ashbury

Sure! Now that the lockout is over, trades are possible again. If we can't pry any pitching from the Marlins, perhaps they'll give us Astudillo in return for one of our prospect arms.

Save that thought for the Urshela puff piece, as well.

Gotta sandwich in that he reported to camp in the best shape of his career.

I keep checking MLBTR hourly, on the assumption that something big must be on the verge of happening. After acquiring Gray and then the drama of the Donaldson trade, it feels like having bought a new set of performance tires and then taking the car in for a tune up, only to learn now that the engine is sitting on a hoist and the mechanic is telling you they are "waiting on parts". Why did you shell out for those expensive tires, again? Sign Story, and/or swing a favorable trade that is possible only by taking on new salary, and my outlook for the team brightens.

There are 24 pitchers on the Twins 40-man roster. Even if a couple will soon be on the 60-day IL, there isn't room for adding a retread. Not that the roster is stuffed to the gills with all-stars, but I'd rather drop one of the incumbents because we acquired someone actually, you know, good, and with upside. Not just a hurler that will help you limp through 2022.

"Only two things will keep that kid from the Hall of Fame. A knife, and a fork."

I'd personally pump the brakes a bit on such a dire outlook. No reliever, not even a closer, is worth more than a couple of wins, compared to the guy who they'd have to plug in as replacement. They'd likely need to go out and acquire someone else - but relievers can be had for a decent prospect, no more.

If the team doesn’t make other moves, I predict some here (including myself) are going to lose their ****.

Palacios was the only name on this list that would have intrigued me (Austin Martin seems like a courtesy invite to me, as far as Opening Day planning is concerned). Of course, just like Charlie Brown with Lucy's football, I'm totally absorbed now by the rumors surrounding Trevor Story, so even that interest suddenly becomes muted.

Concur. Would you trade Ben Rortvedt for Gary Sanchez? I would not. Would you trade Isiah Kiner-Falefa for Gio Urshela? I would not. The only missing piece to the trade is Donaldson. Those who pooh-poohed the notion that he had negative trade value around the entire major leagues are left with defending that our front office must be the stupidest people on the planet, to pull the trigger on the above pair of bad one-for-one trades and then throw in Josh Donaldson for free simply as a sweetener. Josh Donaldson is a valuable player when healthy. But the health risks plus his salary make him a large-market gamble now. The FO has opted to redeploy Donaldson's salary. Half of it goes for Sonny Gray. We'll see what they do with the rest of it (plus of course the considerable budget headroom they already possessed).

It just goes to show that pitching remains the coin of the realm. We did get an undersized pitching prospect in the deal. Going for better pitching than that becomes exponentially harder, if you use only position players as trade bait.

Stewart just didn't work out, but Jay was one where Terry Ryan tried to think outside the box, and the criticism was immediate and obvious. Ryan had this reputation for conservatism, but he would gamble, and the gambles never seemed to pay off.

It's not the absolute last word regarding a player's value, because there is no such resource to tell you that. Team GMs tend to keep their thoughts to themselves on a topic like this, and every GM will have different perceptions and different situations to work under. The results from any tool like this will be based on the assumptions baked in. The single best thing about it is that it factors in the remaining years of control and the dollars committed in any existing contract. Typically fans will forget about this, and just construct trades based on perceived talent. For example Garver and Jeffers have similar projections for contributions on the field per year, but Jeffers has more years of control remaining and thus looks like the one who would bring more in trade. (Of course the same logic might dictate that he's the one you keep and build on.) Now, does Josh Donaldson (for one example) really have negative trade value, as this site will instruct you? For some trading partners, probably yes. If you wanted to swing a trade with the Orioles, they would have less than zero interest, which is one way of saying "negative value," and you might have to offer a good prospect along with him, or pay most of his remaining salary, just to get him off our books. But money aside, he remains an above average bat, and maybe he won't get injured; if some team with World Series aspirations for 2022 thought he was the missing piece, you might be able to pry a decent prospect away from them. "We have him, and you don't," remains a critical factor, and isn't something easily captured in a tool like BTV. Any trade involving one or more desirable players will go to the highest bidder, almost by definition, which means that some GM saw things differently than any competing GM did, which in turn means the trade will probably violate what BTV would tell you. I don't know how you could construct a tool to predict those outcomes. Bottom line, I like the site very much and I use it as a sanity check for proposed trades. I don't treat it as anything remotely approaching gospel, nor I believe would they expect me to.

He wasn't just some random 16-year old signing, and expectations were high at the outset. He hasn't met them.

Just going by what's on the Twins website. It might be out of date somehow.

Literally the most recent on-field data we have on him is being MVP of the 2019 Fall League, including MVP of the all-star game. It's small sample, but I don't think swing mechanics could be a complete mess and still accomplish that. Recovery from the injury to the knee is of course the biggest "known unknown" - but does that truly stack everything against him?

That's great. Curious in the same way, I looked at the SABR site, and nobody has done a bio on him yet. Seems overdue.

Jharel Cotton is on the Twins' 40-man.

Man! The moderators are going to be all over you, like stink on a skunk!

I didn't know that algorithmic projections were capable of Hawt Taeks. This sure sounds like one, although pleasant.

"Home run hitters drive Cadillacs and singles hitters drive Fords.” (Said of Ralph Kiner just the other day... oops I mean in the 1940s.) See also this 1950s newspaper commentary regarding how to deal with the shift: Why doesn’t Ralph Kiner hit to right against the lopsided defense played against him? He doesn’t want to. When Kiner came up to the Pirates and teams began overshifting on him, he toyed with the idea of hitting to right. Fritz Ostermueller. then a veteran pitcher for the Pirates, told him: “There aren’t any Cadillacs for you in right field, Ralph. Your money is in left.” Nothing new under the sun.

Look at the bright side, why don't you. If the lockout persists, our Twins will be tied for first place on June 1.

While fruitlessly searching for that swing-after-miss, I did find this entertaining if mis-titled example of what his speed could do:

Filling out the rotation to have exactly 5 starters in no way fixes anything for a long season. We are in a world of hurt.

His birth date is September 27, 2000. He's 20th Century, and old Millenium. /pedantic