ashbury

Your 5 guys threshold is a good and instructive one. I took a look at all of the AL teams for 2024, and ranked their players by number of PA. Our 5th most PA were taken by Trevor Larnach at 400. Only one other team, the Tigers, had a #5 guy with a lower number of times up (Spencer Torkelson, 381). Only two other teams, Tampa Bay and the Lowly White Sox (yes that word is now officially part of their name), tied at 425, had a #5 especially close to the Twins. Injuries can happen. Or some players flame out beginning the season while others step up. But if the off-season plan works, you ought to have a top 5 that racks up lots of PA. The Yankees' #5 guy had 621 PA. Now that's a plan that came together. Conversely, the Tigers managed to survive this, and even made the playoffs - kudos to them for adapting. But a team's utility infielder should not lead the team in PA. It happening means something went very, very wrong. Identifying your everyday players, and having them play well enough to do so - that probably is every FO's plan during the off-season. Last off-season's plan for the Twins didn't pan out AT ALL. Let's hope good planning and better luck are with Falvey this time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm suddenly and unaccountably hungry.

I'm not a player, but I'm pretty sure that average annual value is only one criterion they go by. Of greater importance is the total guaranteed value over the life of the contract. Giving up $21M in the interest of locking up, say, $60M across 4 years, might seem like a better gamble for a player than taking the $21M in hopes of getting a future contract (or series of them) totaling $39M over the remaining 3 years, in view of the chance of career-ending injury or simply declining performance with age. Of course if a player is in the echelon that will attract multi-year offers above $21M per year, the decision to turn down the QO is trivial - that's a win. But if a player turns down the QO and doesn't get $21M per year, it doesn't mean he lost, or is even being punished for his foolish greed. Fans enjoy the morality-play aspects the off-season has to offer, but really this is just a business decision by all parties, eyes mainly wide open.

Speed and energy guys who get on base are expensive. I presume this article is grounded in the reality that large outlays of cash simply aren't planned, this off-season.

I'll use these snippets from two posts as a starting point (and to acknowledge those who touched on the ideas first). Even with the recent expansion to 13-man pitching staffs as a defacto standard, bullpens are strained, with the solution being a constant shuttle from AAA to the majors, making for 14 or even 15 guys essentially on call during any two week period (minor league stays being regulated by league rules). If an 8-man bullpen is strained when you have a 5-man rotation, a 7-man bullpen isn't going to fare even as well when 6 pitchers are deemed exempt from entering the ballgame in the middle innings. IMO the philosophy with the bullpen has to change, if the starting rotation changes even a little in this direction (and maybe even if present usage patterns continue). The veterans Ryan, Lopez, and Ober averaged long enough starts (in this day and age, anyway), but SWR is a good example of what the manager and pitching coach had to deal with. Look at his splits by inning. In each of innings 1 through 3, he delivered very good performance - a far sight better than league average, with ERA under 4.00 in each one. In inning 4 his performance faltered, and by inning 5 he was frequently terrible (or no longer in the game). In a minority of his starts he pitched in the sixth inning and resumed good results - those are easy to argue as being days when he was "on". In summary, most of his starts were effective for 3 innings but usually the bullpen had to cover 4 or often 5 innings. The usage patterns for the other inexperienced pitches who started games aren't too much different in overall character. But look at the 2024 bullpen. There were 6 pitchers whose appearances were more numerous than any of the starters: Jax, Sands, Thielbar, Duran, Alcala, and Okert. Okert and Thielbar averaged fewer than one inning per appearance, probably because they are lefties trying to survive in an era where LOOGYs are nearly useless. Jax and Duran also averaged just under one inning per appearance, for good reasons since they are late-inning specialists. Only Alcala and Sands were used on average for more than one inning at a time, and just barely. If the team wants a 6-man rotation, the bullpen needs to be remade and the philosophy of its use needs to be reconsidered, with a lot fewer one-inning pitchers. The idea of converting failed minor league starters to relief, emphasizing max-effort, needs to be toned down, toward higher-effort but also multiple inning stints. Current stalwarts Alcala and Sands could for instance be stretched out a little, hopefully without impairing their effectiveness too greatly or else this will all fail. Other players added, such as waiver-wire pickups, need to be told at the outset to plan on pitching 2 or even 3 quality innings when called for. There's a limit to how well this can possibly work: if these guys are good for 3 quality innings, they're in Simeon Richardson Woods territory already, and likely weren't available for pennies in the first place. But that's what's needed if the 6-man rotation idea is pursued. The potential role for one-inning shutdown guys becomes very limited - two guys such as Jax and Duran for example. Everyone else needs to be a long-man - in an era of 4 or 5 inning starts, 2 or 3 innings IS a long man. And then with a rebuilt bullpen, the usage philosophy needs to shift. The rotation can be choreographed, but bullpen usage is by nature completely ad hoc. The starter you counted on to stop a losing streak? He has a bad start and you need to bring someone in earlier than you wanted. The philosophy has to be more in the direction of "next man up" among your bullpen choices, and as long as he is getting decent results, leave him in to begin the next inning too. Treat him like a starter, almost, and watch his spin rates or whatever metrics you use, but as long as he's got the fundamentals working in his favor, leave him in - maybe even if he gives up a run or two, since nobody keeps their ERA at 0.00 indefinitely. It's a long season, you have to be pragmatic, and you can't manage like it's the 7th game of the World Series. All of this is setting aside that, almost by definition, you are taking away innings from your best starters and giving those innings to arms that are, to be charitable, unproven. Maybe they can all be like SWR and show effectiveness when used in moderation. tl;dnr: Going to a six-man rotation is intriguing but hard.

I thought both Severino and Winder, if exposed, would be picked up as "waiver wire fodder". Possibly Duarte too. Some years there are repeated rounds of musical chairs for the 41st and 42nd men on various rosters. All have at least 1 minor league option remaining, so another team could have added them and still planned to send them to AAA next spring. Kudos to Falvey and the FO for picking the right time for these waivers, even if presumably every other team is paring down too. The players themselves aren't super-important, but roster stewardship is. If no one took them for free, via waiver, then there's not much worry about Rule 5 since the rules there are more stringent. Yeah, the plan for first base includes someone other than Severino.

Dilemma seems like the wrong word in the headline. It's a decision. And the answer is yes. If the Twins don't want him, he's got trade value even with a slight bump in salary.

Seattle was looking to shore up a weakness, but spent nearly nothing in acquiring something. Kind of a waste of effort but net-net is just a zero. Minnesota gave up an asset that at the time still had some trade value, and at the moment it looks like they got nothing. - two major league arms that wound up injured for all but a handful of innings, and two prospects who both took giant steps backward in 2024 - if Bowen doesn't turn it around in 2025 he'll be out of baseball, while Gonzalez will likely continue to get chances but even at age 20 a stumble at high-A makes his ever being a star suddenly pretty much a longshot. Unless things change, Minnesota got a net negative return, and thus came out behind on the trade. A trade I was in favor of in principle, especially for the potential of salary savings, but not for these pieces. Talent evaluation for Minnesota continues to be a hit or miss affair, in a market niche where they need to be more hit and less miss.

I did. Just, not for another 10-15 years. 😊

Perhaps. The dropoff in demand can be pretty rapid though. He was quoted as expressing surprise that his contract was tendered this past off-season, and his stock dropped further with his output this year. Minor-league offer with a spring invite was what I had in mind when I said he could try to continue. A guaranteed major league contract of any size will surprise me. He seems like a good guy and if he wants a role in the game he can probably have one but as a non-player.

The Dodgers can beat you in so many ways: pitching, hitting, base running, and letting the other team fritter the game away.

Shocking news. I was also taken by surprise that the sun rose a little later this morning than yesterday. Good luck to Kyle. Like most major leaguers, he has memories that most of us would die to have. He can probably hang around as a player for a while, if that's his desire. Or he can move on to the next phase of his life, inside the game or outside of it, just like every other player who reaches the end of the line.

Target Field is known around the majors as a very tough place to compete, and it's because of the fans. An opposing player, regardless of the team, needs to understand coming in that no matter how stellar a play he might make, the fans will sit on their hands and not even acknowledge the success. The guys on the home team get used to it after a while. But it really weighs down on a visiting athlete if he's not prepared.

There's no question in my own mind that batting average is the most important of the five tools. Sometimes it's interesting to look at the pieces that make it up. People scrutinize strikeouts, and everyone celebrates home runs. BABIP was the last of the three pieces to draw some analysis, and I don't think that the analysis is complete - e.g. Trevor Larnach is reputed to hit the ball really hard without much to show for it, and his BABIP indeed is close to league average, unlike Wallner - what is the difference between the two hitters? If someone misunderstands and thinks BABIP is some kind of ultimate all-encompassing stat, they, well, I just said, they misunderstand.

If only there were a website that brought up-to-the-minute news about the Twins to its ardent fans.

Good point. And fans wanted Joe to try a little harder to hit home runs - that could correlate with popups. Then again, Aaron Judge has kept his BABIP in Joe's range for the past 4 seasons, and few quibble about his power - I don't know Judge's popup rate.

They both strike out a ton and both hit for power. However, Wallner is pretty much the anti-Gallo, when it comes to BABIP, which is what this article highlighted for him. BABIP is a very interesting part of a player's portfolio. It's often used as a synonym for "luck", in that the league as a whole typically hits .300 on balls in play, and if you don't know anything else about a player then if his BABIP is very far from .300 in a given season you might expect the so-called regression to mean. However, not every player's own baseline BABIP is .300. Joe Mauer kept his around .340 for his entire career. Luis Arraez is on a similar pace, so far. I don't believe in "luck" very often, not in a game where trained athletes are competing against other trained athletes who are all trying their best on every play. BABIP regressing to .300 is a useful guide but is not some sort of law of nature. Conversely, a high BABIP is not a Hall of Fame kind of profile, by itself. If you take a look at hitters who've had 2000 PA in the past 4 seasons, and whose BABIP in that timespan has been .330 or higher, you have some absolute studs like Aaron Judge, Bryce Harper and Freddie Freeman, but you also have a sprinkling of "wait, him?" players like Amed Rosario. If a hitter has a high BABIP and also walks a lot and hits home runs (or lots of doubles) then that's a potent combination, but some guys have BABIP galore and don't back it up with additional value. It could correlate, but it's nothing close to a cause-effect. Low BABIP is by itself nothing to hope for, but at the low end of the same group of players*, there is a smattering of guys like Max Muncy, Pete Alonzo, and Kyle Schwarber who are highly productive despite BABIP in the .240-.260 range. Our own Carlos Santana brings up the rear in this group with a .237 BABIP, and yet he's done enough on top of that particular facet of his game to earn major league contracts and will get another one next season. So... what I'm leading to here is that Wallner's career BABIP is currently .359. That's across merely 3 partial seasons, so there is plenty of room for doubt, but all three partial seasons have been in keeping with this, rather than drastically up and down. Joey Gallo? For his career, his BABIP is .254. A full 100 points lower than Wallner. The two batters share some common ground, but in this one area they could hardly be more different, and I think it's an under-studied aspect of analytics. There are many ways to carve out a successful major league career, but BABIP by itself, once it stabilizes, doesn't tell me enough. Gallo has fewer PA than Amed Rosario, yet has scored more runs and driven in more runs, so in a vacuum you want to know more about Gallo than just his low BABIP (namely that he supplements his BA with walks, and he hits balls over the fence). If Wallner continues to walk and hit homers, his BABIP suggests he could be a lot better than Gallo, at the end of his career. If the BABIP isn't entirely a mirage, of course. That's the big unknown touched on by this article. * I'm quick to point out that this choice of players contains a statistical bias built in: you have to be pretty darn good in the first place to amass 2000 PA in 4 seasons. But then again, do I CARE about the batting profile of bad players?

Sad news.

Happy Halloween then. 😀

A worthy champ. Unfortunately.

I was just checking their bench at that moment too. Cupboard looked bare.

Snow in the forecast for tomorrow here in the Sierra, as well. Small world, or something.

And a final blast of entertainment now, whichever way it comes out.

Badly played games (by one team) can be entertaining too.

I tuned in to watch a World Series, and a White Sox game broke out.

The headline is missing its question mark so that I can make fun of it.