ashbury

Ha. My bad, I missed when coming back to this thread that it was about whom to simply cut or not offer a contract. FalVine may know differently, but I persist in believing Gordon has some tiny positive trade value, maybe in combination with another asset if aiming for anything significant in return. So yes, give him a contract, but I'd still be looking to move him.

You mentioned earlier that Castro has a minor league option remaining, and for me that's the tie-breaker between two similar players. Suppose someone like Brooks Lee is deemed ready at mid-season, and the incumbent utility infielder is scuffling so far. Easier to demote Castro and bring up the young'un, than to have to figure out how to trade or DFA Gordon in a rush. (Not that Brooks Lee would be brought up as a utility infielder exactly, but they'd work out the rest of the roster puzzle.)

Sorry the headline mellowed your harsh. 🙂

Didn't matter what "people said." When Mauer hit 30 and 4 months he suffered a debilitating concussion that dictated a position change. Age was not the issue, and would not have been for some time yet to come.

Yes. Exactly. Gray used to be a 6+ inning pitcher in his 20s, but no manager since 2017 has given him the number of innings per start that Rocco did this year. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/grayso01-pitch.shtml#all_pitching_starter And yes, pitcher health played a role in this; Sonny was a little dinged up at times last year and Rocco didn't choose to leave him in the way he did in 2023. But this tired old trope that Rocco pulls his starters too soon needs to fade away. Rocco (or the system he works within, same diff) has shown to be pragmatic in this department.

This is a fine way to look at it. The only question is, can we do better?

I don't know what to do about Vazquez. Keeping him seems right unless and until they have a solid backup catcher to replace him; Tony Wolters scared me to death in 2023. Weak backups are plentiful around the league but having someone who can actually step up if the #1 guy is gone for a while is not to be taken lightly. Acquiring the right guy won't involve a trade of a mere relief prospect or similar small prospect capital. And you will do well to get anything better than a bag of balls in return for trading Vazquez away, due to the contract. It's worth exploring at some prospect cost. What really bugs me is the indecision I perceive regarding the farm system. At AAA you have Chris Williams who they can't seem to quite decide is, or isn't, a catcher. They played him there 25 games. At AA there is Alex Isola, who caught in 15 games. Jefferson Morales at high-A, 27 games. All are bat-first guys, age 26, 25 and 24 respectively, You'll see them mentioned in some prospect rundowns that purport to show catching depth in the system. I don't spot injury as an explanation for the numbers, and I don't understand the difficulty with telling any of them, "you're not a catcher, concentrate on hitting," or else telling them, "your bat will be marginal at first base, catching is your ticket to the majors." Fish or cut bait, basically. Catching a couple dozen games a year does not develop a catcher for the rigors of being even a backup in the majors. And if all three are ruled out as serious catching prospects, the pool seems a bit thin on young guys whose bats look like will ever play; Camargo is kind of it, when it comes to maybe-major-league-ready, and I don't know what his defense is like. Banuelos put up good hitting numbers at AA but he is 27 and one wonders why he wasn't up at AAA to pair with Camargo, leaving Wolters to fill in occasionally and be ready. Maybe Winkel's bat will progress, ditto some guys like Cardenas at high-A, but all those are guys far away in the pipeline and only a fraction of pipeline guys ever come through. At least they made a decision on Charles Mack and cut him from high-A. Whoopie.

I can hold contradictory ideas in my head. The deal will come down to total dollars, and that almost certainly means whichever team offers the most guaranteed years (ignore any option years), and the Twins are on record not liking to do lots of years for pitchers. And yet, I am optimistic that the team and the player somehow will find a way. Book it? No, not really.

This kind of analysis would have me believe also that Dusty Baker is about average. Likewise Terry Francona. Bruce Bochy has a pretty good reputation but this chart would have me say he's below average. Buck Showalter was manager of the year for the Mets last season; this season he's a chump sez the chart. Look also at the comparison of the 2023 column to the last column, for last season. I don't see a lot of correlation, which means that managers get smart or dumb on each cycle of the Earth around the Sun. If anything, my memory of studies is that close games are irreproducible results, and about the last thing you look at when drawing conclusions about something lasting. Instead the teams that win the most comfortably, more often, are the better teams. A manager has more input in making that happen than you give him credit for - getting the right players into the right situations, maintaining a good clubhouse, knowing how to handle his starting pitchers, etc. But in any case slicing and dicing manager data is really hard.

Altuve's on track to be your least favorite Hall of Famer, too.

I just wanted to circle back and say that I checked with some SABR folks, and a full-blown attempt at serious bios of additional Twins may not be in anybody's future, but maybe a few will arise in coming months. If I spot any synergy between your Wiki project and what SABR does, I'll try to bring folks together. But it will be very small scale, one or two individuals at most I would imagine. Maybe zero - different aims. If you want any help fostering the TD wiki project after the site software is in place, let me know.

Paywall. What's the summary?

We acquired Farmer for a run of the mill relief prospect, Casey Legumina. Kyle has been a good Twin but didn't do much this year to raise his stock. I can't imagine getting much more than we gave up, if we trade him now. Sure, move him if he's redundant, but the difference between trading him and simply releasing him will be slight; he won't be a key part of a trade for high-end pitching, say, any more than Legumina would have been.

"Thank you for coming so quickly, Officer. I know it sounds crazy, but there's a guy just standing there in my kitchen. I was busy cooking up something I hoped would be good, and all of a sudden he's there, welcoming me to my own crib, inviting me to use the spices and so forth. No, no, I don't want you to tase him - he doesn't seem malicious, just see if you can talk to him. But don't let him make off with any pots and pans on his way out, either."

The economics of baseball have changed a lot since Flood's playing days. (Due in fair measure to Flood himself.). A journeyman like Trevor May stands to make a lot more money in his career, even in equivalent dollars, than back then. It's asking a lot of a middle class guy, to make that sacrifice. To me, it makes perfect sense to take The Man's dough and then turn around and blast Him, laughing all the way to the bank. Poor form would be to blast the fans who ultimately paid him. Your veneration of Curt Flood is well placed, though.

Every grand slam after his first, and both blasts in the first playoff game, were solidly in Oh No He Didn't territory. He may succeed or fail in any given plate appearance, but for now no moment is too big for Royce Lewis

You're both right. According to native cultures, no one owns stone, we're only the caretaker of it before passing it along to another generation of defensive butcher.

The article focuses on salary arbitration, but minor league options matter more. If the talent is stashed at AAA while the journeymen must play in the majors, it's a funny definition of depth. It's why signing Gallo was a big gamble, and not because of the millions he was paid, but because he was only a bounce-back candidate.

I'm glad I read slow. I lol'ed at 9/12th's comment. Then after I settled down and had a sip of morning coffee I scrolled down to your topper and lol'ed again. Oh my OMG. No. Just no. Put me down for a zero. I'm not subjecting myself to that. Someday I will be diagnosed with Alzheimers*. And my wife will ask, "how'm I supposed to tell the difference from before?" * my apologies to anyone triggered by joking about the subject. My mom died of it. And I know others in the readership have coped with it in the family too.

Looks like I picked the right year to skip making the trek down to the Phoenix area.

Both these on-the-cusp-of-stardom guys gave me the Willies back in the day.

If that's true then explain Cleveland and Cincinnati. They quite literally had OBP results in direct contradiction of their strikeout rates.

That would set this effort off from what's already on the regular Wikipedia page, for players like Greg Gagne who was mentioned.

I tuned out after Schwarber's second homer. Not a dull game, exactly, but it seemed like a good time to go do something else for a while. I didn't come back until the last batter of the eighth. Guess I missed a bit of action. 😊

This is where our opinions diverge, because for example Cleveland struck out the fewest this year and yet their OBP was below average. Cincy struck out a lot and their OBP was above average.