ashbury

Wow, good prediction. I just popped in and I see that's exactly how many pitches he threw.

That's what it might take to get to 84 W. 🙃

Both have poor OPS for the first half of July, but Kreidler's BABIP of .211 suggests a lot of batted balls finding gloves, while Gray's is .333 and doesn't provide cause for optimism coupled with high strikeout frequency. It's all ultra-small sample size, but that's what we have. The two guys have pretty similar minor-league hitting resumes to go by. I stick with Kreidler too, not just for the glove but also a chance of decent offense for a shortstop.

Why do we think relieving is easier on the arm? Currently we have relievers Acton, Banda, Raya and Sands on the two injured lists.

Yabbut what has the FO done for us lately?

The "right-size the payroll" mentality is what has kept this team locked into mediocrity or worse for the last few years.

It's the distance between sprinkler heads in the outfield. .

Walks Won't Haunt? 🙃

Throwing in a rhotic sound can be a very regional thing. My mother-in-law in Chicago pronounces that word exactly that way. I have no idea what the speech patterns in Payette, Idaho were back in the day, but I wouldn't be too harsh on Harmon for that particular one - he had to have picked it up from somewhere. Caratini doesn't deserve his name to be mangled, though.

The '23 Twins were one game under .500 at the All-Star Break. They finished July one game above. They sneaked into a division title and fans had some fun in two home games before getting cut down to size by Houston. The fact the FO then completely fumbled the positive PR potential for strengthening the relationship with the fanbase, with stupidities like "right-sizing the payroll", doesn't detract from the potential for good by trying during this very down year for the AL as a whole and a non-juggernaut Central division. Mortgage the future? No. Redeploy assets? Yes please.

Both these positions could be true. I could see both teams turning thumbs down at this trade deadline.

It's not a good reason to call him up, but it's entirely possible Lackey is better than Jackson ... right now. I just looked at Jackson's BABIP during his good run with the Twins. .405. Breathtaking. And even with this boost, and a K rate that may be unsustainably lower than anything he's managed heretofore, he has merely a nice .729 OPS to show for it. If either of those two indicators revert to something more normal for him, he's a prime regression candidate the rest of this season. If both do, then he's back to being unplayable. Let's hope the coaching staff has done something to unlock an age-30 miracle. I'll be surprised if Jackson is any kind of factor in Twins decision making in September 2027. But this isn't an Alex Jackson thread ... 😁

What are you talking about? In whose view? Rortvedt was a second-round draft pick. Virtually same spot as Ryan Jeffers. If a team's picking someone there with an expectation he doesn't profile as a major leaguer, they're doing something terribly wrong. 9th round is dicier, regardless of the position. But the Red Sox found Christian Vazquez as a 9th rounder a good while back, and other current catching assets like Danny Jansen and Hunter Feduccia were snagged even lower. 9th round is a great place to try to pick up a backup C. Yes, like Vazquez, Garver overachieved a little; that's a great outcome, with little to do with how he profiled initially. Maybe you meant to say they didn't profile as big stars. But then that's true of every player picked after the first couple of rounds at most. And a few always emerge anyway.

Possibly true and not really relevant. No doubt every team picking in that range sees a few guys they wanted go off board a few picks prior. It won't be the last good prospect available. The braintrust's job is to have a guy on the list they believe in and will "scoop" from the next lower-drafting team. No team gets them all right but the picks that come before their turn are not some kind of built-in excuse.

Kreidler flew right under my radar, when he was claimed. Good glove, never hit in multiple tries with Detroit. Not a factor. Well... I didn't invest the time I sometimes do to look even one layer beneath the surface. Because 1) his tryouts with Detroit were a series of small samples, with results that together still weren't even a decent size, and 2) Batting Average on Balls in Play across all those 211 PA was a comically low .198. Small sample? Low BABIP? Decent minor league progression in larger samples? Good glove at even the most demanding defensive position? Maybe give him a look. Check him now: his BABIP with the Twins is a completely league-normal .292, resulting in a perfectly acceptable .758 OPS for a glove-first guy. All-Star? No. Positive asset at a position of need for the moment? Yes. And under team control through 2030. Kreidler may be a surprise in 2026, but only to those like me who failed to pay attention. From the Twins FO standpoint, they merely made a reasonable gamble that he could produce.

We are cheapskates. I think that has a lot to do with it.

We had good luck in '23 at motels near the Mall of America and then traveling by light rail to the ballpark. Have fun!

Shrug. We'll know it when we see it. My expectation is most people will find the champion worthy and not an asterisk.

I think even at that age I understood that you put Hal Reniff in the spokes, not The Mick. 😁

If a team already in serious contention for a WS acquires Joe Ryan this month, they get two bites at the apple: what he does for them this post-season, and what he does for them next year. A trade in this coming off-season gives the acquiring team just one bite. I think that has to be a serious factor in what the Twins would be offered at either moment - the factor could be 2X. The question is how much the Twins value their own chances at contention for playing meaningful games in October. To me, that can't be answered today, and will be answered in about two weeks.

Jeffers: Echoing pretty much the consensus here, he's probably the catcher to trade. His defense has never been stellar and the cost to keep a player entering his decline is too steep compared to other uses for that money. Larnach: He's a paradox and a dilemma. The Twins currently have no fewer than 10 outfielders on their 40-man roster (the Twins 40-man page somehow has Keaschall and Kreidler swapped) and yet somehow we seem short and Larnach feels indispensable all of a sudden. Is Alan Roden really a replacement for Larnach? The Twins remain with a question mark about him instead of answers, a year after acquiring him. Here's the tie-breaker for me: Larnach's numbers at the plate are better this year, but his batting average on balls in play is at a career high (especially against RHP), so if he comes back to earth on that axis then he's basically the same batter we've seen the past several years. And his defense, while usually unimportant, remains a small negative. I would trade him at the deadline, grit my teeth, and hope Roden will develop that final step into being a full-time starter, which the team's scouts must have said was possible given that they accepted him in trade. I don't have huge expectations from Roden but his slightly better defense probably balances slightly lower offense, and he's under cheap team control for longer. It depends as always on the return in trade, as I have no interest in getting a 25-year old glove-first SS currently at AA. Bell: I don't know if we'd get much in return for him. He's on a good run and that could evaporate but I'm inclined to hang on to him. Go for it or build for 2027? 2023 is my evidence that even a modestly talented squad can do the franchise a lot of good - that series against Toronto was tons of fun and should not be downplayed. I think it's possible to do both (go for it without mortgaging the future) but a good deal of wheeling and dealing at the deadline will be involved. You can;'t trade Larnach or Jeffers to a contending team and expect MLB-ready pieces in return for our own contention efforts, so they need to be traded for excellent prospects, and then attention be turned to bottom-feeder teams who would like prospects in return for their few useful pieces. I've probably played too much OOTP and it colors my perception, but prospects are the essence of "fungible assets" and should be used to smooth out the process of acquiring your eventual pool of major league talent. E.g. Roden should probably have been traded last off-season as part of a package for acquiring solid bullpen help, for example, once the Twins committed to Larnach another season. It's this big-picture issue of either committing to talent or else moving them in trade that is one of my biggest gripes with this FO - they acquired a guy like Roden and then let him die on the vine (injury this season being an extenuating factor).

2023 cured me of thinking DH is of much use for him anyway. He gets hurt doing baseball things, and defense seems less than half of the total risk. If he's not capable of playing defense on a given day, I don't want him batting either.

My preseason 61-101 prognostication seems to have worked as an anti-jinx, so I will stand pat.

That's the middle ground I gravitate toward. There will likely be a work stoppage. There will be a season worth competing in, with a worthy champion crowned. These are not contradictory ideas.

No, the point doesn't remain. It's a bad methodology by this point in any season. Indeed you almost spotted the flaw but didn't follow through to the conclusion. #13 for the Twins is Matt Wallner with 135 PA. Was Wallner ever the 13th guy on the roster this season? Of course not. They gave him a long run as a starter, then pulled the plug and sent him to St Paul. Almost every team's roster evolves as the season progresses, either due to injury or due to poor performance (or in rare cases a AAA player forcing the issue with great play). That's what you're likely measuring here. Churn. A meaningful study of 13th men would involve a whale of a lot of work, involving careful tracking of each roster change and how the team made use of each player while that version of the roster remained intact, taking into account nagging day-to-day injuries like Buxton is susceptible to and the handedness of the day's opposing pitcher and probably other secondary matters. I don;'t know how other teams handle their 13th man, and I'm not going to invest the effort, but I'm pretty certain the data snapshot you provided doesn't show the way.