arby58

Give Gordon a shot at SS. I'd much rather have him there with another season with Simmons. IF we think Lewis/Martin are a year away, spend your money elsewhere (like starting pitching).

I think you meant 'release them' rather than 'trade them.'

Whatever Ryan turns out to be (agree the MLB sample size is small, but he has performed at other levels), some of the knocks against him are of the 'so what' variety. Right, he throws a fastball in the low 90s, but plenty of excellent pitchers (Maddux, Buehrle, Greinke) get by/got by in that range. Right, he throws a lot of fastballs - so do Lance Lynn and Jake Odorizzi (also around the same mph and spin rate). He can be an effective MLB pitcher with what he's already got.

He's got almost 100 ABs this year with the Twins. He slugs .340, has a .654 OPS (85 OPS+). He's a below average hitter with little power. He's 25 - hardly a kid anymore - and has never hit more than 9 HRs in the minors. What's there to see?

Another advantage of having a reliever work 1+ innings is they will already have faced three batters, so the manager has more flexibility with removing them - plus, if that pitcher gets, say, 1 or 2 outs and another reliever is needed, if they get to the end of the inning, they are also no longer subject to the three batter rule.

If you send him and he's out, he definitely can't score. If you don't send him, he still might score. It's a case-by-case decision.

It's only six games. Maybe he is the real deal, and maybe pitchers will figure out how to get him out. It's when they start changing approach we'll see whether he can also figure out how to respond - if he can, then we can pronounce him ready.

I suspect that a 12 noon start had something to do with that.

An illness isn't really an injury. If you take the Twins at their word, neither Buxton or Arraez are likely to miss much playing time.

Dobnak is a nice problem to have - very few teams have his caliber of starting pitcher in waiting. If Thorpe also does well at AAA, and with some of their young guns pushing forward, the rotation could start looking like Cleveland's in a year or two.

2 for 33 at bats is an awfully big handful.

Sure, but some of those have proven themselves in the big leagues. Kiriloff has not. I'd keep Rooker he's done more at the major league level at this point.

The article notes that Arraez' lack of power means he's not a great number 2 behind Buxton. Besides, even if Arraez was a 'great number 2' Buxton, with an anemic OBP, is not a great number 1 - except for his speed. Given his decent power, Buxton makes sense at 7, where he is likely to have runners on base to drive around. Meanwhile, the article makes a point I made some time ago that Buxton's first base activity will likely not be much of a distraction for a 'dialed-in' hitter like Arraez.

Sure, in a perfect world, but the point is still valid - you're more likely to accept less offensive performance from a center fielder. Paul Blair is the epitome of this - he had a career OPS of .684, but his defense was other world stuff. In 1974, he finished 13th in MVP balloting with an OPS of .730.

The point of looking at OPS rather than batting average alone is that not all hits are created equal. If, say, in 500 plate appearances, you have 111 singles, you have a .222 batting average. If you have 20 HR and 20 doubles with 71 singles, you also have a .222 batting average. Plus, what if the player with 111 singles has no walks, and the player with the HRs and doubles also walks 30 times? His batting average is the same but not his OBP or OPS.