Doctor Gast

Thanks Seth again for giving us an idea of what to expect. All our eyes are on FO to see what they'll do to solve our SS problem. Talk is there's a lot of activity in the Trea Turner & Bogaert camp & they supposingly be the 1st to go. I disagee with you that SP is #2 priority, catching IMO is a big #2 priority. Sano has great potential but he couldn't utilize it, I see Jeffers in the same boat but to a lesser degree, I've never seen Jeffers as our primary catcher & I don't have much patience w/ him because Jeffers arm, Since we don't have anyone close to MLB, we have a very big long term problem that needs to be dealt with. In years '06, '07 & so we had SPs Johan Santana, Francisico Liriano, Brad Radke, Carlo Silva, Scott Baker, Boof Bonser, Matt Garza and they had Pat Nesek in long relief. Even with this wonderful rotation they were able to utilize a pitcher like Nesek in long relief, Nesek had a successful career as a long RP. We have a big gap between SP to closer, This gap can be effeciently fill with long relief and we have a few excellent candidates in house. Probably managent will chose to ignore long relief again and choose to depend exclusively on short relief again. That has resulted overstretching both SPs & short relief leading to ineffeciency & injuries, Anticipating this then yes need more front line SPing & high leverage RPs. But it need not be so.

We have had very few in house pitchers that ever really amount to much. Berrios is the only one that really amounted to much. Ryan hasn't really been thru the system. Duran has been fantastic & Jax has been good in the pen. Ober & reject Wells hasn't been bad. Varland & SWR shows promise but there's a lot that have came & gone. Cruz might find some success in the pen. My feel is there won't be a lot of activity in the draft this year & Cruz will stay put, But who knows, Legumina found a home maybe Cruz will too. I'm more concerned with Lawyerson being taken

Technically I'm wrong but indirectly I'm right that we got him as a result of the rule 5 draft. It was more creatively done, which I like to cling to.

The problem with that is maybe the MLB version of the NBA Clippers is the Pirates.

Beginning of the off season there was only Nimmo available at CF, then there was Bellinger Now with teams maybe holding out on Reynolds that can effect the salary on Nimmo

Best solution.

Depends if they want prospects or MLB ready players or a combination of both. I misspelled Rodriguez, my bad

PIT still says they won't trade him, but when a player says he wants to be traded. It's hard not to trade him.

Reynolds was on my trade radar in '20, him & Musgrove. I believe his BTV value was 30 something, now it's almost 60

Byran Reynolds has requested to be traded from Pittsburgh. his news has really shocked the MLB world. Many teams have salivated on the aspect of retaining Reynolds only to be denied by PIT. I'm sure PIT is reeling because Reynolds was their hope to finally begin to grasp the thought of competing. Now the flood gates have been opened. PIT organization is full of great prospects it'll be interesting how PIT will pivot. I really doubt that the Twins are serious about retaining Reynolds services. But depending how PIT will react, I'm hoping some how an avenue to Endy Rodriguese could open up. View full rumor

Polanco has nagging injuries is because they keep on playing him hurt w/o trying to resolve the problem. Coming off probation he was healthy & he became an all-star but playing an unnatural position of SS he developed bad ankles. After 2 1/2 yrs. of playing hurt they took him off SS and "viola" no more bad ankles. '21 longer he played away from SS the better he got. '21 is the only true value to measure Polanco because they didn't play him hurt. '22 he injured his back where he couldn't play (most back problems take awhile to get better) they rested him & treated him & "viola", he's good. Then he hurt his knee sliding, they didn't rest him. They run him into the ground until he could no longer take the field to where they finally put him on the IL for the 1st time in his MLB career. His nagging injuries is a Polanco problem is a bunch of krock IMO, it's a management problem. Polanco is the sturdiest player we have. I disagree that Polanco is at a high point in trade value. Because playing hurt for at least half the '22 season his offense & defense #s were down so his trade value took a hit. He needs to be allowed to play unhurt for some time to get his trade up to where it was. "23 with the shift ban, it will show all our warts. Right now Polanco is the player we have that can viablly play 2B. Not Miranda, not Arraez, not Gordon- Lewis. Lee, Martin & Julien are not ready. Until they are ready or in Julien case if, we can't think about trading Polanco.

The pitching market has started. Plus some of the lesser trades will start come off the board, so if FO is interested in Narvaez (which they should be) they'd better hurry up & sign him. Some time during the winter meetings Judge will sign, then the jockeying will start.

I did not trash Cave, Cave was a perfectly fine back up corner OF. I don't blame Cave, if anything I blame management for profiling him as a CF sub. I repeat being a somewhat above average hitter doesn't qualify you as a CFer. If so maybe we should consider Arraez in CF, he's one of the best. Premium positions like pitcher, CF, SS & catcher are valued more on their on field performance over their bat. I'm sorry you can't see Celestio's value & potential.

with the pitch clock the catchers needs to be quick in making the right call, because the clock is ticking. A quick & confident call will help out a pitcher a lot.

I'm not in favor of slow cooking SP prospects in AAA. I'd like to have them get their feet wet in the BP. Build their innings in long relief, go to spot starting up to the point of becoming a fixture in the rotation.

This FO doesn't really care much about the Rule 5 draft, where in past have done pretty well. It's where we obtained our only "ace" Johan Santana. This FO doesn't regret anything they do, they just continue to ignore it. On the hand, it really bugs me to lose barely developed prospects for nothing. IMO it's like giving away unopened lottery tickets. Maybe it won't be the grand prize (Santana) but maybe it's something to help you get by.

Some people develop quickly & then sputters (Badoo), others develop slower and continue to develop thru out their career (Celestino). I'd have like to have kept both of these guys. Badoo was ready & hungry to take that next step, he'd have emerged as Buxton replacement & thrive, while Celestino could have stayed and properly advanced in the minors. But due to the situation that was created, they had to choose between Badoo & Celestino. So why did they chose Celestino over Badoo? #1 Celestino's stats were slightly better #2 Celestino was a product the FO trade so it looked better for them. That's the problem, looking only at stats & what makes them look good isn't enough (especially when there wasn't that much difference in stats). You need to look at them as persons not #s. If they looked at them as persons they'd have known that Badoo was ready & Celestino was not. The team that would have picked up Celestino in the Rule 5 draft would have quickly discovered that & returned him. So you can't cry over spilled milk. 2020 really set Celestino's development back. '21, He was mercylessly thrown into the fire, where he crashed & burned. That'd be enough to destroy any baseballplayer's future. Yet Celestino was called back in action in '22 and he bounced back & gave us a glympse of what a future Celestino can do. Celestino still has things to learn & yet needs the stamina to complete a full MLB season. '23 he'll continue to develop and impress us & show us that he belongs here as a very viable Buxton replacement. This discussion on getting outside help to aide us at Buxton's back up should have been taken seriously back when Cave was it (hit a HR here & there does not qualify you) not now. We haven't been so deep in CF as we are now. We had some very good duos like Span/ Revere and Puckett/ Hunter but not 3 deep. Celestino will prove all you wrong.

The Reds really pitched Mahle at a blistering pace, to showcase him. Twins bought into it. It was unrealistic for the Twins to expect Mahle to continue that pace especially coming down with shouder problems. Hopefully Mahle will be 100% & the Twins will manage him properly. If so he can pitch close to 200 innings & have at least a 3.50 ERA. That's good enough to be our #1. A full ST will also help.

Drop Contreras & Garlick from 40 man, reassign them to AAA. Hopefully you'll never need to use Contreras again. Bring up Garlick when there's a rash of LHPing, then DFA him, repeat & rinse. Kepler could do better somewhere else, trade him if we can get a good return. Celestino would probably benefit from starting in AAA but he took a good leap from '21 to '22. I expect him to mature more & be more grounded with continued advancement. Wallner needs a lot more seasoning in AAA. That leaves Buxton, Larnach, Gordon & Kiriloff and pray everyone remains healthy. FO states that they're in the market for a RH bat corner OFer. I hope they settle the SS, catcher & SP hole adequately 1st.

As I stated before BTV is a great tool to get an idea about trades. Yet I always think they undervalue the Twins but probably all fans feel that way and in general the Twins are probably are under valued. Arraez was an all-star, batting champ, silver slugger, GG nomination, I believe most players would see a notable uptick in value, Arraez needle did not move. Julien had a MVP AFL performance, his needle didn't move. Martin had a very good & steady AFL performance, his value fell from 11 to 7. Hopefully GMs are less bias. This won't let this deter my trading but it's a little frustrating

Lewis had a good chance to win it this year, He might not qualify this coming year although if he qualifies he would have the best shot it. Wallner & Varland might qualify but I doubt they'll get any votes, If the philosophy remains & injuries abound SWR could qualify & get some votes.

Endy Rodriguez was a Mets throw in from the Musgrove/ SD trade. What SD gave PIT was the main value, Rodriguez wasn't worth anything at the time. Rodriguez only really took off this last season when their #1 prospect Davis (C) got hurt. Musgrove was offered to us but FO dropped the ball. SD stole Musgrove from the Pirates with I think 4 mediocre prospects. IDK if you are familiar with BTV but at the time Musgrove was worth 36 something and E Rodriguese was worth 2.4. a year ago worth 7 now his worth 29.6 Anyway, yes we don't have a pitcher that we can trade 1 for 1. It'd take an Ober plus 1 or 2 lesser prospects.

Johan Santana was an elite pitcher for us. Liriano would have been if not for injuries. You could count on Berrios to give you the innings through out the season but his performance was sometimes inconsistent. '20 was the perfect storm for Maeda, only pitching 66 innings in 11 games, new to hitters, hitters adjusting to covid. LAD profiled Maeda as a spot starter/ long relief, he has yet proved that he can go much more than 100 innings much less showing dominance over those 100 innings. So IMO Maeda doesn't come close as being an ace much less elite. About Heany, yes he has some pretty good stuff. But LAD took it very easy on him, pitching him in 14 games at 72 innings (30 innings less than Archer), That's about 4.5 innings/ game. He pitched less than 5 innings in half his games & only pitched 6 innings 2x. If he can't handle that then he's no SP, he's better off in the BP.

with the new rules on the pitchers, I see base runners will be running a lot more that'll put a lot of stress on Jeffers. Plus not having a strong arm, Jeffers will have a lot of problems. Narvaez is an ideal platoon, we need to focus on getting him to set our floor. If we sign Correa we have our tandem if we don't, we can pivot & sign Contreras. If we sign Contreras, we can trade Jeffers. PIT has 2 very promising catching prospects, Davis which has been PIT top prospect for a little while and up coming switch hitting E Rodriguez. Rodriguez last season has shown that he has all the tools to be a very good catcher. IMO PIT could be thinking about competing this year, so they might consider an upgrade at catcher & maybe willing to let Rodriguez go. If so that could solve our catching problem for a very long time.