ashbury

The Angels' 2021 draft is an interesting experiment. They invested all 20 of their picks in pitching - 19 college arms and one high schooler in the middle of that draft for some reason. A little soon to declare it a failure, but so far it has not paid off for them.

I don't think landmines are the metaphor to describe the Twins bullpen philosophy, unless landmines that don't go off are the intended mental image. "How Can the Twins Front Office Avoid More Bullpen Duds?"

Two of the three teams with the highest LOB in 2024 will be playing in the World Series this Friday. I don't use that stat to judge an offense one way or the other. (But for the record, our Twins had 8 more LOB than the major league average, while scoring 31 more runs than the norm.)

Gordon doesn't have the arm to play 2B, much less SS or 3B, and the Marlins stashed him in LF until they couldn't put up with his bat and exiled him to Jacksonville for the remainder of the season. Jake Cave OPS'ed .722 in Coors Field, a park where the majors as a whole achieved .800, and he was in the low .600s on the road. Pass, on both.

There were 15 players who logged 120+ games at first base in 2024. Santana ranked 10th in OPS, so he was a below average hitter at his position. Worse, the five players who hit less (Goldschmidt, Schanuel, Vaughn, Tellez, France) all played for teams that didn't make the playoffs; neither did the two guys just above him. He's not a playoff caliber offensive player anymore, and if his bat is hard to replace then the FO has some 'splainin to do. No question Santana's glove was good. But not every error turns into runs, and it's hard for a 1Bman to provide enough on defense to make up for a subpar bat.

Too much content to try to address all at once. Two players: Vazquez: He's not worth the money in an analytic sense. But what's the plan if he's gone? There better be one. He was durable, and replacing him could involve someone not much better, plus every chance that an even worse third-stringer gets significant playing time. Lewis: I would be cautious about deploying Lewis at first base. His propensity for soft-tissue injury could be a rude surprise when he has to lunge for a badly thrown ball. (Either that or he won't lunge, and becomes a terrible defender there.) Conversely if the training/medical staff can get to the bottom of his spate of pulled muscles and other owies, perhaps he can blossom at one of the skill positions he was originally slated for.

And it depends on the injury, etc etc. My reply was brief and the truth is complex. In 2023 we knew about the knee, in 2024 there was the hip and I forget what else. If those body parts impede the swing, 2023 just serves as a cautionary example - the details have to be left to those close to the situation.

I think it's the other way around. The lesson I took from 2023 was that if Byron isn't healthy enough to roam CF, he won't hit well either. Rest him or put him on IL.

Sometimes the same message (or messenger) gets tuned out after long enough. Three years might qualify as a good run. Batting coaches are fungible; doesn't mean they are worthless.

His peers in AAA don't in general belong in the majors. They put up their numbers against batters who don't belong in the majors either. I know you want to avoid small-sample-size, but the threshold of 60 innings contains an unintended bias, as it represents perhaps a few up-and-coming arms but mostly is a group of pitchers who their major league front offices felt were better deployed at AAA than in the majors. Probably it would be wise to start by sorting by age to find a cohort of similar pitchers. Pitcher or batter, a player wanting to contribute at the major league level needs to put up numbers far superior to the crowd in AAA. "Pretty well" gets you overmatched at the next level up. Smoke and mirrors was no factor for Dobnak at AAA, and his major league numbers were in line with what could be expected from his performance in AAA; I very much doubt that the FO was doing anything other than calling up a fresh arm to replace some similar ones they were DFA'ing right and left. We're basically finding different ways to say "replacement level" for a player in his age-29 season An article speculating about the role for such a player kind of answers its own headline question. He needs to improve over what we've seen the past several seasons to have a role. Every year unexpected good things happen, and I'll always root for him, but ever since his finger injury it hasn't happened for Dobnak.

Yes, and we saw it also in larger samples at AAA. His MLB OPS-against was in the low .800s and his AAA OPS-against was in the low .700s. The majors are harder than the minors; his results are reasonably congruent.

Betteridge's Law of Headlines suggests that the answer to the headline question is "No."

The "kid" is in his 40s. I think he's older than Falvey, who also is past the whiz-kid threshold anymore. If Joe Pohlad is wet behind the ears it's not due to youth, he's just slow to dry off.

Concur. While Joe Pohlad is listed on the team's website as "Executive Chair," just above him is listed Jim as "Control Owner," which represents no real change in the power structure from before. I think it's completely reasonable to believe that after 10 or 12 months in that cushy chair starting in November 2022, Joe was asked to present progress-to-plan on his business plan that they presumably all agreed to when he was elevated. The rest of the ownership team was presumably aghast when they saw the revenue forecasts, particularly the coming collapse of broadcast revenue with no remedy in sight, and mandated cuts. Kind of similar to the situation with Bill Smith as GM after the 2011 season. The rumors that I recall were that his get-well plan involved an infusion of capital to bring in talent, and when he was told no, he didn't back down, and was summarily replaced by Terry Ryan V2.0, who then embarked on a "right-sizing" project of his own. I would infer that in the present case, Joe Pohlad may have tried to persuade the higher-ups in a similar way, to accept some losses in order to build up the fan base, but unlike Smith did back down and thus began the past round of right-sizing that may not yet be the last. It's all supposition of course, and going with sketchy public knowledge.

I don't think the sequence of events supports that. Winning the WS is too long a shot for basing the sale strategy around. If the pump and dump were to happen it would have been a year ago, after the fan base was excited. Instead they didn't replace Sonny Gray and "right sized" the payroll. They missed their window, if that were the plan.

You already saw this, but the others may not have. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=526170843465927

You're depriving yourself from enjoying a really entertaining game, unfortunately. I put aside my antipathy for both teams and just watched the drama.

Enough to have more starts at SS than anyone else on the team, including the guy named as MVP. 😀

I like runs and RBIs. Among players whose games were at least 60% behind the plate, Jeffers had the 8th most runs batted in, and the 9th most runs scored. Part of his secret formula was to be 4th in the majors in HR (among catching peers I mean). Someone has to catch. If you discard Jeffers, it's a false economy - you will be hard pressed to replace the production without paying through the nose.

I had the Twins for 78 wins in TD's preseason survey, so for me Rocco is a dark horse candidate for Manager of the Year for this over performance. 😊

Yes, sorry, I missed that caveat in your explanation. I expect he has some trade value in a full teardown. That's the only scenario I care about anymore. The onslaught of trade this guy, trade that guy, has worn me down.

For every player with a positive value that you listed (where's Wallner?) there appears to be an article at TD titled something like "To Save Money Should the Twins Consider Trading X?" 😀

It's not worth starting a whole different thread, but I'll mention that the recipients of the Most Valuable Twin and the Twins Defensive Player of the Year happen to be the only two Twins among finalists for Gold Gloves this season. https://www.mlb.com/news/2024-gold-glove-award-finalists

Our new old hitting coach turns 34 in a couple of weeks. David Popkins is just under a year older than that. I find it very interesting that such relatively young people are given the reins at the major league level, in preference to someone with decades of experience. If it works out, great, but Popkins didn't last that long here. It could be some variant of the Peter Principle at play here - someone with any abilities in one area may get promoted to some bigger job (bench coach, manager) until they reach a certain degree of failure, after which they either have lost their credibility or else (Rowson might be an example) latch on with someone else in a similar role to what they did succeed at. Nothing new under the sun, maybe.

The billionaire who won't spend has no advantage over the millionaire who can't spend. 😀