Thrylos

I'd like to see what a new mindset in the organization regarding pitching will do for pitchers like Stewart (and others.) That said, I'd have a hard time ranking him above Jorge who was much better than him at Fort Myers and probably at least equal in Chattanooga. His ball rate was a bit alarming at AA. For some reason, save Gonsalves, all starters in Chatanooga had below average K-rates and this might be a reflection to the pitching staff there and/or game planning. Artaega's highest level ever, and not unlikely that he is over his head...

^^^^^ This. Baseball people at any level of this organization should have to prove that they are not part of the problem to retain their jobs. Period. This includes their pitching coach of course, and I am not sure what his defense would be other than maybe a version of "I cannot recall" or paraphrasing certain Dead Kennedys' lyrics...

For what is worth, I'd love the Twins to hire coaches and manager who a. have had some results to show and b. appreciate and rely on their paycheck for a living, so they are motivated to perform. Bonds might be the best hitter to ever play the game, but satisfies neither of the above conditions. Heck, I'd hire Pete Rose (who satisfies both of those conditions) before I'd hire Bonds for that position...

I had Graterol 28th in my last off-season list, good to see a player who did not throw a single pitch in the US soil get love Totally warming up to Granite. 56 SB with a close to 1:1 BB:K ratio in AA and close to .300 BA is pretty close to eye popping. Total lack of power or not. He is putting close to Ben Revere numbers (compare their AA numbers) without getting half the attention. I think that Thorpe with 2 seasons out of baseball is ranked pretty high. I'd rather see him throw a pitch (or 200 close to his previous level) to believe that he will actually have a career And, unless you are up for a big surprise, counting down that far makes me think that someone is omitted. A guy who would win the comeback prospect of the year for the Twins. Hint: He had his best season at the plate, played all over the field decently despite some nagging injuries. Former second round draft pick. Agreed re: Rortvedt's ranking. He has all the makings of a stud catcher, if he can adjust to the wooden bat. And he has not yet. Give him another year or two and he could be a top 10 prospect in this organization, but not now... Good stuff. And, officially, the Twins are 0-0

There is no hate of Gordon here. I don't know the guy. And, yes, Polanco should be the SS of the future. He is light years ahead of Gordon. And thankfully, the future is now.

OBP. Read the argument.

You realize that the above was a comparison between Gordon (who will likely be a top 10) player and a player who is playing the same position and is ranked at this level who actually has better numbers than him, right?

FWIW, Vielma (who has zero power and OPS is not a perfect measure of his hitting skill,) had a higher OBP than (almost) everyone's darling Nick Gordon this season, and, of course, has a better glove than the aforementioned. I think that he really did take a turn (albeit small) this season and will not be surprised if he is a 40-man roster addition. Definitely should be ranked higher.

Horizontal. I mean for each column. Vertically. The sample is about 500 people or so whose SLG% and OBPs are measured.

I kinda have to believe that Light is fixable. With the Twins has been like Jim Hoey with a lesser fastball, but what we see does not tell the whole story. He has been relieving only for 2 seasons. And has started both those seasons pretty well as far as BB/9 and WHIP go, and finished all over the place. Could be fatigue. Still has a couple of options left so no reason to give up on him. Slegers has Loek Van Mil written all over him. I bet the Twins will try to turn him into a reliever and when he is not dominating, they will trade him for Brian Fuentes or something. Speaking of relievers Melotakis and Rosario (because that's where I see him end up) are too low I think. They both can be in the Twins pen next season and be an improvement over the likes of Boshers, O'Rourke, and Perkins's ghost.

The author fails to mention that the +/- 5% deviation in that graph is not significant based on sample size...

I am all for anything that will increase his trade value.

Looking at Harrison and Cederoth (and Landa to a lesser extend) that low, is a full testament to the Twins inability to identify, draft, and develop talent. Cederoth's numbers on paper and from 30,000 ft might look 'very good', but if you look at the fact that the second half of his age 23 season in single A ball was 20/33 BB/K, 1.540 WHIP, I find it very hard to say that he can dominate in the majors, when he cannot do that in the Midwest League. Good to see him to play finally, but darn, what a waste of a pick...

And you are calling this optimistic for a team that is about to rebuild and have only young players? (unless you are implying that such an event might be enough cause to make Molitor retire)

This is a good read regarding ACL tears and returning (from the Chicago Tribune after Schwarber's tear.) There are different kinds of tears and they have not said how severe was Ramos'. The last player to return from an ACL tear was Arizona C Tuffy Goshwisch who had surgery in June of 2015 to repair a complete tear. He returned in ST and started the season in the minors (he is a AAAA guy) and did pretty well (.952 OPS) , caught every game and threw out 41% of the runners. He is 33. Ramos just turned 29 and could be back early next season. Allegedly he turned down a 3/$30M extension by the Nats. They might or might not make a qualifying offer, but got to keep in mind that this was a career season for him after a .229/.258/.358 campaign last season. Whether someone was willing to pay much more than that Nats offer regardless of knee situation is questionable. Maybe 3/$36, but I just cannot see it going that high, based on past performance. Plus the Yankees, Red Sox, Giants, and Dodgers are all set in the position. Maybe Detroit, or the Cubs, but I just do not see much market for him among the over-spenders, regardless his knee.

74 pitches thrown. Then they needed 8 more pitchers. Molitor seems to manage like it is a little league team: Let's get everyone in. Players with no future for the Twins should not be playing. Period.

A rebuilding team does not need any old free-agent pitchers. Got to see what you have.

FWIW. Andy MacPhail came in as an outsider when he was 31 years old and was promoted to the boss of baseball operations as a 32 year old. Indeed pretty exciting times, but the new boss needs to have the ability to clean house since day 365, at latest.

I cannot wait for Bert to try to pronounce Brusador Gratenol... Thanks for the updates!!!!

Here is the thing (and this article perfectly describes it) : There are phenomena, like pitch framing, that existed for ever and there are measures that try to quantify that phenomena. Going from qualitative ('he is a great framer') to quantitative ('his framing skills produced x more strikes than the average catcher') is a hard work. And it gets harder as some of the data points (like umpire strike zones) are subjective and movable targets. Are all metrics perfect? No, there is no such a thing. But of course they are better than "gut feelings" and "eyeballing" because there has been a whole lot of effort to go from qualitative to quantitative and from subjective to objective. As there will be more and more data points with the new systems installed that collect raw data, metrics will improve. But sitting down and blasting a metric without even bothering to understand how it is derived and what it is trying to do, is plain lazy. People put some work in developing those, at least try to figure out what a metric is trying to do, and if you try to blast it, blast it with objective criteria (eg. "this particular parameter is not a true measurement of that") vs. subjective (eg. "my eyes tell a different story".) WAR has been killed to death and misused and abused. It is a great metric to show overall performance over a long period of time (a season, a career etc.) and it is better than batting average, home runs and RBI that have been used in the good old days... Now is someone is trying to use WAR for things it was not meant to be, like looking at potential future performance, shame on them, not on WAR... The beauty of baseball is in the fact that there is a great degree of uncertainty that cannot be measured/quantified (how do you quantify UCL conditions or "stuff that happens".) And this uncertainty over 162+ games almost makes predictions based on metrics, practically invalid. Which is the fun part of it On the other hand, metrics are getting better in describing what happened, when and why. Time will tell, but I do foresee a new generation of metrics with all those data points, based on if/when type of situations improving over a lot of metrics like WAR, UZR, etc Just my couple of Lincolns

Great hire. Waiting to see how this off-season start to shape up. Looking forward for the clean up as well...

This is a false statement.

I'd keep Mauer around, but he would have to earn a starting job next Spring. I like his bat more than that of Danny Santana, Grossman, etc as a bench bat. Can definitely see a Vargas/Park/Mauer rotation at 1B/DH next season (with Plouffe non-tendered, of course.) re: Walker: Seriously? The guy swats at minor league breaking stuff like they are flies. Why would anyone think that he can hit anything but mistakes in the majors at this point? If he gets promoted, he would be more embarrassing than Buxton was last season and the beginning of this one...

His list reminds me the ranking of the 2009 top 10 Twins' prospects by BA (link here.) For some reason national list makers do no think is ok not to have 1st round draft picks ranked high in their lists and it is also ok to include International Free Agents within their first couple years of signing... Doing a Top 100 across MLB is very difficult endeavor, on the other hand, but if someone is up for the task, they need to take their time. Gordon will have a hard time cracking my Twins' top 5 this season...

No love for Wander Javier? I'd argue that he and Diaz are ahead of Gordon/Kiriloff at this point