ashbury

Concur. When I try to project a prospect, his age matters a lot, until he stops improving. At age 20 I think his chances look very good considering three solid seasons in the pros by now.

I bet Joey Gallo could sign a contract with a team in the Midwest League and compete for MVP.

I think it's possible to prove that if Walter Johnson had pitched one season more, or one season fewer, we never would have gotten Mitch Garver. So add him to the chain at the front end. I think.

Fast-paced business, this sports writing is.

Does TD have a Best Article of the Year award? This one needs to be nominated.

Non-tendering Henriquez doesn't quite close the books on the Mitch Garver trade, but close. We still have Alejandro Hidalgo, who is young but pitched unimpressively at high-A yet maybe turns into something someday. Otherwise we got a year of Urshela and Sanchez, and (probably most importantly) disposed of the remainder of Josh Donaldson's contract. Pretty high price paid.

I always enjoy RandBall's Stu's scouting reports. 😊

Trey had better never go to the elusive spot near that one Cracker Barrel in Terre Haute, Indiana, where US 40 and US 41 intersect. Mind. Blown.

Yes, I ran across that after a while; I had just scanned thread titles. Kind of buries a good story for the '23 Twins, but I guess everyone is just taking it for granted. "What have you done for us lately?"

This is a good counterpoint, and by no means do I claim Nick can't play the game. But the manager can't spare a batter completely from facing same-handed pitching - 13 guys on the typical roster means you can't sub for him at will. And the plate appearances versus lefties do count in the stat line (and the team's success), even if the favorable-handed splits are intriguing. Rocco probably did the best he could to spare Gordon from lefties, as his percentage of PA in those situations was smaller than fellow lefty Max Kepler, for example; said another way, a player with a profile like Gordon's ties the manager's hands at times, unless and until he improves somehow. The righties-only BABIP corresponding to the above numbers is .364, even farther above the norm as overall. So I still don't see that .793 OPS as sustainable. All in all, I can't see him as trade bait, nor a reasonable candidate for lots of LF duty.

I didn't see this mentioned here yet, so apologies if I'm duplicating, but Sonny Gray finished as runner-up for this year's AL Cy Young award. Gerrit Cole was a runaway unanimous first-place winner, but Sonny was solidly in second place on most voters' ballots. Congratulations to our guy, even if I'm putting this in Other Baseball because at the moment he really isn't with us anymore.

Build on? His 2022 was itself built on a BA on balls in play of .340. Unless you think he is Roberto Clemente, Derek Jeter, or Rod Carew, who did sustain high BABIP, it's unlikely Gordon can sustain even what performance he showed then. His 2023 was way in the other (wrong) direction and isn't representative either. But he hasn't got the bat for left field, unless a cellar-dwellar team wants to gamble that a 28-year old has an extra gear he can somehow kick into.

What price would you pay, to get some other team's second-ranked utility player, coming off an injury and a bad two months at the plate, with a questionable arm for the left side of the infield and no remaining minor-league options? Call that price "X". Yeah, if the FO can trade Gordon for more than X, call them miracle workers.

The other direction worked well that one time.

I know it must have looked like nitpicking, but I latched onto your word as simply a rhetorical device in my reply. Including Keirsey on the 40-man adds less in my view than it obviously does in yours, whether that metric be "certainty" or "value" or "wins". His ability to contribute is not at all certain, for me. Maybe DaShawn's got some more growth left in him, but he'll turn 27 years old pretty early next season, and the odds are that he is what he is, as a hitter. He was drafted as a 21-year old from college, and while his first year in the minors was okay, he had a disastrous 2019 and then of course had no 2020. From 2021 on, he's been kind of a poster child for my rule of thumb with hitting prospects - up to a certain age they gain about .100 of OPS due to experience plus physical maturing, while each league level gets about .100 harder. Strictly an empirical observation I've tucked away for many years now, but in his case it matches up almost eerily, when he moved up from high-A to AA in 2022, then repeated AA in 2023 and was later promoted from AA to AAA. His AA OPS of .850 and AAA OPS of .739 suggest he might have been somewhere around .650 if he'd been brought up for a cup of coffee in the majors. (Such numbers would have been Small Sample Size so I would not have discarded my rule of thumb had he OPS'ed .400 or 1.000 of course.) I don't know his defensive skills except that he's supposed to be a pretty good center fielder, but the bar is set pretty high at the major league level to be better than average on defense in CF. And would an average/good CFer who OPS'ed .650 be any kind of difference maker, or would he be on a par with someone like Andrew Stevenson, who was easily obtainable for AAA when the need presented itself, and who had actually better batting numbers than Keirsey did at St. Paul? Keep in mind that MAT OPSed .720 this season with splendid defense, and we're still looking for an upgrade over him. Keirsey looks like a notch below MAT, if my rinky-dink projection is anywhere close. The 40-man roster is a difficult constraint for a good team. In a world where the limit was instead 50, Keirsey might be one I'd protect. I've followed him since draft day, and I like him. He's got skills, which is to say he may wind up slotting in as a AAAA player or better, for a few years. But there are 38 names on the Twins' roster, last I heard or checked. Suppose the budget allows signing Kevin Keirmaier (never noticed the name similarity before). I'd rather have him for 2024 than Keirsey. Would you? If they don't sign any kind of experienced and good defender for CF, and if they lose Keirsey, I'll be real disappointed in the FO's judgment. I don't expect either outcome though. Most teams have someone like DaShawn in their systems, and could just promote them, without the constraints that drafting a rule-5 player puts on them. One other angle. Suppose the Twins did add Keirsey to the roster, and then needed to replace him after signing a veteran like Keirmaier. I believe roster rules hold a special case for that, and they must actually keep Keirsey on the 40-man, or else DFAing him is not simply putting him on the waiver wire but actually offering him free agency. I think that little wrinkle is true until Opening Day, or maybe the start of Spring Training. I'm shaky on the exact rule but there is something like that involved. It adds a bit of complexity to the decision, and is why you don't see a bunch of shuffling of marginal prospects on the 40-man like you do with waiver-wire pickups. A team drafting him in Rule-5 must keep him all season, or return him, or work out some other mutual agreement; but a team signing him to a free-agent minor-league contract could just keep him in reserve at AAA free and clear, off their own 40-man, much as the Twins can do now if he doesn't get drafted away from them in a few weeks. All in all, adding Keirsey to the 40-man is a riskier move than it first appears. There, that's the long version of my reply to you. Since you asked.

"When you shake the Baseball Tree, about 9 gloves fall out, for every 1 bat." Miller's still just a baby, 21st birthday earlier this week. Too soon to decide the bat won't play and give up hope. Too soon to forecast success, either. Maintaining the stats as he moves up the league levels is a form of progress and development that can escape notice. Though, the team might need to burn a couple of minor-league options after they have to add him to the 40-man, before he's really ready to contribute to a contending team. Meanwhile, kudos on getting the recognition for defense, so that he can work toward being at least one of those 9 gloves that falls out.

"Ash, buddy, you okay, buddy?" Yep, doin' fine.

Must be past my bedtime. Yep, I got hung up on that one absolute statement.

Gallo himself stands to be a cheaper and equally productive version of Joey Gallo.

Socrates is a woman. All women are mortal. Therefore Socrates is mortal. I was probably more direct than I should have been. And I enjoy a good turn of phrase as well as the next rolling stone who gathers no moss. It's just that, the concept that players will be brought up when they're ready and not before, is too often used to squelch debate that questions what the "authorities" in the front office are doing. If the FO is simply going to be the decider, which ultimately they are, then we might as well close the comments section, and all the opinion articles while we're at it. Just report the transactions as they come. That's a lot of meaning assigned to a simple turn of phrase, and if not much of it was behind what you wrote, I'm sorry to have extrapolated unfairly.

I'll have to locate a better emoticon than when I want to suggest that not every word is meant literally and exaggeration is being used as a different way to make a point. So, to be more direct, no, I don't advocate a house cleaning in the FO. Last off-season after two losing seasons I felt that a big change had to be at least on the table if 2023 turned out to be more of the same. I even felt this if they slid into the post-season due to a weak division but then made a quick exit in the post-season. Fair or not, two entertaining wins over Toronto and then a creditable showing versus a good Houston team are enough for me to keep going where they're going. My concern that the franchise was being driven into the ditch is lessened - I'll save for another time my remaining concern. And no, my point isn't to hamstring Falvey and Levine's moves, beyond what ownership seems to be doing to them already for 2024 (the topic of the article). It just seemed fair to point out the converse of the statistical ranking of the batters in 2023 was due in part to Gallo, Farmer, Castro being no great shakes with the bat. (Jury on Castro being a little bit out, but he's on the roster for his versatility.) The ranking I was responding to was for 2023, and for hitting only (not overall position play), so there's no need to turn this into a retrospective of past years, nor of the pitching acquisitions. It was a joke, to make a point. Didn't land, oh well. 🦄

Lemme ask what I think is another good question, then: why do we believe this? Scouting reports I recall question his arm. Same as why he was moved off of SS. I suppose I'd rather have good range and good ability to track fly balls* in the outfield over a good arm, but the whole package is nicer, especially if the bat is looking good-not-great - in which case a corner OF spot to hide his arm starts to look like not-a-difference-maker there either. I hate to sound like I'm always knocking him as a prospect, but the evidence seems to point to something else IMO. It could be that all the grooming at 2B is because he's going to be used as a trade chip in the off-season, so they want to portray him in his best light, to a team that actually has an opening for his skills. * Not that I know of any particular evidence for range and tracking for Martin either - raw speed doesn't necessarily translate directly to range if it can't be harnessed properly

Among logical fallacies, Appeal to Authority is one of the popular ones. It masquerades as profound but says actually nothing. Meanwhile the speaker can sit back and watch events unfold, and then point back and say, see, just like I predicted. On substance, I don't really disagree. Anointing a rookie for a full time role on Opening Day is a risk the front office must carefully weigh first. I don't see anyone, Brooks Lee included, who is a slam dunk at this time. But then I'm still waiting for Anthony Slama to get his fair chance. Now there's a guy who's proven at AAA that he belongs with the big club, and it's time.

If he's such a sure thing at such a critical position of need, why did he play so much 2B (35 games) after coming back from injury in July, and so little (11 games) in center? While Andrew Stevenson was on the St Paul roster, he got the majority of starts in CF. After Stevenson was called up to the majors, Dashawn Keirsey became the primary CF. Austin Martin played CF only now and then, across nearly 3 months. I hope Austin Martin turns out to be a good major leaguer, but I would not plan a single thing around him for the major league roster during this off-season.