ashbury

Making an article with this title, "Twins 2024 Position Analysis: Shortstop", be Caretakers Only, and having it consist of exactly two words, would ensure my renewal of Caretaker status for another year.

Baseball is a tough business sometimes. It's a shame that AK's development has been marred by injury. But even if the "excuses" are actual reasons, the time is high for some performance by him and some other mid-twenties guys like Larnach. Whether on the 26-man roster or optioned to AAA, the only path forward for these bat-first players is to put up some good (majors) to monster (AAA) numbers. If that's too much pressure, well, think ahead to the playoffs and consider whether pressure is any kind of excuse you want to listen to. Hoping for the best for each of these players. Get some BABIP "luck" to go with solid fundamental analytics numbers, and LFG!

Terrible news. Hope he beats it. F Cancer.

Great job interview! I assume they hired him on the spot. / edit - wait, this was just a podcast interview with nothing at stake, that he's getting worked up over? / edit^2 - I lasted 7:00 before I had to shut it off. Did anyone go farther?

Polanco to his wife, six weeks ago: "Man, I wish SOMEBODY would hurry up and blink."

"Work in progress" is an understatement. Two strikes are arguably what kept the 2023 edition of the Twins from having an elite offense, in double-whammy fashion: No team hits "well" with two strikes. MLB OPS was a putrid .523 once two strikes are reached, although that's somewhat an accounting artifact since strikeouts harm OPS greatly and those get rung up only in this scenario. Atlanta did best in this dubious category, with an OPS of .596, a rate that would get even a great gloveman sent to the minors if that was his overall production. The Twins, though, managed to fall far below even this modest bar, with two-strike OPS of .482, "good" for 28th of all 30 teams. Leading culprits were Joey Gallo (surprise surprise!) and Michael A Taylor, no longer with the Twins for 2024. You could live with poor two-strike outcomes, if you avoided them. Unfortunately, our Twins led all the majors in PA that reached two strikes, at 3423. That's a lot more than half of their total 6219 PA last season. Double whammy. Despite this article's lead-in about two strikes, I didn't see much that addressed this aspect. It's very interesting to learn about the generation of power on outside pitches. I see from the same b-ref.com table that, on PA resolved on the first pitch, our 2023 Twins were second best in the majors with a 1.105 OPS. (The average team does good in this situation of course, at .955, the Twins just done gooder and almost goodest.) Is there something about this tactic that stops working so well once there are two strikes? Maybe I didn't read carefully enough.

I started to do a double-take, but then stopped - but then the surprise caused me to do one anyway just to make sure!

I don't know. b-r.com lets me down in this case, because I can't figure out a way to use its Stathead search engine to display salaries along with playing stats. Instead, I can use their regular Value page which does show salaries for 2023, and sift through manually. Miles Mikolas led the majors with 35 starts, so I sorted by Games appeared in and looked at guys with 40+ games, checking for salaries $6M and up. It was tedious but i counted 23. This overlooks guys like Ryan Tepera wbo is paid $7M by the Angels (ha ha) to hardly pitch for them, but he's been a reliever all along so he should count. Oops, Liam Hendriks too. Matt Barnes. As I said, it gets tedious to sift through because then you get into who is really a reliever and who isn't. Anyway, the answer I came up with to your question is a couple dozen at least, fewer than three dozen. Trevor May, already mentioned, is in the club. Our old buddies Ryan Pressly and Taylor Rogers too. Blasts from the past. Starters turned into relievers who make good coin.

Disco is not a good example. I reviewed his history on MLBTR to confirm what his b-r.com salary history seemed to imply. The Giants signed him on a one-year (make good, "buy low") $6M contract for 2021 after a terrible year for Cincy in 2020. He responded with a very fine 2021 season, which resulted in the Giants signing him for 3 years 2022-24 at $12M apiece. It's very hard to characterize the Giants as signing a so-so starter in this sequence of events. They signed a quality (not all-star) starter, whose value plummeted as he got bit by the injury bug. Wacha is a similar story. When right, Michael Wacha is a quality starter. I don't know that I agree with the Royals gamble that he'll be healthy enough across 2 seasons to justify $32M overall, but it's their money not mine, and hey they're the Royals after all. These aren't guys who are questionable as starters and should be max-effort relievers. Truly so-so starters don't command this kind of money.

Front offices, or managers, or players themselves are unlikely to be in any disagreement that the starting role brings the most value in pursuit of a pennant and will bring the most reward at contract time. I probably was reacting to your repeated use of "prefer" and "want." A player first wants a major league career; after that, money or prestige plays a role. Options A and B might come with "get batters out" for A, and "get tattooed regularly before being sent back to the minors" for B. The smart players figure out how to balance the demands versus their particular physical limitations; if not, then the manager figures it out for them, or at least takes a best-guess approach. I seem to recall Trevor May, a smart and chatty guy who gives good interviews, telling us that he had a serious talk with his manager and pitching coach, and came to grips with the likelihood that he could not cut it as a starter. They probably had tried various ideas, boiling down to how close to max-effort he needed to be in order to get major leaguers out on a regular basis, and found that there just wasn't enough stamina to do what was needed. He wanted to be in the majors, so he embraced relieving, and (apart from TJ surgery) it worked out for him. Trevor May decided that coconut was a palatable option, given the alternative of an empty box of chocolates. Other pitchers are handed coconut and told to take it or leave it; most who are faced with that choice take it, until not even that is offered. / squirrel took the same stance while I was typing, phrasing it differently, and maybe there are nuances between what she and I said

Pitching and hitting have always been so different, and recent trends have made it more so. The current philosophy is that relievers are max-effort every time out. Trevor May would be a good example where, going from starting to relieving, his K/9 rate shot way up. The tradeoff is the number of effective innings you can get from a guy. There isn't an equivalent for a hitter, but you could imagine some home run hitting specialist who swings so hard he injures himself constantly but increases his HR/9 rate by doing so. You can get only 100 AB from him, but they are prime center-cut ABs. Tough way to make a living though, even if I'm sure the money helps him ignore the discomfort. (Maybe Rendon should lean into his limitations and become that guy, I don't know.) Relievers who "prefer" their role aren't sitting in the bullpen sipping margaritas and snickering about the eager-beaver kiss-ups in the rotation who work harder than they have to.

The average age for major league batters in 2023 was 28. For pitchers it was 29. This is from b-r.com and I assume they do it by weighting playing time. If Prime was really 26-32 and Middle Age was 33-35, as stated by the OP, you might expect a higher average than seen. Past these ages, front offices can see the handwriting on the wall and will be looking to have a younger replacement ready to go if there is the slightest indication Father Time is about to have his say. Someone at age 30 could still be in his prime, and remain so (Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez and Freddie Freeman say hello), but for every such instance of longevity there are examples to the contrary. Joey Gallo and Eddie Rosario would be examples for me of someone who was "an old 30" just when old-fashioned benchmarks would say they're in their prime. What is young? It really depends on the player. But for a long time now the smart money has been on moving on, once a player hits 30 - let some bottom feeder team take the chance on wringing out the last bit of quality performance from a player. That said, the Dodgers have all the money they wish to spend and can choose their rosters at will. While their pitching staff checked in slightly below league average for age, at 28, their position players (as alluded to above) were on average the oldest in the majors at an aggregate 30. Baseball remains interesting because there's no one set formula.

He's 26 years old, and a year from now has a good chance of being 27. Time to start mystifying the AAA batters, and dominating the lefties he faces.

You already recognize, you got lucky on that conversation.

If he produced at that level all the time he'd be in demand. But alas, he doesn't.

Rafael Devers has a contract through 2033(!) for money like Carlos Correa is getting. Royce Lewis has 3rd base covered. Boston's not going to be interested in disposing of their third ranked prospect. I don't see the fit whatsoever, and I don't understand the post.

Castro has the defensive chops that Goodrum totally lacks. Niko would have to suddenly start hitting like a first baseman to have any value at all, and he's got enough of a track record at the plate by now to make that a massive longshot. I don't see a role for him on a contending team.

Dallas Keuchel. Aaron Sanchez. Chi Chi Rodriguez. One can go back through the seasons and find a few signings like these who got called up. Probably the Twins will sign someone like these in 2024 (so I'm not disagreeing with your outlook), maybe our old friend Odo, to join this fraternity, and with similar overall consequence.

The Twins should try any and all approaches. But what kind of quality pitcher settles for a minor league no-obligation contract? It will be almost certainly a move with no upside and likely no impact. Keuchel's a pretty good example.

There's another way that works. Play your butt off at AA, then use a Jedi mind trick during the off-season to make the FO trade away your competition for the starting job. Then get injured in your second game so that the team has to use the glove-only backup they signed in that same off-season. Joe Mauer swears by this technique.

I'd say that's his ceiling though.

Scouting reports say he's a one-dimensional player but I think this underrates him a bit.

Sounds like the Twins got the point.

I hope he gave his athletic supporter at least a quick rinse.