ashbury

Last year's postseason catching choice was a mistake. I hope they don't repeat it.* * No, I don't hope they fail to reach the postseason.

They might respond by saying he's done this through the usage they devised.

I'm drawing zero conclusions from 31 PA, whatever the league. How's his fielding?

Folks in Saint Looie today buy tickets to the ballgame because the Gas House Gang won it all back in the 1930s? I'd need to see some market research to believe that this is any kind of factor for spending hard-earned cash.

Wallner leads all major leaguers who have at least 100 PA in this illuminating statistic: Batting Average on Balls in Play, at .418. This is masking his 36% strikeout rate. When the unsustainable level of balls missing gloves ends, the crash isn't going to be pretty.

We can't stash Tonkin in St Paul because the Mets will grab him again when we try to outright him, LOL.

Didn't watch the game. Guess I'm glad I didn't. No positive takeaways from this game whatsoever.

"More to the conversation that he'll keep private." I would not rule out that the "private" portion concerns Watkins. Watkins is a great ambassador for the team - I remember a night in the Arizona Fall League when Tommy spotted me and my son Bashbury down low in the stands, post-game, wearing our Twins gear, and waved to us and then initiated a greeting when I didn't respond, as though we were long lost relatives or something. The Twins perhaps need to find a role now for Tommy that plays to his strengths again. 😀

I heard you the first time. 😀

How many gut punches does this team plan to take, anyway?

So he'll have a 12-year MLB career and come to the plate 5000 times? He'll take that.

I just thought that was such an odd construction for Rocco to say, about a guy who everyone raved about his makeup while coming up through the minors. I went to the podcast linked in the article, and found the discussion of Lewis at around the 11:45 mark. The full context was a little less ominous, with Rocco seeking to reduce some anxiety he perceives from Lewis about being immediately shifted to second base - Rocco took pains to add that it won't happen "right now," nor "next week," nor "probably the week after that." Lewis is only third base for now. The phrase wasn't meant to throw anyone under the bus. It was actually "just come ready to work." "Just" is a little less pointed than "you need to," the paraphrasing the article offered, as though he wasn't already. So now I find the phrase only a little odd. 😀

Not looking good for 16-6.

B-ref's "Game Score" toy (derived from a Bill James idea 40 years ago) shows Ober with the two most putrid starts among Twins for the entire season. I imagine it's just a statistical fluke - every pitcher sometimes starts the game to find he's got nothing, and often is able to adapt and make it through 6 quality innings but other times he and the catcher can't find the remedy and his day is done early. A study like this one depends a lot on where you set the thresholds. Ryan is the Twin who arguably has avoided putridness the best this year, but if you set the Game Score threshold at 50 (i.e. an average major league start) then he looks less stellar. Pablo Lopez is the one who has racked up an awful lot of substandard starts this year. No Twin is elite in this regard but even the best in the majors have their occasional clunkers. Pitching is weird.

I don't understand the headline, since "medium" was never used in the body of the article. Unless a reliever is high-leverage, it means you don't trust him in tight situations, and that makes him filler.

Some more scintillating analysis:

Has Eduoard Julien been taking throwing lessons from Jorge Polanco? That video in this article sure makes it look that way.

Platoon splits fluctuate from year to year. There's a visible split for him in 2024, even if you dismiss it as "not much". Last year in AA the split was even larger. Based on two years of data*, I'm reluctant to forecast he won't have a typical lefty's split differential if he were called up. (Lefties have bigger splits than righties, on average, which I've never seen discussed but would be an interesting topic for another thread.) I share this concern, actually. This rule of thumb I use, of treating each level of baseball as ".100 harder" than the one below it for OPS, but young players gain .100 of OPS skill each year until 25, has me skeptical of OPS in the .800s at AAA being a likelihood of excellence in the majors - more likely an earmark of "he could contribute." Subtract .100 from his .801 OPS against lefties this year, and now you're down in Margot territory, where the latter does have success in the same "he could contribute" department as well. Add to that a concern that maybe we're seeing Keirsey's "career year" unfolding right now at age 27, and it seems like a risky move to replace Margot with Keirsey. Subtract .100 from his numbers against righties, and he doesn't stack up well enough versus the guys in the majors to push one of them out either. The one thing that keeps me optimistic, but uncertain, is his skill in CF. As near as I can tell, he has CF skills, but probably not off-the-charts like Buxton (or MAT last year), and his arm in particular is only so-so for the position. (Kind of like how I pigeonhole Austin Martin actually, except that Martin's ability to play 2B seems to be sufficient for the FO.) That's not quite enough to offset the concerns about his bat. But, if I'm underestimating his defense by even a little, then the AAA hitting numbers (adjusted for the majors) look like they do play. For roster construction I treat "has CF skills" totally separate from "corner outfield." All in all, I remain intrigued by giving Keirsey a chance, but am prepared for him to end up being another Jake Cave (an analogy offered by others at the site at times). * In fairness, Keirsey's 2022 showed a mild reverse-split, OPS .717 vs .746, and ditto the year before that, .730 vs .742. It doesn't change my view very much, partly because recent results matter more to me, ditto performance at higher levels in the minors. But it certainly is part of his overall portfolio. I would take a good scout's opinion from his eye-test over anything I can muster by sifting through the stats - on just about any player. And that might be the actual final nail in the coffin, if the Twins' internal talent evaluators aren't telling the FO, "you gotta promote this guy."

Came here to say that. Major omission from the article. He's got CF skills but not stellar, and the Twins have always placed an emphasis on left-handed outfield bats. So he's got Kepler, Wallner, Larnach in front of him, and which one of those do you drop just to give a rookie a chance? If CF is the place for him in Buxton's absence, you'd have days where you're writing a lineup with 3 lefties in the outfield and the other one potentially at DH, putting additional strain on the platooning system when the opposing manager uses every lefty at his disposal in the pen - and yes Keirsey has typical platoon splits against LH pitching the past couple of years, like most players. The fact Margot is on the roster is practically irrelevant to Keirsey. Making a general observation about outfield depth only scratched the surface.

I was writing about the decision to sign Santana just before spring training. Go ahead and pat yourself on the back for putting words in my mouth about Kirilloff's performance this season, though. (I probably would have pulled the plug on Alex a month before they did - big disappointment.) WAR is basically a counting stat just like HRs, RBIs, TB. Willi Castro and Carlos Santana lead the team in plate appearances, by a lot, and their bWARs of 1.7 and 1.9 are actually pretty pathetic at this point in the season, if anyone wants to point to them as leading the team toward serious contention - which is why their bWAA are close to zero, marking them as average major leaguers, give or take. Guys who won't really hurt you but aren't really excelling. Personally I have higher aspirations for this roster than a .500 season, which is what average players bring you. Santana used to be better than this, putting up twice the value in a typical season in his prime. But pointing to his very good career WAR tells you little about what he can do for the team now. And his 2024 stats bear that out. Comparing him to the rest of the team is embarrassing - to the team. Ryan Jeffers leads with 20 HR, for instance, and there are currently 38 other major leaguers with a higher total. Santana's tied for 59th in HR. Total bases? Santana's 89th in the majors. RBIs? Tied for 84th. WAR? Tied for 117th. The Twins needed for someone to step up and do better than these, but injuries have taken away playing time from all the better candidates. Clutch? I like WPA as a quick snapshot of situational output, and Santana's 0.6 ranks tied for 95th in the majors. Pretty consistent with everything else mentioned above. He's been a good major leaguer this season. But not "huge" at anything.

Just to be clear, I don't mean to totally disparage your idea. When I play OOTP on my computer, that's the first thing I do when I take over a new (bad) team - package up the bad contracts signed by my incompetent predecessor with whatever assortment of middling prospects I must, to get out from under the commitment, and then spend the savings on better players. But - it's a game. There's 29 other AI GM's and one of them will randomly value player X more than the others so I drive a hard bargain with that one. And the scouting/evaluation I'm given is pretty good and probably better than in real life (though the game does go to the effort of fuzzing up the forecasts and sometimes you acquire a sure-thing player who turns out to be anything but) so my FA signings and/or trades are usually wise. But in the game, it allows me to be a real jerk in how I negotiate down to the last dollar, and IRL no one would answer my phone calls after the first few months of my tenure as GM - "it's just a game" and they leave in some things that keep it fun. It's a lot harder for FalVine to put a strategy like this in action. Unloading Josh Donaldson cost us quite a bit, as a cautionary tale. And the example of Correa is a big gamble. I like Brooks Lee a lot, but Correa is a top-10 SS in the majors, and "when healthy" he's perhaps behind only guys named Gunnar and Witt. Conversely, Correa is an injury risk - but so far we are seeing Lee as also an injury risk, and there's also the open question of whether his bat will ever be like Correa's has been this year. (I assume you aren't thinking of installing Royce Lewis as the everyday SS, but while the bat perhaps will remain Correa-like there are similar and stronger arguments about injury risk plus his reliability on defense is more of a question than a year ago.) Also, good as Correa is, with his injury risk he's probably "fully priced" at his present contract, and would bring back less than a haul in prospects - maybe no one significant at all. IOW your idea is likely a downgrade at SS in 2025, while the "need" you didn't specify to fill could be as scarce as hens' teeth when you actually go to make an offer (in FA, or to trade for a large contract), and the return in prospect capital could be small (or even negative, if you do a second trade). If Lee's bat isn't ready to make him a star next year, there's a big chance you unload one hefty contract just to take on another at a different position, and at best you are hoping for a wash, overall, after the downgrade at SS. It's a big bet on one player (Lee). Again, the plan to free up money isn't crazy, but executing the plan is difficult and perhaps not reasonably possible.

This logic has always puzzled me. Why wouldn't the team we want to trade our expensive guy to, not simply apply the same funds toward picking up the guys you want in free agency? For example trading away Pablo would certainly free up funds, but FA starting pitchers are expensive so would we actually come out ahead with some new guy? And if yes: why wouldn't that other team just sign that better guy?

Regardless of the outcome, let me just get this out there now: I knew it all along!

Fourth best lefty bat among their outfielders, and the 26-man really has room for at most three, maybe?

Have you ever let your friend forget, either?