tony&rodney

Seems like he is destined for the bullpen. This is a huge year for him. Do the Twins move him to the pen, give him the uber protective treatment as a starter ala Marco Raya, or cut him loose as a starter? Anyone can guess. I was impressed tuning into his games last summer despite the short outings and sporadic results from inning to inning. Prielipp has great stuff from what I saw.

Fear not, February begins this Saturday.

Totally agree. He was among my favorite players to watch last season (milb.com). I have him as #10 right now. Low floor but superstar ceiling; amazing athletic talent.

In DiPoto's defense, Seattle has a fantastic starting five staff but almost nothing behind those five guys. A little bit of a rock and a hard place. They need Arozarena and Rodriguez to have big years. A comeback from Polanco could go a long way too. Seattle will play a ton of close games and could win the AL West.

Isn't that something. Good for Jorge. This also seems like Seattle is done adding unless they are involved in a major unforeseen trade.

Sands might be interesting to another team who wants to trade for him and convert him back to a starting pitcher. That is possible. I'm not sure what team or how much value Cole Sands has to a mystery team. The Twins are pretty deep in starters and Sands would need a year or two in St. Paul, so that is not happening. Sands was really good in the pen and I'm betting he likes the MLB life better than AAA. So unless some teams calls and offers a bundle Sands is in the pen and we hope he is as good or better than he was last year.

A simple no.

Seattle has plans to use Jorge at third base.

Please excuse me for intruding on your conversation. The scouting and drafting of players is separate from development, the coaching. They don't intersect, not in baseball because drafting for need doesn't work. Occasionally there will be some wild ass idea tried and it fails miserably. The Angels drafted only pitchers one year and passed on players who they knew were better but the club was determined to draft pitchers. Dumb. I can't really think of an appropriate example but maybe fantasy football. I have never even once played any fantasy games. So you draft a team but you only watch to see how your picks work out. You don't actually have any say in their performance. That seems like a lame example but best I could do.

Well, last season both Lewis and Julien were pretty much worthless, but there was a season in 2023. I think Lewis can rebound to carve out a fair MLB career and it is possible for Julien too. 2023 and 2024 - tale of two seasons that highlight the hopes and fears of young players.

Looks like you forgot Brandon Winokur in your top ten. Remember to look back in a few years.

The U.S. has never been further away from an equitable system than right now in its history and it is quite natural to see the big market teams lord it over the bottom 18-20. Expansion. Put three more teams in the New York area and another 3 more in LA and correspondingly in other big markets. Not going to happen. The Rays and Brewers are trying to compete but they get very little credit. I'm not sure Miami, Pittsburgh, and the CWS care. Same old, same old.

Refinement, repetitions, practice, and adaptation is the easy answer but health is first.

Wallner is a horse of a different color than the others you mentioned. The players are too different in multiple ways to discuss together.

Professional sports leagues that require two or more parties to work together at every single event (game) need to share the resources or inevitable the market differences blow away the opportunity for relative competition. I'm not sure (guess we know) how the New York or Los Angeles teams would feel about putting three additional teams in their market areas. New York has roughly 24 million people in the Greater New York or Tri-State area and the Greater Los Angeles area has over 18 million people. By comparison, the greater Kansas City area is around 2 million people. Putting 3 more teams in the New York and Los Angeles areas would still leave all of those teams with more access to revenues as per population than Kansas City. Granted there are a number of teams that are either uninterested or poor in maximizing their regions economic potential to support the local baseball team as well as owners who are not active in working to put the best possible team on the field, which reduces interest. However it still takes two teams to play the game and the different sizes of markets is important. The initial changes in sharing revenue were made before the media contracts became huge. Now it is very likely to be quite a fight to get all stadium revenues and media monies put in a pot and distributed evenly across all teams. Sharing 50% of your media revenues is not anywhere near sharing. If the Twins share their media money of say $80 million (is it that much?), they keep $40 million. If Los Angeles shares their media money of say $300 million (Is it more?), they keep $150 miilion. Sharing as we can see is not exactly sharing but more like when I give myself 75% of the chocolate bar and kindly hand my girl friend the 25% left over. Where this goes is a guess and it seems like a few of the teams who may be just collecting revenue checks without even attempting to invest or improve the fortunes of their teams is a problem too. Perhaps the biggest problem is the ongoing existence of the exemption that MLB has to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, one of the weirder occurrences in legislative history.

Yes, of course. I was responding to ideas that the Twins could sign Cease to a long term contract if he was acquired. Any extension is against extremely remote odds.

I was only wondering where you fund your information because I was curious.

The Dodgers will be looking for a 2B, 3B, SS, and an outfielder next year, so Guerrero, Cease, and Tucker fit nicely into the roster provided they are fine with a few deferrals.

The headline states under 25. The last line before a look at the players is below. "Here is a look at the sixth- through 10th-best players ages 25 or younger in the Twins organization." I'm a little surprised at how critical people are about the content when each person is allowed to contribute articles themsleves or just not open the site if it isn't to your liking. There are a gazillion sites I never open and few that I read. It is always a choice and no you are not adding a critical voice by whining and yes the long offseason is bound to produce a number of articles that have little interest to many which is evident by the names missing in the comments. I would think that Brooks Lee and Simeon Woods Richardson deserve some respect for their time on the roster and their contributions to the team, particularly SWR. After that the prospect list is an arrangement of Jenkins, Rodriguez, Keaschall, Matthews (days but not innings), K. Culpepper, Winokur, Morris, and Raya with Soto and Prielipp close behind.

Try to watch as many plate appearances as you can. It will take less time than whatever moments you spend on Twins Daily. I think you might be surprised.

What seems possible if not real is that the Milwaukee Brewers or as many as 20 other teams would not be allowed to defer $1 billion + in salaries. The playing field is not level. There is what I would term a very lame defense of deferrals up on MLBTradeRumors.com. Ultimately, the wealthy teams (in terms of valuation/market size) (all of the owners are wealthy) make good use of the current rules and dictate to some extent how the lower half exist. I don't think that a cap or floor necessarily helps. I do think combining all media monies and stadium revenues into a pot and dividing by the number of teams would work. Well, except that that will never happen. There are other decisions that can have some effect. Change the days on IL to 15 days and not allow a player who is sent to the minor leagues to be recalled for any reason for 15 days. Reduce the number of times a player can be shuttled back and forth. Change the number of years a player can be retained in the minor leagues to age 25 or 26. Simply ideas off the top of my head, some need further thinking and work.

Curious where you find this information?

In A and A+ ball Emmanuel gave away many at bats based on the score - my observation. I noted that he was a little immature and didn't feel exactly challenged. Last season there were major strides made in his approach with occasional lapses. The big downer for EmRod last season was injuries. He has been injured often although every injury is totally different and unrelated to any previous ones. The 90% exit velocities are the best in all of minor league baseball and his chase rate declines each year and was below 10% in AAA. He tends to take some strikes that I would like to see him smash. There is absolutely no similarities between EmRod and Julien there. Rodriguez will also wave and miss at pitches right down the middle. I can remember Kirby doing that quite often. The swing decisions are huge for Rodriguez and it is why some are worried about him being a bust. Like I previously said, the Twins need to make a call because if they don't believe, the team is missing on a chance to trade him now. Me? I'm all in on him based strictly on watching him dominate those AA and AAA pitchers that are ranked highly. I think maturation and motivation are key for EmRod. But ...... what do I know?

I have watched a ton of his plate appearances the last two years and his progression has been solid. The decision should be made early in Spring Training from those who are paid to evaluate players. I always wonder, merely out of curiosity and fully cognizant that not everyone has the time, how many times a person has watched a player actually play versus checking stats. I have stated in the past that the Twins should take a leap of faith with EmRod. If they don't fully believe in him, the Twins should gage his value across baseball to fill another need.

FWIW, the notion that Cease will sign a long term contract with the Twins (if acquired) is truly remote. He will want to see his value on the market. Cease will hit free agency at nearly the same age as Corbin Burnes and their last four years of pitching have nearly the same value. If Cease has a strong year he will receive a contract similar to or exceeding the deal Burnes signed with the Diamondbacks. Expect 6 years and $210 million as a baseline with more if deferrals are a part of the deal. Cease is going to free agency as surely as Juan Soto or Corbin Burnes. And why wouldn't he? He picks where he wants to play and how much he wants to make.