ashbury

Hard to rank moves because the size of the move may be smallish but executed well. I like both the Taylor and Farmer trades - acquiring low-cost, solid, unspectacular veterans for what seems like a pittance. Those two will earn $10M salary combined, or a little more than what Urshela will get in arbitration (I haven't seen an announcement for him yet). The combination of the three trades moves the talent from "corner" to "up the middle," and deserves congratulations even if the big-ticket moves get more attention.

Byron Buxton can beat the other team in so many ways!

Please do. Piecemeal memory is no substitute for someone taking a careful pass through the record. Many teams play the waiver-wire game, and our Twin are part of it, so it's worth evaluating whether it's been worth the effort and roster churn.

Phillies and Padres made it to the NL championship without one. Meanwhile the Twins did have one and went nowhere.

Always comes down to disguising the pitch. But when done right, there is hardly a more devastating combination than a four-seamer with a perfect changeup, is there? Factor in just about any other offerings and you're really got something to work with.

Everyone "knew about" the ankle. The fact he had had a plate installed long ago was well known. What IMO was new was information that the SF doctors found, that signs of arthritis had become evident and of a nature that could cloud the outlook 10 years down the line. The Twins doctors a year earlier might not have looked at things with a 10-year horizon in mind, given the contract discussion was 3 years., but this time it mattered and the offer was scaled back to a more comfortable 6 years. Had Correa agreed to the Twins' 10-year offer originally, there's no reason to think their doctors wouldn't have made the same diagnosis. Again, IMO, but I think it fits with all available information.

I see Woods-Richardson but not Austin Martin in the table. I noticed that while following up on the trend of trading for pitchers. By contrast Alcala and Celestino were acquired together and both are listed. Looks like Farmer's the first instance of trading for a position player alone. And now Taylor. / edit - No. No no no. Near as I can tell, their first position player traded for was... Jake Cave. The table of course is clearly marked as of the current roster.

You won't get 7 max-effort innings out of the guy, start after start. He won't be the same lights-out guy as we saw in the bullpen. I agree that starters are more valuable, but you have to take into account what is achievable. If Duran wants to start, it's a delicate matter for Rocco to manage, but that's why they pay him the big bucks. The FO can also contribute to the solution by offering Duran a long-term contract at mid-season, assuming he starts out strong, for top dollar for a closer, to ease the financial "regret" he may feel at not being a starter - his agent might advise "take the 6/$100M rather than try for something higher as a starter and risk coming out with a lot less than that." He's still years away from arbitration, so adjust the contract offer from what I said; I think 6 years only buys out his arb years, which may be stupid on the team's part, so some creativity is needed. But a happy player is important and may be worth bending some principles.

It's a useful way of thinking. Pretty wide ranges out outcome but that's the nature of player evaluation.

Let me try and say it another way: I like the idea of measuring performance against the best. Unless our goal is just to sneak into the postseason and then get swept, I don't particularly care how a reliever does against the number 8 and 9 batters - Emilio Pagan did excellently against them too. The level of competition goes up in various ways, in October, because even the best teams experiment with their rosters throughout the long season but they settle on who they think is best starting in game 163. Many of those 8/9 hitters are gone by then. I'm not seeing a lockdown pen right now. Reliever numbers are always sparse, so what I pointed out about Griffin Jax is merely an anomaly to wonder about.

His pattern just looks more extreme than most. It stood out to me. And again (again, again), it's small sample size when sliced 9 ways, so I'm not taking it more seriously than, "hm".

Concur on the first sentence. The second sentence? American Leaguers in 2022 OPSed .789 when batting third. https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/split.cgi?t=b&lg=AL&year=2022#all_lineu I just don't see evidence Jax (.828 respectively) was something special against good hitters last season. And I wouldn't make an issue of him except that he's one of the handful of relievers people point to as being the makings of a shutdown pen. Can he improve? Sure, along with the other young arms, and I hope so. BTW, Jhoan Duran's OPS-against when facing #3 hitters was .696. I'm not asking for miracles when facing the best. Just... for evidence of effectiveness not dropping off. I mean, Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera allowed a .724 OPS against #3 hitters (though league OPS during his era was nearly .100 points higher), so no one is immune. Say, do you want to know Emilio Pagan's 2022 OPS-against when facing #3? Do you wanna? DO YOU WANNA? Okay, since you twisted my arm. 1.011. (#4 beat him to the tune of 1.134, also.) (Again, for the individual relievers, it's all small-sample, so I wouldn't take any of this terribly seriously. I'm just looking for a reason to change my opinion about Jax, and not finding any in the season's results.)

That bullpen doesn't look like it's going to strike fear in too many opponents' hearts. Duran is the exception of course, but other than him, some guys are going to have to step forward. Jax in particular is one I'm skeptical about. His splits last year suggest he feasted on the less-capable hitters - batters in the #3 slot OPSed above 800 against him. Of course slicing and dicing relievers' numbers leads to pretty small samples, but in this case it matches up with my eye-test that capable hitters don't really struggle against him. Maybe he takes a further step forward in 2023 though.

Then that's not insurance. It's a lay-away plan at the department store, or something.

I'm glad you didn't lead with this phrase because I would have been too busy laughing to read the rest of what you had to say.

You sound like an analytics guy.

I'm going to throw in another angle that I think supports yours. During Terry Ryan's second tenure as GM, I got to hear him fill in for a scheduled panel discussion, and he spoke at length about being a GM. I wish I had had a recording device! But one thing he said stuck with me even if I'm sketchy on the details. I think he was fielding a question from the floor about Delmon Young. Ryan responded by saying that there were a lot of major league players even today who could hit .400, if the games were played twice a week. For me, that encapsulates the dilemma these athletes face. Sure, they need to find and stay in a rhythm. But the game is exceedingly taxing when played six days out of seven most weeks, for week after week. They don't call it the long season for nothing. (I wish now that I could go ask him about his reasons for why Ted Williams could still do it in 1941. Being in the majors at age 22 probably had something to do with it.)

In my defense, I dashed off a few thoughts in response both to the comments below the article, and to the article itself. After a few minutes I decided I didn't arrange it very carefully, and my point may have been missed. While you were writing your reply, I was revising the organization. See if you find it a bit more coherent now.

Rocco and his spreadsheets. Rocco and his spreadsheets. Rocco and his spreadsheets. Rocco played baseball. At the highest level. And he excelled (third in Rookie of the Year voting at age 22) until injuries took their toll. Derek Falvey played college ball, on the field and not just the video game version. Thad Levine played college ball. To insinuate, as some do, that management is oblivious to the realities of dealing with injury is just beyond the pale. Rocco could correct any misapprehensions that the FalVine duo might have, except I doubt it's been necessary. The author of this article played baseball at the college level. too. All these points of view come from direct experience of what works and what doesn't when injuries occur. Such POV may differ because humans differ and because experiences differ and because no one has the full picture. I would love a panel discussion of the topic among these four (or of course many others equally well positioned to talk about it). It's dangerous to slice and dice batting records too much (small sample sizes become smaller) but in 2022 Buxton's OPS as a DH was above .800 while the DH performance of the rest of the team was under .750. He did better as DH than the sainted Luis Arraez. No one prefers that Buxton DH, but it's a strategy that isn't doomed to failure when he's not 100% physically. I don't think the strategy especially "worked" for him in 2022, partly because the injuries weren't confined to playing defense, but that doesn't mean it was wrong-headed and conceived by idiots. Tweaking the approach may pay off. But there's a lot of nuance where injuries are involved - "let's get it fixed" is nice in principle but 1) it's not like taking a car to the shop and having the mechanic's diagnostics tell you it has low compression in cylinder #2, and 2) getting it fixed may mean season-ending surgery versus letting him limp (no pun intended) through the season if he can. I'll add that to me it does matter when in the season Buxton plays. If they are on track for a playoff appearance, it can be worth some sacrifice during the regular season to have him be as close to his peak as possible in October. Of course, if resting him results in closely missing those playoffs.... maybe it all just wasn't meant to be that season.

This touches on a downside to the strategy: the opportunity cost. If several of your roster spots are taken up with "projects" of varying types, and you know only a percentage will pan out, then you spend a lot of major league innings finding out, and incurring losses in your season record while you stay the course. If you invest in "projects" who can figure things out at the minor league level, this cost with the big club's pennant race doesn't occur. Of course there are no guarantees in human performance, and the "sure thing" players on your roster may not reach expectations either. It's all a matter of degree, not black-and-white. But when you load up on high-ceiling injury risks, it's possibly a bit cynical to then moan "oh the injury bug hit us again," .

I don't think he showed enough with the bat at AAA yet to earn him a major league roster spot - he turns 27 in May so the clock is definitely ticking for him. And his all-around abilities won't get a chance to shine if he's slotted at DH (the subject of this article).

Back when Adopt a Prospect was a thing at TD, Aaron was my guy. Good luck to him in the next phase of his life.

If we had 5 Sonny Grays (24 GS times 5) we'd have also suffered through 42 starts by Chi Chi González. Ha.

Too late for him to get even, anyway.