Greglw3

How much film have you watched on Keirsey? Thanks to Tom Froemming, I’ve seen a lot. My assessment is superb defensive CF. He hit a lot in AA last year and he’s hitting a lot now. His OPS has been around .940. The film I’ve seen shows Keirsey with a really pretty, repeatable swing and he steals 35-40 bases a year. The OF we have is severely flawed w Margot well below avg, Larnach starting to fall prey to off speed stuff again and Castro a debacle in CF recently. I do think Martin can be good and he made a Buxton like diving catch in Cf this year. Personally, I don’t pay any attention to the new defensive metrics because I’ve relentlessly seen devotees of them reporting severely counter-intuitive conclusions. OAA is the worst. It leads to conclusions as if you had a stat in basketball for defensive metrics and someone reported "Michael Jordan’s metrics show him to be a below average defender.." I think Correa a couple of years ago was said to be in the 18th percentile for OAA, 100th % being best. Anybody who watches consistently and has any perspective on good SS play could see how wrong that was.

I'm not sure if you saw this Austin Martin play but it made a big impression on me even though he does have some communication issues at times. https://x.com/GregAll73910735/status/1788048412631323135

This Austin Martin? https://x.com/GregAll73910735/status/1788048412631323135

Definitely a lot of fun making my list, reading scouting reports, looking at stats and remembering all the footage I’ve seen on TF’s podcast and finally to put DaShawn Keirsey, Jr. where I think he belongs! :-)

Very much agree, I’m a big fan of DaShawn Keirsey Jr. and with Tom Froemming’s minor league highlights have seen him play defense and hit a lot. I think he has an unusually sweet swing.

I think he has a chance to be the greatest defensive SS of all time. Honus Wagner is tough to beat as the greatest offensive SS.

I’m the hugest of the huge Herb Carneal fans so I’m sure I would enjoy it! I feel that Herb taught me baseball, he was so knowledgeable. I remember him on the radio when Twins beat Rangers for AL West crown in 1987, exclaiming, "The 17 year drought is over!" How sweet it was spending my nights and early mornings (for west coast games" with the great Herb Carneal, probably my favorite announcer in any sport - all time! Thanks for making me feel good by invoking my best baseball buddy ever!

You have to believe Camargo can outhit Vazquez. Vazquez hitting .133, Camargo over .280 AAA. DaShawn Keirsey is a sweet swing outfielder 7/7 in steals and upper .800s OPS. Easy calls. The whole OF is hitting terribly.

In my opinion, Rod Carew is not only the greatest player in Twins history, but he’s also one of the greatest hitters of all time since the game was started in 1845 by Alexander Cartwright with The New York Knickerbockers Base Ball Club [Wikipedia] (Note that Base Ball is not a typo but was the official way of referring to the sport at its inception, two words). I’m basing this partly on the margins by which he beat the competition while winning his 7 batting titles in 12 years with the Twins. In his greatest season, when he hit .388 with 239 hits, he won the batting title by 52 points over teammate Lymon Bostock. Such great players as Carlton Fisk, Jim Rice and George Brett were left in the dust by Carew’s torrid season. Rice, at .320 was 68 points behind Carew and Brett at .312 was 76 points behind Carew. Carew completely and totally dominated fellow Hall of Famers in 1977. Did you know that the American League batting Champion is known as the "Rod Carew American League Batting Champion"? [Wikipedia] Rod Carew won the 4th most batting titles in baseball history while going on a hitting blitz in the 1970s that included .350, .359, .364, .388 averages in a 5 year period. Ty Cobb won 11 or 12 (it seems the 1902 title was contested and unsettled between Nap Lajoie and Cobb) and Carew has the 2nd most for the American League, all time. Honus Wagner and Tony Gwynn won 8 batting titles each in the NL, although for one of Gwynn’s batting titles, in 1996, he did not have enough plate appearances to qualify, so 4 hitless plate appearances were added to his stats and he barely beat out Ellis Burks, .349 to .344. Carew is tied all-time with 3 other players in winning 4 consecutive batting titles. Honus Wagner, Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn are the other 3 and Nap Lajoie if you add his contested batting title with Ty Cobb. The greatest margins of victory for any batting champions were Nap Lajoie’s .426 - .340 lead over Mike Donlin in 1901, an 86 point margin in the AL, and Cap Anson’s .399 average was 71 points higher than Joe Start in the NL 1881 season. Now let’s compare Honus Wagner’s margins of victory for his 8 batting titles with Carew’s for his 7. Wagner: 1900 (+14), 1903 (+4), 1904 (+20), 1906 (+12), 1907 (+22), 1908 (+20), 1909 (+29), 1911 (+1). Carew: 1969 (+23 over Reggie Smith .332 - .309), 1972 (+6 over Lou Piniella .318 - .312 in the year of the pitcher), 1973 (+44 over George Brett .350 - .306), 1974 (+48 over Jorge Orta .364 - .316), 1975 (+28 .359-.331 over Fred Lynn), 1977 (+52 .388 - .336 over Lyman Bostock), 1978 (+9 .333 - .324 over Al Oliver). Wagner had a cumulative 122 point lead for the 8 years, winning his batting titles by an average of 15.25 points per season. Carew had a cumulative victory over the second place finishers of 210 points for an average margin of victory for his 7 batting titles of 30 points compared to Wagner’s 15.25!!! Notice that the closest Wagner ever came to Carew’s 52 point margin in 1977 was his 29 point margin in 1909. Carew blows away the greatest margin of victory of the man who tied for 2nd most batting titles in AL/NL history. Note that Oscar Charleston won batting titles in The Negro Leagues and in The Eastern Colored League. Using margin of victory in the batting titles to compensate for different eras, Carew blows away Honus Wagner 30-15 (rounded). I believe this is enough to claim that Rod Carew is one of the top 3 pure hitters in baseball history. I won’t do it now but it would be interesting to calculate the average margins for Cobb and Gwynn. I may do it if this catches on with Twins fans. It doesn’t seem far fetched to claim Carew is the greatest pure hitter in baseball history depending on how the Cobb and Gwynn Calculations come out. Another citation for one of the greatest hitters/player of all time are that Carew was Rookie of the year in 1967 and was an All-Star in his rookie year. Starting with that first All-Star appearance in 1967, Carew would be an All-Star for 18 consecutive seasons, missing only in his age 39 season, his last, played for the Angels. Carew also had 6 top 10 MVP finishes including winning the award in 1977 with that .388 average in which he had a .449 OBP! He scored a league leading 128 runs for Gene Mauch’s team that year. He also had 100 RBIs, 694 PA, 38 Doubles, 16 Triples and 14 Home Runs. It’s also worthy to note that Carew won the 1977 MVP award despite playing on a 4th place team in a 7 team AL West! Carew stole over 35 bases for 4 consecutive years from 1973-1976 including a 49 steal season and a 41 steal season. And, of course, he stole home 7 times in one season! I admired Rodney Cline Carew so greatly, that even though a natural righty, all wiffle ball, softball and possibly baseball games I played from my 20s until late 30s, I would replicate his wide open stance and bat left handed. It may go without saying that I think every Twins fan should be extremely proud that Carew is one of our own and one of the best that ever lived! View full player

I would normally agree and think I still do even though a factor in the equation you have to consider is Wallner is hitting horribly, righties or lefties. I think he has a chance to be a star but right now, Julien, Wallner, Kepler, Castro are all dragging the team down offensively. Once maybe 3 of the 4 start hitting consistently, the Twins fortunes will be much better.

Thad: Oh, by the way it turns out he’s a two way player like Ohtani. Pitches and plays OF and some IF.

Way too much. Don’t forget the Mahle trade.

Bobby Darwin was a power hitter for the Twins in the early 70s, playing mostly RF. Strangely, he played for 1 PA for the Angels, at age 19, in 1962. His next appearance in the big leagues was 7 years later in 6 games for the Dodgers in 1969 but no PA and 1 run scored. It looks like Darwin pitched in 4 games for the Angels/Dodgers in 1962/69, quite poorly, then switched to the OF. In 1971, he got 22 PA for the Dodgers before coming to the Twins in 1972 and becoming a full time player, jumping from 22 PA in 1971 to 562 with the Twins in 1972. I was able to experience some of the thrills of Bobby Darwin's short, but very productive stint with the Twins via Herb Carneal and Larry Calton. I remember Calton’s trademark "Man oh man oh man" when Darwin would launch a long home run (or any of the Twins). Darwin went from ~ 23 PA in 10 years to thriving with the Twins, powering his way to 80, 90, 94 RBIs in the 72-74 seasons. He also launched 22, 18 and 25 home runs respectively. The 80 RBIs and 22 HR in 1972 are particularly noteworthy as 1972 was one of the most extreme "year of the pitcher" years in my lifetime. I have fond memories of Bobby Darwin, Herb Carneal and Larry Calton filling a significant part of my life as a Twins fan with joy. View full player

You can call her, her number is 867-5309.

These kind of mistakes happen even to good journalists. The organizations with journalistic integrity makes a correction and apologizes. CNN has to do this at times. You did the right thing by showing respect for journalistic integrity and owning up fast!

Chavez has had 2 very good to excellent seasons in 2022-2023. One season with an ERA around 2.8 and last year around 1.5.

I think they’re horrible projections especially for Santana, Julien, Jeffers, Wallner, Buxton. If the Twins offense performs per these projections, it will be a long, long, season. My general feeling on projections is that there is zero need for them and the chances of them being accurate in aggregate is near zero. I’m totally and thoroughly unimpressed with their work.

From my long experience as a baseball fan and standard baseball wisdom for decades. Good hitting can never cover for weak, teetering pitching. The best I ever saw was the ’77 Twins and they finished just 84-78 with truly phenomenal hitting. In my book, the greatest hitting team in Twins history, Gene Mauch skipper.

FWIW, I’d go get Clevinger ASAP and move Varland to the pen for late inning duties where he proved last year, he’s up to the task. Not 1 or even 2 players can fill Duran’s void IMO but I’d have a lot of confidence in Varland, added to Jax and Stewart.

Dave Goltz was a #1 type pitcher for the Twins for several years before leaving as a free agent after the 1979 season (one of Calvin Griffith's ignominious stable of star players that he let go after the advent of free agency. Calvin made the Pohlads look like George Steinbrenner, the free spending owner of the Yankees. Notably Goltz carried the pitching staff of the 1977 Twins, who arguably only had 2 decent starters. That seems to be one reason that a team with a poor pitching staff went 84-78, allowing Rod Carew to win the MVP award on a 4th place team in a 7 team division, the AL West. The other was the very hard hitting offense. For the year, Goltz threw 303 innings. allowing only 284 hits, and registering a 3.36 ERA with a 20-11 record. [Baseball Reference] 1977 was the 2nd straight year that Goltz turned in a 3.36 ERA! He broke that streak in a big way in 1978 (Carew’s last year as a Twin and the year my brother and I travelled from Toledo to the Twin Cities for a series). In 1978, Dave Goltz went 15-10 with a 2.49 ERA. That was the year when the Twins were a shell of the 1977 team as Calvin let several players walk, not the least, both Lyman Bostock and Larry Hisle. So, the Twins put out pretty much a AAAA team that year with newcomers Bombo Rivera, Hosken Powell and Willie Norwood. With my MacBook Air calculator and Baseball Reference, I determined that Goltz had a cumulative 3.48 ERA for his Twins years. His out pitch was the knuckle-curve as Herb Carneal reminded me thousands of times! Since Goltz had an over 4 ERA in his last year with the Twins and in his seasons with the Dodgers and finishing with the Angels, obviously his stuff declined but I wonder if that knuckle curve stopped knuckling and curving as much as before. Greg Allen View full player

I agree wholly with you. Clevinger had a 3.7x ERA last year, 1 more year removed from injury and now sans Thielbar and Duran, Varland would be perfect and proven at up to 100 MPH and effective in late innings. That’s what they should do. Sign Clevinger to a 1 year deal w team option tonight!

I’ve been writing that on Twins twitter for a while now. He pitched well last year and is 1 more year removed from injury. I’d sign him tonight!!!