Muppet

Assuming Celestino and Matt Wallner start the year in St. Paul, and that Kirilloff gets a few starts in RF, the Twins will have more outfield arms than bullpen arms. Seems smart. If your tired mediocre bullpen that pitches more than 4 innings per game starts to falter, your stacked outfield can surely get those extra outs.

Correa is the only guy on the team who we can reasonably assume will hit .250 or more. This team will struggle to score 3 or more runs per game on a consistent basis. The 15-20 hrs Gallo hits will not win many games if they are part of those 1-3 runs/game. The skills he brings are completely redundant with an OF that already has 3 gold glove caliber players and Larnach who looks as though he might potentially be GG quality. If the team is lucky, they can expect any number of the players to hit 15-20 hrs... Buxton, Kirillof, Miranda, C4, etc.. I think the team needs more players that can be on base when the HRs are hit, and more players that can move the line forward and allow HR hitters more opportunities to hit. Nothing against Gallo. He'd be a useful cog on a team that needed a good defending outfielder and someone who could hit a HR once in awhile. Twins don't need one of those. Pardon the dead horse, but they need a couple of people who are a bit more like Arraez to round out the team.

Jake Cave. 2023 will be the year of Jake Cave. (He can still be added to the team in Spring Training right?)

If the Twins are going to stick with the plan of limiting starters to 3 times through the lineup/5 innings, they need to have relievers that can pitch 2-3 innings. They must have had their reasons for limiting starters, but they never seemed to figure out that bullpen games with shaky bullpens doesn't work out. How many times did they turn a 1-2 run lead into a blowout loss because they needed to piece the second half of the game together with tired or ineffective arms. All that said, I looked at Fulmer's past. 2020 was an interesting case. The Tigers had him start all 10 of his games and limited him to 3 innings in each game. While he almost always got through the first inning without giving up a run (the highest scoring inning in baseball), he often was still shellacked despite only throwing 3 innings per game (an 8.78 ERA). NOT the type of guy you want serving as that middle innings eater role. But he's at worst a mediocre pitcher who doesn't give up a lot of home runs (when he's not pitching for the Twins). Definitely worth having around the pen ... at least more so than others on the team named Pagan.

Sorry to Rickys everywhere. Didn’t mean to Randy up your reputations.

Maybe one day my kids will be able to watch a Twins game on TV without going out to the bar.

To me the problem is that they don't have anyone better as a replacement. Taylor and Gallo are both supposedly great defensively. Taylor's numbers look about the same to me (I'm concerned about 2022 numbers, not career numbers) and Gallo looks like he fills a Sano sized hole. Larnach, if healthy, is too young to be a proven asset (though I hope and expect he will be) and besides, if he fits the bill, he'll probably be in LF. One thing I do wonder, though, is whether it is OK to have a poor defending RF when Buxton is healthy. Can't they afford a RF with less range? Especially if it means replacing the bat with someone who might actually move a runner forward? If that's the case, I put Gordon in right... until Buxton is hurt.

I don't care who they trade, as long as they pick up another great defending outfielder who can't hit. I'm collecting those.

I agree. I see Kepler staying with the team now. They have a rock solid OF and it is Buxton injury proof now. I understand that the younger squad is supposed to take over the hitting, but I'm always of the mind that younger players are only potential until they are proven. A good deal of prospects don't pan out, as exciting as they are in their first year or two. And sophomore slumps are real. If the young squad does meet their potential, this team will actually be pretty good.

I'm looking for a way to estimate how many runs a player is part of creating. There might be a better stat, but I can easily calculate this, so I did it. It doesn't double count HRs (those are subtracted from R and RBI) but it does double count players' runs. Buxton on second when Kepler hits a HR counts as a run for Buxton and 2 runs for Kepler. Also, not saying that is what will happen in the future, just what has happened in the past. Hopefully everyone does better in the future. I'm also concerned about players ending innings. So OBP when there are 2 outs keeps an inning going. With the Twins terrible at RISP hits, I'm looking at the RISP avg. And Taylor is the only one of the four above the Mendoza line. That his RISP avg is only .234 but is the highest of the four tells a little something about how much trouble this can be over the season.

So. Welcome to my first post. I screwed up the spreadsheet. Here's the real deal. (And I added runs generated by plate appearance too). The above numbers show runs by at bat instead of also incorporating RBIs. ab pa h r hr rbi rg ab/rg pa/rg obp w 2o ba/risp Michael Taylor 414 456 105 49 9 43 83 4.988 5.494 0.294 0.234 Joey Gallo 350 410 56 48 19 47 76 4.605 5.395 0.360 0.165 Max Kepler 388 446 88 54 9 43 88 4.409 5.068 0.339 0.196 Byron Buxton 340 382 76 61 28 51 84 4.048 4.548 0.277 0.145 Looks like Kepler was a little bit better at generating runs than the other weak hitters, but not by much. Both Gallo and Taylor are still probably comparable replacements for Kepler with a little upside with 2 outs or RISP... both of which are needed upgrades.

After scratching welts in my head trying to figure out how Taylor and Gallo are supposed to make this team better with their terrible offence as potential replacements for Kepler, I figured that I'd look into the numbers to see if I could sort anything out. I'm apparently of the minority opinion that offence was a larger problem than pitching last year. Yes the pitching was terrible, but what does it matter if the bullpen gives up 5 runs if your team can only manage to score 2 or 3? In that sense, imagining that Taylor and Gallo will be Kepler replacements in the event of a trade, I thought I'd see if they actually can add a bit more offence. Here's what I find from their 2022 splits (RG is runs generated, or R + RBI - HR; and : ab/rg is the average number of at bats per run generated... e.g. Taylor averaged 8.4 at bats per run). ab h r hr rbi rg ab/rg obp w 2o ba/risp Michael A Taylor 414 105 49 9 43 83 8.449 0.294 0.234 Joey Gallo 350 56 48 19 47 76 7.292 0.360 0.165 Max Kepler 388 88 54 9 43 88 7.185 0.339 0.196 Byron Buxton 340 76 61 28 51 84 5.574 0.277 0.145 A couple of things stand out. It is probably not surprising that Kepler was slightly better in generating runs than Gallo and Taylor (but not by much). What IS interesting is that despite Gallo's terrible numbers, he WAS effective in getting on base with two outs. This is important as, although he might not hit well, he WAS able to effectively prevent the inning from ending when it was on the line. Kepler wasn't that bad in that area either. Though not great numbers, Taylor was better than terrible with batting average with runners in scoring position, good enough that it is probably a significant difference. This is a great improvement over all the other OFs (that I listed). Also notable is that all OFs were better than Buxton with 2 outs or RISP. I've been wondering why the Twins would trade off Kepler and replace him with OFs that were good at defense but even worse hitters. These numbers put me a little more at ease if we do deal off the Kepler. I still think the offense stinks. But so did the offense of the 1988 Dodgers. There's no denying that great defense makes pitching (numbers) better. Onward to 2023.

Clearly the strategy is to prevent runs from scoring at the expense of scoring any runs whatsoever. Sounds boring, but let’s hope it works.

Everybody wants a true ace on the staff. And who wouldn't want a John Smoltz or Randy Johnson as the number one guy. But I think knowing that they aren't a rich team (relatively) that they are instead trying to avoid a staff that has any Nick Blackburns or Randy Nolascos. A solid staff made up of all #2 or #3s is more resilient and gets more wins than a staff with a solid #1 that also has 2 or 3 terrible arms. Might be cheaper in the long run too. I don't know how they plan to manage their strategy of only allowing starters 80 pitches/5 innings without a solid bullpen that is also similarly stacked. I'm hoping that is the new trainor's job.

Larnach had an absolute cannon on him. People didn't run for a reason.

Yes. But assuming Larnach is able to play and Kepler is still on the team, I'd prefer to see Gallo on the bench.

Glad I haven’t seen Gallo on anyone’s list. I’m betting it’s gonna be Gallo.

I’d add to that that only Arraez and (gulp) Gordon were the only ones that showed that they could hit. The rest are all just potential (even Buxton). Let’s just hope they all break out next year. That’s the only way the twins are a winning team.

But if Gallo’s 30 hits next year, 15 of them will be home runs. Arraez only hit 9 last year and 15 is more than 9. That math works right?

Changed my mind. This is a good deal. Since Arraez is most valuable when hitting with runners in scoring position, it was unlikely that he would make an impact on the Twins as they would rarely have runners in scoring position when he is at bat. Nor would they have anyone who might drive him in when he's on second.

The way things have been going, that is likely to be Arraez hitting .330 for the Mariners and Lopez spending 75% of the year on the IL.

The best pitchers in the league will still lose games if their team can't score any runs. Last year the Twins were bad at pitching, which overshadowed the terrible hitting. They have not made themselves any better in the offseason. We can now be sure that Arraez will be a HOFer.

Gordon and Arraez are the two best hitters with runners in scoring position. Maybe we should trade them both for as good of pitchers as we can get. We'll need all the pitching in the world if we can't score any runs.

Keep one or two of the healthy ones on the roster. Replace out with Polanco next year. Trade the others.