Riverbrian

122 OPS Plus - 11% K Rate over his first 500 Major League AB's. I think he's going to be a pain in our side for years to come.

It shows up in December consistently without fail like Egg Nog suddenly appears at the supermarket in December.

Don't get me wrong... I am very very happy with Lopez but giving up Arraez was very painful for me. Arraez was at least a 4 and maybe a 5 for me. Trading Lewis would be at least a 7 maybe 8 on the pain scale. I think you pass out when the pain reaches a 10. Don't do it... it would hurt to much. OK... on second thought... wait... Umm... Lewis seems to get injured easy... He probably has his own face icon on the scale. So maybe but... umm... Wait... pitchers in general get injured easy. OK... Don't do it. Lewis is untouchable... We need offense more than pitching in my opinion.

Jenkins would be tempting but why would the Marlins weaken a young playoff team today for tomorrow? Moving Luzardo doesn't make much sense unless you are getting immediate major league offense back.

Morosi was the guy who reported and apologized later for letting the world know that Shohei Ohtani was signing with Toronto and on a plane heading for Canada which had everyone tracking the plane. When it landed Robert Herjavec the Shark Tank guy got out of the plane and was surprised by his welcoming party.

Of all people... It's Morosi reporting that the Twins and Blue Jays are potential trade partners. Apparently, Max Kepler is on a plane bound for Toronto and George Springer has made a reservation for 40 people at a popular German restaurant downtown.

Luzardo speculation is running amok. Is it running amok because of the reported Luzardo/Pasquintino rumor that didn't happen? The Marlins made the playoffs last year with a young roster. They don't need to sell the top of their roster. However, even if they decided to sell Luzardo... why would they dilute the talent level of what you acquire by getting multiple players back. If you were the Marlins... Wouldn't you go big and try to get one off the charts offensive player. Such as Pasquintino or Jordan Walker or Tristan Casas. If I was the Marlins... I'm not screwing around here with packages. .

Let's look at last off-season. On November 18th... The Twins traded Urshela to the Angels and acquired Farmer from the Reds. December 16th... The Twins signed Free Agent Christian Vazquez. December 20th... The Twins signed Joey Gallo. January 11th... The Twins signed Carlos Correa. January 24th... The Twins acquired Michael A. Taylor. February 23rd... The Twins signed free agent... Donovan Solano. It might be quiet but it's not like other off-seasons are loud by this time.

The Padres are a mess right now. Yes, they do have very good talent on the top end with Machado, Tatis, Bogaerts and Kim... Along with Darvish and Musgrove fronting the rotation. After those big names... Uff Da. Almost every other 26 man roster spot is at best a question mark and at worst extreme question marks so they have a ton of work to do just to put players in uniform while they reduce payroll. 32 players currently on the 40 man roster so they have roster space. Top prospects were AA or below last year. They look like they need about 6 position players on the major league roster, a couple of starters and the bullpen isn't exactly overwhelming. We probably won't hear a lot of comments about how the Twins should be like the Padres this year.

Julien, Kirilloff and Wallner were protected against left handed pitching. They were all pinch hit for very early in games last year. I'm not sure how any of us can look at any of these 3 and say covered. At the very least the Twins are going to need right handed hitters to handcuff them to.

Upgrade where you can.

Great Post... You have a fantastic list of players from that time period and your assessments are solid but I do see things a little differently when I think of those guys. Perkins - No doubt... He is a development success story. A Twin from beginning to end and he was top notch. Dozier - I'll give you Dozer... Kind of... We had 4 big years of Dozier. Although, when it was time to cash out... only pennies remained. The Dodgers sure didn't give up much for him. Certainly wasn't a player that could speed up the needed build. Ramos - I won't give the Twins any credit for Ramos development. I give the Twins the opposite of credit. He goes into the same pile as Carlos Gomez. Traded at age 22... Just another young player that was given away. What a shame because the following year Joe Mauer shifted over to 1B. No worries we had that ole' average vet standby that we stuffed our rosters with during that decade in Drew Butera. You list Drew Butera and admit to stretching the boundaries. I can't stretch things that far. 😄 Span - What the Twins got back in return is another example of that development problem. Span was like you said... decent but not great but I think Alex Meyer in return was a pretty good get at the time... Hard throwing 6-9 Dude out of Kentucky. But Alas, Alex Meyer did not develop under Twins care. So when I think of Span... I think of Meyer... Failed development. Revere - I have always been a huge Revere fan. That speed, that defensive ability, that ability to put the ball in play. I was a big fan. But, Revere and Span traded in the same off-season just reminds me of another development failure. We trade Revere at age 24 along with Span and hand the job to... Yep... that 23 year old 1st round pick named Aaron Hicks who the Twins developed to the point of being worth John Ryan Murphy. Hicks was just decent... not a superstar but he did stick around New York for 2,000 AB's of average baseball. 2,000 AB's with the Yankees is pretty hard to do. Plouffe - 1st round pick. Career OPS of .714. The definition of average. Yet... he was entrenched as the every day 3B for 6 years like he was Adrian Beltre. So entrenched at 3B while playing average baseball that the arrival of top prospect Miguel Sano had to detour to RF to accommodate an average Plouffe. Once Plouffe hit free agency... he barely found a job spent two months with the A's and was traded to the Rays for a player to be named later. Valencia - No Credit for Danny... He was given to the Red Sox after producing a back to back sub .522 OPS season. His success came with the Orioles, A's and Jays. At best those clubs fixed him after we broke him. At worst... he's just another example of a young player that we moved off of as a young player and they found themselves elsewhere. At least for awhile in Danny's case. The Twins really really really struggled with development over that long dark period and I believe it was why the period was long and dark. I'm not sure the Twins could have done worse and I'm typically a pretty optimistic guy.

Kansas City is a major league baseball team with major league players. I won't over look them. Many pre-season predictions from the experts had both the Rangers and D-Backs with losing records. I won't bet against the Royals. Won't bet on them But I won't bet against them.

29 teams are frustrated every year. 😉

The innings eater is the worst baseball invention ever. There is absolutely no reason to ever... and I mean ever... to let one of your worst pitchers pitch the most innings on your staff. 1451 Innings needed to be covered in 2023 by Twins pitching. It's really simple... Have your better pitchers throw more innings than your lesser pitchers. The innings eater is a bad idea.

Trades are won by the team that better develops or increases the value of the players acquired. There was nothing wrong with the original deal when it was made. The trade ended up being really wrong afterwards because Delmon's value plummeted to the point where he was given to the Tigers. Delmon Young the center piece of the deal was just 22 years old at the time with tons of career that was supposed to come. It's probably more on Delmon according to reports that I've read about Delmon... However... Delmon did not increase in value during his time with the Twins... His value plummeted to the point where he was given away to the Tigers just to get him off the roster. Development during this time was certainly not a strong suit for the Twins. Not only did Delmon not develop... every single player that we acquired in the aftermath did not develop either. No Rookies broke down the door either for over a decade. J.J. Hardy was mentioned in the article. J.J. Hardy was probably a worse trade tree. We failed to develop Carlos Gomez, we rushed him to the big leagues as a 22 year old and cut him loose two years later. During his time with the Brewers Carlos Gomez increased his trade value so much that the Brewers got Josh Hader, Domingo Santana Adrian Houser and Brett Phillips in return. Hader has since netted them Estuary Ruiz who was traded for William Contreras and Joel Payamps today. So the Hardy trade is still giving to the Brewers. J.J. Hardy did not develop as a Twin in his only year with the Twins. He was injured during the season hitting 6 homers as a Twin and that was the ONLY year he didn't at least reach double digits in dingers over the course of 7 SEASONS. The Orioles got him back on track with 30 dingers the immediate year after acquiring him from us for nothing as we handed the reigns to a SS from Japan that was the worst thing we have ever seen. Another development failure I guess. Because we couldn't convert whatever the scouts saw in Japan to a functional major league baseball player. It's easy to see who wins and losses trades afterwards... The teams who lose trades are the ones who don't make the players acquired better but most of us tend to think the win/loss thing is decided at the time of the trade. From 2006 to 2016... Under Terry Ryan. We went through a long stretch of very few players increasing their value with a few big ones crashing and burning. Name a rookie who rose from the Farm during this stretch that developed any kind of decent value either on the field value or trade value. This is what did Terry Ryan in... In my opinion... the failure to develop anybody as we plugged the holes with average veterans. As I'm building a statue outside of Target Field to honor Terry Ryan and I do honor him because he was one of us... development was his downfall and ultimately I will judge our front office on development as well. We seem to be doing much better at it today. The Twins can't survive without development. We have to make our players better.

I'm with ya just with less patience. I gave up last June... The Twins didn't and he took off so the Twins were right and I was wrong. But... I'll still contend that yes... I was wrong yet still right at the same time. Wrong because not having the Kepler that we had after the all star break would have been a blow. Yet right because the team was struggling bad at the plate and changes needed to be made and we had two players (Gallo and Kepler) getting lots of playing time and not pulling their weight while on expiring contacts. There are baseball players in the minors who won't get a 26 man roster spot let alone the playing time that Kepler got for as long as he got. I just can't tolerate players getting chance after chance when other players get no chance because they get chance after chance. Kepler used up his chances and he was using up other players chances while performing badly... So... I'm right yet wrong cuz he turned it around. In the end... He's one of us. I'm a Kepler Fan... I want him to the player we all think he could be... but I'm a Twins fan first. Yeah... I pulled the plug. Good thing my plug doesn't plug into anything.

Yep... No doubt. The Illinois River has less Asian Carp than Twins on the disabled list in 2022. You make a good point worth considering and if you convince me of this possibility and you might. Kepler will merely transition from 2.5 of struggling to 2.5 years of injury prone.

Just a note to all: I really don't want to criticize Kepler anymore. I want to believe in a great 2024 for him. He is one of us and I pull for him. As frustrated as I have been with his performance for 2.5 years and I've expressed it too much... I will also say... I believe his post all-star break 2024 was top 20 in all of baseball.

We had to hit better after the all star break... We just had to... It couldn't get worse... The first week of June... I was ready to set the dugout on fire. I didn't because I didn't want to be known as an arsonist.

It's really hard for me or any of us to make judgements on injuries nagging or severe and what it does to performance on the baseball field. The only thing that I can say from my chair is this. If injury... nagging or severe is causing a drop in performance... the manager must get him out of the lineup and on to the disabled list if necessary. There is no justification for absorbing poor performance because of injury. Playing hurt is not romantic to me. Logan Morrison played every day and was terrible almost every day for us. Then the reports came out that he had been fighting a hip impingement that people say is extremely painful. OK... the hip impingement explains the .644 OPS... But it doesn't explain why the manager kept turning to a guy who was in so much pain that he had a .644 OPS. Injury will never really justify things for me.

Yep I could be wrong but I am guessing that you re-typed the records from my post to express the Twins turnaround coinciding with Kepler's turn around. I don't believe one player by himself was the reason for the turnaround but... to stay in that lane of traffic... the reverse would also be true. Twins struggling coincides with Kepler struggling. This bring us back to which Kepler do we get in 2024? The one that turned around or the one who was struggling? I don't know... I'm glad I don't have to take responsibility for it.

Thanks... Your first bolded statement was helpful to unconfuse me a bit. I couldn't find any articles that could explain it like you just did and I appreciate it. My 1st question was legit. Honestly my 2nd and 3rd questions were probably best described as... whining. Back to the 1st question that really matters and your succinct easy to understand response. That's a loop hole that must be closed. In essence: Ohtani is indeed making 70 million this year and every year but the Dodgers get to hang on to 68 million of it each year... collect interest for 10 years, watch it's value shrink before paying it, all while circumventing the spirit of the CBT in the process because of a value decrease that only counts on referrals but not escalating long term contracts. The CBA as agreed upon encourages this. I don't blame the Dodgers. Every team should do it... It's a loop hole that must be closed. 70 million should be the luxury tax hit for the Dodgers because that is the AAV much like Machado's AAV is 31 million. The AAV is the AAV. Only referrals get the inflation treatment... escalating long term contracts don't... that's wrong. Anyway... thanks for the response. You are sharp as usual.

I don't believe in WAR. Defensive Metrics are over weighted. His defense can be replaced.

You could be right - He had a .926 OPS post all-star break. 203 AB's. 91 Games - Twins Record - 45 Wins 46 Losses He had a .688 OPS pre all-star break. 235 AB's. 71 Games - Twins Record - 42 Wins 29 Losses Reported Injuries all in the first half April 3 - Knee - Disabled list from April 8 to April 15 May 11 - Hamstring - Disabled list from May 13 to May 29 June 1 - Migraine