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Thrylos

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Everything posted by Thrylos

  1. Thrylos
    For two reasons: 1. He has to develop his secondary pitches (SL, CH; maybe drop the curve as well) which are at best average right now 2. He has to improve his command that is spotty. He can throw 98 mph fastball past minor league pitchers, but that does not cut in the majors (ask Mr. Hoey, James)
  2. Thrylos
    I think that Alcala is seriously underrated. Lots of similarities to his stuff with Graterol and similar command issues and similar bullpen concerns. Was the Astros' number 5 prospect according to fangraphs last July. I think that in raw stuff and ceiling he is likely the second best Twins' pitcher. Somewhat high risk though...
  3. Thrylos
    To quote Yogi Berra, it ain't over till it's over. There is a lot of time left even before Pitchers and Catchers reports. I would not believe in everything the FO tells reporters to write. Many times these messages are not set directly to fans but to agents and players they have been negotiating with, trying to create a negotiating advantage... Give it month or so.
  4. Thrylos
    I don't follow the logic above. Common sense says that: If you give them a B for the new player acquisitions, an A- for the new field management, and you believe that they achieved that by spending fewer resources than expected, then resource management should be given at least a B, not a D-, since those resources were efficiently spent. Just a logic exercise. Unless the goal is to spend the most money, instead of building the best team (and those things are not always related...)
  5. Thrylos
    Take away the first 14 games of the season, and Polanco had a slash line of .293/.344/.438 with.339 wOBA and 112 wRC+ That's higher wRC+ than Trea Turner and Jurickson Profar and higher wOBA than Chris Taylor and Turner. Plus/minus and DRS are friendlier to Polanco than UZR, and even from the 3 UZR components, the only below average and the one that drives the whole thing down is errors. Polanco is a streaky player and needs to play every day to get going. There are some issues with the errors, but most of those I believe are from pressing (and he does that) and will go away as he matures as a veteran. Sleeper? Not as far as I am concerned. He has star potential. At some point as a prospect I had him higher ranked than Buxton I think that there will be a place for Polanco, Lewis, and Javier in the same team. From the 3 Javier is the best shortstop with the glove, and shortstop is a glove first position. Let's not forget that the guy who most consider the best shortstop to play the game, ended up with a .666 OPS, 87 OPS+, and a 90 wRC+.
  6. Thrylos
    Speaking of hurting, do you think that having their highest paid player not give 100% every time and publicly admitting it and justifying it will help or hurt the attitude and development of the Twins' young core? Is that who you want to be their role model?
  7. Thrylos
    I agree with the opinion that the Twins are looking to see how their young players, mainly Sano and Buxton, and to a lesser degree Berrios, Kepler, May and Romero and the pen, perform and then decide what they are going to do come June and July. If these guys play at their potential (and they have done it before in varying degrees and for a varying length of time) the Twins could be close to or even ahead of a weakened Cleveland team by mid-season. And this is not a bad strategy by any means, because no matter what (even if they signed Machado and Harper and Kimbrel and Keuchel), if the young core is not playing up to its potential, the Twins would not be a competitive team in the postseason, and might not even make it to there. On the other hand, if they "treading water" by that point, they will start selling at the mid-point and the situation will not improve and would have to make some big decisions come the next offseason (and they have the budget flexibility to do so...)
  8. Thrylos
    Here is the pertinent quote from Olney's writeup (behind ESPN paywall) In other words, there is zero evidence that the Twins are looking at either player. There is only speculation that they could maybe even potentially be in, because they maybe could possibly afford to be in. I just don't think it is happening. Disliking it when national writers bring people's hopes up based on speculative guesses, and this seems one of these cases...
  9. Thrylos
    That statement would had bee truth if both players were beyond their primes. They still have to reach their primes. They still can become superstars. One down season and let's call them busts. Under the same logic Torii Hunter was a bust as well...
  10. Thrylos
    Great stuff! Totally agree on Eades and Stashak. In my prospect list last offseason regarding Stashak, among other things I wrote: His small sample size success at the Chattanooga pen at the end of last season, makes one wonder whether he can shine in the pen if his fastball gets a couple of ticks. It looks like this is what happened. His FB looks like mid-90s from 88-92 as a starter. He had mainly two above average pitches (FB & CU) so the transition made sense. Curve looks close to plus, but need to look in person. Alcala is an interesting story. He is pretty early in his development besides being 23. He was signed as an International Free Agent at 20 years old, instead of the customary 16 and 17. So his body is that of a 23 year old, but his baseball acumen is that of a 19 year old. I think that he will be a later riser and that he is another year or 2 away because of his later start. For this reason, I suspect that the Twins will make everything possible to keep him developing as a starter. Another worthwhile name to keep in mind for this list is Rande LeBlanc. Had some arm issues, but if healthy I can see him making the transition to the pen more than I see him as a starter.
  11. Thrylos
    I'd add Shawn Kelley to the list
  12. Thrylos
    A quote from his Wikipedia page: "He is compared to be a cross between Johan Santana and Greg Maddux by Jason Parks of Baseball Time in Arlington."
  13. Thrylos
    Are you suggesting that the Twins will look much better supplemented with a proven bat? If you are, this is exactly what they did this offseason: 2018 numbers: Machado: 122 OPS+, .377 wOBA, 141 wRC+ Harper: 133 OPS+, .376 wOBA, 135 wRC+ Nelson Cruz: 135 OPS+, .361 wOBA, 134 wRC+ Slice it any way you want, and Cruz's bat in 2018 (a down season for him btw) was pretty close to that of Machado and Harper. The commitment is not, allowing them to spend extra money for other needs (pitching). Plus his clubhouse influence I suspect will be better than that of a Machado.
  14. Thrylos
    Are you sure that what he said was something that came from the Twins' organization vs. his own opinion?
  15. Thrylos
    If spending $ vs winning was the object of an MLB franchise, I would totally agree with this article. However, here are 1000 words to describe a little told fact: The size of the payroll does not correlate well to winning. (.500 record is 324 on the above graph.) Indeed Payroll is Resource Allocation. The Twins have X dollars to spend every year, just like every corporation. They have been allocating resources in revamping their minor league systems, the player development strategy and infrastructure, they built a new academy in the DR and state of the art facilities at Fort Myers, and added a whole bunch of people in the baseball operations and scouting parts of the game. Those are asset allocations as well, and if I were to bet (need to find a graph), organizational/farm strength correlates better with wins (albeit future wins, as a lead indicator) than MLB payroll. For one, I am not interesting on how much $ the Twins are spending on MLB players, I am interested in them winning. And it has been a while...
  16. Thrylos
    Neshek was hurt and missed the best part of 2 seasons and then took him a while to get back to form. His problem was mechanics and throwing strikes. It is a different case here
  17. Thrylos
    It will be hard to add 1-2 top of the rotation arms and extend their own future stars, if they commit $35-40M a year to a single player, plus putting most of your eggs in one budget highly increases the risk. If the Twins were willing to trade top prospects for cheaper controllable top of the rotation pitching, would have been a different story. However, I am not sure that they are willing to do this at this point, not that what they are doing is "wrong" by any means. It is a strategy.
  18. Thrylos
    I hope that the Twins bring up the best 25 North. And that he figures it out
  19. Thrylos
    This is exactly what I thought when I heard of Ozoria. Vielma was a bit taller, but not 150 lbs wet when he came to the Twins I think that Vielma's arm seems to be a bit better, but Ozoria's bat projects better than Vielma's. Good to see the Twins getting a very young guy with some potential and with up to 10+ years of team control (if he pans out.)
  20. Thrylos
    Can he pitch?
  21. Thrylos
    Nice try Unlike Cuddyer, Puckett took the team on his back and won two rings, and did not mouth afterwards...
  22. Thrylos
    For me Cuddyer's tenure with the Twins has been marked by his lackadaisical effort to break the ball loose from Pierczynski in game 163 at Chicago, and his nonchalant post game comments after the loss, like it was just another ballgame... The poster boy of embracing and applauding the just not good enough era of Twins' baseball.
  23. Thrylos
    That's a bit of a myth. Fact: Hildenbergen's ERA/Opponents OPS per month. March/April 4.15/.827 May 1.93/.613 June 3.55/.641 July 5.40/.818 August 6.75/.971 Sept 14.04/.949 He really started falling apart at the end of June, and other than May and bit of June he was not all that great. His March/April was bad, but was lucky that did not reflect to his ERA. Only 2 months of the season he was an acceptable MLB pitcher.
  24. Thrylos
    Then the Twins should be more than fine with their pen since Taylor Rogers had the 10th highest fWAR in the majors, tied with Aroldis Chapman and ahead of Craig Kimbrel,Dellin Betances, Jeurys Familia, David Robertson et al.
  25. Thrylos
    WAR is a horrible metric to use if one wants to measure reliever success. WPA is about as good as it gets
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