Brandon

You should add a 31 and 32 prospect in case a draft pick who ranks doesn't sign. but It looks like we have a deep farm system. Last year it felt like we graduated/ traded a few too many prospects and depleted somewhat our farm.

Paxton because he is the easiest to make a cash neutral deal on. Kikuchi because he is next on the easiest to make cash neutral list. Eovaldi or Heaney after that.

I just picked a random prospect. It could be anyone in the 20-50 range or 2. I don't get to construct this trade. but since I keep hearing that the Twins need to be cash neutral on a deal. then getting Paxton needs to be a top priority and we can include a better prospect to take the salary of someone else. Dobnak and Winder and Henriquez maybe. I know they want relievers. any of those three can relieve. Though probably not Dobnak.... maybe they prefer a different prospect. Also the Twins could just decide to cut corners on the draft budget ....say spend 250-750 k less than what they can spend. They are already down 600k below their cap. They may decide to not sign Dasan Hill instead of going over slot. now they have the savings to acquire Paxton and keep it cash neutral. I am not advocating this just making an observation as a different avenue of staying cash neutral.

With Preilipp back and pitching again, just need to get Canterino going again. I thought he was a candidate to make the Twins and he hasn't pitched since spring training. Does anyone know why he is out?

If we are able to include Theilbar the deal becomes almost cash neutral. That is why I included him. but we could trade others too. but I am sure if he is being DFA'd there wasn't much interest in him beforehand. Maybe we could include Dobnak and say Severino for Paxton. I am not sure what it would take. But I am just thinking of how to make the deal cash neutral.

It looks like the Dodgers are looking for a reliever. Could we send Theilbar or Staumont for him?

I just came to this site to post about getting Paxton, I think getting him is the smart choice as all three of Paxton, Woods-Richardson and Paddack can take turns getting rest as they get ready for the playoffs. All three would be approaching the most innings they have pitched in the majors in the last 5 years or so. They could swap one to the bullpen or piggyback and have each throw 3 or 4 innings in an appearance to limit innings. I like the salary and the fact we wouldn't have to give up much to get him and we are in another league so LA won't care about sending him to us. I am surprised we didn't have him before the DFA.

I am not saying your wrong. but Farmers overall stats since his season opening slump are pretty good. He still has value. I can see either scenario play out though I think he has established enough value to still be useful to a team who is offloading salary in a trade with us. though is we are trading for Snell, I would expect either Kepler or Velazquez to be included in that kind of deal along with a prospect....

A rebuilding team that gets a better prospect or say the Giants trade Snell and offset some of what’s owed.

With Kyle Farmer, I can see the Twins trying to include him in a trade to get salary off the books. Or replace in coming salary. I doubt they DFA him.

Hopefully the Twins can get a dual deal, 1 with cable and 1 with streaming for totals that get them close to where they were and as a result the Twins boost payroll next year to the 150 million range. That would go a long way to fixing their image I think 🤔

Flaherty in Detroit is an option if the Twins want to go all in this year.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/07/twins-trade-rumors-starting-pitchers-rentals.html key names mentioned include Kikuchi (Blue Jays starter). Flaherty, Frankie Montas, Andrew Heaney, Trevor Williams, and a few others. On this list I like Heaney and Flaherty.

I would hate it if the Twins go to the playoffs and get knocked out by Julien hitting a walkoff hit for Boston....

Correa is providing value on his contract. since there is only 4 more years after this year He would need to decline pretty soon to make his deal a bad one. More than likely we get to year 5 before he starts to slow down.

The idea was to show how much those two appearances affected his overall numbers compared to how much it affects the numbers of other relievers. I used Funderburk because he has a similar ERA. And Funderburk was less affected by his worst two performances and Jax even less so. This illustrates that two performances are skewing his overall effectiveness. Relievers are more volatile from year to year and it’s usually a bad appearance or two is why. While the bad appearance is a part of their record. I’m trying to show how his pitching is overall. By comparing the damage done from 2 worst appearances and overlapping with percentage of appearances with earned runs, you see that Theilbar is closer to the effectiveness of Jax then he is to Funderburk. As I said at the end of the post, it’s not a full proof way to evaluate. But it does help normalize the numbers so the two appearances don’t young what else he’s done.

The national media likes to highlight a specific player. so when a player stands out offensively you see the adulation of the media. When Mauer and Morneau were hitting they would talk about them. not like Jeter but still. The current Twins offense is build on a team effort with the team third in the American League in runs while having their best RBI guy with 47 (24th in the AL) compared with Judges 83. on HRs the Twins are 4th in the league with their best HR hitter at 14 (25th in the AL) compared with Judges 32. You can insert over 20 players in place of Judge before you get to our top ranked hitter.

Relievers are a different then starters so judging a reliever by just his ERA doesn’t tell the whole story. So lets look at Theilbar and see if he has been successful for the season or not so far. We are going to start by going through game logs and comparing to a reliever with a similar ERA and another who is getting the job done and make notes. As of the All-Star break Theilbar has pitched in 31 games with 22.1 innings and given up 14 earned runs for a 5.64 ERA. In his 31 games he has 8 games where he has given up runs. Or just in 25.8% of his games. He has the following breakdown of Earned Runs given up in his appearances. 1 game with 4 earned runs 1 game with 3 earned runs 1 game with 2 earned runs 5 games with 1 earned run I wanted to point out that half of his earned runs came in two appearances spanning 1/3 of an inning. He gave up 3 runs in his first game of the season coming off of the disabled list. And 4 runs in another appearance. Without those two appearances his ERA is under 3.00 which is almost in half. Lets compare with Funderburk who has appeared in 26 games with 33.2 innings and a 5.61 ERA. Funderburk has given up runs in 13 or half of his appearances. Now to be fair he is averaging over 40% more innings per appearance than Theilbar. But at the end of the day. Theilbar has a significantly better rate of pitching a scoreless appearance. Funderburk has the following distribution of runs given up. 1 game of 4 earned runs 1 game of 3 earned runs 3 games of 2 earned runs 8 games of 1 earned run for comparisons sake, if you take out Funderburk's two worst appearances his ERA is still over 4. which is a reduction in ERA of around 1.5 ERA vs Theilbar's almost 3 ERA improvement from taking out his 2 worst appearances. Now lets look at a reliever who is deemed to be having a great year in Jax. Jax has pitched in 44 games and given up earned runs in 8 of them. 18.2% of his appearances he has given up earned runs. His distribution is 1 game with 2 earned runs 7 games with 1 earned run. The difference between these two is 2 appearances with an earned run by Theilbar more that Jax and that two of his appearances he was blown out with 3 and 4 runs during his appearance. So that is those 2 appearances with 7 combined earned runs out of his 31 appearances makeup the difference between Theilbar and Jax level effectiveness in terms of % of appearances without giving up an Earned Run. also pointing out that taking out Jax's 2 worst appearances amounts to 3 earned runs in 1 inning, so his ERA drops from 1.91 to 1.31 which is only .6 earned runs per 9 innings compared to the almost 3.ERA drop from Theilbar's two worst appearances. Thus, making Theilbar's 2 worst appearances more costly to his overall numbers. And lastly let's look at Theilbar vs previous Theilbar and see how he fares against last year's record. Last year Theilbar gave up earned runs in 8 of his 36 appearances or in 22.2% of his appearances. He had the distribution of 3 games with 2 earned runs 5 games with 1 earned run The difference between this year's Theilbar and last year's Theilbar is 5 more scoreless appearances, and in two of them he gave up more runs. With a few more scoreless appearances he could be just as successful at run prevention per appearance as last year. Why then do we feel like Theilbar should be on the chopping block. Here is an observation. By June 12th he had 3 out of 6 appearances where he gave up runs including one where he gave up 4 earned runs in an appearance. At that point he had given up runs in 8 of his 23 appearances, which is in 34.8% of them. He was looking like a candidate to be reassigned. He only had 3 more appearances in June. And he has 5 more in July where he has not given up an earned run. Also, his two worst appearances skew his ERA more than the other 2 examples by a long shot which also makes it seem his season is worse than it is. It seems like he has turned a corner and being more effective overall. I think it says that Thielbar is having more of an OK season that a bad one. He was having a borderline bad one and then it seems he has turned a corner. I do not think this method of evaluation is the only way to look at a reliever’s success, but it does help to remove or minimize the view of the damage 2 bad appearances do for a reliever. How does this view affect your view of his season so far? Is his season more just OK then awful?

Even Farmer was surprised he was kept. So he will pocket that money and try to keep going. I am surprised he hasn't hit a homerun yet. I think the biggest negative while he hasn't hit was to also be the backup SS which he is not anymore. He has hit ok since his season opening slump. That slump was so bad though that his overall numbers have not rebounded and may not. Taylor was the OF they wanted. but Taylor overplayed his hand. I am sure he would have hit a little better here and been a better defender. Margot is an ok backup. but the main goal of a backup OF is defense and Margot being unable to play solid Defense in CF would have been a huge problem had it not been for Castro and Buxton being more available. But the Twins could have done worse with this pick for sure. Santana was the ideal signing. He is a Twins type of hitter. One that is good for 80 RBI's as those hitters are much cheaper than the 100 RBI guys. The Twins go with 8 out of 9 hitters who could knock in 60-80 runs a year any given night. That is the key to their success. You will not see any Twin in the top 10 or probably top 20 in RBI but they are the 3rd highest scoring team in the league. as far as the bullpen goes. Staumont hit. Keeping Alcala is a hit, Trading for Okert is a hit, even minor league signings Bowman, Castillo and Duarte were psuedo hits in that they were good when up. Topa is an incomplete at this point. and DeSclafani was a miss due to injury. That is a pretty good record based on the budget they had.

Was Kiermaier designated for assignment or placed on waivers so a team could claim him and his salary for nothing and take his salary? I think he is still with the Blue Jays.

You have to root for the guy who played for the Twins at the age of 6, I am looking forward to seeing him in Minnesota some day starting games.

We also have that LH starting pitcher we took with the 69th pick in the draft from Grapevine Texas or Dallas Baptist ..... I forget. but he is a good LH SP prospect.

What are we trading for? I still do not see a need outside of maybe a reliever. and I think that is pushing it. We have 5 solid starters and 2 prospects ready in AAA with Zebby almost the third prospect ready to go. If not for Wallner and Larnarch maybe a LF. if not for Lee, Farmer, and Castro and Julien in AAA we could get a 2B like Polanco. or a DH like JD Martinez but I doubt the Mets are sellers and we still have Miranda and Lewis and Buxton needing to rotate through DH and probably Correa with the foot issue popping back up again too. so I don't see where else we would trade for someone and I am reaching with what I proposed above.

What your missing is the Twins have so many hitters who can go on hit streaks more so then Cleveland who has basically 3 really good hitters. If any of this three slump Cleveland is in trouble. If Correa slumps Buxton or Jeffers or Santana or Kepler or Miranda or ….. could get hot.

Cleveland offense is spearheaded by three key. Players. on base machine Kwan and RBI guys Naylor and Ramirez. If any of these three goes into a prolonged slump their offense is going to struggle. Someone already pointed out the key to their success is their bullpen. Not saying Cleveland can’t pull it off but it is more of an uphill battle for them to keep their offense going. I suspect they can find help for their pen if needed. The Twins however have the deepest lineup and deepest bench. They are designed to score runs. I’m surprised they are not hitting more home runs as a team. But their offense doesn’t center around a few players the same way as Cleveland so anyone can step up at anytime and lead the offense for a while.