Thrylos

Seth, glad to see you back at it

Caveat that there will be new blood C - Rainis Silva 1B - Brent Rooker 2B - Jorge Polanco 3B - Miguel Sano SS - Wander Javier LF - Royce Lewis CF- Byron Buxton RF- Eddie Rosario DH - Lewin Diaz

10 players, Ty Cobb among them had BABIP higher than Sano's, with Tom McCreery being the overall leader at .390 (Cobb second at .378). Odubal Herrera (.359), Corey Seager (.357), Yelich (.356), Trout (.355), Marte (.354), Votto (.354), Goldschmidt (.354), Cesar Hernandez (.353), Derek Jeter (.350) have had or having career BABIP's at Sano's (.362) neighborhood.

BABIP for hitters (unlike for pitchers) is an individual hitting trait measure and can vary. For example, out dear old friend Kirby Puckett (whose BMI was at Sano's level in his prime) had a career .342 BABIP, much higher that Barry Bonds's (.285), Frank Thomas's (.304) or David Ortiz's (.300) and even Ken Griffey Jr's (.287.) Wonder if there will be any discussion on whether Joe Mauer can sustain his career .341 BABIP too

Sano's career BABIP numbers: .422, .382, .339, .307, .397, .265 (surgery), .315, .396 (MLB), .329 (MLB), .375 (MLB) MLB average BABIP is .362. So it is pretty darn sustainable (and likely will improve for someone who is 3-4 years away from his prime.) And more important 17.25 PA/HR last season (and has been improving) which means that if he had Dozier's PAs last season, he would have hit 41 HR. When Dozier was his age he had 9 HRs between Fort Myers and New Britain. And that is not measured by BABIP. And he is 3-4 year away from his prime. We are talking about a perennial 50-60 HR a season hitter here...

Of course. What I think fair value for Sano is: One MLB starting pitcher on the top 25 under 25 list (even the 2017), one AA+ bat and one AA+ starting arm in the top 25 prospect list. Good luck finding a team that has all of that. The Mets are close (Syndergaard, Ahmed Rosario) but they are missing a high minors top 25 prospect arm. Deals have to make your team better. Not worse.

Sano, again? For real? Hasn't this been discussed to death and beyond the last few weeks? The process is under way. There are no news about it, until there are news about it.

I'd actually offer a contrarian opinion here: If someone can hit .300, with close to 30 HRs and only a 18 K%, I don't want him to take walks That was Rosario's 2017 season. He, (and Polanco 7.5 BB% and 14.3 K%) should be swinging the bats. It works. Because of the title: Rosario, based on his K%, does not have much of a problem with plate discipline... Has lower K% than Dozier, Buxton, Kepler, Sano, Vargas, etc....

Re: Berrios: Last season he improved from 2016. From 17.4 to 22.6% K% and from 12.5 to 7.8 BB%. And in the first half he was a pretty remarkable 23.7 K% and 6.5 BB% I think that his 2017 goal was to be able to throw his fastball for strikes and get ahead, something that he had issues with in 2016. This season his goals should be: a. to build on that, b. mix it up with a third pitch a bit more; esp. against LHB (11.9 BB% and 1.58 WHIP vs. 4.3 BB% and 0.98 WHIP for RHB); he threw the change only 8.6% of the time. Needs to be higher. and c. build up a bit more endurance; which is something that will eventually come.

The Dodgers have shown what the real market price (value) of Dozier is. The Twins should not pay more than that. Either trade him now with a year left, or let him play and give him a qualifying offer, and end up with a high draft pick. Extending aging players who are way older than the club core will not help the club. The Hughes, Capps, Pavano, etc extensions should make people realize that by now. I'd rather see the Twins give the $ towards acquiring a starting pitcher, extending Buxton, Sano, Berrios, etc...

Bit of a legal procedural thing: Based on the CBA, ballclubs cannot do anything about such allegations. They cannot even start an investigation. The MLB office is the only one that can do so. And I think that I saw some place (maybe the Twins comment?) that the MLB is investigating. Don't expect announcements soon, unless civil lawsuits are opened in this case (one way or another)

Must be low on Gordon The Twins #1 "consensus" prospect last off-season, should have a tad more value than that, no?

How would you feel if the Twins got a decent arm for Burdi and Bard last off-season? Prospects have their expiration dates unfortunately, and they are not always as good as advertised. Ask Delmon Young.

Nitpicking, but Should read it is the 9th shortest turnaround for a Major League pitcher in the Tommy John era. It is the shortest, for a professional pitcher, the last 10 seasons or so. Casey Crosby, a high schooler returned after 262 days. Data in the linked article that is utterly confused and confusing on the subject...

Re: Castro. His defensive last season was disappointing, at least as BP metrics go In the same link, you will see that his back up, Chris Gimenez was 3 places above him. Speaking of Gimenez, he was slightly better with the bat (.731 OPS, 97 OPS+ vs .720 OPS, 93 OPS). Gimenez is 4 years older. Gimenez's value is a minor league contract with invite to ST and about $1M if he makes the team. Castro is younger, but there is no way that his value is close to that of Kirrilloff and Javier who if they have another good season, they might shoot to top 50 level prospects. Same with May. Would you get Kirilloff or Javier or May 1:1 for Castro? Nah. Duffey, sure.

Views is not the best way of judging audience engagement with a particular piece of content, since with that metric, someone who is a first and only time user who clicks a link at a third site and spends a second on a piece of content, is treated the same with someone who is a dedicated user and who clicks once and spends 10 minutes reading another piece of content, and does that for a couple hours a day... Views is easy to calculate; you need a bit more of advanced analytics to quantify engagement, which should really be the goal of every digital content provider.

Might not be impressed by their moves, but how about their results? Bit impressed there?

Regarding Duke's 1.04 WHIP: His BABIP was .196, which means that if it were league average his WHIP would normalize to 1.45 that is at the (replacement) level of his other numbers. Cannot really commend on the signing, before we have details of the contract type (MiLB, or MLB) and the amount.

Few thoughts: - I think that TD should a. figure out what problem it solves for its audience and b. focus on its strengths and not focus on trying to fix weaknesses, unless there are some really glaring ones. Figuring out why we all are coming here and staying here and returning here, and base-lining your audience should be the first step. - About writing and this blogging thing: It has it's ups and downs. If you look at the blogging industry these days, it is definitely a down time. Look at writers like LaVelle and Howard Sinker. LaVelle used to write daily pretty much. Sinker twice a week. Even Gleeman does nor write much any more. Podcasts, vlogs/youtube, twitter etc are the thing now. - Writing just to write every day it does take its toll, esp. if you are doing it as a hobby. Looking back to my blog the last 10 years: in the beginning I was at 170's post/year, peaking at 242 posts in 2013 and then sticking around 70 each of the past 4 years. And from those, about 10-15 are daily reports from ST, and 10 more prospect count downs, so my comfort zone is about a post a week. Or so. When I have something to say. - I think that (and that is an opinion that should probably be checked) audience comes to a sports blog site not to get informed about something as soon as something happens (twitter is wonderful for that) or to find what happened in yesterday's game (can't beat beat writers for that), but to hear a particular point of view, find out stuff that cannot find out anywhere else (like Seth's minors info, prospect interviews etc, or Parker's breakdown of particular individual tendencies etc) or (and this is a particularly strong point for TD) to vent (in the forums.) - The other thing I got to mention is that you all need to figure out what you are: bloggers or journalists. If you are the latter, with access, it is hard to criticize fairly the organization. If e.g. St. Peter is your buddy, you just cannot be critical about him e.g. hosting school football games and tearing up the ballpark for no reason. Or e.g. if Goin is your buddy, you just e.g. cannot celebrate that the Twins went another way, because based on the results, he was ineffective. - Find out what you can do and are doing different than others (hint: the forum, and specific exclusive content mentioned) and do it better and do more of it...

Can he pitch?

We are not. This was regarding the comparison of Santana's and Lincecum's peaks, and a peak cannot be more than 4-5 years, esp in a short career. Career-wise, Santana is 120th in fWAR behind Mike Mussina, Tommy John, Curt Schilling, Kevin Brown, Andy Pettitte, Rick Reuschel, Jim Bunning, Juan Marichal, Dwight Gooden, Chuck Finley, David Wells, Frank Tanana, David Cone, Orel Hershiser, etc. and behind some contemporaries lilke CC Sabathia and Cole Hamels, who are short of Hall of Fame pitchers as well. If you got to get Santana there because of his "peak", at least Gooden (another pitcher whose career was cut short) and Lincecum should also be in the discussion. That' why the Lincecum comparison (who, of course, like Santana, I don't see as a Hall of Famer)

7 years is too long. 2008-11 Lincicum: 2.81 ERA, 2.81 FIP, 1.173 WHIP, 997 K, 23.1 fWAR, 2 CY 2004-07 Santana: 2.89 ERA, 3.14 FIP, 0.990 WHIP, 983 K, 24.6 fWAR, 1 CY I'd say that they are pretty darn close.

Any thesis supporting someone for induction to the HOF, which has 'what ifs' as its major arguments, it is a detriment to that player's candidacy. Johan Santana and Joe Mauer were dominant for about 5-6 seasons each. That's not a hall of fame career. Santana's and Mauer's career kinda mirror Doc Gooden's and Dale Murphy's / Don Mattingly's. With those guys out of the Hall plus others like Dave Parker, Mike Mussina, etc out of the Hall, Santana and Mauer, just does not deserve it. Tim Lincecum is another interesting comparable to Santana as well. Even more dominant than Santana in his peak. Does he deserve to be in the HOF?

Great to have those in one place for future reference. Thanks! bit of nitpicking. It is Ramon Borrego not Borrega

I am not sure what they have seen in Kinley because he is the devil you don't know. But I am impressed that they have not seen enough of Buddy Bo (esp) and Slegers to give their spots to Burdi and Bard. Those are both replacement level (and below) devils they should know by now. On the other hand, there must have something against Burdi because they tried to trade him to Atlanta last summer.