Greglw3

Personally, I’d start Martin ahead of Margot and Miranda ahead of Larnach even vs righties. I think Miranda is a better hitter now than Larnach.

Deserving are Correa (total no brainer) and probably Lewis. And quite possibly Joe Ryan.

When I wrote that, I had Margot and Farmer in mind but Margot has looked better lately.

Good guess!

I agree with you and recall too that they almost ruined Austin Martin by insisting he produce more home runs until he went back to his old line drive approach. `When will the Twins braintrust ever learn?

Ha ha!!! He’s been read his rights!

With Lee going 4 for 5 at ST. Paul and Lewis healthy, I’d say it’s time to call them both up now. And I’d call up Keirsey as the main Buxton backup and 4th OF while I’m at it. Keirsey had .400 OBP s OPS about .846 vs lefties last I checked.

Good idea!

Keirsey is out hitting Wallner by a landslide. Same pitchers. Outhitting Severino by a landslide too and Prato and Hellman.

The eye test is far superior to these infant stage def metrics in the 170 year history of baseball. It’s not just eye eye test either, I listen to the opinions of those I respect, like Tom, who is more than knee deep into the Twins farm system. There’s a reason why the eye test was used by scouts in baseball for 150 years before these absurdly counter intuitive def metrics came out, I just saw someone mention that Carlos Correa is below average in 3 main defensive metrics. In fact, he is a superb defensive shortstop, without peer, by my eye test and many others who have played the game. The point is too that the average CF could never make those plays that Keirsey is making. Do you think Delmon Young would make them? How about Margot. Zero indication. Larnach, never. Andrew Benentendi? Buxton yes. Billy Hamilton Yes. Michael A Taylor Yes.

Anybody that covers the Saints/Wichita like Tom Froemming or anybody with two eyes and has watched the myriad YouTube highlights knows that Keirsey is an outstanding center fielder. Check out the YouTube highlights and do some research and you’ll see and hear that Keirsey is a phenomenon as a defensive center fielder.

L/R splits for Keirsey this year, the bottom row is vs lefties but a .400 OBP and .847 OPS aren’t bad.:

Looking at the numbers he slashed .305/.363/.488 in AA last year and in a small sample .264/.375/.364 in AAA. His combined 2023 season Was .294/.366/.455 with 39 SB in 44 attempts, 15 HR and 8 triples. Now, in 2024, he’s slashing far better than Wallner/Severino, Prato/Helman against the same pitching. 2024 slash .296/.392/.515 and a .907 OPS. 14 SB in 17 attempts 36 RBIs in 199 AB and superb defense (search YouTube to see multiple great Keirsey catches in CF). I can’t believe that a .907 OPS AAA hitter wouldn’t be better than Margot.

I agree 100%! Living for the day when Keirsey gets his rightful call-up!

Walker Jenkins The Natural!Brooks Lee The 2nd Natural!Emmanuel Rodriguez Love his high OBP, I, like the moneyball A’s, believe that’s the best way to build a high scoring offense.Simeon Woods Richardson 5 starts, a little shaky on #5 but appears close w fastball up to 95 and that tantalizing curveball.Austin Martin I love Austin Martin as an all around asset to a team. A few ugly miscommunications in the OF but overall catches the ball, has the burners to go get some that might drop for others and made a certifiable Buxton like play in CF.DaShawn Keirsey Jr Sweet swing, superb defense, 35-40 SB high OBP and a little pop. Would be in the major leagues right now with a lot of teams.Luke Keaschall He looks to be The Natural #3 for Twins and it looks like he’ll play in MLB.David Festa Very promising, appears to be close.Zebby Matthews With what he’s doing in AA already, he could be the Twins #1 pitching prospect.Charlee Soto Relying on the scouts and those who make the minor leagues a passion plus a brief glimpse of him in 2024 highlights. Solid #10.Rubel Cespedes This guy has catapulted and I’ve seen lots of footage thanks to Tom Froemming’s frequent minor league highlights, He looks tools and a force.Gabriel Gonzalez Dropped a bit due to limited dimensions to his game after the power. Still in eventual striking distance of the majors but I’m not sure as a lot can happen between class A and MLB.Marco RayaKala'i Rosario I like him but not as much as Keaschall. Would love to have my dose of Rosario back!Brandon Winokur I think this is where he belongs for now, which ain’t bad.Rayne Doncon He’s forced himself onto this list, another one I’m convinced of my ranking due to Mr. Froemming’s excellent minor league ghlight packages.Cory Lewis Looks good, will know more when he gets back on the field.Andrew Morris Another guy with an up arrow, he deserves the spot.Jair Camargo I like him, reminds me of Wilson Ramos who was, in my opinion, foolishly traded away.Yunior Severino Disappointing in 2024 but he still deserves my last top 20 spot. This has been a fun little exercise with many thanks to Tom Froemming for his frequent thorough rundowns of the day in the Twins minor leagues, with actual footage of the key players!

I appreciate your perspective and the paradigm is very popular now. I believe that a far superior measure is a cross section of good MLB caliber scouts, using the 20 to 80 scale. Yes, I think to a trained eye, the eye test is superior to the new defensive "range metrics". And, I also believe that fans with 50-60 years experience watching baseball at a passionate level, have the wisdom that only experience can bring. Not that there aren’t exceptions, take a guy like Nash Walker, for example, way ahead of his years. Bottom line is you believe in those numbers and I don’t because they consistently are at odds with what I and other experts such as the walking baseball encyclopedia, Roy Smalley, can see with our eyes. My eyes tell me that Carlos Correa has the 2nd best range of any SS in my lifetime, exceeded only by Ozzie Smith and it’s close and getting closer. Correa probably has the strongest arm of any SS in my lifetime. So, I’m skeptical when well intentioned fans write that Correa is below average in any facet of SS defense based on defensive metrics. I honestly feel that cost him the gold glove at SS since writers are now trusting the defensive metrics, which I think is a lazy way of evaluating players one hasn’t seen play much. Same was being said about Urshela when he was here, below average when he was playing spectacular defense at 3rd. I think the only way to find out about Keirsey is to give him a chance. Margot and Castro are awful in CF. I think Keirsey could bring balance to the team with his SB ability, bat and defense. Maybe a Steven Kwan light or if lucky Steven Kwan equal. And these are just my opinions. We can disagree on Keirsey for whatever reasons - whatever our guiding force is in evaluating players. Maybe he comes to the majors and flops. Or maybe he comes to the majors and does what the legendary 2 Orioles rookies did when called up together, Rich Coggins and Al Bumbry, raw rookies called up during the season both tore it up offensively. I guess I live for that, the thrill of seeing a prospect come up and right a wrong for the team I love! ;-)

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