jmlease1

It's very easy to say "trade him for a durable player", and much harder to actually to do it. There's now guarantees whomever we would get back in a Buxton deal would be any healthier. but we certainly won't get back anyone as talented, and frankly it's unlikely we'd get back anyone who provides as much overall value even with Buxton's limited games. Buxton put up 4 bWAR in 92 games...and definitely had stretches where he was struggling due to the knee even when he was playing. The hits will come for the Twins offense if they have average health instead of disastrous health, but even with last year's injury problems the Twins were MLB average in runs scored last season, 11th in hits, and 10th in walks. The offense died last season after everyone got hurt, not because of Buxton's batting average. i love Nick Gordon, but on no planet was he the Twins best hitting OF last season: his OPS+ was 117, and Buxton's was 135. he was healthier, not better. (the the problem with Kepler is he puts the ball in play too often with weak contact and doesn't barrel the ball up nearly often enough to make up for all those bounce outs to 2B) Our depth was tested last season and we failed, which is why we signed Gallo & Taylor. We literally started guys like Jake Cave and Mark Contreras in the OF last Sept. (along with Celestino, Wallner, Billy Hamilton...we churned through 12 OFs last season! 12! And that's without counting Royce Lewis' unlucky start. In 2019 it was like 8.)

the Kepler situation is complex. He's a fine defender in the corners and probably stretched at this point in CF, but the range and arm profile very well in RF for him to add value. But goodness he had a rotten year at the plate in so many ways. 2019 is looking very much like a fluke year, so any expectation that it's going to be repeated somehow (shift or no) should really be thrown in the trash. I think the baseball Savant numbers are very instructive: the max exit velocity shows that Kepler can absolutely crush a ball, but the Avg exit velocity, Hard-hit %, and Barrel % shows that he just didn't do it often enough. His K rates and BB rates are fine, but when he does actually swing at a pitch and make contact he's been too inconsistent in really driving ball and doing damage. Now, how much did the busted toe hurt Kepler even after he came back? Maybe being fully healthy plus the shift rules will help him enough to make him viable as a hitter, but I'm still concerned about his inability to make consistent hard contact. It was easy for fans to turn on Sano when he was piling up the Ks, but Kepler has been a less productive player on offense even with 500 additional ABs and Sano's last season being an utter catastrophe (12.3 Offensive bWAR vs 11.8 offensive bWAR) and took less crap for it, even though Kepler's career OPS+ is significantly less than Sano's. It may have been less irritating for some to watch Kepler bounce out to 2B, but it wasn't effective. Kepler was absolutely overwhelmed last season by fastballs, for the first time in several years. was that injury, or was that age slowing him down? he's going to have to show he can catch up to the heat and handle sliders in the zone, because I'd bet the early book on him is going to be "no slop". If he can't get it going again, I'm sure Wallner & Larnach would love a shot. Wallner has sort of the opposite problem of Kepler: he hammers what he hits, but might not connect enough. Is he Adam Dunn or a lefty Brent Rooker? Larnach is the better bet to me to follow on. He won't cover as much ground, but he's got a great arm for the corners and will get to more balls than people think. And healthy, Larnach can hit more consistently than either Kepler or wallner, I think.

I wouldn't think the ChiSox fanbase is feeling all that great about their offseason (other than dumping LaRussa). Clevinger is still under investigation, wasn't good last year, and has been healthy basically once in his career. Abreu was easily their 2nd best hitter last season and Benetendi seems unlikely to come anywhere near replacing that for a team that was below average on offense to begin with. Better health might make a difference with Jimenez, Robert, and Anderson but I wouldn't expect Grandal to play a lot more games at 34. But as much as their 2022 season was hurt by their injuries on offense, their pitching staff was pretty healthy overall. But already Hendriks is going to miss time (good luck to him on his fight), Clevinger might miss time (and based on his track record will miss time even if he's not suspended), Lynn is old enough that you always have to wonder and last season pitched fewer innings in any non-COVID year since he was a rookie. the depth looks thin, the system hasn't been super productive, and they're spending a lot of money on the bullpen when they need some help on offense. They were definitely a bit lucky last season (27-16 in 1 run games is part having a guy like Hendriks slamming the door, but it's also a little luck. They were outscored last season but finished .500 that also some luck) ZiPS and other projection systems are seeing this too.

Very interesting point, and I will admit, I completely missed this fact. For some reason Gallo has always seemed older to me in my head, maybe because Kepler signed with the twins so very very young.

Really good compilation of the rotations over the last 25 years. I might quibble a little with the rankings, but I'm not sure it makes that much difference if one is rated 11 or 13 and so forth. I would probably downgrade the 2020 group just because it requires an awful lot of projection to comp against the others, and injuries have wiped out so many other promising rotations before. The 2006 group feels like the greatest missed opportunity: Liriano was so electric before his elbow unraveled, Johan was dominant, and it felt like something special might be happening. (the team also had Joe Nathan at the peak of his powers with some good bullpen depth, Mauer & Morneau were rolling...Terry Ryan kinda failed this group, though as his veteran dumpster diving completely crapped out: batista, white, nevin, sierra...none of them worked.) oof, the 2012-2013 seasons were rough. what a terrible rotation! I like to think now we would have given Liam Hendriks a shot in the bullpen before giving up on him. but just a rotation bereft of talent. veteran retreads, no young guys stepping up...just a miserable experience. I'm amazed Glen Perkins had 36 games he could save! It'll be interesting to see where this year's crew ranks. they're very deep, which is not something you can really associate with many of these rotations over the last 25 years. There were definitely groups with higher top-end (Johan Santana at the peak of his powers was the best pitcher in baseball) but even with 2004 Lohse wasn't all that good as the 4th guy. (kind of amazing how healthy that rotation was, though! 4 guys started 135 games between them! they only used 8 guys total, only 6 of them threw more than 2 starts! Too bad that team couldn't hit; Mauer was hurt, Morneau wasn't ready, Gardy refused to platoon Jacque Jones, Kubel's knee exploded...)

While I'm fine with banning the shift (it's a little silly IMHO, but if it increases offense while reducing the whining then whatever) but I don't care for the "infielders must have their feet on the dirt" bit. Trading bloop hits to the OF for slow rollers in the infield seems like a wash to me. Let guys stand where they want if they're on the correct side of the base. It's really nice to not have to worry about SS in the near term. We've churned so many guys through at the spot in the last 20 years that it's great to have Correa locked in as the guy for a while. I expect the Twins will continue to draft "shortstops" every year and keep the flow of middle infielders flowing in the system. Hopefully one or more of them will be legit options defensively if and when Correa needs to slide down the defensive spectrum (with his arm, he'll be a fine 3B if it becomes necessary). I'm interested to see if Noah Miller will hit enough to make it, because so far he seems to be a legit defender there.

They don't. Gaetti's Gold Gloves don't exactly line up with his best seasons defensively but the stats show that he was excellent defensively in MN. It's a shame about Martin's injury: he's a talented guy and looked like he was figuring out his approach at the plate again, and had gotten himself healthy after a wrist injury and COVID. His AFL performance was overshadowed by Julien a bit, but he played very well and looked to be using that to launch into his season. It's a shame to have that interrupted again. Someone suggested if he has surgery that we leave him exposed to the Rule 5: that's a pretty bad idea, and I doubt it will happen. Another team, especially one that's rebuilding would snap him up in a heartbeat. They'd be able to stash him on the injured list for a chunk of the season, but even if they had to activate him he could be useful on a major league roster even if it was too early for him to be ready with his defense in the OF and flexibility to roam around. There's pretty much no chance the Twins will risk it.

I don't think there's much question that Lopez didn't have his head right during his time with the Twins last season, and that almost certainly impacted him. I don't expect him to be 1st half Balto dude, but if he's the average of the two halves he'll be a quality guy for the back end and I think that's very achievable. The Twin did buy high on him, but there also a real possibility that he can get back to a high level again. Making moves like that in the midseason are going to cost. I liked the aggression at the time and I'm not going to second-guess now because the season unraveled. It's also important to remember that it doesn't take much to balloon a reliever's stat line, especially in a sample as small as 23 games. As bad as the Cleveland game in Sept looks, he didn't blow the game: we were already down 3, and I like he bounced back after a garbage outing to have 5 straight good ones.

Yeah, Koskie (much like Plouffe) had some adventures early on at 3B. At least a few times where I joked to a friend, "Is he using a glove or a frying pan out there?" But Koskie really worked at it and could have won a Gold Glove if not for Eric Chavez. I think Miranda has the drive to be great that will improve his defense.

I think the biggest factor that brought down Park as a major league player was age. he was 29 when he first came to MLB, not 24. he'd been a star in his home country, but the pitching in the Korean league isn't up to MLB standard and he struggled with the sharper and faster breaking stuff. I think it's a lot harder to adjust when you're older, and when you're also trying to adjust to a foreign country in a place where there's not a huge Korean immigrant population, it's probably even harder. It's also important to remember that Park struck out a lot in Korea as well, it's not just that his K rate in MLB was was high: he rang up a lot of them in Korea against worse pitching. Throw in some injuries and just ok performance in AAA and he didn't make it back. i thought it was a good move at the time and I was excited to see the Twins taking some risks in the international market, but it didn't work out. I'm guessing the Twins have a lot better feel for evaluating Korean baseball now?

i think this is right. If you get a rash of OF injuries all at once and you need someone to fill in as a emergency, having a guy who is still right in his prime and has spent some time in the majors already sitting in AAA on a minor-league deal isn't a bad thing at all. he's not going to slot in ahead of Larnach or Wallner but gives you another option to keep the floor a little higher if disaster strikes. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Cave didn't show up until we got to disaster levels last season and while he didn't do great, he was professional and not horrible, so having a player for that type of role stashed in AAA seems good. Cave didn't take ABs away from Nick Gordon or Trevor Larnach last season like some people (including me) feared: he was the break glass in case of emergency OF...and we had to break the glass. Stevenson feels like a similar version.

I think there's a mischaracterization of why we gave Urshela 131 starts at 3B over locking Miranda in there. I'd say it's not because they didn't like Miranda at 3B, it's more because they didn't like Urshela anywhere but 3B. And they needed him in the lineup as one of the only healthy & consistent guys last year. but his lack of positional flexibility in the the Twins eyes (at least that's how it looks from my chair) is a big reason why they moved on from him and got Farmer, who can play a lot of different places. I was pro keeping Urshela, but I can understand how if he's shifting to a bench role and can only play 3B (or maybe 1B?) that he's much less attractive as a bench player. For all the preemptive moaning about how "bad" Miranda's defense is...it actually was pretty solid in his limited time at 3B last season. He struggled at 1B, a position he'd basically never played before and clearly was uncertain of his play out there, which definitely led to some poor play. But I think he's showed enough that he can be right around average at 3B, and playing there consistently (especially next to someone like Correa, who will help him on positioning) will likely help him out. The depth looks pretty good as well: Farmer or Solano shouldn't have any trouble backing up Miranda, though there would definitely be a drop-off offensively. Lee looks like the best fit to move in there from the system, so you hope there won't be a lengthy injury since Martin is out for a while (and his arm might not be the best fit there), Royce won't be back until midseason at least, and Julien has been pretty bad there when he's tried it and didn't play there at all last season. but there are a lot of options going forward for 3B. I think Miranda holds down 3B this year. It'll be fun watching Brooks Lee try to push him off it.

Good scouting can find players at D-II that can become quality prospects and team assets. Louie Varland seems to have worked out pretty well coming from D-II. They spotted a player they saw real upside in that they could sign below slot, freeing up money to sign another player above slot that might have stayed in school. Sounds like good business to me. Should be fun to see what kind of pro Ben Ross is going to be, and it'll be a nice feather for the scouting department if he grows into a serious prospect. A good athlete who has shown promise of a quality hit tool might be a guy you can turn into something. decent enough power numbers for the FSL in his first taste, so I'm interested in seeing what kind of player he is. wonder if he'll stick at SS?

Disagree, Nick: I don't think the 2B situation is very comparable to 1B. We have so many guys who can play 2B now and prospects who are close/ pushing as well that there's a reason we have people already getting ahead of our skis and talking about trading Polanco. (I do not favor dealing Polanco this season unless things completely implode by the trade deadline AND at least one of our prospects is begging for time) 1B we're sliding in guys because we think they can hit enough. 2B has real depth and strength. Polanco is the best 2B on our roster right now, but Farmer, Solano, Miranda, Gordon, Julien, Martin, Lewis, and Lee can all play there (admittedly, Martin & Lewis are not likely to be available any time soon). The MLB depth is strong, the system depth is strong and clear, and even if the Twins decide to move on from Polanco they're going to be in good shape at 2B. Jorge Polanco is still one of the best players on the Twins, so losing him for an extended period of time would hurt a lot. But that's what happens any time you lose one of your best players even when you have good depth. but this isn't a position where we'd be stretching someone to play there, quickly reaching down to AA to find a body, or asking someone to really learn the position on the fly. Hopefully the knee will not be a problem this season, but the Twins have a lot of strength at 2B built up and organizationally it's a strength.

It's not just the walks, though. His H/9 is a little too high for someone with that level of K ability as well. he doesn't need to get his BB/9 down to the 1-1.5 per 9 range, but he also can't be giving up 8+ hits per 9 either. The K/9 numbers are impressive, but he's got to get the other tools together. (WHIP does a lot of work to show a level of dominance from a pitcher, IMHO)

The K rate is really impressive, and if his velocity is really regularly sitting at mid-90's on the fastball, that's pretty nice for a lefty. The BB/9 is a bit concerning and he's going to need to bring that down to more like 2-3 and I'd like to see him be a little less hittable. He did a solid job of keeping the ball in the park and that's good, but I do like to look at the WHIP at this point to see where a pitcher is at, and even though he hunts up Ks brilliantly...a WHIP around 1.3-1.4 is not good enough. (for comparison, Joe Ryan never had a WHIP over 1.1 in the minors and had multiple seasons under 1.0) Talented guy, and he'll be interesting to follow this season, but he's got some work to do.

I'm guessing they see defensive value in Wallner's arm in the OF and are hoping that work on his fielding in the OF now will make him a more effective defender out there.

The good thing is there are options that are available either as short-term or longer if needed right now. ideally, we'd have Kirilloff installed from Day One, healthy and productive, smashing line drives all over the park and playing a quality 1B. But it might not get there on the perfect schedule. So far, I don't think the news on Kirilloff is bad: no, he's not playing in games yet, but he also hasn't been shut down to rest it up either. So the recovery seems to be going ok? It's a process. I get how after the last two injury-filled seasons for the Twins everyone is hyper-sensitive to every droplet of news about an injury or rehab note, and with injuries that were supposed to have taken only a few weeks to rehab turning into months-long epics that sometimes led to surgeries. but right now, even if Kirilloff isn't quite ready for Opening Day, he seems to be on the path to go in April, not May or June. Gallo as a backup seems ok if not ideal (losing his defensive value in the OF seems wasteful). i don't think they want to run Miranda out there unless they have to: they clearly want him at 3B and it feels like they believe (and I don't disagree) that it will be better for his development if he slots in at one position rather than flip back and forth. If his arm isn't quite ready, I think it's more likely we see him at DH than slotting in at 1B. Solano seems to be the first choice to roll in there in the short term, and I think that's ok. But he's probably not the best long term fit. The pipeline for 1B prospects doesn't have a lot of guys lined up there, but the Twins philosophy does seems to avoid drafting players that slot in at 1B early in their career. They'd rather draft a hitter at another spot and slide him down as they develop than limit themselves from a prospect lane, and i think that's the right choice. Julien looks like he might end up at 1B and be fine there, and there are options in the lower minors from some of the OF that could end up at 1B too. It's also a position where there's almost always a CJ Cron type available in the free agent market if you're willing to commit $8-10M+ to the spot, so it's not that hard to fill the gap if you have the payroll to do it. (I'm sure the twins would love Sabato to break out and push his way up, but that's sadly looking unlikely.) Someone like Emmanuel Rodriguez may end up being a better fit for corner OF/1B by the time he (hopefully) hits his way up to MLB too. So I'm not too worried about the pipeline right now.

Yeah, that was my point: catchers aren't going to play in 130-140 games a season and you can't treat the position like you're going to have one primary guy and a backup that won't play enough to hurt you if they slug their own weight. they might be able to patch this through free agency after Vazquez moves on, or Jeffers flames out, but it'd be nice to have some organizational prospects moving along in the system. (I'm definitely not on the "trade Polanco" this season train, though; while it might max his value, I think this team is good enough to compete right now and Polanco is going to be a big part of it. Dealing him for depth is assuming a lot of risk that someone like Lee or Julien is ready to step in when neither has played a game in AAA)

Detroit needs some of the exact same work that the Twins did with we made a regime change. they need better drafting, more prospects, and a serious reinvigoration of their talent pipeline. (they also need to get their investment in the international markets improved, which was much less of an issue for the Twins) Torkelson & Greene were almost certainly rushed to the bigs for...reasons? not sure they made a smart decision there, but maybe they ran out of bodies. but the offense was rotten for Detroit last season and there's not a lot of guys that you think are positioned to make significant leaps. they need Torkelson, Greene, and Carpenter to all take a real step forward with Haase not taking a step back, and Schoop & Baez rebounding to have a quality offense. While I think Schoop will likely be better how much is a really the question, Baez is likely to have a modest gain at best. Meadows? He's had one great season in his career. Maybe he's back to his 2021 form. Baddoo had a nice Rule 5 rookie campaign, and then got exposed. not impressed or excited about their pitching staff either. I like Skubal and not much else. they needed to sell off last season and restart, but they didn't have much to sell that wouldn't have been selling low. This feels like a bad team without much hope. I'd feel better as a Royals fan than a Tigers fan right now.

even if Jeffers improves (and I think he will, in fact) the Twins still need to be thinking and planning for the future. It'd be great if your #1 catcher could play 130-140 games a season every year and you could slot in a specialist as the backup, but that's a best case scenario that's unlikely to be true. Vazquez is signed for 3 seasons and at the end of it I'm not expecting him to be a quality option at 35 and 11 years deep into his career. Catcher is easily the biggest organizational depth weakness right now, unless a couple of the young guys down in A-ball make a sudden jump. everywhere else we have guys, or guys that can slide down the defensive scale into those spots. But at least at the MLB level I think we're about as well-positioned as we reasonably could be.

1B/DH might be his eventual landing spot somewhat by default: even if he plays a passable 2B or 3B (and it's a little questionable whether he will get there), with Jorge Polanco, Jose Miranda, Brooks Lee, Royce Lewis, and Austin Martin (even with injuries putting the last two behind) Julien would really really have to hit to jump past those guys who are all better defensively (yes, even the oft-maligned Polanco & Miranda) at those spots. His eye at the plate is really pretty awesome, though and he's shown real ability to make contact and do damage when he decides to swing. he's not likely to be a batting title guy competitor like Arraez, but he's also not going to be a 200 Ks a season guy either. I think some time at AAA will probably help him refine his approach against pitchers with better control and better stuff; in the lower minors a player with a great eye can wait out the wildness that you see all the time in the pitchers. the higher you ascend, the more those pitchers have ironed things out and can clip the corners on breaking stuff and ride the edge with a high velocity fastball. there's fewer mistakes and meatballs to annihilate. I'm looking forward to seeing how his power potential develops; can he be a guy that slugs around .500 consistently? If he keeps showing and building that ability to punish the ball when he does take his hacks, it's going to help him keep that OBP up too, because pitchers will be more afraid to challenge him. As great a hitter as Arraez was, a good pitcher isn't going to be as afraid to challenge him with a pitch when there's 2 out and the bases empty or even with a runner on 1st, not in the same way. The great eye sets Julien's floor for me, but the power will determine how high the ceiling is. I expect we'll see him at Target Field sometime this season, and I'm looking forward to it.

In a vacuum, the Twins catching depth looks a little thin. In the context of MLB as a whole...it's probably pretty good? I mean, it's one of the toughest positions to find a true 2-way player at and even guys that are league-average hitters provide significant value at catcher when you consider just how poorly catchers hit last season. SD was ranked 15th last season in catcher in team OPS (.658) yet that was good enough for 2.4 offensive bWAR at the position. You have to go all the way down to the 24th spot to start getting to negative team offensive bWAR at catcher (the Mets, whose catchers had a collective .589 OPS). That's the context Vazquez and Jeffers are playing in. Offense at catcher is so bad league wide that if we get career average performances from Vazquez and Jeffers we're going to have one of the better duos in MLB, especially if they continue to be quality options defensively. We'll see how Jeffers and Vazquez do controlling the running game this season, but I'm a little surprised by the assumption that Jeffers is somehow terrible at it? The Twins don't have much minor league depth to be sure, and it's something they need to address in the draft, in international signings, trades, something. but right now, the MLB club looks to be in pretty good shape and better than most.

That's a real shame about Austin Martin. He had a nice AFL stint and I was really hoping it would lunch him into this season. Hope his elbow comes around. I know we're trained to presume the worst at all times, but a lot of these injuries aren't new so for guys like Buxton, Kirilloff, and Polanco they're just working their way back. There really isn't any new or bad news on them that i can see?

Not thrilled with the jump in BB/9 or H/9 when he made the jump to cedar rapids, but if the fastball can consistently get to 97 mph with some life then he's got a shot. Would like to see him dominate in high A and get an early promotion to Wichita for his age-23 season. I do appreciate his durability in making 22 starts his first professional season and throwing more innings that he ever did in a college season. that said, he needs to get deeper into games.