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minman1982

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Everything posted by minman1982

  1. minman1982
    When Sano was on, he could hit anything out of the ballpark. When he was off, it was strikeout after strikeout. I wish the guy luck at his next stop. I know the Twins have held on this long because of a guy named David Ortiz, who they probably gave up on too early back in the day. Maybe Sano still becomes Ortiz v2.0, but probably not at this point.
  2. minman1982
    Hopefully, some team picks him up and he gets another shot and a fresh start. Unfortunately, it was past time for the Twins to make this move. If it had not been for injuries upon injuries to are rotation and bullpen, Duffey probably would have been DFA'ed a lot sooner.
  3. minman1982
    I have to agree as well. The Twins will also probably be getting Maeda back at some point before the end of the season. While he will not be a starter this year, he could certainly provide some depth in the bullpen and play a role in 2023. Imagine what this season would look like if Maeda was pitching like he did last year every fifth game. 2023: Mahle, Maeda, Ryan (with a solid year under his belt), Gray, and take your pick from the rest could be the rotation, in no particular order. If the FO really wanted to make a splash, they could go after a top tier free agent starter and round things out nicely.
  4. minman1982
    While it stinks to give up someone like Christian Encarnacion-Strand, that is the price you have to pay for a decent to good MLB starter with multiple years of team control. I think this was a move the front office had to make.
  5. minman1982
    If the price is right, why not take a shot? At least the FO can say they made a move to try to improve the pitching.
  6. minman1982
    Are the Twins going to make some moves to acquire some upgrades both in the starting rotation and that bullpen? If so, I say they have a 50-50 chance. If not, I give them a 1 in 5 chance of winning the division (and 1 in 4 of making the playoffs). I think winning a playoff game should be the goal of this team. A run in the playoffs would be nice but I don't think this is a team that is going to really threaten the top teams in the AL (Yankees, Astros, etc.).
  7. minman1982
    The shoulder is enough to scare me away from this trade. Go after Castillo first. Only think about Mahle if you get a truly great deal. Martin, Wallner, and SWR is too much for a pitcher with a bum shoulder. I would give one of those and another low level prospect but I doubt the Reds would be into it.
  8. minman1982
    Is this a team that can compete in the postseason this year? Before you look at what types of moves to make at the deadline, you have to evaluate what a realistic outcome for this team is. Given the Twins recent postseason history, winning a single postseason game would be huge even if they go no where. Young pitchers with multiple years of team control should be the targets. The Twins need to be thinking about 2023, 2024, and 2025. If they can get some pitching to go along with their offense, they could be one of the best teams in baseball.
  9. minman1982
    The Twins have shown thus far that they are a team that could easily win this division. The White Sox have had some bad luck so are probably better than what their record and stats indicate. The rest of the division is about where I would have expected. The question is how do the Twins matchup with some of the better teams in the AL?
  10. minman1982
    As far as his future with the Twins, does anyone see him getting traded at some point? I have always thought Sano was a streaky hitter. When he is hot, he is among the best in the game; when he is cold, it is ugly. If we could get a decent prospect or two for him, why not make a deal?
  11. minman1982
    What should we expect? Even the best teams lose to poor teams at some point during the season. If we take the Dodgers out of the equation (since it is clear that they are an elite team right now), the Twins are 18-8 against mostly mediocre to poor teams. That is a 0.692 win percentage. If the Twins can take seven out of ten from every poor to mediocre team they will face the rest of the way, we probably should start selling tickets for October. I have been impressed that this team has kept finding ways to win. At the beginning of the season, I would have said that everything needs to go perfectly and they needs some luck on top of that to maybe compete for the postseason. While the Twins have had some luck go their way, things have definitely not gone according to plan. I am happy to celebrate that a month into the season the Twins are three games up in a very winnable division and seem to be in the driver's seat right now. I look forward to some head-to-head games with Cleveland and Chicago later this season.
  12. minman1982
    It sucks to lose Correa but I am excited to see what Royce Lewis can do in the Big Leagues. If Lewis is clearly over matched or just average, it makes the decision easy when Correa returns. Send him back to St. Paul to play every day. If Lewis does really well, it makes this decision a lot harder. Do you find a spot for him to play every day with the Twins or do you send him back to St. Paul? I don't think you can have him ride the bench at Target Field. While this is certainly a more complicated situation, it would be a good problem to have for a change.
  13. minman1982
    I have to agree. If the Twins went down 1-2-3 in the top of the 4th, maybe you could argue that sending Bundy back out for another inning of work is a smart way to protect your bullpen since your offense clearly isn't performing either. The Twins tried their best to claw out of a six-run hole, and almost did it. The fact that this was clearly a winnable game when the bottom of the fourth started should have paved the way for the bullpen (which has been outstanding as of late) to take over. With the number of starters we currently have and how well some of the others are performing, I would have to believe that Bundy's days as a Twins starter are coming to an end pretty soon.
  14. minman1982
    "Team chemistry" is one of those amorphous things that is really hard to pin down. How do you know if a team has good chemistry or not? Obviously, if you are winning games, a lot of the little issues in a clubhouse get ignored. I may not like you very much but if you are going to help us win, I will put up with you and even pretend to be your friend. Losing does the opposite. It is easy on a losing team to blame others for your team's performance and try to find scapegoats for every situation. Since it is next to impossible to actually quantify "team chemistry" in any meaningful way, it is hard to answer the initial question. My gut feeling is that it is a little of both, winning games contributes to better team chemistry and better team chemistry increases your odds of winning a game. Basically, a positive feedback loop where one improves the other and vice versa.
  15. minman1982
    If you are a pitcher and you can trust your defense to make the routine plays and make a couple spectacular plays mixed in, it gives you a lot more confidence to throw the pitches you want to throw. If you can trust your infield to do their job, you don't need to try to strike everyone out. Correa and Urshela are definitely improvements on the defensive side of the ball. Polanco seems much more comfortable at second than at shortstop. I would be fine with going with Arraez/Kiriloff (when he returns) at 1B, Polanco at 2B, Correa at SS, and Urshela at 3B as the normal defensive alignment.
  16. minman1982
    While walk off wins are exciting, it was nice to have a boring win for a change. Joe Ryan completely dominated the Tigers and it felt like the Twins were in complete control from start to finish. If this is going to be a team with aspirations of postseason success, this is what needs to happen when we play mediocre to bad teams, like the Tigers. It would be nice to complete the sweep today and bring a seven game winning streak to Tampa on Friday. The Rays should prove to be a more capable opponent so this will be a good test for the Twins. If the Twins can look competitive over the weekend, maybe this team is for real. If they get their butts handed to them, we will know that the AL Central just stinks. If the Twins look dominant in Tampa, maybe they enter the conversation of legitimately good teams. I would be happy to see them not get swept over the weekend. 1-2 against a probably superior opponent at their home field is nothing to be embarrassed about.
  17. minman1982
    When I coached sixth graders, we taught our catcher (or any other player for that matter) to NEVER throw the ball back to third on a play like the last play of the game. Nothing good comes out of throwing the ball again. Best case scenario, you get Urshela for the second out and Larnach probably scores in the process. Better to take the bases loaded one out than risk giving up a run (or two) by doing something dumb.
  18. minman1982
    I don't see Correa staying in Minnesota long term. Depending how this season goes, I would not be surprised if he opts out. The only advantage I see to stay beyond this season is to build more time between the present and his time with the Astros when they won a the trash can World Series. I don't see the Twins as a team that is going to be willing to give a long term deal with $300M, unless it has a ton of incentives in it and a lower base salary (kind of like the Buxton contract).
  19. minman1982
    The answer is yes. Byron Buxton is the best player in baseball when he is on the field. Let's put it into perspective. Over the last two seasons, Buxton has 0.076 WAR/game played, best in MLB. The next best is Mike Trout at 0.069 WAR/game. Buxton is currently third in the AL in WAR at 1.2 (and he has missed 6 of his teams first sixteen games). Let's assume that he manages to be healthy enough to play in 110 more games this season. If he produces at the same rate he did over the last two seasons while on the field, that would put him at 9.6 WAR for the season. For comparison, a 10-WAR season is generally considered an all-time great season (only eight position players have every done this, Mike Trout has done it twice). The key question is can he stay on the field? If he does, he is a generational talent like Trout, Barry Bonds, Joe Morgan, or Cal Ripken Jr. The fact that he hasn't been able to stay on the field consistently is the only reason the Twins could sign him to an extension. I think the good news is that even though Buxton has had more than his share of injuries, none of those injuries seem to be related or recurring. If you talk about players who have simply had bad luck when it comes to injuries, Buxton has to be near the top of the list.
  20. minman1982
    Got to love that Sano hits a 2 run homer in his first at bat today. Looks like the 0-21 to start a season is going to have to wait until next year. Then he backs it up by WALKING in his next plate appearance.
  21. minman1982
    1-161?
  22. minman1982
    It will be interesting to see if this opens the gates a little bit for the offense. Overall in this series, I feel the pitching has been decent. If we ignore the stinker of an inning that Duffey threw yesterday, the bullpen has been nearly rock solid. All three starters have been about what I would have expected. It was really nice to see the bats get going this afternoon. Six homeruns from 5 players today with Arraez and Urshela getting into the action the last couple days shows that there is some power in this lineup. It feels like this is a team that could score ten runs in about any game they play this season. Play of the day for me was the throw from Correa in the first to prevent Winker from scoring. Great relay from Kirilloff and great throw to the plate. Winker was almost to third when Kirilloff started to throw the ball from the outfield wall. Correa has shown just with his defensive play that he is worth $30M this season. The Donaldson trade is looking pretty good right now. Urshela and Sanchez have shown they can contribute. We dumped Donaldson's contract and freed up the money to get Correa. Lastly, I never felt that Donaldson ever really fit in with this team and in this clubhouse. Urshela, Sanchez, and Correa all seem to fit in.
  23. minman1982
    I like the idea of sending Winder down to start the season and maybe using a few bullpen games in the first three times through the rotation. If there will be a 28 man roster to start the season, that gives you enough bullpen depth to pull this off. It is also worth noting that while Ober and Ryan were good last year, the sample size on them is very small. It is certainly possible that one or both of these guys plays themself out of a starting spot, in which case Winder (or someone else) will need to step up. Either way, I think the Twins are going to need to get another established major league level starting pitcher if they are going to actually try to compete this year. I could see the FO waiting to see what happens in the first month before giving up any of the farm to get a pitcher by trade.
  24. minman1982
    The problem I see with the "opener" strategy is that it requires you to put a lot of work on your bullpen during that game. In order to be successful using this strategy as more than a stop-gap for a single game, you need to both have quality bullpen depth and a couple of other quality workhorse type starters to protect your bullpen in other games. If you top four starters only average five innings and you are trying to use your "opener" as your fifth starter, you would be relying on your bullpen to go about 5 innings per game. I don't believe the Twins (or many other teams, for that matter) have the bullpen depth to do this for 162 games. The question I have is are we better off having two pitchers (say, Jax and Thorpe) give us five innings of work or sign someone like Cueto who might also be able to give you five quality innings? For the record, unless Cueto is dirt cheap, I don't think he has enough of an upside to make it worth signing him. Also, this FO doesn't really have a great track record when it comes to picking starting pitchers out of another team's trash bin. The Twins also seem to have a lot of near MLB ready starting pitchers. Could the fifth spot be a combination of these options mainly to see if we have a diamond in the rough somewhere in our organization? Maybe Thorpe or Jax surprises everyone and is dominant and shows they are a legitimate starter. I doubt this will happen but you never know, stranger things have happened in baseball.
  25. minman1982
    We will see what happens tomorrow, but I cannot imagine both sides wanting to push this thing far enough to have the whole 2022 season (or even a large portion of it) called off. If you think what happened in 1994-95 was bad for the sport, think about what losing a whole season (after playing through COVID) because owners and players can't figure out how to split up billions upon billions of dollars would look like. It would not be good for the owners or the players to lose the 2022 season.
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