Brandon

Dobnak is one step closer to making it back to the show. I feel like he could be a Bundy type of results pitcher a 5 inning 4.5-5 ERA 5th starter if we need one. So we will be fine as that should be the lowest our 5th starter floor goes.

I was thinking that our bullpen was pretty good without Graterol in it and is really looking good this year. so do we really need another reliever at this point? I think the trade is win / win for all involved. Maeda salary was a guaranteed 3 million with incentives. so yes we did real well because we couldn't get the team we had last year if his salary was a guaranteed 10-13 million could we? no Correa and we would have a black hole at SS right now.

Greg Maddox is the pitcher model that I consider as he never threw too hard and was very efficient with his pitches. Obviously not all results are equal. I am not a professional itch analyst maybe the 40% number is high maybe just take something off 10-25 pitches a game. But I do see merit in picking spots to dial it back to save more bullets for when really needed. Also in blowout games starting pitchers would take stuff off their pitches and not worry about giving up a few runs in games they already won. This was done back in the 90’s Also Ashbury. I think you have good points. I’m bouncing ideas from them

It depends on how you use your less stress pitches. I think the curveball is less stress than a fastball. Also you can throw just off the plate if you want to take something off the fastball. I remember Jack Morris would throw a Euphis pitch every once in a while to throw hitters off. Just gotta get creative with your strategy and have a plan for each at bat.

Nit picking but Simeon Woods-Richardson has already debuted. So he won’t be making his debut this season for the first time. Also this is a good article. The Twins don’t draft many high School pitchers for good reason. A college pitcher is closer to the majors and more developed making them less costly with more success to develop.

I wonder how much it helps if a pitcher does something like 2 high stress pitches then a low stress pitch then a high stress pitch then a low stress then 2 high stress……… Just to give the elbow a breather in game. I wonder how much that helps protect against the arm?

Gallo would have been a successful hitter with us if he could get his average in the .220 + range. His power and walks were good. It was his strike outs and below .200 average that made him ineffective. The strikeouts were more livable with the higher batting average. See his past results he was good with a .220 average and bad when below it.

His power is legit. I expect 25-35 HRs out of him with 550 ABs this season. The question is his ability to get on base. Can he continue to get hit at his current pace of 26 times per 162 games? That plus the projected 59 walks per 162 games and you can see the HBP is a big part of the added OBP. So if he only gets hit 5 times then I think we will see a .040 drop in his OBP. Going from .370 to .330 is a big Jim down and that is with no other regression. But for some players getting hit is part of their game. Biggio is a player that comes to mind. He had 6 seasons of over 20 HBP. Other than that as long as Wallner can keep his batting average over .220 he will be successful same as Gallo would have been.

Signing a pitcher for 4 years when we have Lopez for 4, Ryan, and Ober for 4 as well and Paddack for 2 and Varland for 6 with more on the way. We only need 1 starter for 1 year. on Offense we needed 1 bat and Santana is fine. I think JD Martinez would be a good fit if he plays some first base so there’s can DH too. The Twins did a great job on the bench and bullpen. Also on adding 3 prospects including a top 100 and a draft pick. For what they were given, (a.mandate to cut payroll, they did a great job). San Diego is still working to balance their budget and build their team.

I think the now or never is if Killeroff is an everyday player or bench player. backup corner OF/ DH/ pinch hitter. Is he a 300 AB per season player or a full time 550 AB per season player. a .793 OPS will keep you in the majors for a while. Also by having Santana eat into Killeroffs playing time this year and coaching him up on defense at first will help keep his salary down should Killeroff improve up the .850 OPS range. 400 AB instead of 550 plus previous years and that will keep his salary down the following year more than paying for Santana in salary savings. Either way the Twins win with the Santana signing.

It’s not the number of tickets you buy, it’s the number of spots in the pen available for them. 1 spot for several lottery tickets to compete for is good. 3 spots for 3 lottery tickets is not so good.

I look at him as someone we can get 5-20 innings from with an era near 4. Having those results would be a success in my book for us.

True but there is so little financial investment in this player that anything positive is a bonus immediately. He costa close to league minimum and if we can get 15-35 innings out of him we get value. In 2021 for example we got almost 20 innings of 3.26 ERA from Ralph Garza and 40 innings of 2.48 era from Juan Minaya. In 2020 we had Matt Wisler. These guys are not expensive I think Wisler was just over a million. I think having a bullpen of projects is problematic but having a AAA bullpen full of projects for one spot is a plus.

Your appraisal of Noah’s hitting ability is a little on the extremely high side. I don’t think he has 10-15 HR power of Gagne.

I was just saying there is a path for him to get to an .800 OPS. I will let others he craft a more exact projection of what his numbers could be in a platoon.

He will still get over half his AB against lefthanders unless Buxton goes out for the year the first week of the season. But an .850 OPS against lefthanders in 200 AB and a .650 OPS against righties in 100 AB is going to be close to an .800 OPS.

Noah Miller = A poor hitting Nick Punto and

He will be platooned mostly this year. You are better served looking at his stats vs left handed pitchers.

If Margot has a big year say .800 OPS and 8 defensive runs saved then we could pick up his option and trade him for a prospect.

The keys for Margot to be considered a success here is a positive impact on defense and a .750+ OPS against left handed pitchers. Being a solid base runner helps too. Hopefully his knee has healed and he is back to being that above average defender of the OF we need. On a side note the payroll is at 129 million. The range was 125-140 million. I wonder if the Twins are drawing well and needed a starting pitcher for the playoffs if the Twins would make a trade and be willing to add up to 10-11 million in payroll for that starter. More likely for 1/3 of a season the starter we acquire would likely be in the 5-9 million in salary remaining but it seems we do have the payroll space to add if a) it’s needed and b) the attendance and revenue say we are on track to hit the goals. We did pick up more prospects this offseason to allow that to happen.

Evaluating the offseason. Ownership has gone out of their way to botch everything they set out to do this offseason in terms of improving a growing fanbase and fan morale. Lowering payroll was ok. What they should have done is let the fan base know last year they were going well over their limits for the team last season to compete. This would have set us up for the blow this year that payroll has to come down. The way they went about it was less so. I think their biggest mistake is the cable situation. Keeping games away from those who can’t go or get whatever channel they are on limits their ability to grow their fan base and makes the base they do have happy. I do give the front office points for being honest. I would rather have an honest front office rather than watching the offseason unfold where I keep thinking I am seeing missed opportunities all around. Ownership gets a solid D. I think Joe will get a better handle on this as he gets more experience. The Front Office on the other hand had a great offseason. Let’s look at their objectives going into the offseason. Their biggest need was to replace the production of Sonny Gray. And while many would also say Maeda that was already done and planned for before last season began. Paddack was already acquired and signed to an extension and is ready to replace the 100 or so innings and then some from Maeda. The Twins went into the offseason with decent depth in their bullpen, so the expectation was maybe signing a reliever for the midlevel innings to replace Pagan. There were also several depth players who were free agents including OF Taylor, IF Solano, and they were told to lower payroll 20-30 million this offseason which meant trading one of Polanco or Kepler. It’s the last item on their to do list that makes what the front office did, such a great job. To start, the Twins needed to replace the innings from Gray. How did they accomplish this. From several sources. 1. If Paddack manages 120-150 innings this season, then essentially 20-50 innings go towards replacing what Gray did as Maeda had 100 innings last season. 2. The Twins traded Polanco for a top 100 OF prospect #79 on MLB.com and DeSclafani and cash to lower his cost to 4 million (gotta budget to keep here). If healthy DeSclafani can be a mid-3 ERA starting pitcher. The question is if he is healthy. I think its pretty impressive the Twins could get someone with a floor of Bundy and a ceiling of pre-Twins Gray for 4 million cost. 3. The Twins went absolutely crazy signing and claiming relievers this offseason. We are now 14 or 15 or 16 relievers deep. This will do several things for us. Now we can start Paddack out with a lower pitch count into mid-May when it warms up to protect his arm. 4-5 inning starts. We can also throw competitive bullpen games and not gas out our pen. And with what should be more quality innings from an already strong pen, they will replace many innings that Gray was going to pitch. 4. The Twins acquired the #79 prospect and the Dodgers 12 ranked prospect and there was another prospect in the Mariners trade and we get an extra draft pick for losing Gray. With what we already had in our system we have more ammo to trade for an ace starter at the trade deadline. We should have extra payroll space to add a starter too. This part gets an incomplete until the trade actually happens. It may not be needed but we have the extra capability if we do. The Twins replaced Solano and Taylor with Margot and Santana. Santana is a good defensive 1B with a league average bat and can DH occasionally. This is good insurance for the injuries we keep getting from Killeroff. Santana also deepens the lineup by giving us a competent bat at DH when the Twins are not rotating players through the DH and need a consistent bat. Margot can be a good defensive OF if his knee injuries are behind him. He is also the RH hitting OF we wanted that doesn’t K all of the time. This allows us to keep Martin in the minors for now. If Buxton goes on the DL, we will have Martin and Margot available for CF. As a whole our bench is deeper than last year as we even have Larnach, Martin, Lee, Miranda, Severino and Carmargo available in AAA if needed. And on top of all of that they lowered payroll from 156 million to around 128 million. For that they get an A-. (They still didn’t get a CY Young level replacement in the rotation) but they were able to get more done then what others like Preller did who also was working to lower payroll. The Twins are well positioned to go back to the playoffs this year.

Wait a second, no one is getting hurt. No one is going to miss time for injuries. That Papparrazzi guy they hired to be the teams trainer will automatically get inducted into the Twins Hall of Fame after no one misses a game all season due to injuries or slumps. Everyone who didn’t make the team will spend the entire season in the minors without a call up except the 3 in September and the double header guy.. surely everyone knows this right?

I think he would be a good prospect to include in a trade if he keeps hitting or if he can work his way into the 1B/DH equation. Either one suits me just fine. I like how we got him. it is unconventional to get a player who was signed and set free. It would be nice to see one of the extra prospects we get turn into something at the major league level.

We are the major leagues major supplier of 2B, with Steer, Polanco, Julien Arreaz, and with Lee, Keaschall, and Schobel. The Twins can continue to supply needy major league teams with 2B in exchange for some ........ I am sad to see Polanco leave as I wanted to see the international class of 2009 continue to accumulate stats here. Sano finished with 161 HRs and Polanco now finished with 112 HRs and Kepler is at 153 HRs for a total of 426 HRs between the 3. It also looks like Kepler will hit the most HRs with the Twins too when he hits his 9th HR this season. Initially the hope was to see them combine for 1000 HRs in their careers and Polanco and Kepler can still accumulate enough to get the group to 750 but most of the rest will come with other teams. Kepler can still push their total with the Twins to 450 before he reaches free agency. Maybe the Twins will resign Kepler so he can get the groups total with the Twins over 500. Anyways its just fun with HR numbers. In RBIs Kepler has 466, Polanco has 447, and Sano has 418 for a total of 1331.

AAA World Series here we come!