Riverbrian

Flight, Rental Car and Hotels are booked. My first time attending spring training this year. Been on the wish list for a long time. I'll soon check that box. I stand here on leap day in anticipation of taking the leap.

I suspect that my friend already looked up the answer on the internet and is just being an ass. 😄

Based on the above sentence... I'm willing to bet that you will be disappointed when it is all said and done. I hate to say that because you are a good guy and you deserve happiness. 😉 I'm willing to bet that Santana faces a lot of right handers. Barring a significant injury that puts him on the shelf for a long time. I'll set the Over/Under at 250 AB's versus right handers and I will take the over. I'll predict that he has twice as many AB's against right handers then he does against left handers. If you are right though and the Twins do indeed strap Santana into a Kyle Garlick role. If Santana joins Farmer and Margot. I'm going to chuckle a bit because it will mean that our Twins have $21,500,000 worth of ball players stuffed into the SHORT SIDE. With all of the discussion of belt tightening... after you take the 8 million that Dodgers included in the Margot trade... the Twins have 21.5 million worth of ball players and 13.5 million of actual money stuffed into the short side. That's tightening the belt to make plenty of room for junk food. 😄

Taylor Walls in 2022. 466 PA's - .172 BA - .553 OPS What does Baseball Reference list for bWAR and what does Fangraphs list for fWAR? Just asking for a friend.

This sentence is about as emotional as it gets. It's one thing to disagree with a trade but when you are saying that the Twins think Miller is WORTHLESS to support your point... you are embellishing, escalating your rhetoric. I highly doubt that the Twins felt Noah Miller was worthless. Again... It's OK to disagree with a trade but at least consider the possibility that instead of the Twins thinking Noah is worthless maybe the Dodgers think he is worth something. Trades take two to tango. You have to consider the other team. There are miles of gray into between black and white. Deep Breath Doctor Gast.

Insatiable. This is an itch that can't be scratched because it doesn't end. If the Twins spent some money... Oh... Let's say they spent 250 million in an off-season. I know that's crazy to think they would do that ever... but lets say they spend 250 million. That wouldn't calm the the masses down because there will just be another level after that. I wish the Twins would spend 250 million in an off-season so I could prove my point but until they spend 250 million in an off-season... I'll just say that Yankees fans think that Steinbrenner is cheap. It doesn't end. Fandom is insatiable to the point where you can't pay attention to most fans anymore. NDSU Bison fans were producing page after page of non-stop fire Matt Entz conversation because they were 4-2 after 6 games because winning 9 out of the last 13 FCS titles isn't good enough. Insatiable. I have a friend who left the Twins last season for the Padres. Last off-season!!! After spending 250 million... he's gone. He says... I'm done with Twins... The Padres are my new team. He would text about how awesome the Padres were at least once a week until the Padres were obviously not so awesome and the texts slowed to a drip. This year he's a supposed Twins fan again but still constantly whining about the cheap Pohlads. I stopped listening a long time ago.

He hasn't really hit since 2018 actually. He wouldn't be my first choice for that last spot with the Twins. However, he has career .801 against lefties and the Dodgers are a platooning team. and perhaps most importantly... The Dodgers keep bringing him back. After the trade from the Red Sox last year... This is what Dave Roberts said: “I still stand by, he’s one of the most talented baseball players I’ve been around,”

Short Side Platoon to pair with our young left handed hitting outfielders. Wasn't hard to guess that the Twins were going to search for this guy. Someone who can play CF because we will need someone who can play CF. Wasn't hard to guess that the Twins were going to search for that guy. Doesn't strike out a lot and he can steal a base. Those are a couple of nice features. We should have all known that another player was coming to address the short side platoon. Here he is. The guy who makes the opening day roster all pretty with that platoon right/left balance. Another thought I have. In consideration of the timing this trade and Kike signing with the Dodgers. I can't help but wonder if the Twins were close to signing Kike... prompting the Dodgers to pick up the phone and interest the Twins in someone else while clearing roster space to sign Kike themselves. I don't know of course but the timing suggests a plausible hypothesis. The Dodgers had Kike before and they know how to utilize his versatility... while Margot is OF only. Just a thought.

I had absolutely no issues with the 2023 defense and I'm really not sure where clean up is required. Defense is run prevention. The Twins tied for the third in MLB in run prevention. 4.07 Runs Allowed per game. The Brewers led the way with 3.99 I understand that fans would normally give pitchers the credit for good run prevention numbers but if the Twins finished tied for third in MLB... even if you give all the credit to the pitchers... how bad could the defense be if they finished third in runs allowed? Are we saying that we would have been first in run allowed if only the defense was cleaned up?

Last Off-Season... The D-Backs did very little in Free Agency. This off-season... They did some things. Last Off-Season... The Twins did some things in Free Agency. This off-season... The Twins did very little.

I'll agree this off-season that they dropped a couple of oranges while juggling public relations. However, the thing about PR is this. They will pick up the oranges and try again. When they keep them in the air for awhile with no mistakes, the crowd will forget about the oranges previously on the floor until the next time they are dropped.

I don't disagree with you about this off-season. We both would have liked to see the Twins add top end to what we had returning from last year. However... in regards to payroll and the many discussions that spawn from it. Last year it was the Padres. Twins Daily was subjected to the Padres being held up high as the example to follow. This year it's the Royals and D-Backs. Nobody is talking about the Padres anymore. Next year the Royals and D-Backs will fade back into the corner where they usually sit and a new team or teams will be the new team in the spot light. . Next year it will be whatever team steps out out of the corner and makes a significant free agent signing or two and that team will be used as an example of what the Twins should have done.

Agreed Player X is trying to negotiate for a 6 year deal with Teams A, B and C. The general manager, owner, manager of Team D says publicly that Player X is asking for way too much money, he has an injury history that is concerning, he can't hit a breaking pitch, he doesn't listen to his manager and he doesn't shower after games so therefore we are not interested. I think it is quite understandable that the players union would have a problem with that type of thing and also quite understandable that they have stipulations preventing such things in the CBA that is painfully negotiated between representatives of owners and the players.

More power to you. Sadly... you and I both know that social media only gets to it's current scale because of people paying attention to it.

So... Let me get this straight. If Joe Pohlad speaks honestly about off-season plans. He is not only torn apart by the fan base who is always at the ready to get pissed about words spoken... but also by the players union who don't want any inside negativity attached to any players while they are in negotiation positions. It makes you question why Joe agreed to be interviewed in the first place. What possible benefit could be gained for Joe and the Twins organization by speaking to the public? Perhaps the biggest lie being told is from the fan base or an electorate that demands the truth. The truth is... we demand the exact opposite. We rip the truth to shreds every... single... time. Joe is new to this... he will learn to stay behind the scenes and let the PR people craft the message. Teaching moment for Joe.

So based on MSA data... You have Minneapolis at 60% of Atlanta and that forms the basis of your narrative. OK... Keep going. Do the same with all of the markets if you'd like. How does Atlanta compare to New York. Are the Yankees spending up to par in comparison to the Braves using your MSA formula? Maybe the Yankees are the real cheap skates. Maybe the Brewers are the big spenders? Based on MSA... Why would the A's leave the 13th largest market for the 29th if you can simply assess Twins revenue based upon MSA Data comparison between markets? The same comparison would have to apply between San Francisco/Oakland and Vegas. Come to think of it... Why is the San Francisco/Oakland market only 13th!?!. Why does the San Francisco market go from 4 million to 9 million shooting up to 5th largest if you use the CSA? What about San Jose? San Jose isn't part of the arbitrary lines drawn to determine MSA but they are included within the arbitrary lines to determine CSA? Why Did the Giants Care if the A's landed in San Jose? Whose going to care if the A's land in Las Vegas. Why are blackouts rampant in Iowa? How do the Brewers do it if they are a lowly 40th ranked MSA barely bigger than Louisville. I appreciate the tone of the discussion and it's great to have discussions but... all I can say is. I tried I can only advise you to not use MSA data to draw your conclusions. It is your decision weather you will take that advice.

You have to understand that professional sports teams have footprints that are much larger than the arbitrary lines drawn to determine a DMA (Designated Market Area), MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area or even the larger CSA (Combined Statistical Area). Source Wikipedia The MSA of Atlanta 6,104,803 - Twin Cities 3,690,512 The CSA of Atlanta is 6,930,4323 - Twin Cities 4,080,232 By extending the arbitrary lines outward to include area surrounding the MSA. Atlanta has picked up 830,000 people. While Minneapolis/St. Paul picks up 390,000 with the addition of St. Cloud and Faribault among other neighboring counties. What happens if you keep extending out and adding the counties surrounding the arbitrary lines of the CSA?. The answer is Atlanta keeps adding to their advantage. I only do this to illustrate the limitations of what you have chosen for data to make your conclusions. Atlanta isn't just bigger in the Designated Market Area, they increase the margin when you expand out further to arbitrary lines of the MSA and they increase that margin again when you expand you further to the arbitrary lines of the CSA. So, I'll ask what happens when you expand to add the counties surrounding the CSA. The Answer is that the Atlanta area population will grow that margin even further because there are more people living in those counties then in the Minnesota counties surrounding St. Cloud. I am only typing this for your understanding of the data that you are using to draw your conclusions. They don't support your conclusion. At this point it is important to repeat a sentence that I used earlier. Professional Footprints are much larger than the arbitrary lines drawn to determine the MSA. Rochester, Duluth, Sioux Falls, Fargo, Grand Forks and Baudette are not included in the Minnespolis/St. Paul CSA. It would be a mistake to not consider these secondary even tertiary markets when it comes to revenue possibilities for a sports team. Twins games are broadcast exclusively in those markets, the additional market demographic data will be included to determine advertising rates. The advertising rate will determine how much money the broadcast rights are worth. It is also important to note that the people in Pipestone, not only watch the games from home, they buy Jorge Polanco Jerseys, they travel to home games and they buy a hot dog when they are at the game. If they didn't... the Twins caravan would be an incredible waste of time and effort. It was great meeting Kirby Puckett in Thief River Falls and all but why do it, if they don't matter. Once you consider that using MSA or expanded CSA data robs the Twins of the chance to include significant population centers like Rochester, Duluth, Sioux Falls, Fargo and Grand Marais. Then you have to consider what you have robbed the Braves of by arbitrarily condensing their footprint. The Braves get to tack on fairly large population centers in the state of Georgia like Augusta, Columbus, Macon and Savannah. All of which are bigger or similar size to our largest population center outside the CSA which is Sioux Falls. Not only that... but Atlanta Braves Territory extends out to neighboring states much like we extend out to the major crowded states of North Dakota and South Dakota. This put Braves broadcasts exclusively in markets like Nashville, Charlotte, Birmingham, Jackson Mississippi and Tennessee plus Knoxville, Asheville and it probably includes New Orleans, and the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Area. Add Nashville to the Braves and compare that to the addition of Duluth. Add Charlotte to the Braves and compare that to the addition of Fargo. Add Birmingham, Mobile, Huntsville, Chattanooga, Biloxi. and compare that to Rochester and Hibbing. To put it simply... More people live in the South than live in the North. Throw all of this information into the hopper and it still doesn't mean that the Brewers won't have more attendance than the Giants at the end of the year.

The family had a cat If you were sitting on the couch and when the cat felt like it, she would crawl up on your chest, lay her head next to yours, make that purring sound and stay there for awhile. It was kinda nice and then all of sudden, from the same position, without doing a thing to her, she would do that cat slap thing across your face while hissing, like it was her way of saying it's over and I'm leaving. Day to day, moment to moment, we never really knew what to expect from her. Sitting in the window, all calm and then the zoomies would cause her to sprint full speed across the house and back to the window in seconds. She would meow by the door, so you open the door to let her out, she would go out and immediately meow to get back in. The cat was very hard to figure but I came to the conclusion that she had the stability of defensive stats and I was just going to have to accept that.

Wrong or Right... I dismissed WAR along time ago in my evaluation of players. I won't quote it and I won't accept it in any discussion for positive, negative or neutral assessments of players. I take issue with the use of any zone ratings which in my opinion are too unstable due to the small sample size of the non-routine plays that are needed to produce rather large swings in the data. On top of that... I am under the impression that this unstable defensive data is then over-weighted in the formula allowing small sample size data to erase more stable larger sample size offensive data. In other words... Using 2022: 1. If Max Kepler is a 2.2 bWAR with a .666 OPS and Jose Miranda is 1.0 bWAR with a .751 OPS. I'm suspicious of the defensive weighting. 2. If WAR is a counting stat and I believe it is... If Jose Miranda played in 10 more games and had 36 more plate appearance than Max Kepler in 2022... I'm even more suspicious. 3. If Max Kepler makes 3 plays a game on average. How many of those chances are routine? How many of those chances are considered difficult. The Answer is: Routine... A lot... Difficult a little. I'm even more suspicious. 4. If Max Kepler makes one difficult play every 2.5 games... meaning he catches a ball in a low percentage zone 1 time every 2.5 games. That can erase over .100 OPS point difference? I'm beyond suspicious. 5. The catcher position... IMO opinion contains more defensive intangibles that don't get folded into WAR. But... then again... I haven't looked into WAR for quite some time.

I am not qualified to speak on the finances of any organization... including the place where I work and earn a living every single day. With that I am reasonably certain of is this: Twins payroll falls up and down in a range and there are a group of teams that fall up and down in that same range. They have a budget, they have always had a budget. They spend on player salaries at a similar level of the teams in that grouping so I assume the whatever the Twins are using for their budget... they are not alone. I am simply not going to bang my head against that wall because the head wound from repeated banging won't knock the wall down and is therefore unnecessary because I also don't believe that this group of teams are too cheap to win. I read the back of the napkin math of jharaldson at your suggestion. He lost me when he attempted to use MSA data to support his conclusion. While I may not know anything about the finances of any organization. I do understand audience measurement. If anyone is using MSA, CSA or DMA data to bang their head against that wall... they are using faulty data so therefore the conclusion is faulty. . Now back to things that I don't understand which are finances that I don't have access to. If each team pools 48% of revenue and splits the total equally amongst the 30 teams. Shouldn't that 48% of revenue be a fairly large part of the equation. I don't see any place where jharaldson mentions the 48%. Shouldn't that 48% of revenue that the Twins contribute to the revenue sharing pool go into that section where he tries to determine the Twins revenue by comparison with the Atlanta Braves using faulty Metropolitan Statistical Area methodology to come to his conclusion.

Agreed... they do need to get better at the PR game and the PR game is typically best played by shutting up. Yet... at the same time we have folks... lots of them right here on twinsdaily who demand the "Truth" only to tear them to pieces when they speak... Worse than when they don't speak. I still hope for a world where people can speak. I know it ain't coming and gone forever and how we react to little bits of information is why it ain't coming and gone forever. But... Agreed... they should just stay away from microphones, tik tok and the like. Let us stay in the dark because we can't handle the light. On what is really being implied by this article. I honestly don't care. The Twins have always had a budget that they operate with. I don't care if I know the exact budget because I've watched Twins payroll fall up and down in the same range with the same teams year after year. I understand that there is a correlation between payroll and success but I hold no expectation that they will become the Padres and I am absolutely sure that the Padres paid for it with their future. You and I agree that this would have been a great time to add impact to the lineup. We have the depth built so adding at the top would be the natural progression for club improvement but I have never expected the Twins to exceed budgetary guidelines whatever those guidelines might be. I'm OK with the Angels holding Anthony Rendon stock... I am more concerned with the trade of Polanco only to reallocate the savings into what are multiple lesser parts. We already have multiple lesser parts. In other words... it isn't the amount of money we have to spend... it's what we do with the amount of money we have to spend.

Great post. Substance, alternate view points beyond the owners are cheap and manager is the worst ever. You'll be one of those posters that I take seriously on this site. I agree... Catchers don't get to choose who is on the mound. Not to mention that cERA and just plain ole ERA is going to be influenced by big bad innings of a 7 spot with one out retired which is going to be influenced by the lucky bounce. However, in the end... as the sample increases by using all pitchers over the course of a season... stabilization increases and with that stabilization, you may not find the absolute truth but at least a nugget of truth. I don't put a lot of stock in cERA either for all the reasons that you correctly list but... I will let the nugget of truth confirm for me what I already believe: Jeffers was not a defensive issue behind the plate. I think it is OK to let his superior offense shine without defense worry diminishing it.

Agreed there are a lot of factors that go into Catcher ERA to put too much stock into the stat and I am sure that there are advanced metrics used internally that would be much more reliable measures. However... there is always one thing that I can't dismiss with cERA. Since defense is all about run prevention. Since the catcher plays such a big role in team defense, pitch sequence, advanced scouting, pitcher psychiatrist, quarterbacking the infield cuts, framing, blocking, steals and all of those things. Since often times managers will choose to sacrifice offense at the position for defense because of the hard to measure value of those things. Since run production can be sacrificed and justified for run prevention at the catcher position. At the very very least... Jeffers 3.61 cERA and Vazquez 4.09 cERA can at least show that the run prevention wheels didn't fall of the tracks with Jeffers behind the dish. Analysis beyond that... I'll leave for those who do this for a living. Jeffers did just fine behind the dish in my opinion.

You are probably in the ballpark. I really don't have a problem with regular rest at the catching position for maintenance. Ideally... you want your best catcher available for the playoffs and rest during the regular season should increase those odds... however... the distribution does need to reflect performance. If Jeffers is the guy that they started every game in the playoffs... that illustrates the importance of Jeffers over Vazquez. Jeffers should have played more than Vazquez did during the regular season. This year... I actually hope we are able to give Camargo a significant run. At the catcher position... I want the development pipeline to chug along and opportunity is necessary for development.

Will Jeffers be the primary catcher this year? What does primary mean in regards to the catcher position? Last year both catchers were healthy (as far as the public knows) for the entire year. Last year Jeffers out hit Vazquez by a significant margin. It wasn't even close. Jeffers had the 2nd highest OPS amongst catchers over 100 AB's with .859. Ryan Jeffers out hit the already fitted for Cooperstown Adley Rutschman with .809. Jeffers and Rutschman had almost identical BA and OBP but Jeffers out slugged him by a good distance. Vazquez ranked 39th in OPS amongst catchers over 100 AB's with a .598. Yet for some reason... with the best hitting catcher in baseball based on actual OPS performance in 2023. Vazquez caught more games and Vazquez made more trips to the plate in 2023. I understand that Vazquez started the season as the primary catcher with a 2 to 1 ratio but that ratio never adjusted to 2 to 1 in Jeffers favor regardless of the offensive distance between the two. Now it can be argued that Vazquez is the better defensive catcher and using the importance of defense at that position can be used to justify Vazquez getting more playing time. However... if defense is important to justify playing time at the catcher position... Why was Jeffers chosen to catch every single game in the playoffs? Catchers typically require rest and Catchers typically require time on the disabled list. JT Realmuto led MLB in games caught with 133 with a couple of pinch hits for 135 games. 125 positions players played in 135 games or more at other postions. Only 5 MLB catchers qualified for the batting title last year (502 AB's) but those catchers got there by including DH work to their resume. William Contreras C - 108 DH - 33 Adley Rutschman C - 110 DH - 46 Cal Raleigh C - 128 DH - 15 Keibert Ruiz C - 117 DH - 16 Salvador Perez C - 91 DH - 29 1B - 23 --------------------------------------------------- Ryan Jeffers C-82 DH - 9 Catchers are over valued consistently. We had the best hitter at the position last year and he didn't out catch the other guy making 10 million. OK... Jeffers is the primary... He should be but in the context of the Twins... What does that mean?