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jmlease1

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Everything posted by jmlease1

  1. jmlease1
    I really hope Austin Martin is recovered from the elbow injury and doesn't need surgery. Twins are due for a little luck on the "rest and rehab" plans (they've had several guys where they've tried to do this for several months and then the season-ending surgery happened anyways). But more than that, I'm rooting for Austin Martin, who looked like he was getting back on track after getting healthy and playing well in the AFL. He's had a screwy development path and struggled with some injuries, but he's still very talented and could be a significant contributor. It'll be fun to follow some of these guys at the complex: Chourio is definitely one I want to keep an eye on after seeing some write-ups on him.
  2. jmlease1
    Well, he's probably a bit better than this; right now it's a career low OPS+. But I don't disagree: he's a drag on the offense on a team that can't afford more drags on the offense. He's not going to be better than a league average bat for more than a week or two at a time. But the problem is, Larnach hasn't been able to stay healthy, Gallo has missed time, Gordon is missing a lot of time (and has been bad), and Kirilloff has a significant and recent injury history. If we dump Kepler now, he's gone forever. So it's an issue if you replace him with Wallner and someone else goes down, because now you're down to Garlick (who also has never stayed healthy). The closer you get to the trade deadline and further along you are in the season the less your depth matters, unless you have a pile of guys on the IL. But we're barely into June and have a bunch of injuries again. I'm entirely unenthusiastic about running Max Kepler out there right now, but but I get why it seems like we're stuck with him for another month. The mistake was not dealing him in the offseason and using the money saved to reinforce the bullpen, add a RH corner OF or both. Good news: Twins haven't been playing all that great, the offense is pretty thin, the bullpen could use reinforcements...and we're still leading the division by 3.5
  3. jmlease1
    I think if the Twins had managed to pull off a win on either Sat or Sun and won the series, we'd be feeling a lot different this morning. Kind of amazing how much one game can make a difference, but that's the way for a 4 game series against a division rival: take 3 out of 4 and you're rolling. Split 2-2 after winning the first 2 and the gloom sets in. It's interesting to see so many people finally turning on Kepler; he's in a slump right now, but he hasn't been a plus offensive player for most of his career. In 8 full seasons, he's been an above league average hitter exactly twice, and one of those was the pandemic year (so less than 200 PAs). he'll probably bounce back a little bit this season and push those number back up around a 92-95 OPS+, but there's little chance of more. And it's why some of us wanted to move on from him in the off-season, but once that decision got made to keep him it's really problematic to drop him in May/June. No one is trading for him right now (and it would be the ultimate sell low) and we're on the hook for his entire salary so literally the only thing the Twins gain at this point is a roster spot. That gets easier to accept as the season progresses, but of our corner OFs from the start of the season, Larnach, Gallo, Gordon, Kirilloff, and Kepler have all spent time (or are currently) on the IL this season, making our depth a little more wobbly. So i think the calls to cut Kepler today are unrealistic. But a lot of people were ignoring Kepler's lack of offense for a long time before now.
  4. jmlease1
    Not a great night for the affiliates, nor for most of the prospect list! (though good to see guys like Julien and E-Rod still taking walks even on nights when they're not connecting. Suggests that the approach is right even if the results weren't big) Severino continues to perform well on offense; have to wonder if he has a defensive position, but if he keeps hitting like this he'll find a job somewhere I think. And the Kala'i Rosario Saga continues on: he got dissed a bit in the FanGraphs prospect write-up this week, so of course he just turns in another great game at the plate. Maybe we should just find someone to ding him for something every week to keep giving him someone else to prove wrong? :D Twins have to feel good about his progress this season.
  5. jmlease1
    Not me! Maybe they look to move on from him in the off-season, depending on how various other players have developed this season, but he's a key player for this team and an important offensive cog. Happy to see Polanco in the lineup. Really good win for the Twins on a night when the offense was light. Ober pitched well, but dodged several bullets (a better offense might have hung several on him). Great to see the bullpen hold it down again: Duran is a monster and a real weapon in the 'pen. Getting Thielbar back will help steady things back there, I think, and make us a little less reliant on wild boys like Moran/Stewart/Pagan in tighter games. Cleveland has bigger problems than we do on offense; outside of Ramirez and Maylor there's a massive power outage over there, and with their luck in 1-run games from last year flipping back they're in real trouble if they don't start hitting soon. Hopefully it doesn't happen this weekend at all!
  6. jmlease1
    Positional flexibility makes a huge difference, especially for those last few roster spots. Castro is clearly the better infielder over Gordon, which helps him out; Gordon has more experience in the OF including fairly significant time in CF. If Castro's also an option in CF that's going to make it hard for Gordon to find a role on this squad as long as Castro hits around league average. I didn't think much of the Castro acquisition at the start of the season, thought he was just a retread blocking some of our prospects. Happy to be wrong about him so far, hope he can keep hitting.
  7. jmlease1
    I think you're wrong, but even if you're right and the vast majority of the blame should all land on the twins hitters...there's no excuse for the home plate umpire not knowing how many strikes he'd already called in an AB. This wasn't a case where something weird had happened to interrupt play for a substantial amount of time or anything; dude just lost the plot, and undermined his own credibility.
  8. jmlease1
    hard to pick between Ryan, Ober, and Varland. I think Ryan is the right choice, but I wouldn't squawk too much about any of the others. oddly, one of my favorite performances by Ryan was his last one which was also easily his worst of the whole season. he just didn't have it, and you could see it early, but he still battled his way through 4 innings and tried to grind it out. I dunno, there's just something about him when he's on the mound.
  9. jmlease1
    That's a really big night for Cedar Rapids! I've been on Team Rosario for a while now and he keeps doing everything right to get himself promoted: hitting for power, good contact rates and a strong batting average, taking walks, and a more than reasonable K-rate. And this isn't a older player beating up on a bunch of kids: he's still only 20 (for now)! He looks like an easy choice to move up to Wichita at midseason to me. E-Rod had a great night. He's so talented, but we shouldn't be surprised that it's taking him a while to find consistency coming off a knee injury at his age while adjusting to a new level of competition. He's still taking walks and his overall approach at the plate is sound. He's still so young (just barely turned 20) but the ball explodes off his bat and he's going to be really fun to watch all year. Looking forward to a few more 3-hit nights!
  10. jmlease1
    Good job by the offense in getting us back in the game and then winning it late. Royce Lewis sure does seem to have that igniter in his skill set (he also made some very nice plays at 3B and looks pretty solid there) Tough night for the home plate umpire last night, but fortunately it didn't impact the outcome. But it's increasingly frustrating to see umpires not have a consistent (and correct) strike zone. Correa got rung up on a pitch that sure looked outside, and then the ump loses track of the count against Lewis when he struck him out on a ball that definitely looked low. Considering the Twins were in a position to push some more runs across the plate when the ump took the bat out of our players hand again the "I'm bad enough at my job that I can't keep track of the count" was a little maddening. P.Lopez was rolling along pretty well before imploding in the 6th. A little disappointing, because it sure looked like he was going to cruise through 6 or 7 innings, but the bullpen did a nice job picking him up. It's still hard to trust Pagan, but he did a very nice job holding Cleveland down for a couple of innings and then Jax finished it off. Feels good to only use 3 pitchers last night in a game that ended 7-6 while getting deeper into Cleveland's pen.
  11. jmlease1
    not wrong; it's been 25 years since baseball added any franchises. but there are also teams that are struggling to compete and be financially viable in their markets as well. Until that gets resolved I think MLB would prefer to hold those expansion cities out there as possible relocation threats to bully cities into building a team a free stadium...
  12. jmlease1
    The "oh, we can't call anyone up because the Saints are in Buffalo" is pretty silly: this is a billion dollar team, not a tiny non-profit. There's plenty of flights out of Buffalo to get a player here in a few hours if needed. They're not coming in from Katmandu. i think the Twins take 3 of 4. (I'd love the sweep, but I'm not gonna be greedy) Their starting pitching will keep them in every game and I'm starting to feel some confidence in the offense again. twins are a good home team and have been a little unlucky so far this year (only 4-10 in 1-run games). Time to get it in gear. Predictions: Gallo breaks out of his slump and clocks 2 dingers this series, Polanco comes back hitting, and because I keep talking about how we probably need to move on from him Max Kepler makes me look like a fool and has his best series of the season. Lopez goes at least 6, and Joe Ryan acts like the last game never happened and goes 7.
  13. jmlease1
    Never understood that, really. but seeing the reactions to Miranda and Julien not being immediate all-stars makes me wonder if some folks just don't have patience for prospects.
  14. jmlease1
    I've always been a big fan of Kirilloff as a hitter, the only thing holding him back was the bum wrist. Hopefully that's behind him now, but they'll probably need to keep an eye on him. He's got a sweet swing and pretty great eye at the plate. Totally deserving hitter of the month. (I think I'd rather see him at 1B than in the OF, but as long as he's healthy and in the lineup regularly I'm going to be pretty happy) Jeffers is definitely earning himself more playing time. Be great if he can keep hitting close to this while catching a little more. (a little more time off might help Vazquez anyways) Jeffers had a bumpy season last year between injury and his power stroke abandoning him and it's great to see him hitting the ball hard this season. Glad the team didn't give up on him.
  15. jmlease1
    I mostly meant with the Twins. I'm happy for Rooker that he's playing for the A's, but he's basically had one great month and one bad month this year, so I'm having trouble calling him a solid MLB player. he's been pretty awful lately. We've seen him have hot stretches before, but he's never been able to sustain it.
  16. jmlease1
    Rocco sneaks in (he's over 40 and the early 80's still had teams that arguably had 4-man rotations and 10 pitchers on the active roster; look at the 1982 Orioles for an example) but by the mid-80's you're right that concept had gone away, along with the idea of using your best reliever as a fireman, and multi-inning relievers who weren't the mop-up guy. It's been a long, long time and certainly none of our players were alive for when the 4-man rotation was a significant thing.
  17. jmlease1
    Hard to say. He's still got value as a player, but if he's not hitting and not an option in CF, then you basically need a team who thinks "we can fix him" and who knows if that team is out there at his price on contract. Feels like they're trying to get to the trade deadline and maybe move him then. Wallner is overqualified for AAA, but his defense is shaky and until the Twins decide to move on from Kepler, he's going to have to fight his way up. Good to see Miranda making good contact again. Hope he finds some power in his bat as well and gets back his plate discipline.
  18. jmlease1
    I think you've got this backwards. 28 games in 30 days isn't where you need an additional starter unless we end up with a double-header. It's the bullpen where we could get overstretched, especially if we get a couple of short starts. And adding a starter to the roster means one less reliever (remember, we're capped at 13 pitchers now). Maeda makes much more sense in relief right now, especially if as a former starter he could consistently take 2 innings every three days. Really good start from Varland. I think I would have let him try the 8th; as much as giving Lopez a shot in low leverage makes sense, it was also an opportunity to see how Varland does 3rd time through the order and seeing how his stamina holds up pushing 100 pitches. But I don't have a big objection to giving him 7 shut-out and having him call it a night. (There's almost no chance of him throwing a complete game in this situation, so taking it off the table after 7 is fine) Really good hitting last night overall too. Seems like every time I get down on Solano and start suggesting it's time to move on from him he has a good game. Castro is having an excellent stretch and is proving to be better that I thought for sure. He played nice defense at 3B too. I love winning a series against Houston.
  19. jmlease1
    I'd argue pretty strongly that these were not our best trade chips, but our most tradable chips. It stinks that we didn't end up getting the value for them that we did when we dealt Petty for Gray, but that's the risk.
  20. jmlease1
    I just wish the shady-ass media company (Sinclair? Think was those scumbags) that bought up all the regional Fox Sports Networks and rebranded them into Bally's and spun them off into this Diamond Sports Group could be held to account for this. They vastly overpaid for the networks and everyone knew it at the time. Now, saddled with all of that debt, they're trying to get out of paying their bills. It's pretty pathetic that they're also trying to get MLB to hand them streaming rights in exchange for fulfilling their contractual obligations. they've been broadcasting the games, collecting the ad revenues, and not paying the rights and think they're entitled to extort baseball for additional assets to add to their bankruptcy pile? Twins may face a similar fate this season, but it's my understanding that their rights fees aren't as out of whack with the revenue generation that they had with SD. So that one might still get paid, at least until all of the other debt calls wipe out the rest of this fraudulent company's cash.
  21. jmlease1
    I think this is right. We'll see if Steer really can hit enough consistently to stick at 1B; he loses a fair amount of value if he can't play 3B. But it's also possible that he's only over there because they don't have anyone else at 1B right now. Without Votto it's pretty thin at 1B for Cincy. CES was the player I least wanted to lose because I thought his bat might be special, but you never know how guys like him are going to go when they get to MLB. He's looking like a bad 1B or a DH, so I think chpettit19 is right: he's going to have to hit a LOT in order to make us be "haunted" by him. let's see if he can hit MLB sliders before we decide he's the next David Ortiz. They rolled the dice on Tyler Mahle being healthy enough to stabilize the rotation last season and be a real contributor this year and crapped out. It's a mark against the front office in their ledger (and maybe they learned a lesson about how some players can't be trusted to tell you the truth about their health?) but I don't think they were wrong in the evaluations of Steer, CES, or Hajjar and how much prospect capital they gave up. If the expectation is that we never trade away any prospect that could be good, or even really good, but still expect the front office to bring back real talent in trades, then we have an expectations problem as well. there was a non-zero part of this board that wanted to deal Royce Lewis for pitching last year, and Brooks Lee's name has been thrown around too.
  22. jmlease1
    I have to wonder if the Twins don't generally prefer college players overall, not just bats? Last 2 drafts the only HS players they've taken in the first 10 rounds were Petty and Miller and they've already traded Petty. I would be a little concerned if the Twins having been gifted a top 5 pick decide to ignore the CW if a consensus top 5 player were to fall to them. Of course, I seem to recall that at the time the draft order was announced that Max Clark was a consensus top 5 pick and the top prep prospect. Skenes has been a beast at LSU this year after a very good season with Air Force. Hard to see them passing on him if available, unless they have some inside information that he elbow is about to explode or something.
  23. jmlease1
    I don't know that they've had more issues with 1st round picks than other teams under this regime. They've made 9 picks in the first round since 2017. 4 of them have made it to MLB under the Twins (Lewis, Rooker, Larnach, and Wallner) and 3 of those are still with the franchise. 2 are looking like busts (Cavaco and Sabato), though they are still with the franchise. 1 was dealt for was has to be considered a win in Sonny Gray (Petty) who has been excellent for 2 seasons and will likely net us a similar draft pick next year. Miller looks good enough defensively to make the majors even if his hit tool doesn't develop, and Brooks Lee looks like a potential star. Potential Stars: Lewis, Lee Solid MLB players: Larnach, Wallner Made it to MLB: Rooker Should make it to MLB: Miller Traded for quality MLB asset: Petty Bust: Cavcao, Sabato Look at say, the White Sox in a similar time period. They've only had 6 picks (no compensatory picks), but have also picked a bit higher than the Twins over the last 6 years. (average pick for Twins: 16. ChiSox: 13.) Potential Stars: Montgomery Solid MLB players: Madrigal, Burger, Vaughn Made it to MLB: Crochet Schultz is basically exactly where Petty was for the Twins: HS pitcher with talent, not a top 100 prospect. Chicago hasn't had the misses the Twins did with Cavaco and Sabato, but they've also picked a bit higher overall and had fewer bites at the apple. (I understand if people think I'm overestimating Larnach or Wallner by calling them "solid MLB players" right now...but I do think it's reasonable to lump them in with players like Burger/Madrigal/Vaughn)
  24. jmlease1
    He's got the arm to be a quality corner OF, but he needs to keep working on his recognition and route-running because right now he's a liability in the OF. (the throw he made while up with the Twins to nail the runner at 2B was brilliant, but it was also on a ball that most OF simply catch without too much difficulty and he twisted himself around trying to get a line on it and let it hit the wall) He also still has deeply concerning contact numbers that aren't all that much of an issue against AAA pitching, but are problematic at the majors. Maybe he won't K in MLB like he did in 2022 next time he's up, but expecting him to hit like he did in his first stint(s) this season for an extended period and not pile up huge K numbers is overly-optimistic. That said, he's over-qualified for AAA at this point and the only thing holding him back from pushing kepler is his fairly awful defense. Severino is doing a great job this season. It really looks like he's figured it out; ever since getting out of the FSL he's hit pretty darn well, and when he's repeated a level he's improved his performance since then as well. I think that's meaningful. The real question is: does he have a defensive home, or is he a player whose best position is "hitter"?
  25. jmlease1
    Still not really sure how to rate Matthews or Lewis; they're doing everything asked of them, but as college pitchers in A-ball I don't exactly know if it's that meaningful against this level of competition. I do love the fact that Lewis throws a knuckleball. Cossetti is a little bit in this boat too; if he can stick at catcher and keep hitting now that he's been promoted he could be an interesting riser in Twins Prospect Rankings (but he's basically never going to make a national prospect list unless he starts putting up extreme video game stats; they always downgrade older players) Kala'i Rosario is someone I thought should have been pushed back into the prospect rankings when the update was done, and he's only confirmed that opinion. He's hitting well, he's only 20, and all the numbers around him look good. K's are more manageable, walks are up, power is looking good and might project to more, and he's making good contact.
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