ericchri

Gotta believe if Colabello was on the 40-man he'd have gotten this callup. But you don't put someone through waivers for a 3-day fill-in. They already did that to get the guy who needs a short-term replacement on the team. There's so many ways this could go, most have been covered extensively by others with more knowledge than I, so I'll just leave it with I hope he plays well enough that they have to find someone else to go back down to Rochester. We need hope for this team, and right now there doesn't appear to be much to look forward to this season.

Scott Leius. I don't know why, but I was always happier when he was in the lineup, even though the platoon with Pagliarulo worked almost perfectly. Probably because as the righty he was in the lineup less often.

I think the difference would be Zunino would have been a year or two away from the majors, where the Twins expect Mauer to be catching for them for at least another 4-5 years. I know next to nothing about any of these draft picks, but the notion of picking a HS catcher makes a little more sense to me than an advanced college catcher, because our catching is set at the moment, meaning the HS catcher has time to develop and won't get held up while Mauer is still there. But as I said, I don't have any other knowledge of these guys, and I don't get too concerned about draft choices in baseball. Unlike football or basketball where you're expecting them to contribute immediately, most baseball draftees take a year or two at least, even when they played in college. In two years our needs may look a little different. Of course, "You can never have enough pitching."

I thought the whipping boy was already Joe Mauer. Sure seemed like it the last couple years, at least in reading comments in various places... Is Walters a possibility for the bullpen? It doesn't seem like that's how they've viewed him in general, but somebody somewhere had him listed as making the roster in the bullpen. Wish I could remember where I saw that. I would assume he'd get Swarzak's job to start with if so. How long is Swarzak expected to be out?

Perkins 272

Out of curiosity, I was glancing through this spreadsheet, and I noticed the guys who had signed split contracts, with salaries for the majors and the minors. How does that work? Is it prorated based on service time they spend at each level?

I couldn't help wondering the same thing. Obviously the movement is different such that they feel one suits the lefties or righties, but with such poor success from his slider, isn't another breaking ball he seems to have more control of going to end up more effective anyway?

If he's healthy and hitting homeruns, you'll obviously see his slugging go up, but also hopefully his OBP as pitchers start trying to pitch around him a bit. My guess: .260/.335/.470, 28 HR, 20 errors

If Morneau puts up an OPS of around .850 or more for a full season, he's probably worth that QO (the Twins can certainly afford it next year). He's always going to have the concussion issue dragging down his value, but he's had plenty of other nagging injuries during the last few years as well that have sapped his production. Both of those added together mean he's unlikely to get much for long-term offers from anybody, I would think, but short-term deals he would have the potential to provide pretty good value. If he's actually healthy barring the concussion risk, he can be close to dominant. The biggest problem with Morneau is essentially Parmelee and Arcia. One of the three of Willingham, Morneau, or Parmelee almost has to get traded this season to make room for Arcia. But if Willingham was the one to get traded and Morneau has a great season, it wouldn't bother me to see the Twins offer him up another year to potentially get the draft choice if he became a FA or keep him around if Morneau wanted to stay.

Liam Hendricks immediately jumps to mind when reading that story about the different baseballs.

There's so many other variables that factor into his potential call-up. We've got a whole crew full of AAAA and #5 pitchers in front of him that would presumably have to be injured/fail before they'd even think about it. He has to pitch well. Are the Twins in contention or is the season all but over and it's time to audition new guys. Is New Britain in contention so they want to leave him there for the "postseason experience?" How well is Trevor May pitching? I just can't believe things would shake out for him to get called up mid-season this year. Taking a wild guess, it would be surprising, but I'll say a September call-up this season. He pitches well at AA, May doesn't pitch as well, they've seen enough of all the other guys to know what they have and they want him to get 3-4 starts in the big leagues to see how he handles it.

If we do get the 2-man catching crew this season (and they stick to it), and assuming no significant injuries to Mauer or Doumit, wouldn't you have to expect Joe to catch around 90 games, possibly even more? He'd catch more often than Doumit, they're not going to split the games half and half between those two. Someone would be up in September to take maybe 15-20 games away from those two, but they're gonna split 140+ games if they can stick to those two for the season, and I would guess they'd go around 60% Mauer, 40% Doumit.

If he's not one of the 5 best, his innings wouldn't be wasted in AAA. I think that was the point of saying if he's clearly one of the 5 best. Echoing JC, I've advocated the notion of treating him as the #5 starter before and skipping him every time it makes sense as opposed to rolling all 5 starters back a day because of an off-day in the schedule. In the grand scheme of things, I'm not sure I really care a whole lot how Gibson gets used this year, though. It only matters if the "Strasburg situation" happens where he would be dominating and has to be shut down before the playoffs. Since I'm not expecting playoffs this year, regardless of how well he pitches, whatever way he gets used, be it AAA or majors, reliever or not, it's all about building him up to be a big factor next year anyway. But my ideal would probably having him pitching well as the #5 and getting skipped from time to time during the season.

I just don't expect much from Florimon, but as a fan I hope he proves me wrong. I think Carroll is our best SS option, but they're running the "kids" out there this year to see if any of them can hack it (pun semi-intended). I'd probably rather see Escobar get the start, with Carroll as the utility to start the season and Florimon in AAA, but all the talk makes that seem unlikely. Rumors of Escobar taking a little practice to be a possible emergency catcher make it seem near-impossible. Pretty sure you don't take a guy you think can start at short and have him work on playing catcher just in case. The real thing to watch is does Danny Santana start the year at AA, and how does he perform? Not sure he's going to be any more of a hitter than Florimon or Escobar, but for now he seems like our best chance for a young, quality starting SS (i.e. not a utility or AAAA playing due to lack of better options) in the near future. As for Dozier, I'm pretty hopeful about him at 2B. Good reports just add to it a little.

He's on a minor league deal. Ask Harden what he wants to do, and let him work towards that in the minors (or extended spring training) with a mid-season call-up in that role as the goal. If he manages it, awesome, if not, nothing lost. If he can manage to be healthy and pitching close to how he used to he would seem to be an upgrade over just about anybody currently slated for the role he wants, excepting maybe Perkins and Burton if that was what he wanted to do.

You're totally correct! I feel so stupid. Since each player's contribution to a game is 1/25, and there are 162 games, each player plus therefore accounts for 6.48 wins, not just 6. I can't believe I rounded down. So in actuality the Twins are +6 over last year's squad due to coming to their senses and playing Jamey Carroll all season. 6.48 x 6 is essentially 39 wins. So the 2013 Twins are 39 wins better than last years team and are actually winning 105 games. Thanks for pointing that out.

Somewhere, somewhen, I realized I'm generally ill-suited to responding to internet forums as I often type up ten times as much information as is really suited to being in a forum post. It hasn't stopped me from doing it, but it has stopped me from posting more than about 1% of the things that pop through my head when reading forums. I type up a response to a thread that starts growing as I try to add details to clarify why some of the things I was saying were as they were until it gets to the point I realize it no longer has anything to do with the posted topic. My usual response is to just close the page before I add tons of unnecessary text to what doesn't need to be so complicated. Recently it occurred to me, the site owners in their infinite "wisdom" allowed people like me to spew out random ideas for some reason and let us call it a blog. Well, that is pretty much what blogs are for I guess. So here it is, my completely arbitrary thoughts unposted to a forum thread and instead turned into some kind of system with which I can predict almost nothing about the Twins in 2013 based mostly on a bunch of hunches. Look out, Bill James! When approaching the topic of how the Twins will compare to last year's team, I decided the best way to approach it was position-by-position to make assumptions about my expected performance in relation. The resulting "system" ended up being a +/- system. What are the pluses and minuses, you ask? In essence, a plus means I predict better performance than last year, and minus is conversely a prediction of worse performance. Simple right? At the end I can just total up all the pluses and minuses and "accurately" predict why the Twins will be better or worse than last year. Or something... The biggest assumption being made in this is one player manning the position for the majority of the season, which of course completely nullifies most of the value from predicting anyway. Many players will suffer injuries, many will be replaced/traded mid-season, and various other things can happen to make that a truly horrible assumption. But it's easier than the alternative, and therefore is perfect for my arbitrary system. So here we go... Left Field: Josh Willingham manned it last year and will again this year. While I'm inclined to believe he'll have a hard time repeating what he did last year, I'm letting my optimism run wild with this one and going with a push both offensively and defensively. Offense=, Defense=. Center Field: Denard Span is gone and being replaced by Aaron Hicks. Span was a good hitter last year, though that .342 OBP wasn't exactly stellar for a leadoff hitter. It'd be fine for a lot of teams, but he's done much better in the past. Hicks had perhaps his best year as a hitter in AA last year, but there's no way it translates to as much success at the majors as a rookie. Boy would that be nice, though. I don't see much chance Hicks hits as well as Span did last year. Defensively is a more interesting proposition. Reports have Hicks being extremely fast with good instincts and a very strong throwing arm. Span has never seemed much more than average to me, but he seemed to have his best year defensively by a good bit last year. Any other years' defense by Span and I'd call this a plus, but Span's best year to a young Hicks's first year in the majors makes this a push. Offense-, Defense=. Right Field: Ben Revere turns this over to Chris Parmelee. There's really nothing similar about these two players. Best I can do is WAG this one as a push offensively. We're trading some OBP and stolen bases for slugging on this one, hopefully it's about equal. Defensively, well, that's a pretty huge loss. No need to expound anymore. Offense=, Defense-- (yep that's a double minus). 3B: Trevor Plouffe gives way to new and improved Trevor Plouffe. Pretty much I'm just predicting more offense for the entire season than what we saw last year and improved defense based on being able to prepare to be the 3B for the entire offseason. Plus he's already gotten through the inital learning curve. I pretty much think he'll be better. How's that for scientific? Offense+, Defense+. SS: (redacted) last year to Pedro Florimon (more on this later) this year. Well, the position was pretty much terrible both offensively and defensively last year, and that's being kind. And apparently our starter is going to be part of what contributed to the (redacted) last year. That being said, I'm hoping Florimon just had a few bad errors in a compressed timeframe last year when he was trying too hard to impress. His offense will be a push with last year's, which doesn't require much, and his defense will be a little better than what we got last season. Offense=, Defense+. 2B: (Mostly) Alexia Casilla to Brian Dozier. One of my biggest hunches is Brian Dozier taking over second and playing well. I want my gut to shut up so I'm not disappointed, but unfortunately it's been growing larger every year, and I can't control it like I used to. If Dozier hits like I think he can, we have a massive improvement from last year's contribution. While I think he'll be adequate defensively, I don't think Dozier matches Casilla's defense. Offense++, Defense-. 1B: Another totally scientific prediction of "he'll be better than last year offensively." I don't think there's much reason to expect his defense to be any different, so hopefully last year's second half is more indicative of the Morneau we're getting this year. Offense+, Defense=. C: Joe Mauer to Drew Butera. Watch as we run the best-hitting catcher in baseball out there game after game and he guns down runners while calling perfect gameplans for the pitchers. Nuff said. Okay, reality says Joe Mauer matches last year. I'm hoping for better defense this year, but honestly I'm not real confident in it. Offense=, Defense=. DH: Ryan Doumit both years. Not much reason to expect different results that I can think of. Offense=. So for the starting lineup, that totals up as Offense +3, Defense -1. Yay, we're better this year. Moving on to the bench, at this point my arbitrary system to compare positions 1-to-1 gets thrown out for the new arbitrary system to call the bench a wash as a whole. Bad last year, bad this year. Bullpen. Hmmm, you know that 1-to-1 comparison thing is a lot less fun when it's not a starter. Most of the same guys back from last year, bullpens are notoriously impossible to predict, I'm calling a wash and hoping nobody's looking. Now for the rotation. Quick, name the top five starters from last year. Scott Diamond, ummm... Cole DeVries, Sam Deduno, all right executive decision says 1-to-1 comparisons are again pointless. Good thing this system is arbitrary. I'm making up a separate system for the rotation to see how many ranks better I think this year's rotation will be than last year's and making that equivalent to a +/-. The ranks from worst on top to best at the bottom of the list: Putrid Bad Mediocre Average Fairly Good Good Excellent I say we go from last year's putrid to this year's mediocre. Diamond is about equal, to last year (he didn't pitch the whole season last year, either), Worley should be better than anything else we trotted out last year, hopefully Hendricks is better, Pelfrey and Gibson combine for a season's worth of starts better than most contributions last year. Still below average, but compared to last year's I'll take it. That's a nice ol' +2. Woot. All right, the grand total says +4. It's a good thing that in my arbitrary system each plus translates to 6 more wins right? Right? There you have it, the Twins are winning 90 games next year. Okay, obviously my pluses don't actually translate to anything beyond saying I'm predicting the Twins to be a little better next year as a whole. In trying to come up with the reason I was going to be optimistic about this year's record, I ended up going through this drawn out exercise, and it was enjoyable even if it'll be proven completely absurd in a couple more months. About Pedro Florimon. I think if they'd just admit Jamey Carroll is their best shortstop, even though he's 39, it'd also contribute to the overall improvement of the team. He's solid. Unspectacular, but solid, both offensively and defensively. If I substitute Jamey Carroll for Pedro Florimon in the above assumptions it leads to another +2, which then means the Twins are winning 102 games next year. How awesome is that? There seems to be some notion we should run Florimon out there because he's younger, as if they can pretend he's the shortstop of the future by doing so. If he's an amazing defensive player and below-average on offense, I'll be pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately I just have no hopes of that, and am instead expecting inconsistent defense to go with atrocious hitting. I do know Carroll was third on the team in OBP last year, though, and didn't make many stupid errors like much of our infield. I'll take a workman-like Jamey Carroll over our combined shortstops from last year any day. I haven't seen/don't know enough about Escobar to have any real opinion about him, so I'm leaving him out of the equation. And there it is. You can take all those other projection systems and shove them. My clearly superior system predicts the Twins win 102 games next year based on pretty much nothing and should handily win the AL Central because I've also arbitrarily decided nobody else is winning 102 games. Detroit can take their loaded roster home and cry about it. Enjoy the season!

Somewhere, somewhen, I realized I'm generally ill-suited to responding to internet forums as I often type up ten times as much information as is really suited to being in a forum post. It hasn't stopped me from doing it, but it has stopped me from posting more than about 1% of the things that pop through my head when reading forums. I type up a response to a thread that starts growing as I try to add details to clarify why some of the things I was saying were as they were until it gets to the point I realize it no longer has anything to do with the posted topic. My usual response is to just close the page before I add tons of unnecessary text to what doesn't need to be so complicated. Recently it occurred to me, the site owners in their infinite "wisdom" allowed people like me to spew out random ideas for some reason and let us call it a blog. Well, that is pretty much what blogs are for I guess. So here it is, my completely arbitrary thoughts unposted to a forum thread and instead turned into some kind of system with which I can predict almost nothing about the Twins in 2013 based mostly on a bunch of hunches. Look out, Bill James! When approaching the topic of how the Twins will compare to last year's team, I decided the best way to approach it was position-by-position to make assumptions about my expected performance in relation. The resulting "system" ended up being a +/- system. What are the pluses and minuses, you ask? In essence, a plus means I predict better performance than last year, and minus is conversely a prediction of worse performance. Simple right? At the end I can just total up all the pluses and minuses and "accurately" predict why the Twins will be better or worse than last year. Or something... The biggest assumption being made in this is one player manning the position for the majority of the season, which of course completely nullifies most of the value from predicting anyway. Many players will suffer injuries, many will be replaced/traded mid-season, and various other things can happen to make that a truly horrible assumption. But it's easier than the alternative, and therefore is perfect for my arbitrary system. So here we go... Left Field: Josh Willingham manned it last year and will again this year. While I'm inclined to believe he'll have a hard time repeating what he did last year, I'm letting my optimism run wild with this one and going with a push both offensively and defensively. Offense=, Defense=. Center Field: Denard Span is gone and being replaced by Aaron Hicks. Span was a good hitter last year, though that .342 OBP wasn't exactly stellar for a leadoff hitter. It'd be fine for a lot of teams, but he's done much better in the past. Hicks had perhaps his best year as a hitter in AA last year, but there's no way it translates to as much success at the majors as a rookie. Boy would that be nice, though. I don't see much chance Hicks hits as well as Span did last year. Defensively is a more interesting proposition. Reports have Hicks being extremely fast with good instincts and a very strong throwing arm. Span has never seemed much more than average to me, but he seemed to have his best year defensively by a good bit last year. Any other years' defense by Span and I'd call this a plus, but Span's best year to a young Hicks's first year in the majors makes this a push. Offense-, Defense=. Right Field: Ben Revere turns this over to Chris Parmelee. There's really nothing similar about these two players. Best I can do is WAG this one as a push offensively. We're trading some OBP and stolen bases for slugging on this one, hopefully it's about equal. Defensively, well, that's a pretty huge loss. No need to expound anymore. Offense=, Defense-- (yep that's a double minus). 3B: Trevor Plouffe gives way to new and improved Trevor Plouffe. Pretty much I'm just predicting more offense for the entire season than what we saw last year and improved defense based on being able to prepare to be the 3B for the entire offseason. Plus he's already gotten through the inital learning curve. I pretty much think he'll be better. How's that for scientific? Offense+, Defense+. SS: (redacted) last year to Pedro Florimon (more on this later) this year. Well, the position was pretty much terrible both offensively and defensively last year, and that's being kind. And apparently our starter is going to be part of what contributed to the (redacted) last year. That being said, I'm hoping Florimon just had a few bad errors in a compressed timeframe last year when he was trying too hard to impress. His offense will be a push with last year's, which doesn't require much, and his defense will be a little better than what we got last season. Offense=, Defense+. 2B: (Mostly) Alexia Casilla to Brian Dozier. One of my biggest hunches is Brian Dozier taking over second and playing well. I want my gut to shut up so I'm not disappointed, but unfortunately it's been growing larger every year, and I can't control it like I used to. If Dozier hits like I think he can, we have a massive improvement from last year's contribution. While I think he'll be adequate defensively, I don't think Dozier matches Casilla's defense. Offense++, Defense-. 1B: Another totally scientific prediction of "he'll be better than last year offensively." I don't think there's much reason to expect his defense to be any different, so hopefully last year's second half is more indicative of the Morneau we're getting this year. Offense+, Defense=. C: Joe Mauer to Drew Butera. Watch as we run the best-hitting catcher in baseball out there game after game and he guns down runners while calling perfect gameplans for the pitchers. Nuff said. Okay, reality says Joe Mauer matches last year. I'm hoping for better defense this year, but honestly I'm not real confident in it. Offense=, Defense=. DH: Ryan Doumit both years. Not much reason to expect different results that I can think of. Offense=. So for the starting lineup, that totals up as Offense +3, Defense -1. Yay, we're better this year. Moving on to the bench, at this point my arbitrary system to compare positions 1-to-1 gets thrown out for the new arbitrary system to call the bench a wash as a whole. Bad last year, bad this year. Bullpen. Hmmm, you know that 1-to-1 comparison thing is a lot less fun when it's not a starter. Most of the same guys back from last year, bullpens are notoriously impossible to predict, I'm calling a wash and hoping nobody's looking. Now for the rotation. Quick, name the top five starters from last year. Scott Diamond, ummm... Cole DeVries, Sam Deduno, all right executive decision says 1-to-1 comparisons are again pointless. Good thing this system is arbitrary. I'm making up a separate system for the rotation to see how many ranks better I think this year's rotation will be than last year's and making that equivalent to a +/-. The ranks from worst on top to best at the bottom of the list: Putrid Bad Mediocre Average Fairly Good Good Excellent I say we go from last year's putrid to this year's mediocre. Diamond is about equal, to last year (he didn't pitch the whole season last year, either), Worley should be better than anything else we trotted out last year, hopefully Hendricks is better, Pelfrey and Gibson combine for a season's worth of starts better than most contributions last year. Still below average, but compared to last year's I'll take it. That's a nice ol' +2. Woot. All right, the grand total says +4. It's a good thing that in my arbitrary system each plus translates to 6 more wins right? Right? There you have it, the Twins are winning 90 games next year. Okay, obviously my pluses don't actually translate to anything beyond saying I'm predicting the Twins to be a little better next year as a whole. In trying to come up with the reason I was going to be optimistic about this year's record, I ended up going through this drawn out exercise, and it was enjoyable even if it'll be proven completely absurd in a couple more months. About Pedro Florimon. I think if they'd just admit Jamey Carroll is their best shortstop, even though he's 39, it'd also contribute to the overall improvement of the team. He's solid. Unspectacular, but solid, both offensively and defensively. If I substitute Jamey Carroll for Pedro Florimon in the above assumptions it leads to another +2, which then means the Twins are winning 102 games next year. How awesome is that? There seems to be some notion we should run Florimon out there because he's younger, as if they can pretend he's the shortstop of the future by doing so. If he's an amazing defensive player and below-average on offense, I'll be pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately I just have no hopes of that, and am instead expecting inconsistent defense to go with atrocious hitting. I do know Carroll was third on the team in OBP last year, though, and didn't make many stupid errors like much of our infield. I'll take a workman-like Jamey Carroll over our combined shortstops from last year any day. I haven't seen/don't know enough about Escobar to have any real opinion about him, so I'm leaving him out of the equation. And there it is. You can take all those other projection systems and shove them. My clearly superior system predicts the Twins win 102 games next year based on pretty much nothing and should handily win the AL Central because I've also arbitrarily decided nobody else is winning 102 games. Detroit can take their loaded roster home and cry about it. Enjoy the season!

While an aspiring LOOGY is a bit unusual, I think most of the normal folks who can't play professional baseball would be on board with anything that gave us that chance. Cool article, someone else to root for.

It's been covered already, but I'll just add my $0.02 because I have a hard time not piling on the Butera issue. Which isn't actually a Butera issue, per se, but as was noted previously is really a Gardenhire issue. His irrational fear of having to bat a pitcher for a few at-bats in a game when his second catcher is DH'ing and his starter gets hurt. It's not about whether Butera's 150 AB are a massive dropoff from somebody else who's only worthy of 150 AB, it's that he's getting those 150 AB because Gardenhire is afraid of a pitcher having to get 2-4 AB. In a season. In the era of interleague play. We don't need a 3rd catcher. Repeat after me. We don't need a 3rd catcher. Even if we like to DH our backup catcher, we don't need a 3rd catcher. I don't want Herrmann to start the season in the majors, he should spend some time at AAA. That is incidental to the fact that I don't want Butera to start the season in the majors either. Neither deserves to.

Wow, I'm expecting Florimon to (not) hit his way out of the SS job, but even I couldn't predict that pathetic a season. I'm curious how much of that is just gut feeling and how much actual projection. I'd have pegged him for around .210/.260/.300 which is still pathetic and a fair bit better than this projection. I hope you're right about Morneau and Dozier. I expect Plouffe to be very streaky and Parmelee to be a fairly consistent decent hitter (similar to Doumit), so having another slugger in the lineup in Morneau to pair with Willingham would be fantastic, and we'll need one of the guys from the bottom of the order to hit better than expected, and Dozier seem like our best chance. Honestly, if you get a .685 OPS season from Carroll and a .720 OPS season from Dozier, you have to be pretty happy. Of course Florimon is gonna suck up a bunch of those at-bats to start the season off...

That was a really fun read. It's nice to know that his success last year wasn't really based on luck, but just by pitching really well. His late regression is still worrying, of course, but maybe he's just the rare guy who has really, really good control, and it just took him a while to find it. Here's hoping.

Never heard of this guy before...

The talk has certainly made it seem like Gardenhire especially wants Hicks as his CF for some reason. I'm truly excited about the prospect of him playing CF for us, but I agree that the more reasonable decision would be giving him the time in AAA for that extra year of team control. The Twins really need to get off to a decent start this year instead of burying themselves in the standings by the end of April, and while I think Hicks will be a better player, if I had to choose who plays better to start the year to help that goal, I'm going with Mastroianni. Benson can back up all three OF spots adequately for now.

With the season nearly here, it's about time to start throwing out our best wild guesses of what's going to happen before Spring Training gets a chance to change the crazy theories. Last year we had Scott Diamond coming out of practically nowhere to have a really good season. Josh Willingham posted the best season of his career. Who's the guy you think is going to have a better season than most people are expecting? Is Plouffe gonna hit 35 dingers? Is Morneau gonna post an OPS over .900? Is Glen Perkins going to lead the league in saves? Is Kevin Correia gonna win the Cy Young? Pick your player and tell us what you think their season might look like and why. My guess is gonna be Brian Dozier. I've said it before, I think he gets moved to 2B and it's going to really work well for him defensively. That change allows him to relax and be more consistent with his hitting. My guess is a hitting line of around .265/.315/.385 with 10 HR, 25 doubles and maybe 10-12 stolen bases and only around 12 errors. I think he plays well enough to get the Twins to think about moving him back to short at some point during the season.