Larsbars08

I think it's a little early to say they missed on Eades. Lets see where he is in a month. It would be nice if he could dominate right away, but there's a reason he fell to the second round. I generally prefer them taking the high upside guys in the first few rounds, but considering they took Stewart 4th overall last year, I'm willing to give them a little leeway on drafting someone who is considered to be more of a "sure thing". I think he's a guy who once he gets a little bit more familiarity with CR will improve tremendously. He's never been a high K/9 guy so hopefully once the weather warms up he, his numbers will as well. Also, is this finally the year that Levi Michael makes out of Ft. Myers?

Mauer has the 3rd highest career OPS of catchers through his 10 year career. If you go by career WAR he is the 12th best catcher already, and his 7 year peak 5th overall, behind Gary Carter, Johnny Bench, Mike Piazza and Ivan Rodriguez. All of whom are or will be in the HOF. He has an outside chance this year to pass Pudge in the WAR-7 peak this year if Mauer can put up all-star caliber numbers. Mauer might not be a 1st ballot HOF, but he'll get in.

Hopefully the errors are just early season jitters. Hopefully things calm down a bit for them and the game will start to slow down in the field.

Great write up, it's always great to hear these little observations that you wouldn't otherwise ever hear about. How much getting in better shape (e.g. BSOHL stories) will make these some of these guys better is a little questionable, but it certainly can't hurt and probably will help. I had only heard of Vielma a little bit before Keith Law put him on the Twins top 15 prospect list. Always good to see the non-elite tier guys improving and doing well.

Huh. I had remembered him getting hurt, but I guess I was wrong.

Didn't Escobar have a great start to the season last year before he got injured? I was at the Tigers game last year where he hit the walk-off double. Seems like he could be a solid regular if he could achieve any kind of consistency.

I hope that they push him to Cedar Rapids in June, or whenever they are planning to unleash him. I'd be okay if he went to E-Town, only if he is going to be promoted very quickly if he shows he can handle it. I know that he had only one outing in E-Town, but it seems like it'd be beneficial for him to follow Berrios' path so far.

Someone asked the same question and this was Jason Park's response. I can't disagree with his reasoning too much, although I think (believe) that Sano will overcome the issues. I still think for his power and on base % at 3rd base alone makes him a top 10 overall prospect. But Parks know this much better than I do.

Think about it. His contract will end when he's 32. If he's healthy, and even if he's not as dominant he'll still probably get another massive contract. He's in line to make an ungodly amount of money over the next 10-12 years. Of course, Santana and Halliday showed how quickly it can all disappear, but it would be nice to have the best pitcher in baseball locked up for the next 7 years. Also makes you wonder what Trout's contract is going to look like.

In terms of accomplishments and WAR he's pretty much a lock to get in. Mauer is already 12th all time as a catcher in terms of JAWS (Total Career WAR and their 7 year WAR peak averaged). That should improve through the life of his contract. Beyond that, he's won three batting titles, an MVP, a few gold gloves, silver sluggers, etc. He's also been the best catcher of the last 10 years. He should be one of the few guys that basically everyone can agree on, whether you prefer statistics, award hardware, or by the yardstick over whether he was dominant at his position and regarded as the best. He might not get in immediately, but he'll get in quickly.

I hope this is sarcasm. I'm pretty surprised he got that much. I figured he would get a Ryan Doumit type contract, 1 year 3-4 million.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Eades one of those guys who has great stuff, but the strikeout numbers don't seem to match his stuff? It's not really ideal, but I imagine the hope is that the system can help him work out the kinks and let him move quickly. He was a 2nd round pick for a reason, even with an underwhelming K%. If he had a better K% he would have gone in the first round. I like them taking a chance.

I like this because now I think the Twins will give guys like Meyer and May more time to develop in the minors. Meyer probably already has major league ability but still needs to work on consistency and command, and letting him figure things out in AAA should be more than alright. Having him force his way to the Majors is a great problem to have. Hopefully May has something click (I'm not holding my breath). It also allows the Twins to take it slow with some of these low minors pitching prospects (Berrios, Jorge, Thorpe, Gonsalves, Stewart) and not have to rush anyone who doesn't force the issue. Hopefully they will go for upside and give Gibson the 5th spot in the rotation and give him a chance to prove himself. Correia, Nolasco and Hughes aren't world beaters, but this rotation should be significantly better, and I hope to see 600 innings between the three of them.

I'm not trying to feed the fire, but this is the old Redskins Fight Song. Obviously, some lines have been replaced, but still. I'm not trying to brand anyone racist, I think that Riverbrian has had the most cogent comment in this thread. This debate is simply not worth it. With our long and sordid history with Native-Americans, it simply isn't possible to completely disconnect the Indians, Redskins, etc. team iconography from all of the terrible atrocities that have been committed. There's a reason why blackface is universally frowned upon now, even when people do it without any overt racist malice. Remember the idiots who dressed up in redface for the Indians home playoff game? I know that not everyone will agree with me, and that's fine. I just think that its something that is important to change.

Adam Walker is probably going to be a question mark until he can significantly raise his walk rate. Even with prodigious power, it's hard to see a regular big leaguer in a guy who is that dangerous, but still only gets on base at a .320 clip. He certainly has time, and he seems like the kind of guy who will still be able to hit a decent amount of HR's in the FSL, but he needs to get on base more to start rising up "experts" prospect lists. I would have thought that Polanco would be higher, a 2nd baseman with solid power and good on base skills is incredibly valuable, but I guess his tools aren't quite as loud. I hadn't quite realized how loaded the MWL was until I saw the league top 20 and some of the guys who were left of. I don't think it's much of an insult for Polanco to ranked 20. I also thought it was promising that scouts were still high on Berrios. He had a tough 2nd half, and I was worried that some of the original projections of a useful bullpen guy were going to be tossed around again. But it looks like they're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and see how he adjusts to another year of full season ball. Enough said about Buxton. Guy is amazing.

I have no problem with Boegarts over Sano. That kind of bat at SS is incredibly valuable, even more so than a power hitting 3B. And really, being rated the #3 overall prospect is no insult.

Maybe I'm being unnecessarily alarmist about this. I'm guessing that Mauer's career would have had less and less catching each year he got older regardless.

It does say on Harper's wiki page that he was moved from catcher to speed up his development AND extend his career. You can't really argue that injury concerns played no part in the decision. Obviously having an elite hitting catcher is incredibly valuable, but if all those guys are a figurative roll of the dice away from a potentially debilitating brain injury, at what point do you move them?

Is it worth having a good hitting catcher, considering how volatile and the significant injury risk that playing catcher has? Is it worth paying a catcher big money considering how volatile the position is? I have very mixed feelings about this. Obviously there's a huge problem with Catchers and concussions. Catcher is clearly the most dangerous position on the diamond. Whether from concussions or home plate collisions. There has to be some sort of solution to this, because it's a massive baseball problem when 10 of the 18 players who have gone on the concussion DL are catchers. Considering that's pretty much 1/6th of all catchers in the MLB. It seems like there is a small chance every pitch, that a catcher will suffer a concussion. There has to be a way to protect catchers, because otherwise every catcher out there is a ticking time bomb. Some might get lucky and others won't be lucky, and that seems unacceptable. If Buster Posey or Yadier Molina had a concussion, would those teams move them from behind the plate? Should they be preemptively moved? The Nationals moved Bryce Harper to the outfield as soon as they drafted him, should that be done for any promising hitter who also plays catcher? I know I'm asking a lot of questions and I'm not sure there's many answers, but major league baseball has a serious issue. I don't know why teams aren't throwing millions of dollars into new and improved helmet tech. Because something needs to be done, and improving the helmets seems to be the only answer that doesn't involve changing the game.

Both Cuddyer and Willingham signed 3 year deals at the same time with the Rockies and the Twins for 3/33 and 3/21. The first year of the Willingham contract he wildly outperformed his contract, Cuddyer was pretty ineffective and injured for the first year of his contract. The second year, Willingham was ineffective and injured for most of the year, and Cuddyer has outperformed his contract this year. The third year, who knows, but it will probably be somewhere in the middle for both. I don't know why I'm bringing this up, but it's something to keep in mind for the people that wish we would have resigned Cuddyer.

I think Felix Jorge will be a top 5 Appy league prospect. It will interesting to see where exactly. Also, it was cool to have Badler answer my question about Thorpe.

Even with Mauer playing less, I think he's still the clear cut MVP. He's by far the best player on the team, he had the best year, this team has been near unwatchable without him. Dozier is absolutely the most improved player, but lets not over think this. Even with about 40 games more than Mauer, Mauer has till provided much more "value" to this team.

It's entirely possible that it's the MiLB gameday that is screwed up, not the data itself. It will be interesting to see what the September numbers for pitch framing will be for Pinto.

I've never doubted the MLB numbers, just that the MiLB iteration doesn't seem to be as accurate. Pitches that end up in the dirt, often show up just below the displayed strike zone, pitches that appear to be just above the knees are called consistently balls. Maybe MiLB parks calibrate it poorly, maybe they don't have the latest versions of it. But it's no where near as detailed or consistent as the MLB version.

I've found the pitch f/x info for AA/AAA to be highly dubious. Have you watched the MiLB gameday, with the pitch by pitch results? I can never tell what is called strike or ball based on where it shows up on the screen. I'm not saying Pinto is particularly good. I think we've all been hearing that Pinto's main weakness is defense, and I'm sure pitch framing plays into that. I do question how accurate the info is in the article. It's probably not good, and I'm sure the September numbers for the Twins will be down on Pinto, hopefully it won't be Doumit bad.