack of awareness of this front office's history. Now, Jenkins' breakout is starting to extend too far to ignore. A couple weeks ago, it was a random couple of good games. As the games go by and Jenkins just keeps raking, the confirmation of him breaking out vs. having a little hot streak is being established. There are 26 (soon 28) roster spots, but only 9 spots in the lineup. Roden is easy to option to make room for Jenkins, but Roden doesn't play a lot. I think it makes the most sense to replace Keaschall (as probably the absolute worst defensive player in MLB) with Jenkins in the outfield, but there's no room at DH because the Twins have Bell there, and Larnach should be a DH. I don't think Keaschall is a huge downgrade over Larnach in LF. I guess move Keaschall to LF where his speed can play and he doesn't have to hold runners from advancing as often? Larnach gets starts at DH vs. righties and Bell against lefties.

You're canceled again, Jack Morris!!!!

Yeahhhh!!! Whomever this "clipped" guy is, he needs to go! I'm assuming you meant Culpepper somehow. But yeah, old school Twins came up perfect defensively, like Greg Gagne. Gagne's first 10 was at SS were like he was a sure fire Gold Glover. Except for the errors and bad play. Gagne had a -80 runs (literally) full season projection after his first season. Yeah. That's -8.0 WAR defensively.

Good article. I've liked what I've seen from Kaelen Culpepper so far in terms of poise. He doesn't look overwhelmed, and he's had good production. With so few plate appearances, the metrics are bound to shift a lot still, but the bat speed is nice to see.

apparently you and I learned different ways of counting as toddlers LOL

Tinney needs work on his exchanges when attempting to throw out base runners from my understanding. That said, stolen bases aren't always the catcher's fault. Depending on the pitcher's methodology of holding runners or the pitcher's delivery or the type of pitch (a 75mph curve in the dirt vs. a 95mph high fastball). I've looked at a lot of their individual at bats. Lots of bad ump calls, and not a lot of pitches in the zone to hit. It's honestly tough to take a lot away from things at this point.

Seems like people don't understand what Zoll said. Jenkins wasn't forcing the issue by producing or looking good enough to replace one of the existing starters, but he's trending the right way. I agree. Jenkins was barely an above average MiLB hitter in AAA by actual production, and well below average in terms of how balls looked coming off the bat until about 2 weeks ago (12 games ago). He was a no-power slap singles ground ball and pop up machine until something seems to have clicked just recently. It's nice he had a great game against terrible MiLB pitching. Last 12 games = .380/.436/.640 OPS 1.076, 9.1% BB, 18.2% K, wRC+ 174 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- prev. 12 games = .244/.358/.356 OPS .714, 15.1% BB, 13.2% K, wRC+ 90 BABIP .289 prev. 20 games = .263/.356/.434 OPS .791, 12.6% BB, 14.9% K, wRC+ 104 BABIP .351 Jenkins was pedestrian in performance and assisted with a higher than expected BABIP. Jenkins doesn't need to replace Martin and ride the bench 75% of the time. He needs to replace Keaschall, Buxton or Larnach.

Development gets my vote. The Twins of Falvey era feel a LOT like the Twins of Ryan era. It feels like the organizational philosophy is about conversion to a method vs. highlighting what players are actually good at.

wOBA is weighted on base average. It's kind of if you could reverse OPS into just OBP. I personally don't like the format because I think people understand what a good OPS is a lot more clearly than OBP. When you see an "x" in front of something it's going to be "expected." xwOBA is supposed to predict what should have happened, adjusted for the quality of contact. It's insanely complicated. i.e. if a player hit every single fair ball off their bat as a 120mph rocket line drive, they'd have an extremely high xwOBA regardless of if every single ball went directly to and infielder and was caught just by pure luck. O-swing is when a player swings at a pitch which is not in the strike zone. whiff rate is when a player swings and catches nothing but air, also called swinging strike rate. I'll try to be better at including that info in my posts.

this is obviously click-bait garbage. As if there isn't enough BS on the internet.

Feels like this is almost intentionally pessimistic. Fragoza's O-swing rate was 30.4% in Ft. Myers. Good for 17th of 48 qualified hitters in the Florida League which is 35th percentile, and not far off from a ton of other hitters in the 26-27% range. He wasn't bottom 20th percentile. Also, despite being more aggressive at the plate, Fragoza was better with a 40th percentile whiff rate. Meaning, relative to his peers, he makes better contact. Btw, there a ton of hitters at that level who simply don't swing. Any O-swing rate below 20% starts to to diverge into 2 types. Ultra elite plate discipline guys at the very top of the prospect charts and passive hitters who rely exclusively on meatballs. The overly-passive hitter is more common and far less likely to succeed at the MLB level than somebody with an O-swing of 30% IMHO. Fragoza is an international signing. If you've spent much time following those hitters, they tend to be aggressive at the plate, and Fragoza is doing a lot of damage at the plate with an outstanding .322/.398/.607 slash line which is certainly not going to encourage him to change his approach. Fragoza also swiped 19 bases in 21 attempts showing he at least has some base running savvy and probably some decent speed. He spent equal parts at 1B, 3B, RF, with less time in CF and LF. That is outright false. Many, many elite players in MLB had a hiccup year. The 2nd hiccup year is uncommon, though. Acuna sucked in AAA at age 20. Aaron Judge struggled to be average at AAA at age 23. Francisco Lindor had a hiccup at A ball when he was 18 and struggled again at age 20 in AAA. Mookie Betts only held his own in Low A back at age 19. Pete Crow Armstrong was only league average in AAA at age 21. Bobby Witt, Jr. sucked in Rookie Ball at age 19. Every single one of those players I picked had a league average or worse season at some level in the Minors. They're all MVPs or potential MVPs. Yordan Alvarez was league average at High-A for age 20. Dillon Dingler sucked at AA at age 22 and flopped again at age 24 in AAA. Otto Lopez was league average at age 20 in A ball. Kevin McGonigle was league average in A ball at age 20. That's the top 6 position players in WAR in MLB this year and a smattering of established super stars.

Something which stands out aside from the epic raw performance is the xwOBA being 100pts lower than actual. I don't know where that xwOBA data comes from and I haven't found the batted ball data from the low minors to be particularly trustworthy LOL. The plate discipline looks okay, a little aggressive outside the zone, but not crazy. Cedar Rapids should be a good test for him over the next month. If he can hold his own, I expect him to start getting noticed real quick. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/minnesota-twins-top-50-prospects/#more-492036

Buxton's very fast but he has some of the slowest reads in MLB. Jenkins is no where near as fast as Buxton, but the word is he has great instincts/jumps/routes that make up for his borderline speed.

I think the Twins should either send Go to Ft Myers to re-work his delivery from the ground up or they are better off just releasing him. No need to clear waivers. Just release him. 6 walks, a wild pitch and 2 hits allowed. Apparently, the Twins believe in something he's got and wanted to see it, but he's not going to be able to fix whatever ails him at that level. Emma continues to be ice cold. Yay. I keep my eye on Tinney. Boy did he get robbed in the first LOL. "6" was a strike??? Reviewing all his plate appearances, Tinney seems to have a pretty good feel for the zone. Probably a little too passive in the zone waiting for mistakes to punish, but I'm not seeing a lot of struggles with breaking/offspeeds.

I don't know... I don't see the change in pitch type here. 4 seamer 37.5% first half, 41.7% second half. sinker 12.6% first half, 14.2% second half. It's not a huge shift. The other pitches seem to be about where they were too so it's probably mostly sample size. Clemens seems to have expanded his zone a little. He's swinging at more pitches outside the zone, whiffing a little more, walking a little less, hitting the balls a little softer (91mph vs 92mph EV), barreling a little less. It's pretty much across the board. Clemens doesn't have a lot of leeway since he doesn't take walks and contrary to the article, he's never been even mediocre with line drives. That combo is pretty guaranteed to generate low AVG/OBP. Clemens' production value comes from power. His 30pt reduction in power has largely what has tipped him from above average to below average for production. He hasn't been a black hole at the plate, but he's been pretty rough. A couple home runs changes the results because of the SSS.

Pablo Lopez's stuff was in serious decline who usually underperforms his peripherals, and he's coming off a serious surgery. That's not who I would extend.

Good or adequate? I'd still consider Buxton good. Jenkins has some of the best range factors in the IL for Center Field, solidly behind Petey Halpin who moved up to the Guardians this year and has been above average.

Of those, how many are successful at the MLB level, not just in the minors? It's great we have a farm full of guaranteed no-miss players, but they're just wishful thinking. The reality I continue to point out is the Twins had dozen or so other can't miss elite MLB prospects in the Falvey era. While these new prospects are hyped to the moon, they don't rank any higher than other guys who turned out to be flops in the big show.

The Twins taking 2 back to back against the Braves certainly wasn't expected, but I'll take it! Getting the wins courtesy of production from those you least expect it from has made for a strange season!

31 / 126 games this year the Twins have allowed 2 or fewer runs. Basically, 25% of the time. It's not that uncommon for the staff being dominant.

Nick Gordon would have been an MVP if he could just improve his instincts, fix the hole in his swing and recognize the zone a little better.

Have him work with Hawkins. If he could teach Funderburk how to throw things near the zone, Wallner's got the arm 😄

It wasn't an hour haha. I arrived at game time, got my beer first. Then I met up with friends I hadn't seen a while at our seats because they arrived early and were bugging me. It was a weird chain of events. Rest assured, though. If I had been in the seats and left to get food in the 4th, the Twins would have held off to score all their runs at that point. They employ spotters for when I leave my seat.