TopGunn#22

I would love a Max Clark selection. If he gets picked by Texas then the Twins have a real decision to make. Walker Jenkins, the other prep outfielder? Or someone like Lowder, Dollander or Teel. I just hope we get Max.

I thought the end of the article hinted that if he was there at #34 the Twins would pounce. That makes more sense to me. I see a bat being drafted at #5 unless Skenes somehow falls to the Twins there. Skenes is the only pitcher I could see the Twins considering if he falls to them. I'm still leaning toward the draft being chalk for the first 4 picks and the Twins picking Max Clark who will be their CF of the future. We NEED a legit CF prospect and Clark would not only be the best available player but would check a needed box.

The Twins have a stretch of games where they could put together a mini winning streak and actually open a 4-5 game lead in the division. That's the minimum I think they need to do before deciding to be buyers. But they really need to see if Correa and Buxton can start hitting. The other key piece in my estimation is Jorge Lopez. He's that 8th inning guy and sometimes closer if Duran isn't available. Will he be 2022 pre-All Star break Jorge Lopez when he comes back? Or will he continue to struggle? They REALLY need him to be the "good" and "reliable" Jorge Lopez. I could actually see our FO being a little of both buyers and sellers. Polanco still has value and depending on what a team needs and will actually give up to get him, I'd have him at the top of my "sell" list. Since Larnach is still more prospect than big league player, he'd be at the top of my sell a "prospect" to add a RH bat/bullpen piece. Sonny Gray is interesting. He's been very good but will surely not be with the Twins next season. Is he moved for prospects or more in a Gray for Goldy type deal...veteran for veteran. Or do they just ride him until the end of the season. Can Gray keep this up? Or will he regress somewhat to who he's been his entire career. This division is so bad that a sub .500 record might just win it. But the White Sox and Guardians might just make moves to bolster their teams and the Tigers are on the cusp of having Eduardo Rodriguez and Tarik Skubel rejoin their rotation. Those two lefties could give the Tigers a huge boost. I don't expect the 2nd half of the season to be a cakewalk for the twins even though they have the most talented roster in the division.

He has great potential and as fans it's always nice to dream. What is his projected timetable to advance above Cedar Rapids? It's the same question Twins fans would have for Brooks Lee...when is he coming to St. Paul? Do you need to DOMINATE a level before moving up or do you just need to show steady improvement and better consistency?

I hope they don't try to get too cute with that #5 pick. But #34 is interesting. If you look at a bunch of guys in the #22-#30 range there are a lot of 3B/1B type college bats that seem to be elite hitting prospects. Kind of like Torkelson without all the #1 pick hype. Torkelson has struggled, but he's starting to figure it out and I'm curious what his 2nd half numbers will look like and how he starts 2024. The key is to get a bat more like Torkelson and not like Sabato. One kid that intrigues me but who is NOT in this year's draft is White, the LSU 3B. He just really impressed me with his approach and power during the CWS. I would prefer taking a hitter like that at #34-#60 if I was looking for an elite hitter with a 3B/1B defensive future.

Skenes is the only pitcher I take at #5 if he's there and if he is, I dash to the podium. It really comes down to Clark, Jenkins or possibly Teel if Crews, Skenes and Wyatt Langford are gone. At this point I've heard a lot to like about Max Clark. Jenkins is an eyelash behind Clark and recent commentary about Teel (and the fact that he's a catcher that hits LH) and is a pretty darn good hitter to boot leads me to believe the decision will come down to Clark, Teel or Jenkins. Right now our pitching is great and our hitting is atrocious. But MLB drafts take at least 2-3 years to have any impact on the major league roster. We could be without Sonny Gray, Maeda and Mahle in 2024. Skenes could have an immediate impact but I'm not sure about Lowder or Dollander. They could each be 2025 kind of guys.

I'm going to defend Kepler on that call terrydactyls. That pitch was a full 6 inches outside. It was a terrible called third strike and why robo home plate umps are looking better and better. Kepler has stunk since 2020. He should be traded or DFA'd. But no hitter stands a chance when a guy calls you out on a pitch like that.

Ted, 2 games doesn't make Rocco a Saint. I could argue, and I will, that it took far too long for him to say anything about this now 3 years running underachieving bunch. I still think Rocco stares at his computer analytics while the game on the field passes him by. We had plenty of baserunners yesterday, but just couldn't seem to get that important 2nd run across the plate. Once again, Rocco punched a bullpen button (and it was a good one with Duran) yet it blew up in his face. Rocco has developed a knack for making moves that most of the time just don't work out. This team has far more talent than any team in the horrible A.L. Central and they are one game under .500. When it was time for a comeback, we went meekly with 3 consecutive strikeouts in the 9th. You can blame the players (and we should) but we all know it's easier to fire a manager than an entire roster. I'll give Rocco the rest of July to guide us to a 5 game lead. If it's status quo at that time he and the F.O. should be unemployed this off season.

I went with Medina. Longest outing (over 6 innings) zero walks, 5 K's and one run. When will the Twins promote Brooks Lee to St. Paul?? Just before or just after the All Star break? It's time to move him up a level and see how he adjusts to AAA.

First, the expectations in St. Louis are always higher than they are in Minneapolis. The Cardinal organization and their fans EXPECT not to just contend, but to WIN their division and to not say Rosaries that they, please, just win ONE playoff game. So the idea of the Cards throwing in the towel is a tough one to embrace. And yet, here the Cards are, absolutely dead in the water with a shaky pitching staff and their closer (Helsly) out until near the end of July. They have players who could step right in for Goldy (Gorman). They're an organization that would never give a Max Kepler the time to figure things out like the Twins would. So maybe the Cards would be up for a minor re-tool. I went to Baseball Trade Values and put together this deal: Twins Get: Goldy 35 y/o 1B BBTV of 21.1 and Jordan Hicks 26 y/o RP 2.6 value for a total of 23.7. Cards Get: Sonny Gray 33 y/o SP 17.8 BBTV and Josh Winder 26 y/o SP/RP 5.8 value for a total of 23.6. Cards can plug Gorman in as their primary 1B and add a SP in Gray. Winder who could start or come out of their BP. Twins plug Goldy in at 1B and hit him #3 or #4. Hicks joins the Twins BP. If the Cards just can't let Hicks go (he's shown a flash of two but never put it all together) then replace him with Gallagos (2.2 value) who's 33 years old. Then it's a microscopic Twins overpay. It's a trade for both teams and the state of Minnesota get's to have a player called "Goldy." How perfect is that??

Hat Tip to Riverbrian for doing an excellent job of summarizing all the frustrations we have here on TD. I've been a Max Kepler fan since we first called him up, but for 3 years it's been beyond frustrating watching him play. The play Ozzie Albies made by flipping the ball to Arcia to throw Kepler out at 1B just shows me Max is not giving "max" effort. He's a LH hitter with good speed and he was thrown out easily. He should have beaten that out. He needs to be traded for a bag of baseballs or cut within a day. Buxton is clearly hurt. If he needs further surgery then shut him down and don't play him until he can do everything a ballplayer needs to. I'd start selling. Sonny Gray, Jorge Polanco, Vazquez, Gallo, I'd trade any or all of them for anything I could get. As has been pointed out, what's being done now clearly isn't working and it hasn't since after the 2019 season. Falvey and Levine have made massive blunders in trying to build this roster and Rocco has as much admitted he's at wits end trying to figure this out and watching him manage leaves me wondering that unless 300+ HR's are flying out of the ballpark, he doesn't have any idea what he's doing. If nothing changes after this outpouring of truth, or nothing of significance happens there will need to be a massive housecleaning this off season. The F.O. replaced, the manager and his coaching staff replaced and a lot of dead weight players replaced.

The Twins certainly expected a LOT more out of Correa. But they certainly expected a LOT more out of Buxton. I would posit that those two hitters are essential for the Twins offense to be even average. But those two guys alone don't account for striking out 16 times in a game. The game yesterday was a microcosm of the Twins season. Good pitching has the Twins down 2-0 in the 7th inning. They put the first two guys on base...and the next three hitters all strike out! At this point the Twins have a better "run differential" than the Yankees but are 8 or 9 games worse. It seems whenever Rocco taps a relief pitcher in a key part of a game disaster follows. It may not be "reality" but it sure seems that way. We're clinging to first place in a terrible division but look out. Jose Ramirez is starting to heat up and if he stays hot and Correa and Buxton continue to flail and fail the Guardians will blow right past us. There is a lot that SHOULD change. How much changes and who is part of the change is debatable, but one thing is clear to me. Since Rocco took the helm in 2019 with Falvey and Levine in our F.O. we won the division and set a major league HR record. In 2020 we won a Covid shortened division title, and then in 2021, 2022 and now this season we've under achieved. Whether it was the crap SP's like Happ and Shoemaker, Archer and Bundy the F.O. tried to pass off as major league worthy, the lack of truly trying to build a competitive bullpen or even signing a LH power hitting outfielder who K's a lot instead of a RH hitting outfielder when your roster already consisted of Kepler, Kirilloff, Larnach and Wallner (with your best RH hitting OF option Kyle Garlick) not much has gone right for our intrepid front office. There could be a lot of empty seats at Target Field the second half of this season. Change is needed. Tough decisions loom. How patient will the Pohlad family be??

I'm still seeing rumors that the Pirates LOVE Max Clark. I would be happy if the Twins picked Clark at #5 but while watching the classic LSU v Wake game with Skenes and Lowder the ESPN graphic referred to Skenes as the #5 prospect in the draft...right where the Twins pick. If the Pirates DO select Clark, Crews will certainly go #2 and then all hell braks loose. I'd take Skenes in a heartbeat if he's there at #5. I'd give him one of two starts in Cedar Rapids or St. Paul and then I'd get him up to the Twins for the rest of the season. Even if he pitched in long relief his stuff would play. Why waste ANY pitches in the minor leagues with this kid??

I think the better off season signing would have been Adam Duval. He's every bit as good an OF defender as Joey Gallo, but he's a RH power bat who strikes out less, walks less, but hits for a higher average. He doesn't play 1B but the Twins really didn't NEED Gallo at 1B either given the options they had (Solano, Kirilloff, Julian, Miranda). With Duval out there it was baffling to me why the Twins FO went for Gallo who furthered the redundancy of LH hitting OF's. Duval got off to a red hot start for the Red Sox and then got hit on the wrist by a pitch and missed some time. He's back in the Boston lineup hitting 4th or 5th and playing all 3 OF positions.

To me, it's still unclear if his not playing CF was for the rest of THIS season or the rest of his career. I'd like a clarification. I'm not sure how much rest he would need or how beneficial it would be. A couple hits last night was nice, but certainly not to be expected very much in the future. He's a black hole in our lineup. I think they should put him on the IL and see what a month of rest would do. Does he need further surgery? Do it now and try your best to get him healthy. Is it going to be a chronic pain and essentially not fixable? Find a trading partner...ANY trading partner, cut the cord and move on. Our big decision a couple of years ago was Buxton or Berrios, who do we keep?? We had endless and interesting discussion on TD about this. Turns out neither were worth keeping.

The Reds trade for Mahle is bar far the worst because of the talent we gave up and what we've ultimately gotten and will get (Mahle won't be back). Paddock still has some potential upside. Arraez won't hit .400 this year or any other, but he WILL be a consistent hitter with little power for the rest of his career. Maybe we should have offered Polanco instead and gone with Julien/Farmer at 2B. Hindsight is always 20/10 looking back. Jorge Lopez is disappointing because he has the talent and the stuff but he's lost all his confidence. The Twins are right to have put him on I.L. to give him some time. They should probably do the same with Buxton. This FO has "missed" more than they've hit on trades. I give them credit for shipping Donaldson off to the Yankees. That's a big win in any calculation. Getting Sonny Gray for Chase Petty was good. But I'd like to see them pull off something truly beneficial to the team because it's clear the Twins are a mess right now and I place most of the blame on Buxton and Correa. Those two MUST be good to great for the Twins to be good to great and neither has been anywhere near good this season.

I drafted Buxton for my fantasy baseball team. We play 4 outfielders and 4 DH's. Right now I can't start him ahead of Luis Robert, Seiya Suzuki, Alex Kirilloff, Eloy Jimenez as OF, and Zeke Duran (whose playing quite well for the Rangers), Gerardo Perdomo-who, even though he's a switch hitter has to let Nick Amed Start 2 games a week against RH pitchers, Adam Duval-just back from injury, and Jaren Duran of the Red Sox who now has to squeeze in playing time with Duval, Verdugo and Yoshido. I just picked up Mickey Moniak who's in the same situation with Trout, Taylor and Hunter Renfroe for the Angels for playing time. Buxton just can't beat out any of these 9 guys the way he's playing now. I'm of the opinion that they should just put Byron on the IL and give him time to get to some definition of healthy. He is less than half the player he could be as an exclusive DH. But with this horrible slump he's terrible. If he's not healthy enough to play the field and he can't steal bases his health is also affecting his hitting. He's not really healthy enough to play right now.

Thanks Doc Bauer, for going into greater detail in how I feel about this. I agree with you 100%.

No. Who would you prioritize keeping over him?

Yes. Choosing Reardon (although I cheated somewhat and went with a $1 Worthington or Perranoski rather than Ron Davis) the only reason people would pick Reardon over Eddie G, Aggie or the best the Twins have ever had--Joe Nathan, is to save crucial dollars to have a guy like Oliva, Puckett, Carew, Mauer or Killebrew at a position. For me, in this exercise, it was to maximize star power at certain positions, true difference makers where the talent drop off from say, Allison to Oliva, was just too steep. Morneau is a value play at $3. Mack is a value play in LF at $3 because while he's not Larry Hisle, he light years ahead of Dan Gladden. The fall off at catcher from Mauer to Earl Battey means you HAVE to have Mauer. The extra one dollar is vital to spend on a player who's not just good, but a difference maker. It's also why everybody who did this picked Johan Santana as their SP. It will be interesting to see when Devlin comes out with another version of this that maybe expands to a LH & RH starting pitching and bullpen guy. Expands DH choices to include Cruz and maybe allow Killebrew to be listed at a value at 3B and DH as well as 1B. Does Lyman Bostock get listed at a LF, CF or both? And what will his value be?

chpettit19 and jmlease1 you both make good counterpoints to what I wrote. I think we're actually fairly close in how we see this. Each of us would have probably given the ball to Gray to start the 5th and hoped he could have a relatively clean, scoreless inning and finish with between 90-95 pitches through 5 innings. The fact that two of the buttons Rocco pushed for his bullpen (Moran and Jorge Lopez) completely blew up is probably what got this topic started anyway. If Moran comes in and throws 2 scoreless innings and Lopez closes down the 9th Rocco and all of us here on TD are geniuses. So that leads me to another question. What are your thoughts on Anthony Bass as a veteran who could help our BP? Assuming the Twins are smart enough to put Maeda in the BP when he returns, those two arms could have a tremendous stabilizing effect on the pen and give Rocco more reliable options. At this point, I think Varland has earned his spot as a #5 starter on this team.

YES!! Both Kirilloff and Julien should play more against LH pitchers. These guys get on base! Lewis should be playing as well regardless of the pitcher. The only factor that should matter with Lewis and Kirilloff is whether they just need a rest to give them more time to round into everyday lineup shape. A Julien/Farmer platoon is O.K. with me, but Julien just simply gets on base. He should see more LH pitching. On another topic, has anyone else noticed that Lewis does not yet have a walk this season and only had one walk in his time with the Twins last year?? He's at 100 AB's with ONE walk. The kid is talented and I believe he will be a star. But he's literally swinging at everything. He needs to be more selective.

This is a very interesting year for the Twins based on the talent in this draft, a top 5 pick, and 3 picks in the first 49 selections and a LOT of money to allocate. There are college and high school outfield bats that are VERY GOOD. There is a small but reasonable chance the Twins could have a shot a Skenes, the #2 overall rated guy and the best pitching prospect since Cole and Strasburg. And then there are these 5 guys you ran through who could all be available at #34 or #49 or even in rounds #3-#5. Falvey and Levine were brought here to develop pitchers. Most of our rotation has been traded for. Depending on how the first 4 picks fall we could have a highly rated college outfield bat, a phenom pitching prospect or a highly thought of high school outfield bat. But these pitching prospects you've listed are also very interesting. Looking forward to seeing how this all plays out. Will there be more "insider information" mocks coming out we can have fun speculating about??

Great Job Met Stadium Usher! Lost of names that are "Blasts from the Past."

I will be contrary to the prevailing logic that there's nothing to see here. Gray was frustrated at being treated like Chris Archer LAST year. He's still chaffing at Rocco's quick hooks. A pitcher that has thrown 79 pitches through four innings isn't in any sort of groove but with a 4-2 lead show me a starter who wants to come out with the clear chance of a win if he can throw a scoreless 5th. I predict Gray is gone at season's end. That, coupled with the probable parting of ways with Maeda and Mahle leaves the Twins with Lopez, Ryan, Ober and Varland with maybe Paddock. Nobody in AA or AAA has shown they are ready to step up and be counted on. To me, this points to the need make a trade either at this year's deadline or in the off season to bring in at least one more reliable SP. I will also point out (again) that with the current state of our BP Anthony Bass is out there and wouldn't cost anything in terms of player capitol to sign and stabilize our BP. He had a 1.41 ERA in 48 games with the Marlins last year and followed that up with a 1.74 ERA in another 28 games for the Blue Jays after a deadline deal. Bass can pitch on multiple days and pitch effectively. He has a proven track record as a quality BP arm.