bean5302

First, he's not going to be $5-6MM. It's going to be a bit more than that. Second, he's coming off his best year in 5 years both offensively and defensively (best of his career) going into his age 39 season. The only year in the past 5 Santana was worth a full time roster spot, btw. No.

Paddack has substantial negative trade value. Maybe if the Twins "included" a mid level prospect, a team would take Paddack giving us back a PTBNL.

This nonsense is getting old about some sort of choice between Vazquez and Jeffers. Writers are just wasting people's time and their own credibility.

That's my fault, I've seen Hoffman pop up in discussions out of the blue lately, and incorrectly remembered you being tied to it. I've corrected my post and found the TRUE perpetrator of this heinous act! haha

Obviously you are pretty sore about it since you've mentioned it several times. It has nothing to do with quality bullpen arms in free agency. ( @Blyleven2011 has been falsely implicated by me. He is not the person I was thinking about so I shouldn't have accused you of this... @DocBauer is the culprit!!!! LOL) Jeff Hoffman was passed over by all 30 teams in baseball, and he had to settle on a MiLB contract in 2023 with the Twins after being largely bad to terrible for his 134 appearances during his 7 year career. Hoffman had an opt out if he didn't make the opening day roster, and told the Twins he was going to exercise it so the Twins released him a couple days early. Hoffman went on to sign what? Another MiLB deal with the Phillies with two opt outs. Hoffman was assigned to AAA and pitched there for the first month (unimpressively, I might add). Hoffman again exercised his opt out giving the Phillies a 48hr window to decide, and the Phillies decided to take a chance on him and his newly rebounded velocity as Philadelphia had tons of pitching injuries so why not? Hoffman was viewed as MiLB roster filler with a ceiling of middle reliever. He opted to leave the Twins, and he accepted a similar deal elsewhere where he didn't get a shot at the MLB roster until making 9 unimpressive appearances in AAA and opting out there as well. Nobody, including the Phillies, had any idea he'd be so dominant.

You definitely didn't read my post.

LOL! The Twins are not giving any free agent relief pitcher a $6-7MM AAV contract. MLBTR is in outer space on this one.

The 150 game hard break is responsible for a lot of it. Several catchers in the 140+ game area, many guys at like 148 games. SS is your super premium player group. The Witt, Jr's of the baseball world where they're often the best player on the team so they're in the lineup every day. Lindor, De La Cruz, Henderson, etc. Of the 13 players with 150+ games, only 3 produced less than 3 WAR. Median was 3.7 fWAR, far above any Twins player in 2024.

The cost to replace 1 WAR of production in free agency has been about $8MM AAV. Last I checked, it declined slightly in 2022-2023 down to about $7.8MM, but maybe it's back to $8MM. Teams seem to pay about $6MM per expected WAR, but free agents often don't live up to the hype so with actual production drops, it winds up close to $8MM. The average cost for 1 WAR of production overall is like $2.5MM including arb/pre-arb guys.

Keirsey can't hit and I don't think he's going to be anything more than serviceable in CF.

Baseballtradevalues has Brendan Donovan at +25MM surplus. Probably in the ballpark of Brooks Lee, a little above a guy like Luke Keaschall. I don't like trading premium prospects for $2MM in savings.

Some overlap as Fangraphs quantifies "primary position" oddly. Assmuming you mean games and not "innings" so a quick search says 150+ games C - 3 1B - 11 2B - 9 3B - 9 SS - 13 LF - 11 CF - 9 RF - 7

A six man rotation makes no sense to me. As almost everybody has agreed, trading Pablo Lopez or Joe Ryan starts in favor of Randy Dobnak starts is a bad idea if you want to win games. Not to mention a couple of rotation arms will go down throughout the year. If you have a six man rotation, that means you need at least 9+ MLB caliber starters. The Twins have 7 guys on the roster I'd be comfortable with in even a spot start capacity. After that, totally unproven minor league depth. The only team who intentionally employed a six man rotation was the Angels when they had Shohei Ohtani. That's after years and years of speculation and pushing by people who just want to be "right" on the internet, but without any concrete or even real suggestive evidence a 6 man rotation carries any benefit for injury prevention or durability. The drawbacks for a 6 man rotation have far outweighed any potential gain for MLB teams so far, and I agree with them.

Yes, if you include the positions where he doesn't field well to hurt his defensive contributions, and look at him from the absolute worst possible projection possible, you can get him alllllllll the way down to 2 WAR.

The Rule 5 draft gives players under 19 an extra year before their eligible. Being on the 40 man doesn't mean debuting. Polanco was signed in 2009. He technically debuted in 2014 with a whopping 8 plate appearances mid-season, 5 years after signing. Polanco didn't spend any significant time on the roster until 2016, 7 years after his signing.

Buxton is a 3 WAR player. He'll play in about 80 games. He'll cover CF in 60 to 70 games. A "healthy offseason" doesn't exist for a guy with chronic migraine, knee, hip, and back issues. He's also had a few hamstring and wrist issues over the years. The chronic health issues aren't going away, they're "chronic" through no fault of his own. Some people get the short end of the stick. Buxton is a pretty freak athlete, IMHO. With that extreme physical capability, not all parts of his anatomy can keep up to his muscle strength.

With a healthy quad, Lewis "should be" quite a bit faster than Castro, but it's tough to know if Lewis will ever get back close to what he was before all the leg injuries. It's tough to gauge arm strength between the two with all the "positional flexibility" preventing them from playing a static position long enough to get throwing speeds listed at the same position on Statcast, but the two are pretty similar if you look at their infield throwing speed. Can't look at overall "arm" because it includes a lot of high velo outfield throws for Castro. Lewis probably has a 60 grade arm. Castro's throws from SS last year would put him in the 70 grade arm category, but there's no history of that. Kinda odd. I'm not sure what Lewis is thinking about 2B long term. I know he didn't like being suddenly and forcibly moved off 3B to a position he'd never played or practiced on a side of the infield he'd never played while he was fighting a slump in the middle of a playoff push in favor of a rookie who wasn't performing. I'm not sure why Baldelli just didn't put Jhoan Duran at 3B. Strong arm, that one.

Castro's pretty good, man. He's not the 6 WAR guy some TD folks were projecting after a month or two of lucky SSSS this year, but he is a solid wRC+ 110 type of hitter with plus defense at 2B. Easily a projectable 3 WAR guy. It's a money issue, and long term issue. Lee is probably around for 5 more years, Lewis around for 4 more. Castro costs 4-6x as much, and "he gone!" after this coming season.

Found you an energy guy. Name's Royce Lewis.

Colt Keith was 21 and had a 300 PA sample size at AAA when he was signed. At age 21, Keith had an ISO of .234 in AAA, and he has plus plus raw power. Brooks Lee was 23 when the Twins called him up, and between 22-23, he had a 282 PA sample size at AAA. Keith age 21 vs. Lee age 22-23 PA 301 vs 282 AVG .287 vs .266 OBP .369 vs .330 SLG .521 vs .500 ISO .234 vs .245 OPS .890 vs .830 Now on to MLB Keith age 22 vs. Lee age 23 PA 556 vs 185 AVG .260 vs .221 OBP .309 vs .265 SLG .380 vs .320 OPS .689 vs .585 wRC+ 97 vs 62 ISO .120 vs .099 EV 87.8 vs 85.8 Max EV 109.4 vs 107.4 Max Throw 81.9mph vs 83.1mph Speed 27.7 vs 25.6 Home to 1B 4.32 vs 4.56 Swing Speed 71.3 vs 69.3 In virtually every conceivable way Colt Keith is better than Brooks Lee. Stronger, faster, younger, better track record, better results, better expected results. Keith raked against fastballs, was well above average against offspeed stuff, but struggled a bit against some breaking balls. Brooks lee couldn't hit fastballs. That's an enormous gap in projectability. It's expected for a 22 year old rookie to struggle a bit against MLB breaking balls, but not nearly so much to see a rookie have major struggles against both 4 seam and sinking fastballs. Lee's bat speed may be a major issue in regard to that since his swing speed is far below average, likewise his max exit velocity suggesting Lee's power tool is well below average. He was one of the slowest runners in all of MLB. Lee's arm is better than Keith's, but Lee's arm is still well below average for a SS/3B. Keith's arm is a tick weaker than Julien's so it's going to be a major issue for him to work on if he doesn't want to be relegated to LF/1B/DH, but apart from that... I mean, what did Lee show? There were valid reasons why Lee struggled against MLB pitching. Limited raw power, slow bat speed, inability to catch up to MLB fastballs, large areas of the plate he couldn't cover, slow down the baseline to first. On top of that, while he was smooth, his physical skill set limited him defensively as well. This article absolutely bleeds desperation like a skydiver in a spiral pulling the emergency cord after cutting a failed main chute away. Even Jim Crane operating without a GM wouldn't give Lee a Colt Keith contract.

What's been talked about is how the Twins do not have any depth. AAA is a ghost farm for positional players. While the Twins could reach down into the depths of their farm system to package up some future guys, Baltimore isn't going to be interested since they're in their window of competitive play, and Mountcastle will cost $6MM the Twins can't afford to absorb, and he's not a great player. The Twins will need to trade from their MLB ready players to get Mountcastle, and to get the Orioles to eat salary will be expensive in prospect capital. Marco Raya/Zebby Matthews + Austin Martin or something like that might do it. That's also if you believe Mountcastle is actually an upgrade from Miranda, which I don't.

Pretty furious take there. The Twins do have a lot of potential starting pitching prospects on the cusp of being MLB ready, but I wouldn't bank on any of the AAA depth guys being as good as Lopez or Ryan. A year can make a lot of difference. Right now, the starting rotation looks like: Lopez, Ryan, Ober, Paddack, SWR. Already debuted depth - Festa, Matthews AAA depth - #5 Morris, #6 Raya, #13 Lewis

Honestly, this amounts to America telling poor countries what to do so as to not inconvenience a small portion of our entertainment. Median Household Income $1,000? - Cuba $2,700 - Venezuela $4,000 - Dominican Republic Those countries are where almost all international prospects come from and you're talking about countries with limited technology and recordkeeping. Internet access for those countries is 50-65% with rates dramatically lower in rural areas. Venezuelans are dealing with a nearly 20%hunger rate right now. When you're talking about going from your family almost starving to generational wealth overnight, you're going to have these scams. MLB teams do not benefit from age scams. MLB teams get hurt by age scams, which is why there are so many levels of background checking, and systems to address other issues like education and PED usage.

International players are often signed by age 16 so it takes a lot lot longer for them to make an appearance. Emmanuel Rodriguez leads a handful of Twins top prospects who came from international signings. Max Kepler, Jorge Polanco, and Miguel Sano all took between 6-7 years to debut.

I'm glad to see Santana win the award. I'm sure he takes a lot of pride in his defense, and he's played a long time in the league so this is something special he can hang his hat on. It wouldn't surprise me if this was a personal goal of his. He's probably kicking himself that it wasn't one of his escalators this year, but he did hit both $125k performance bonus goals, hah.