Doctor Gast

My definition of super utility is someone who can play SS & CF well which translate he can play anyplace well. Castro fits that bill all others are just plain utility. A good chance we can see a small regression from Castro but glove can play anwhere & his base stealing adds another benefical dimension to the Twins game where very valuable. They should limit Gordon only in the OF because his glove & bat don't play well in the INF. The turning point for Martin when they resolved Martin off SS (finally) & Martin resolved to focus on his own style of batting at the end of '22. Martin adapts very well & have the grit to make it in MLB at CF sometime in '24. It'll be a very interesting spring training indeed. Castro & Farmer can handle the INF.

I was overjoyed when Buxton signed the extention. Because Buxton is a difference maker at CF and with the incentives based on games played, he be well worth the $. If he can't play CF IMO he shouldn't play. What I'd like to see is have Buxton play enough games at CF to help win the division & have him 100% in the PS. Then I'd be happy. It'd be hard to determine how many games he'll play. IMO they took care of the problem last year but he still has a chronic knee problem. IMO it can be controled so he can make a significant impact on this team.

Thank you jorgenswest, I appreciate it.

I thought I had responded to your text but couldn't find it. I appreciate your trade offers & share in the love for TonyO. BTV listed Julien as OFer & Carrigg as SS, they really blew that. Carrigg can play anywhere including pitcher, but he was drafted as & his heart is at catcher. He also has a rocket for an arm. To fill a need at CF he was moved off of catcher his last college year. Which cost him a high ranking at catcher in the '23 prospect Draft. He has been highly underrated IMO he can become an elite catcher.

With Hinch (IMO still is a good coach) who finally has something to work with will improve DET's record while the departure of Francona DET will become our new competitor. I was thinking maybe this division won't be a cake walk.

Cleveland got the #1 overall '24 draft pick. IMO fortunately this draft is considerably weaker. not sure where the Twins are.

"Great" is a general exageration by some members who try to justify not moving these players off these positions when I advocate for doing so. Members now are saying that Jeffers is "untouchable" that's super star MVP statis. And where do you think that noise came from?

As a LH hittng CFer with good #s, there's a good chance he could be taken. Right now we are pretty deep in CFers (Buxton, Castro, Gordon & Martin at some point) & they are thinking about adding from outside. Unfortunately, we don't need him which is a good problem. Uncertain how he'll respond to MLB his 1st year but hope he'll develop into a MLBer & does well. Even if he does well I doubt that the Twins will regret it.

Maybe FO don't listen to the fans but the owners & unbias baseball reporters do & FO needs to listen to them.

Absolutely not, any transaction to move Lewis to the OF isn't worth the risk, I don't care how good or cheap he is.

Amen to what you said. Concerning Molina, their manager often asked Molina for advice especially about pitchers. I can really see Molina helping out Contreras to fill that gapping hole that appeared after he left. See the pitching & catching staffs really turned around, resulting in a major turn around for the whole team. Can Molina really do that? Yes he can. Former Twins, Nellie Cruz was hired as a Latin America Coordinator & Chris Archer as a special assistant (although he hasn't officially retired) by the Dogers. Both have shown great ability to be mentors. To be selected into the Dodgers system is no small thing & God bless to both of them.

There's only 1 true untouchable & that's Royce Lewis. There are too many intangibles that go along with his talent & upside to ever get close to a fair return on him, a likely perennial all-star & future MVP, someone to build a team around. Then there's the very hard-to-trade & that's #1 Pablo Lopez, an established veteran who has a great attitude, anchors our rotation & still has plenty of upside- all-star & likely CY winner #2 Brook Lee is a great all-around player who can play anywhere on the INF, pure switch hitter that shows some power- likely all-star. #3 Jhoan Duran, hard to find a better high-leverage RP who is undervalued w/o him our BP goes from the top to below average- should be an all-star. Low trade availability- #1 Walter Jenkins, I believe he could be another Aaron Judge, Someone we can dream about but that's all it is right now a dream. He's someone I'd like to hang on to but if a deal to good be true came along I'd jump on it. IMO a Judge type isn't someone who can take us to the WS. As I get to know him more, my opinion might change. #2 Joe Ryan, a hungry young SP with still a lot of upside fairly durable- potential all-star. #3? Edouard Julien, is a great hitter that I'd like to keep as a 1B man but would trade very quickly if projected as a 2B man especially if a top-end SP is in the deal. The others I'd be open to trade especially if they top out in trade value & less likely if they are under-valued.

I think you're underselling the importance of defense at the catcher position & trying to sidetrack this thread. If the defense wasn't the deciding factor why go through all that trouble with a 3-way trade because Contreras was the more offensive catcher? When a successful organization like the Braves makes defense (that doesn't mean ignoring hitting) a priority in the premium position of catcher then the Twins need to take note. I agree that the Twins need to improve their offense but a big bat isn't the answer. Twins have been drafting, signing and hoarding big bats, yet their answer is always another big bat. The Twins were 3rd in HRs last season, their focus on HRs has resulted for years SOs in clutch ABs, poor hitting in RISP, especially with the bases loaded, until Royce Lewis (who doesn't adhere to the Twins philosophy) showed up. This FO together with their minions have said that Jake Cave is a great CF sub (which means a lot of time) Jorge Polanco is a great SS & Luis Arraez is a great 2B man. Their bat played well there but their glove definitely did not, they didn't take their defense at all into consideration. If no one stood up & contradicted the FO we would still have a Cave-ish type CF sub, Polanco would still play SS and Arraez would be playing 2B & we'd be competing with KC, CWS & DET for the cellar. Thanks to those who stood up, FO has changed their position by upgrading at CF sub, SS & traded Arraez for Lopez (upgrading SP). Those were the biggest reasons together with Lewis that we broke that winless PS game & ultimately series losing streak. My point in this article is to provoke people to think & stop drinking the FO Kool-Aid. For us to win a WS with this team we need to upgrade our premium position catcher, change our hitting philosophy & maintain our pitching dominance.

I remember in Moneyball when Bean wanted a trade for a certain player & offer a certain player. He'd asked for a different player & offered a different player but it boiled down that he got his player with the player he wanted to offer. In the begining there's a lot of posturing by the FOs & FAs to get their desired outcome. So don't believe evrything you read. Just like a super car promotion, you go in to buy the car on sale. But discover that the car had been sold but they have another car they'd love to sell you.

Johan Santana was a Rule 5 draftee & after the dust settled he was a Twin. That's all that mattered to me. Because the Twins were creative only adds to their credit & merit of claiming him.

It's unbelievable how MIA after losing Lopez in trade, Meyer, Rogers, Alcantra & Perez to injuries & yet was able to make it to the post season with poor offense & defense. Yeah it would be nice to have a catcher pipeline to develop catchers & have some left over to trade.

Lewis was the spark plug that got us to be divisional champs. But for us to advance to the big dance we need all 3 of these guys healthy & that's what needs to be the focus. Lopez will also needs to be in the equation. We still need at least one more SP to step up to fill in the PS #2 SP. The other premium position catcher we need to shine. Yet in the regular season we beat TX, HOU, AZ & PHI head on

I have to admit I was skeptical of Paddack coming off TJ. IMO the 1st outing of a pitcher coming off TJ shows a lot about his progress. Paddack has proved to me that he can be inserted into the rotation. Though his innings need to be limited & vamped slowly which a Paddack/ rookie Varland piggy-back duo would make a terrific idea. Although he has some interesting articles, I'm not a big fan of Law because a lot of his ideas are way off. This is one of them.

Very good insight, Doc. I agree with everything you say. Just want to comment on this one comment. The 1st half the Twins were absolutely terrible in hitting with RISP and even worse with bases loaded. I credit this to the Twins hitting philosophy where they got HRs when we didn't need them & SO in clutch situations that kills rallies. The big difference in the 2nd half was Royce Lewis. Our hitting with RISP & with the bases loaded drastically changed, thanks to him. I hope there'd be a change in hitting philosophy (I doubt it) even so we'll have Royce Lewis who is Royce Lewis & thanks to Paparesta we'll have Buxton, Correa, Kiriloff, Miranda & Polanco 100% with Kepler who finally found himself after the shift ban. We have a potent offensive that will begin in full force in '24 so we shouldn't have a problem in offense.

Do you agree with Tom Kelly? Did he hold it against him there after? Kelly seemed to be bias although he was a very successful manager.

Very interesting indeed. Don't think that Sea can handle a big trade like Ohtani or Soto & it seems a few of FA's like SEA which is good for them. Kepler would be a great 1yr. fall back option. Good sign that SEA is moving away from the SO fad, So I expect them to do better & hope the Twins do the same.

Under the suggestion of my friend TonyO I will post a more popular early version of a trade offer I made at BTV, https://www.baseballtradevalues.com/trades/149730 I like this trade offer because it covered a lot of SEA & our needs & gave an upgrade to CO's catching prospect situation. Plus Romo & Veen are good friends. Although Jorgenswest & I debated about the prior offer I posted here. I think one thing that we definitely agree upon is that Romo is a very good catcher. Romo & Carrigg are both very underrated because they are line drive hitters & not sluggers and IMO they both could be elite catchers. That's why I targeted them. I revised this offer because I believed the latter was more CO friendly, meeting their current need for a veteran catcher while keeplng their OF prospect Veen. & it could leave our SP trade options open. But the masses have spoken & if CO concurs then so be it.

I think most worthwhile pitching options (FA or trades) won't happen until Yokomoto signs, where they can capitalize with the teams that lost out on him. I'll say again FA isn't the solution especially this year. Trades are the best solution. Paddack can replace Maeda, There are a few internal options that can match Pagan's production. Gray had a career season with MN, so it's hard to replace. But IMO we could find another Lopez type of trade that could come close to match his production this year. Plus Lopez, Ryan, Ober & Varland (piggy-back with Paddack) will step up IMO.

Good news but like last season they'll take it easy on him in the cold spring by playing hima at DH fulltime. IMO they'll take a long look at Martin in ST, if he looks pretty good (which is likely) he'll break camp as the RH CF sub. If they doubt his readiness then they'll go outside to find one, not before.

Totally agree. Twins struck out on the FA SPs they wanted. So to save face they went all out to sign Donaldson. They should have gone to the trade market. Their excuse back then was there was none to be had. Yet other teams usually found good deals. But this contract hamstrung us from getting players we needed more. To correct this mistake they had to completely dismantle the great depth at the premium position of catcher. Which greatly handicapped us. This is by far the worst. Gallo was pretty bad too but probably the focus is on current contracts. IMO the Dobnak contract was a good one. He was given a contract due to his newfound slider. This gold mine was his downfall due to mismanagement. Dobnak was a good GB pitcher, they should have left him alone & used the new pitch sparingly using it on opportune times as a SO pitch. But they wanted to transform him into a SO pitcher therefore they focused on the new slider. His hand was not accustomed to it & he quickly had difficulty with control & soon injured the finger that drove that pitch & never recovered fully. Vazquez's drop in offense was to be expected because he needed to focus on getting to know new pitchers to aid in their pitch selection. Plus adapting to a new team, especially the hitting philosophy that's so different from HOU. Yet Vazquez got some clutch hits and contributed a lot to our defense & our pitching success. With Vazquez's PS experience, he could very likely risen to the occasion & had a good one that everyone would forget his regular season offensive shortcomings. But he never was given that chance. I expect a better '24. He's worth his contract. Buxton & Correa was hampered by injuries. '22 to credit the Twins they focused on limiting Buxton to maximize his ABs throughout the season. But to their discredit, after he got hurt they still tried to force ABs (IMO attempt to help Buxton, $ wise) but instead of giving him the proper time to heal, greatly aggravated his injury that followed him into '23 that cut his playing time & kept him from the PS. I believe both these guys will have a much better '24.