ashbury

Well then this will be ideal, because there will be fewer and fewer of those situations arising. 😀

Is it fair to say that 356 times, the Twins did their best to put batters into a favorable matchup (more often than not), and time after time those batters failed to come through?

This happened a few times. It's not a key to understanding the season though. Wallner played in only 75 games, in the first place. Of those, 43 were complete games - yes in a majority of times Rocco left him in. In 11 others, he was the one brought in, in the 7th inning or later, to finish the game. A couple of times he was brought in for the 6th inning and got 1 plate appearance. That leaves 19 games where he started the game and didn't finish. He was never taken out sooner than the 6th inning - zero cases of coming up once to start the game and then coming out. In 9 of the 19 games he had 3 PA and in 6 others he had 4 or 5. I count 4 of these games as having just 2 PA; 2 of these games were in April when he was going badly. Putrid as Margot the righty was, it doesn't seem like a hill to die on, to me. Not when lefties failing against RHP were a much more systematic problem for the team.

Right, it's cherry picking to make excuses for Margot, the most disappointing pickup I can remember in many years.

This is going to be unpopular. But basic stats show that the platooning worked. The key players failed. b-r.com provides league splits, on which you can drill down to an individual team's splits. For L/R pitchers and L/R batters there are 4 combinations, and I clicked on each then sorted by Plate Appearances and by OPS. Here are the Twins' rankings against the rest of the majors: RPvRB: 2102 PA (24th), OPS .733 (5th) RPvLB: 2394 PA ( 7th), OPS .716 (17th) LPvRB: 1433 PA ( 4th), OPS .746 (9th) LPvLB: 194 PA (30th), OPS .630 (20th) totals 6123 PA ( 9th), OPS .726 (11th) Their platooning had them near the bottom of the majors in opportunities with unfavorable matchups, and near the top in the favorable ones. (These numbers include switch-hitters batting the way they prefer against a given pitcher.) The lefty hitters were putrid when they faced lefties, but they had the fewest opportunities of any team so it wasn't as much of a burden. Among righty batters against righties, Buxton and Correa are pretty good hitters. so they weren't part of any platooning which arguably held the PA higher, while Miranda did well too, and the OPS is overall really quite good. It's the FAVORABLE matchup for the left-handed batters that held the team down. It was the most frequent matchup and they didn't do much clobberin'. Sorting by PA, Willi Castro did okay (.733 OPS) for a guy who is here for his versatility on the field and who by rights shouldn't be leading the team in plate appearances period. Next was Carlos Santana and his OPS was .676 - that's just unplayable at a bat-first position, but they played him anyway (in fairness he was signed as a Plan B). Larnach was good (.784) but Kepler was frustrating (.672) and again at a bat-first position was objectively unplayable. Next is Julien, at an even more unplayable .620 and they did finally take steps with him. Wallner was the only guy who clobbered, .972, in limited playing time at the major league level. Kiriloff was at .663 and we know he wasn't right physically. Finally is Brooks Lee with .580 in 133 chances from the favorable matchup; I'm all for starting him at St Paul this season and have him work his way back up. That's a bunch of guys, too many guys, underperforming when put into favorable matchups. You can't fix that by demoting or cutting them all, though three of the prime offenders are no longer with the team. It's the number one thing that the new batting coach needs to figure out, among the holdover players. This is a strategic look. Getting down to specific tactics such as pinch-hitting isn't covered by this analysis. And it ignores the perhaps bigger-picture aim of letting left-handed batters get more experience against LHP and (perhaps) improve with time. But management achieved what they set out to do in-season, and we might be singing a different tune if the lefty batters didn't let them down big time.

Who's on your roster now?

Without knowing the scoring system you use (I'm not a fantasy guy at all), at first blush Ohtani seems like a sound choice. He's slated to come back to pitching sometime later than Opening Day, so whatever WAR he racks up would be in addition to his batting stats - but weighing against that is not just the elbow surgery to still recover from but also some kind of knee work that was done. So, high risk, high reward. That young fellow playing shortstop for the Royals seems like a strong contender if you can hold your nose and root for a divisional rival. Again, that depends on whether your fantasy league/system includes defense. If it doesn't, Judge is a natural choice, but again you have to hold your nose for him being a Yankee. I can't think of a pitcher who stands head and shoulders above, like these choices, but again it depends on the scoring system. This isn't very clever or outside the box thinking, but for 1/1 you kind of have to ensure the highest of high floors, yes? Hope some others chime in with their thoughts in the coming 45 minutes.

Let me know if you hear him lauding the trenchant commentary from @ashbury.

People could speculate that Derek Falvey has some kind of profit-sharing arrangement in his compensation package and part of that 20M comes out of his pocket too. 😀

Willi's a tweener. Not a good enough glove for a full-time spot up the middle, not a good enough bat for a corner position. His other skills such as baserunning are good quality but nothing extraordinary. The Twins should be commended for getting the most out of a castoff from a rival team, but his only conceivable role on a competitive team is as utility player. It's true that his salary has become a little rich for this role, but if the Twins would struggle to replace his contributions, probably needing two utility players on the 26-man, I'm not bothered by keeping him. But if his second-half bat last season proves to be his first-half bat this year, parting ways could and should (and probably won't) be quick.

I was about to ask the following anyway but you brought up the general subject of the draft, and this is a Willi Castro thread after all. Willi is listed as being born in Puerto Rico, but Cleveland signed him as an International Free Agent. Jose Berrios and Carlos Correa are examples of Puerto Ricans who were subject to the draft; why wasn't Willi? Or was he subject to it, and somehow was overlooked but then signed undrafted? Doesn't sound right, since various articles describe him as a well-regarded high schooler - the draft went 40 rounds then, shortstops are valuable, and scouts are plentiful there. (IFA is a specific category, but maybe Wikipedia just has it wrong.)

Every team probably has someone like that already, or close. Low demand means StL can pick him up for cash, DFA him if they need to with few regrets. Baseball economics are not linear.

I'm away from a proper keyboard, and trying to type on my phone using one index finger instead of two thumbs like a civilized individual, so I will say just this: I hope you don't do that.

13 at a minimum these days.

I think it's also a clue that a trade for Dylan Cease isn't how 40-man spots will be opened

Fair point. I think my purpose was more to explore the best case scenario, and show that even it isn't all that hot.

Rocco (and/or the front office) will likely give him the chance to be that, nonetheless.

The problem with playing platoon games is if you bat your righty 8th or 9th, he may get only one crack at the LHP before the opposing manager brings in the RHP long man from the bullpen in the fourth inning, to face precisely the batter you have in there to deter lefties. Is Bader good enough to lead off when a southpaw is starting? Questionable, even if he gives way to Larnach or Wallner by mid-game. He's better against lefties, but not actually "good."

Get ready also for the Darth Bader jokes, unless I missed one in somebody's post already.

Yikes indeed. This does reduce my enthusiasm. It's our Big Off-season Signing? Well, I wasn't expecting one anyway. I do expect Bader will contribute more than Margot did. Bader hit better in 2024 as a substitute than as a starter, so that already is auspicious.

Much better than signing Canha.

A waste of scarce financial resources. Just no.

Um, Spring Training. Pretty sure .

AKA the Margot Line. "To pinch hit, you must be hitting better than the guy you are replacing."

Hardly any different than for batters. Be productive against opponents from one side, don't be unplayable against those from the other.