Thrylos

The AAA starter is TBD (same as the AA), but I'd love to see the Twins have a hard time making a decision, if, let's say, Romero opens the season with a no hitter while Hughes is Hughes and cannot get high A bats out...

I second that opinion on Ben Rodriguez based on what I saw this Spring. Big guy who plays much smaller as fast as speed and plate coverage goes. He will hit with power, he does have the frame, but seems like he has the ability to avoid bad swings, which goes very far. There is no way he is a catcher at 6'6" and his glove and footwork have a bit to go at first base, esp going after lower balls, but I think that it is a matter of reps. Really impressive for a 38th round pick.

Eyeballing those, looks like about 9 K/9 from the pen this season. Not bad. If it happens.

J.T. Realmoto's bone bruise on his back, which landed him on the DL, will stop you from making that trade; at least until you figure that he is back and healthy.

Two of the things that have to be mentioned about this game (and are positive) are: The Twins' ability to come back from a situation that Baltimore's win probability was 96.3% at some point, instead of going belly up. Molitor's substitutions when the Twins where hitting (LaMarre PR for Morrison & Grossman PH for Buxton) were essential for this, as was his move to play with 5 infielders to get to that inning ending double play at the 10th. It seems that relay of interesting information and correct use of that information is happening. What is important is for the Twins to win series. They have 2 more games and can win the series at Baltimore.

Déjà vu all over again.

90-72 Win the AL Central Offensive player: Miguel Sano Most home runs: Miguel Sano Starting pitcher: Jose Berrios Relief Pitcher: Addison Reed Twins rookie: Gabriel Moya

Logan Morrison's contract is not an one year contract... The Twins have an option for 2019 as well. Other than Lynn, potentially, who would have given a long term contract to the other 2?

Good stuff. Re: Rosario and zone judgement. O-swinging% is just one indicator of zone judgement and really need to look at additional indicators, as well as progression, esp. for players who have not yet reached their primes. His O-swinging% has dropped from 45.6% to 41.7 to 37.6 while his O-contact% at those pitches has increased from 63.5% to 65.5 to 72.0. Also his K% has dropped from 24.9% and 25.7% to 18% while his BB% has increased from 3.2% and 3.4% to 5.9% In other words, swinging outside the zone is not a cardinal sin, if you make contact. And he makes good contact: His batting average increased from .267 and .269 to .290 while his BABIP actually decreased from .332 and .338 to .312. If he adds those .020 points back to his BABIP (which in not a guarantee; but in 2017 he hit the ball as hard as in the previous years and with pretty much the same pull-straight-opposite values, indicating that it might be an outlier) we are talking about a .310 or so hitter and close to an .875 OPS (up from his .835 last season...) I liked what I saw in ST from both Kepler and Buxton and I think that the will have good starts with Kepler continue taking meaningful PAs against LHP like he did this Spring

Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch --- This is my last Spring Training Notes piece for this season. As with the previous seasons I finish my Spring Training notes with a prediction of how the Twins will do this season based on what I have seen this Spring. I think that 2018 will be an interesting season for the Twins. They improved a lot in the off-season addressing some of their glaring weaknesses, namely starting and relief pitching. On the other hand, there are some situations that can be disrupting for the team. Here is a closer examination: Starting Pitching: Jake Odorizzi and Lance Lynn are light years ahead of the likes of Bartolo Colon (15 starts), Hector Santiago (15 starts), Phil Hughes (9 starts), and a whole lot of others (16 starts) who started in 2017. Ervin Santana is a question mark and that was even before his injury that seems to be lingering into May. On the other hand, I believer that improvement from Jose Berrios (primarily) and Kyle Gibson (secondarily) as well as potential positive contribution by Trevor May, will offset the loss and regression of Santana. Based on what I have seen, Fernando Romero might be the best pitcher of the Twins at this point, and if healthy he can make a tremendous contribution in the second half of the season. Bullpen: The Twins did improve in the bullpen. Part of it was addition, part of it was subtraction. The question is whether they improved enough to have a top bullpen. Addison Reed, Fernando Rodney, and Zach Duke are useful players with varying degree of usefulness. However, does any of them strike fear in opposing batters? Would any of them have a place in one of the top bullpens? Maybe Reed, as far as the second question goes. Trevor Hildenberger and Taylor Rogers were hit hard and often in the Spring and not sure how this will translate into the season. Other than Gabriel Moya, and maybe John Curtiss and Jake Reed, there are not many reserves who project as "lights out". And that is what the new and improved Twins' pen misses. Maybe the aforementioned May, the injury-nursing Phil Hughes (who is projected in long relief, but way back in the day was Mariano Rivera's successful set up man.) or possibly Michale Pineda might jump into that role. Alternatively, depending on the team's record come July, a trade for a "lights out" arm, might be in the works. All in all an improved bullpen, but in no means a top bullpen. It is hard not to improve one of the 5 worst bullpens in the league, but still it needs work. Position Players: The Twins' young core seems much improved from last season: Miguel Sano who has the allegations now behind him and can focus 100% on baseball will play with a chip on his shoulder and will make some damage. Byron Buxton is a much better hitter than I have seen him be previously, and based on what I saw this spring, he will finally bring his speed on the table. Max Kepler is also improved. He is taking meaningful PAs against LHPs, something that was not true last season. Jorge Polanco's head was in his positive test all Spring and it showed. Hopefully he will come back ready in the second half. Logan Morrison will be a good addition and if he hits behind Sano, he will give him the protection he did not have in 2017. Eddie Rosario was hurt most of the Spring and I did not have much of an opportunity to form an opinion, but if he repeats 2017, and there is no reason he could not, the Twins will be happy. With Eduardo Escobar moving into at starting SS at least for the first half of the season, you have a Twins' 2018 double play combination that hit 55 HRs in 2017, second only to Cleveland. His double play partner, Brian Dozier, and his free agency status might be a distraction this season. He talked a lot about it, as he did about the decreased FA compensation this off-season. He also did not do very well with the bat this Spring. Not sure whether the two things are related or not, and hopefully it will not carry into the season. The same with the other upcoming free agent, Joe Mauer. Mauer's situation is different and Mauer has not been vocal about it and I don't think that it will affect him. It will be great if Dozier and Mauer will speak with their bats regarding their upcoming free agency. Competition: Do you remember when the Twins' reigned over a weak AL Central, other than times when one of the other teams was super competitive and they were neck to neck? This season the AL Central will look a lot like that with Cleveland staying about the same on paper and the improved Twins, the only teams with a winning record in 2017 and the rest of the division weakening. Maybe not the White Sox, if the young players surprise, but Detroit and Kansas City are in full rebuild mode. According to fangraphs, the Twins have the second easiest schedule (on paper), but this should not be much of a relief, because Cleveland has the easiest. Prediction: The 2017 team won 85 games, but overachieved. I think that the 2018 Twins will finish with a record of 90-72, securing at least a wild card spot, and the AL Central will come down to the wire between the Twins and Cleveland. Unfortunately, unless there is major improvement (or surprises) in the bullpen , this does not seem like a team that will move deep into the post-season, unless the bats go crazy. And this can happen. So you have it. This is my last Spring Training Notes post, since the Twins start the season this Thursday at Baltimore, after they play an exhibition game in Washington against the Nationals. To see all the notes and coverage of the 2018 Twins' Spring Training, including my daily live reports from Fort Myers in the second half of March, please visit here

Only issue with that train of thought is that those numbers were 2017 numbers and include Odorizzi playing mainly against the AL East, Lynn against the NL Central (both better than the 2017 AL Central that the rest of the numbers are). Also the AL Central competition in 2018 will be worse than that of 2017. I expect that the FIP numbers will go down, maybe down even half a run, just because of that, Santana and Hughes (who knows when they will be ready and how they will return) notwithstanding

FWIW, the MLB said that there was an "absence of contemporaneous substantiation" (their words) of the accuser's claims, which in legalese is pretty close to what you typed up there...

Ryan LaMarre: career ST OPS: .834 career MiLB OPS: .719 career MLB OPS: .157 Would you give him a shot?

I just hope that both the interested parties and the rest of the world put this thing behind them, and move their attention onto the upcoming 2018 season, and we hear nothing else about it.

Congrats!

Pick one: Luke Bard: 10-1/3 IP, 2 BB, 7 K, 7 R, .225 OBA, 1.06 WHIP, 6.10 ERA Tyler Kinley: 10 IP, 6 BB, 11 K, 5 ER, .237 OBA, 1.50 WHIP, 4.50 ERA Gabriel Moya: 10 IP, 2 BB, 10 K, 1 R, .171 OBA, 0.80 WHIP, 0.90 ERA

If that were the case Duffey will be there ahead of Hildenberger and Moya, since he is the veteran and not these 2. This round of cuts means that at least one of Kinley and Moya will open the season with the big team.

I have been accused of bias against Kirilloff, and have him ranked 13th, two spots behind Baddoo, in my Twins prospect list, but his hit tool is real. As a matter of fact, if I were to compare him with Max Kepler at the same age, I'd say that Kirilloff is ahead of where Kepler was then with the hit tool, they are pretty close as far as fielding and OF routes go, but Kepler had much better arm. I don't thing that he is a wasted pick at all, I just don't think that he is an OF (as Logan Morrison is not an OF, for example, but he is not a bad player)

I think that he can be impressive with the bat, but I just do not think that he is an OF. I saw him play this spring at RF. In addition to the bad routes that he admitted, the huge issue is his arm. He threw 3 times to the cut off man in the game I saw. Twice he bounced the ball once, the third time he bounced it twice. Not sure how much of that is TJ-related, but there were concerns about his arm even when healthy. From here it looks like first base might be his future and I suspect that he will start taking turns in that position as well....

Great stuff! The one additional thing I noticed seeing Rooker yesterday is that he really gets to anything in the middle of the zone and away, ball or strike and gets at it hard. The "word on the street" has been that he was a "launch angle" guy, but this is not really true, since he can get at balls on top of the zone and hit them for line drives with his compact swing. Where he has problem is in the inside pitches balls or strikes. He just cannot deal with either. If that second pitch was taken yesterday, then it was after striking out in his second PA by trying to swing at a ball that was about to hit his knee. Definitely fixable, but something to work on and I thought that it had to be noted. Huge future and the heir apparent to Joe Mauer, but he might need another year or so both with the bat and the glove at first.

You forgot to call the party those congressmen are attached to. Please do so. Even if it might pain (you)

'cause you asked: There are 2 forms of B-12: Methylcobalamin that can be used intranasally, orally, and parenterally, and hydroxocobalamin that can be used only parenterally i.e. with injection. Methylcobalamin should eventually be metabolized to hydroxocobalamin that is the active form, by a healthy body. Hydroxocobalamin and iron cocktail injections are somewhat common for anemia treatment. Bioavailability of the oral and nasal forms are about 10% of that of the injectible form, thus the preference...

He can play in EST games

Same substance that Ervin Santana tested positive. Not sure that Aybar is an automatic to make the team, since both Adrianza and Escobar can play SS. This means that Erick Aybar, Jake Cave, Zack Granite, Robbie Grossman, and potentially even Ryan Lamarre or Brock Stassi fighting for 2 positions. The suspension opens a 40-man spot until mid-season as well that opens the possibility to be filled from outside the roster. Not many free agents left out there, but the Twins are looking for a home for Kennys Vargas as well... SS Adeiny Hechavarria currently of the Rays is owed $5.9 million for 2018. Might be a trade that benefits both.

These guys bring two different skill sets. In the same league (IL) Cave hit .324/.367/.554, with .403 wOBA, 156 wRC+, 6.1 BB% & 27.6 K% and stole 1 base and Granite .338/.392/.475, with .386 wOBA, 144 wRC+, 7.7 BB% & 10.9 K% and stole 15 bases. They both can play CF, but Garver is much better there.