arby58

He's had seven seasons, and he simply can't figure it out. Moran''s pitched 257 innings in the minor leagues and issued 130 walks. In 91 MLB innings, he's added another 42 walks. He basically averages a walk every two innings- which explains his MLB career 1.330 WHIP. That just isn't going to cut it.

CBS Sports came out with their 2024 power rankings, and they don't think much of the rest of the division. They place the Twins 10th - followed (from a distance) by the Tigers (23), Guardians (24), Royals (26), and White Sox (28). If those predictions would hold true (doubt they will all be that bad), it might well be the worst division ever in terms of overall winning percentage. PECOTA and FanGraphs agree with you that the race will be tighter, and both predict the same order but different numbers of wins. They also have the division considerably better than CBS (PECOTA wins listed first, FanGraphs second): Twins 89, 85 Guardians 83, 81 Tigers 75, 80 Royals 70, 75 White Sox 66, 67 I'd be fine with 89 wins and disappointed with 85.

His OPS by month last year went .780, .776, .794 (so far nothing spectacular at AA), 1.033 (ok, call him up to AAA), .656, .829. Yes, September was a marked improvement, but the whole year doesn't scream out '26 man MLB roster.' My guess is he spends at least a month in St. Paul (barring injuries, of course).

Both Lee and Holliday played at AA and AAA last year. Holliday's OPS was .928 and .796 respectively. Lee was .841 and .731. Interestingly, at the AAA level, Holliday's walks versus strikeouts were basically 50-50, while Lee struck out about twice as often as he walked. Besides the issue of playing time at the MLB level, it looks like Holliday is well ahead of Lee offensively - and is about two years younger.

The point about Gallo last year is valid. It's too bad that Gallo's career fell off the table, because he had some really strong early years. 2017 and 2018 he averaged 40 HRs and 86 RBIs with OPS of .869 and .810 respectively. Then, in 2019, in just 241 AB, he had 22 HRs 49 RBI and an OPS of .986. It's easier to accept a lot of Ks when you're putting up those numbers.

The claim was the player development staff accentuates hitting prospects' strengths. Lewis, Jeffers, Jiulien, and Wallner all came up through the Twins system, and they all hit well above .230 last year. Besides, accentuating prospects' strengths isn't necessarily batting average. Wallner hit .249, but that's not his strength as a hitter. His .877 OPS is primarily because of his power, which is his strength.

Minor league system rankings are highly subjective - are you looking at overall depth, high impact players, performance within the league, etc? By contrast, the ESPN ranking has the Twins 9th (and the Tigers 3rd). Pretty much everybody has the Orioles 1st - it helps to be drafting at/near the top for several years in a row.

The Twins have had their share of great people as leaders. Harmon Killebrew was about as nice a person as you would ever want to meet (having met him years ago). Tony Oliva is/was the same way. Kirby Puckett always had a smile on his face, and Joe Mauer embodied humble class - four HOFers cut from the same cloth.

Sounds right. Luis Arraez was among the league leaders in OBP (8th at .393) last year, but he was only tied for 88th in runs scored. Some of that, no doubt, is on the rest of the Marlins offense, but some is also the fact that he mostly hit singles and doesn't run very well. Martin's speed will help him, both in advancing from first to third and turning singles into doubles via a stolen base.

Between Larnach and Martin, Martin is the one who can play CF. My guess is if Buxton can't play out there on a semi-regular basis, Martin gets the call up. If it's Wallner or Kepler on the IL, it may well be Larnach.

The Twins had the sixth most games lost due to injury in 2023 (1,804). The team with the most games lost was the Dodgers, with 2,465. The team with the fewest games lost was the Guardians (717). That said, six of the eight teams with the fewest lost days made the play-offs. Overall, lost games were up 6.1% for all of MLB in 2023.

Don't sleep on Bailey Ober. Lopez had slightly higher WAR (3.3 to 3.0), more innings (194 to 144 - Ober started the season at AAA), and a better strikeout rate, but Ober had better WHIP (1.067 to 1.155). They were pretty close in batters' OPS and hard hit rate (slightly better in each for Lopez). I believe they will be a very effective 1-2 punch for the Twins this year.

The LLC is the Pohlad family, which means multiple shareholders. You act as if they are a behemoth, and they are not. It is entirely possible that there are differing perspectives as to how much they wish to crimp their individual cashflows to support the baseball operation. From Forbes: "EBITDA for the entire sector was $505.7 million on $10.3 billion in sales in 2022. That results in a profit margin of 4.9%." That's hardly a stellar rate of return, and my guess is the Twins, given their market place, were not doing better than that. So if I'm a Pohlad member of the LLC, I'm asking if it really makes sense to make this my loss leader. I assume you understand this with all your business acumen.

Other people's money is easy to spend. I happen to work closely on 501c3 charitable work with a billionaire, and if you think $50 million a year is chump change, then I seriously doubt you hang out with them. Maybe the Pohlads could 'cashflow' it, but that isn't how businesses operate. It isn't can they do it, but can the business support it. You're thinking like a fan, not a fiduciary.

They aren't signing one year deals - I doubt they would even sniff at the 3 year deal you mention. It takes two to tango.

Right - this is super superficial. The fact that they are paying Witt a lot more this year than they would have to (based on his years of service) should have absolutely nothing to do with comparing payroll. That is them making a long-term decision, not a next year decision on their payroll. That is the problem with just making straight payroll comparisons - it doesn't take into account the players who are just getting started and have low dollar value contracts but may have a lot of impact. Meanwhile, the FO has to be cognizant of what those players mean to future payroll. It's not like you go out and spend a ton on players with long-term contracts when you know you will have to pay up for younger players coming off those contract restrictions.

The Bally TV money was not chump change. Yes, I will give them cover for that. You run businesses based on free cash flow - of course increases in valuation are helpful, but that is, like gains in the stock market, mark to market and not spendable cash. I also suspect that much of the Pohlad fortune is tied up in various assets and investments that are not readily spendable cash. Hence the need to actually, sort of, really, run the baseball operation like a normal business. Having been the budget director of a multi-billion dollar operation, nothing they have done strikes me as worthy of embarrassment on their part.

I won't be angry if they spend less and win more games. The three teams with the biggest payrolls last year all missed the play-offs. Baseball is littered with long term free agent deals that didn't amount to anything in the standings - paging Albert Pujols, Anthony Rendon, Pablo Sandoval, Josh Hamilton, etc.

Meanwhile, back at the ballpark, ,21 HRs in half a season of at bats is still a pretty big number. You strike me as a lover of guys that put up big batting averages, even if it leads to small numbers elsewhere - maybe a Luis Arraez lover. For all Luis' virtues in getting on base, he only scored 71 runs in 574 at bats. Meanwhile, your hated Joey Gallo scored 39 runs in 282 at bats. Do the math and explain to me Luis' big advantage in that stat line.

I didn't imply Gallo 'duped' the FO into anything. My point is that you only identify the 'for sure he's done' point, when a player has had strong success in a season, after giving sufficient time and chances. A lot of the people who now 'pile on' about playing Gallo were ready to trade Kepler for a bag of batting practice baseballs in June. Funny how that died down. Meanwhile, back at the ballpark, Gallo still hit 21 HRs in basically half a season's at bats and was league average in OPS+. If somebody else tells me that statistic is wacked, I'd suggest they take it up with Bill James.

That is what is known as a false dilemma or false dichotomy.

Anthony DeSclafani American baseball pitcher I think that as number 5 starters go, he's about what they had last year. Compare his starting numbers to Varland and Maeda, and he falls about in the middle of the two in terms of ERA and WHIP. There is also the issue that he started strong, then not so much, which is probably because of injury. The one issue that has been raised that is relevant is whether he will be injury-free at the start of the season. That may well mean that Varland plays the Ober role of AAA-MLB-AAA-MLB next year. In terms of next year's staff, I fully expect Ober to have a very good year - he was great last year until innings caught up with him. He had the look of a number 2 starter when he was going good last year. Ryan will probably be his typical number 3 type starter self. A lot depends on if they can get 120 innings of starting pitching out of CP. He certainly looked good in his brief audition end of last year. I've said I think the starting pitching won't be as good in 2024, but the offense should be better, and the bullpen has more depth. On offense, you're really just replacing Taylor in CF (expect Buxton to make up for that) and Polanco's half year. If they can get close to full years from Lewis, Julien, Wallner, and Kirilloff and some return to form from Correa, the offense should be better - maybe by a lot.

Anthony DeSclafani American baseball pitcher

Agree on both - Farmer can handle 2B, SS, 3B. Castro only played 8 games at SS last year, Gordon only 17 at SS in 2022, and his defensive numbers there were not good. With Vasquez, you would be selling low, which (other than maybe dumping a bit of salary) isn't going to get you much back in return. Others have suggested (and I tend to agree) that if they make a trade before the start of the year, it will be 40 man roster prospects that are the primary movers.

That's a reasonable analysis. My guess is the Twins stash Varland at St. Paul and keep him stretched out to start. Maybe he ends up with a chip on his shoulder - it seemed to work with Ober, who was (at least until he wore down late in the season) arguably the Twins' #3 starter.