bean5302

Smalley, Goltz, Koskie. My minimum requirement is 20 WAR with the Twins.

Jim Kaat was HoF eligible in 1989-2003 (maxing at 29.6%), and the veterans committee 2005-2015 (maxing out at 62.5%) before being specially appointed by the Golden Days Era Committee. The people who were in evaluating Kaat were from 30 years ago, in a totally different era of baseball. Kaat had an exceptionally long and distinguished 25 year career, but he was almost always the #2 or later guy on his team's rotation. The only year you could really say Jim Kaat was the ace starter in the Twins' rotation was 1966. Kaat was almost always behind Pascual, Grant, Chance, Perry or Blyleven. Of course, the resurgence of Kaat's career in 1974-1975 where he was suddenly the White Sox's ace happened, but it was 2 very short years in a huge career. He never won an ERA title or a Cy Young. He made the All Star team only 3x in 25 years, and he was a top 10 pitcher in WAR only 3x in his 25 year career, never better than #5. Overall, Kaat's career 3.45 ERA converts to 8% better than league average. Even if we cherry pick Kaat's through his prime end in 1975, it's still only 13% better than league average. In my opinion, Jim Kaat is the very definition of an accumulator. A very long career of good, but rarely great, seasons getting him to 45 career WAR. It's also the reason I feel like 60 career WAR should be an automatic. No accumulator can possibly hit that accomplishment. Even 50 career WAR should be a near automatic. Here's a stunner for you. Brad Radke, just about the single most overlooked Twins player in history, has more career WAR than Jim Kaat.

You have a very different opinion on the subject than I do.

While it's great Suzuki doesn't have major platoon splits, Rocco Baldelli clearly doesn't care about actual results as much as theoretical results. Baldelli would platoon Babe Ruth and Kyle Garlick so Suzuki's plate appearance ceiling is probably 500ish with the Twins. Also, I like the idea of acquiring Suzuki, but the proposed trade is going nowhere. The Cubs are shedding salary, not taking on bad contracts. Paddack and Vazquez could be traded elsewhere, but like a recent article talked about, any big moves probably hinge on the Twins dumping salary before bringing on any talent. The Twins would need to clear $25MM+ off the books to bring Suzuki in. Not happening.

The Twins got -0.2 WAR from their DH position last year if I remember right. Seiya Suzuki is a pretty nice advantage there.

Swanson's previous 3 seasons = 107 OPS+, previous 114 OPS+ Story's previous 3 seasons = 113 OPS+, previous 102 OPS+ Kim's previous 3 seasons = 103 OPS+, previous 96 OPS+ While Swanson and Story might have been viewed as slightly better than Kim, I don't think its enough to pull Kim below $100MM in total guaranteed value for a 5+ year deal, unless the shoulder is a huge concern and he opts for a 1yr deal at like $25-30MM similar to Correa's pillow contract with the Twins in 2022. It wouldn't surprise me to see a vesting option contract for Kim if a team wanted to get creative. Like 1 year $20MM deal with a team option for 5 more years at $100MM+ which is automatically vesting at 504+ plate appearances.

Not sure this article can make the case Santana was robbed or that it didn't actually make the case that Ichiro was robbed.

I do like good defense, and Kim should be a great defender at 2B, but with a slightly above league average bat, his ceiling is pretty low for like 3 WAR in my opinion. Where It takes 10 DRS to equal 30pts of OPS = 1 WAR. As you know, I do not like using DRS/OAA for a single season to judge performance as they're so unstable, but I think the signing make a lot more sense if the Twins pushed Correa to 3B and kept the superior fielder, Kim, at SS. Correa has an outstanding arm (still not as strong as Kim's), but his range is limited. Putting Correa at 3B makes use of his cannon arm while minimizing the impact of his limited speed. Correa will be a better 3B than SS, which will offset the 5 run adjustment. Also, I think people are surprisingly low on Kim's contract. Trevor Story got 6yrs $140MM with a defense first profile. Dansby Swanson got 7yrs and $177MM with a similar profile and age as Kim. Swanson was coming off a better season, but Story didn't have an impressive contract year. There is a huge concern with Kim in that he had labrum surgery his throwing shoulder. If his shoulder strength doesn't return, 2B might be a required positional change, but it would mask his loss of shoulder strength. I'm seeing this roster at 86-87 wins with the shifting of Kim back to SS. Better than current by a couple wins, but it needs a RHB for DH/OF somewhere in here which could elevate the roster to a 90 win team.

Prielipp struck out 1.5 per inning in A+ ball Duran tore his UCL which is why he moved to the bullpen, though there was risk his 3 pitch repertoire wouldn't work as a starter.

Sasaki is not signing with a team who has a front office in disarray where the people who sign him aren't likely to still be around in 10 months. Not to mention the Twins have a terrible track record of how they've treated Korean and Japanese players.

I'd say this is a 82-83 win roster in my opinion, which is about 1-2 wins worse than the current roster construction. Considering the Twins are over by $5-10MM currently, I think that's fair in a way. I don't see Falvey or ownership being on board with a $25MM bullpen, and without Castro, Miranda or Julien, depth is probably going to be a huge problem (not just a concern) in the infield and DH spots. Helman, Severino, and Keirsey are not prospects, they're MiLB roster filler in my opinion. Helman will be a 29 year old 8 year MiLB veteran with 10 career plate appearances in the big show who is being thrust into a role where they're going to see probably at least 300 plate appearances. Severino's been a league average hitter at AAA thanks to short bursts of performance. He was outrighted and no team in baseball bit on him. If Lee doesn't make a massive improvement at the plate, he's unplayable, which pushes a guy like Payton Eeles or Michael Helman into a starting 2B role. Keirsey will be 28 with an adequate performance at the plate in AAA, but his fielding isn't likely to be plus at the MLB level. I believe Keirsey is likely just a less speedy Andrew Stevenson. though as a backup CF, it's not a profile I'd expect to produce a ton of negative WAR at least. Career Andrew Stevenson MLB - .243/.316/.352 OPS .668 wRC+ 80, 8.0% BB, 27.4% K '23 AAA a29 Andrew Stevenson - .317/.394/.522 OPS .916 wRC+ 131, 8.9% BB, 20.6% K '24 AAA a27 DaShawn Keirsey - .300/.368/.476 OPS .845 wRC+ 119, 9.5% BB, 23.0% K Of course, Miranda, Julien and Castro are not bringing back peanuts so there's no reason to believe the Twins couldn't acquire their depth or honestly, starters, from those trades. Since they weren't included, I'm assuming the Twins are going for high ceiling / high risk in your scenario.

Boyd was signed by the Cubs (and for a lot more than your estimate 1yr $10MM + $14MM option), but let's assume the Twins do something similar here. I'd expect this team to be a 91-92 win club. I'm coming up with $136MM total, plus Dobnak's $3MM at $139MM total. I don't think ownership goes for that, but if they were willing to open up the wallet, this is a team with solid depth, and a lot of high end performance potential.

Yeah, I don't see this (or something similar since Severino signed with the A's) happening. Rooker would be LF, not utility and as noted, you have Julien at 2 spots. I've no idea what you had to give up to get Rooker, LOL. If this did happen, I'd say you built a 87-88 win roster. Pretty good shot at the playoffs.

Looks like about an 85 win team to me. I think that's pretty much exactly what FGDC predicts.

It's not a terrible plan to put it in the hands of the existing young core, but I also don't think it's the best option the Twins have at extending their window. I'd project the roster at about 83 wins. I think you're being pretty optimistic Santana signs at $5MM since he's expected to get a better offer than that in general. I think he'll probably get $8MM. I'd also suspect he produces more like a 1 WAR season similar to his recent seasons than his unexpected 2024. While I think Julien at 2B will maximize his value, I don't think expecting him to bounce back to his xwOBA (probably an OPS .780 / wRC+ 115) from 2023 would be likely based on his inability to adapt to the scouting reports exposing his weaknesses. Paddack probably isn't a good starting pitcher in my opinion. I don't think he'd be anything better than a #5 guy on most playoff teams, and that's if he remains healthy (which he won't). I'm also not sure his stuff will play up much in the 'pen. He had some impressive K rates in 2023 in a SSSS, but the stuff doesn't really look much better. Paddack is a luxury, and the Twins do not have payroll for luxuries. The biggest problem I see with this roster is infield/outfield depth. If anything goes wrong or an unexpected injury crops up, it gets ugly quick, and there's a high degree of likelihood multiple players of the Martin/Keirsey/Julien/Lee group aren't up to the task of regular playing time.

I think you're putting the cart before the horse, here. The entire premise of this article is the Twins need to shed salary before they have any options. I'm inclined to agree with the idea ownership has the wallet locked down hard for the front office at the moment. If Falvey wants any ability to significantly explore the free agent market at any time during the offseason, $15-20MM is going to need to come off the books beforehand. Carlos Correa, Pablo Lopez, Byron Buxton, Christian Vazquez, Chris Paddack, Willi Castro. Those are the only legitimate places where the Twins can shed any meaningful salary, and there are serious handicaps on moving most of them. Like a free agent who missed out last year, the Twins should be in a (shed salary) sign early mode like Blake Snell was. If the Twins take the good 'ol tried and false Falvey method of wait it out looking for deals, the Twins will be unable to shed significant salary as teams will already be at their budget max or have their roster set. We've seen this exact scenario play out with Polanco in specific. It was late in the offseason, and the Twins were in a pretty desperate situation to shed salary, and as a result, they got a bad package back with minimal cost savings for the infielder.

Rooker, Steer, Encarnacion-Strand, Gipson-Long, Petty, Miller, Hajjar, Povich, Wade, Baddoo, Wells... The Twins have cast off a lot of young talent through trades or failing to protect players. In particular, they traded all 5 selections they made in the first 4 rounds in 2021.

The Athletics have been saying they're building since the beginning of last year. It follows their small market rebuild pattern. 3-4 years of not making the playoffs followed by 3 years of open window.

Arraez had a torn thumb ligament last year. He's been a wRC+ 130 hitter the two prior years when he didn't have a torn thumb, which is excellent. Arraez typically produces about 40 extra base hits a year with 30 of those being doubles. This is the same kind of trash people talked about Joe Mauer, the "slap singles hitter." Arraez loops a lot of soft line drives into the center of the shallow outfield. If those hits land in the gaps, it's a double. It's a technique he talked to Correa about. In any case, Arraez's value is limited by the lack of home run power and his poor athleticism. Defensive metrics are mixed on his play over the past 3 years. If you like UZR, he's about average at 2B. If you like DRS, he's above average. If you like OAA, he's one of the worst fielders in MLB. I'd expect him to be a solid 2.5 fWAR kind of player for at least the next few years, he's been a near 5 bWAR player at 2B.

Lopez wasn't a free agent when the Twins extended him. Lopez was still basically under team control for 2 years when the contract was signed so of course he didn't get free agent value. He's making very close to ace money given the team control scenario.

I think this has been the case for several years, and Falvey has been unwilling to take the deals he's offered. Instead, Falvey he tries to dictate to the market what the market is going to pay. Ownership stepped in to bail Falvey's poor budgeting and negotiation skills out in 2022 and again in 2023, but they slammed the wallet shut in 2024. I'm already disappointed in Falvey's inaction yet again this year. The Twins are on the clock and they need to be making deals now. Before the demand dries up for the limited options the Twins have to shed salary.

It's hypothesized they cannot stand pat as they're already $5-10MM over max budget.

Find a suggestion Seattle has changed their mind. Until then, I'll go with Dipoto's strong statements they're not interested in trading their rotation pieces... just like they said (and backed up with actions) last year. https://www.si.com/mlb/mariners/news/seattle-mariners-front-office-leader-jerry-dipoto-says-team-has-no-plans-to-trade-starting-pitching-luis-castillo-bryce-miller-bryan-woo-logan-gilbert-george-kirby

So your position is Prielipp would be viewed as a starter without major innings limits in 2026 if he were to pitch 40-60 innings this coming year or maybe 80 innings at the absolute 1%'er extreme end of things? I find it implausible to go from 60 innings, throwing 10-25 pitches on 2-3 days of rest to 150 innings throwing 80+ pitches on 5 days rest over 5-6 innings at a time when Prielipp has such a short track record. Even if successful, it's hard to imagine Prielipp getting more than say 100-120 innings in 2026 if he was deployed as a reliever during the stretch out process. Even if Prielipp was elite as a reliever, and the Twins weren't worried about dramatically increasing his workload and changing his preparation plan, the Twins wouldn't have any real idea whether or not he can go through the lineup multiple times. If Prielipp follows the Marco Raya plan design, he'll get to 100 innings this coming year as a starter, and that is projectable to potentially 150 innings in 2026.

What has Prielipp done to earn this shot at the MLB roster? I didn't realize the TD hype machine working overtime for him was a major qualification. Prielipp has never pitched above A+ and he's never thrown more than 23 innings in a season. He's not a top 100 prospect and he's literally Twins prospect #20 for MLB. Moving him to the 'pen pushes Preilipp back 1 year for being available as a starter. Instead of potentially being a rotation arm in 2026, now it's going to be 2027 because he'll need another year to stretch him out, and the Twins won't know if he's even capable of being a starter at that point.