Thrylos

There is another factor here: Fielding. Lucas Duda at first is just about as good with the glove as Jim Thome was at first when he played for the Twins...

Tyler Austin is career .272/.345/.592 off LHPs... It is not only the rotation. It is the pen as well and Cleveland has 3 good lefties there: Brad Hand, Oliver Perez, and Tyler Olson...

Gardner, Judge, Hicks, Stanton on one vs. Bird on the other. Of course the Yankees chose 1B for Austin last season. This does not say as much about Austin as about their other options in other positions. In the high minors he ended up in the same teams as Jake Cave,Mason Williams, Clint Frazier, and Billy McKinney (the last 3 top 100 prospects at several seasons.) It is a numbers and opportunity game.

Nelson Cruz might have an opinion on that...

This is actually the best argument for why Duda is not necessary as a platoon player on the MLB roster, along with the fact that Cruz had .819 OPS vs RHP and .932 OPS vs LHP. That takes care of the 2 spots that Duda can play. If Austin is to make the club it will be in a PT role mainly PH and OF (and occasional 1B and DH.) His main competition will be Cave and maybe Astrudillo, both of whom have options. Austin is better that Grossman at OF btw. He is a serviceable corner OF. The fact that Molitor did not play him there is on Molitor not on Austin. In the minors he played OF in twice as many games (327) as 1B (168). I see Duda as Chris Carter's replacement for Rochester.

This assumes that everyone in the current squad has already reached the prime, which is not a good assumption As a matter of fact both Kepler's and Polanco's contracts take care of their prime years. Pitching is a different story and indeed they will likely need to add a starter or two at some point to be competitive this post-season. If all goes well, I hope it is by this trading deadline.

Polanco is a switch hitter. Last season he hit .317/.387/.457 vs. RHP. He needs work from the right side.

Now if the Twins extend Rosario, I expect they give first base gloves to both Larnach and Kirilloff starting this Spring Training.

The biggest obstacle for Gordon is to finish a season strong and not hitting below the Mendoza line in the second half. He needs to improve that before one even considers him as anything more than a potential utility player in the majors. Arraez lost some ground because of injury, but came back full force. The worst batting average for any stop in his career has been .298 and worst OBP .345. Schoop is in an one year deal and would be leaving just in time for Arraez to slot in as the starting 2B in 2020. Arraez does not belong in the same sentence with Gordon... But this is for Polanco. And by all indications he will be the present and future SS for the Twins. If the Twins will need to accommodate Lewis and Javier in the future, that would be a great problem to have, and I am sure that they find a way to do it. But not today

Well worth it and a great deal for the Twins. The greatest deal about this, however, might be that now that the Twins would have at least one person under contract after 2019, the conspiracy theories may cease and desist

The problem of moving Romero to the pen permanently, is that if they Twins do that, they will be running out of starting prospects who are close with top of the rotation potential. Given the fact that the organization appears allergic to trading prospects for top of the rotation pitchers, this can signal future trouble. That said, a move to the pen is not a permanent situation. It took Chris Sale dominating in the pen for 2 seasons before he became an ace. I think that a year in the pen for Romero working towards becoming a better pitcher might do wonders for his development as a starter. Four of the penciled in rotation arms this season are free agents next off-season, so there will be plenty of room for Romero.

Javier has pretty much the highest ceiling of any hitter as far as prospects in the Twins' organization go, and good to see him ranked this high here.

I think that it will serve the Twins to give Rooker more time in the outfield. The reason? If you exclude Rooker, other than 19 year old DSL league Frankie Martinez who is a switch hitter, the top 13 OFs in OPS in all levels of the organization are LHH and many LH throwers as well. Also, other than maybe Chris Williams (8th round pick in 2018) Rooker is pretty much it as far as right hand power prospects go. As a fielder, he is better at the OF than Wilingham, Arcia, and Grossman, and the Twins have trotted all of those out there before...

Link here, if you are interested: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/lets-talk-about-a-bunch-of-proposed-changes-to-baseball/

I know that the players would like to impose penalties to teams with a bad record, but I suspect that the league would counter with hard salary caps and floors, and they will not like it a bit. Those things have to go together.

John Danks

Not sure what to think of Enlow at this point. His fastball did hike a couple of ticks, his curve was fine, but his changeup did not move. Still young, it is more than perfectly fine to work at one thing at a time, and it seems that he worked on velocity, but he really needs a third pitch badly, if he wants to be a starter. This might be compounded in 2019 by the fact that the FSL is such a pitcher's league, making any improvement in the numbers maybe not as meaningful as noted. I'd really look at two things for Enlow in 2019: Improvement in command and game planning (using K% as an indicator - no reason that it has to be so low.) And the development of an above average third pitch. Still he has plenty of time ahead of him to be successful; that said, there is talk about Romero being a reliever because he "just has 2 pitches" and "suspect endurance"; well, Enlow's stuff is behind Romero's, including endurance...

Sure. Give me a name of a free agent (because "sign" is the operational word) better than Perez that would have agreed to an one year deal with an option. Should they have traded for a better pitcher? For sure. But that's a different ask

Rhymes with voodoo

With both Kepler and Rosario being able to play CF if necessary, I think that Austin will be it.

Agree with the top 3. I'd rank number 7 right after that. I like number 8. I'd rank it fourth. Then 11 So 1 2 3 7 8 11 10 12 14 13 9 5 6 4 16 15 17 Looks like there are a handful more.

"Likely" is miles apart from "maybe", which what seems to be the Twins' front office position and invested $4M to find out. If not, he will "likely" be better than Gonsalves or Duke/Belisle who will be the 2018 players he will be replacing, if he does not "become Arrieta". And he has a higher probability of "becoming Arrieta" than Gonsalves does.

Rortvedt had a breakthrough season. I think that his overall numbers in Fort Myers do not indicate how good he was: Eventhough he hit lefties and righties equally well at Cedar Rapids (.708 OPS against LHP and .711 OPS against RHP) at Fort Myers he hit .269/.349/.425 vs RHP (pretty exceptional at that league for a catcher) and .184/.295/.184 against LHP. Better league, tougher lefties. He will adjust he is just 21 years old. Will probably need another part season at Fort Myers at least to get better against lefties before he moves up.

True. However one needs to get a bit more granular with that. He has struck out 20.7% with his changeup and 21.8% with his slider (career numbers). His sinker induces 60.4% ground ball rate. Those are not bad numbers, esp. for a back of the rotation guy. His problem is his four seamer and curve that are pretty awful. Last season opponents hit .422 off his four seamer (vs. 286 off his sinker) and 37.5% of the flyballs off his curve were home runs (that moved his overall to 18.2%). Getting rid of those pitches that he threw 25% of the time will go a long way towards improvement. If one can see that opportunity by simply looking at publicly available numbers, I am sure that the Twins saw even more, because they have more data.

To put things into perspective: a. Perez is 27 years old. Here are Jake Arrieta's numbers up to his age 27 season in Baltimore: 5.46 ERA, 4.72 FIP, 1.472 WHIP, 7.0 K/9, and 4.0 BB/9; so far Perez's numbers are: 4.63 ERA, 4.44 FIP, 1.479 WHIP, 5.5 K/9, 3.2 BB/9. In the ballpark, if not better. It is not the first time that a 27 year old moved to another team and blossomed. b. Texas (like Baltimore for Arrieta) are not known to develop pitchers though their systems. c. Some pitchers are late bloomers. Cleveland's Klubel and Carasco and Houston's Keuchel are in the category of pitchers who really did not do much until their age 26 or 27 season. The list includes more, and a certain 5 time Cy Young award winner and HOF lefty. d. Perez at some point was baseball's #17 prospect according to BA and #15 prospect according to BP, so there is some talent there. e. We are talking about the Twins fifth starter. Not their opening day starter. I would argue that Perez will be better than Gonsalves based of what we have seen so far by both. Perez's 2018 in the majors was better than Gonsalves's, so the risk is minimal for the Twins. On the other hand, if Perez pulls an Arrieta, the Twins have a bargain. If the Twins get something close to what the Cubs got from Arrieta in 2014 and 2015 for $11.5 million for both seasons, I suspect that there won't be many detractors... f. If he does not work out, he can pitch in the pen/get cut while the younger pitchers had some time to develop further in AAA and replace him for a cost of $4 million of the Twins (which is less than 1/3 of what Phil Hughes will receive in 2019...) I also suspect that he will be better than Matty Belisle was in the pen...