jmlease1

Brunansky spent 3+ years in the minors, Gaetti spent 3 years in the minors, Hrbek spent 2+ years in the minors, Gagne spent 4+ years in the minors. Julien has spent 2 years in the minors. It's not just about age. and remember, Gagne sucked in his first couple of attempts in the majors (and got sent back down), and Gaetti didn't hit in MLB until his 5th season in MLB either. Hrbek was the wunderkind who was ready at a young age and little experience. Brunansky was successful in MLB out the gate at a young age, but also had a lot of minor league experience. Julien will very likely start the year in AAA and get his first shot in MLB some time during 2023, depending on injuries.

There will also be games where your starter goes 6+, and there will also be games where you can ask your 2 inning longer relief guys to throw 3 rather than 2. You can ask your shorter relievers to throw back to back games from time to time, or throw for 4 outs rather than 3. The point is, you have to use all 8 spots in your bullpen and not "save" pitchers for overly specific situations like save situations or long relief in a blowout and then look back in a week and realize that you have two guys in the bullpen who didn't throw in any of that week's games. You also can't have a Chris Archer as a pitcher who can't even make it to 5 innings as a starter and is capped at 75 pitches. My point is really that teams have lost the long reliever, treating them only as a mop-up guy, and pushed relievers to be max-effort, 1 inning guys as the priority for use. Starters aren't going to suddenly start throwing more unless they show they can thrive in that 3rd time through the order, so you have to patch the game together differently. trying to run out 4 relievers a night on 1 inning efforts and hope that you get enough 6+ inning jobs from your starter is a fools errand.

As a RH hitter, Martin would be well-suited to a super-utility role. Celestino will need to up his game to be the regular backup in CF. I think they'll take a long look at him in spring training, but ultimately I expect him to land in AAA to start the season. besides, we're bringing back Correa...right? Right? RIGHT?!?!? ?

This is what throws me as well. with an 8-man bullpen, there's no reason you can't have 2 guys designated to throw 2 innings in their relief appearances and still have enough 1 inning monsters to close out your games. the sequencing works: SP1 throws 5 innings LongRP1 throws 2 innings ShortRP1 throws 1 inning ShortRP2 throws 1 inning Game 2: SP1 throws 5 innings ShortRP3 throws 1 SRP4 throws 1 SRP5 throws 1 SRP1 comes back and throws 1 on a back to back Game 3: SP3 throws 5 innings LongRP2 throws 2 SRP6 throws 1 SRP2 throws 1 Now, for game 4 your first 2 inning guy has had 2 days off and should be ready to throw 2 innings again if needed. But you have to actually treat all your bullpen spots as being pitchers you will use, not holding 1 guy as a mop-up man or only slotting certain guys to pitch the 7th, etc. Getting more consistent health out of the rotation is going to be hugely important; twins had 12 guys make at least 3 starts for them in 2022, but only 4 make at least 20. Bundy's best attribute last year was availability: he actually lead the team with 29 starts...but unfortunately (and somewhat predictably) they weren't above-average ones. I think they could make this work with the rotation we have (although I still favor going after a top-end guy like Rodon), but they can't be afraid to have relievers that they expect to throw 2 innings fairly consistently.

I'm not a fan of handing out multi-year, big-money deals for most relievers. I look at the Twins bullpen and really see only one need right now: one more RH arm to insure us against Alcala not coming back strong from injury. Fulmer quality or above. (Trevor May is interesting for a bounceback candidate at a good price, Fulmer is someone I would be happy to have back, etc. All of them on a 1 + team option deal, in the $4-6M AAV range) the other way I'd look at the 'pen is 6 1 inning(ish) guys and 2 2 inning guys. Lopez, Duran, Jax, Thielbar, and Alcala fit the 1 inning mold. Winder, Sands, Maeda, and/or Moran could fit the 2 inning mold. If Maeda starts, I'd think about slotting Winder & Sands into a planned 2 inning role and float Moran into the 1 inning crew for the later innings. If we sign a Fulmer/May type, Moran goes to the 2 inning group with Winder/Sands. bridge us better from 5 inning starts to the late innings and Duran/Lopez. Splurging big money on relievers just doesn't seem like good value to me. Hendriks has been amazing...but his ERA, FIP, and WHIP have all gone up the past 3 years. Trend or no? Diaz was a monster in 2018, bad in 2019, a monster again in 2020, just ok in 2021, and a monster again in 2022. Stuff like that happens with relievers, even great ones all the time. Smaller samples and wild volatility. Very few Joe Nathans, who dominate for 6 years in a row exist. If you find one, pay 'em...but I'd rather not sign and hope.

interesting idea! I think if you're still under "budget" like this I'd look to upgrade the 4th OF slot with a hitter like Wil Myers over Garlick. (and it would provide better insurance if Martin isn't ready for MLB pitching yet) I think it's more likely that kirilloff is on the this roster than Wallner, but you never know with health?

Let's calm down a little. I'm a big fan of both players, but the AFL is roughly AA from a competition/talent level and neither Julien or Martin have ever played above AA at this point. That's a big jump. I'm perfectly fine with moving on from Kepler, since we have a barrel full of LH corner OF options, and it seems unlikely that Kepler will ever have a year like 2019 again without a juiced ball (although ending the shift will help a few of his bouncers to the right side bleed through next season). but Polanco is a very different case. he had a down year, but still had an OPS+ of 117 and should get back some of his power with better health. Tossing him in favor of the unproven tandem of Julien/Martin seems foolish, especially since Polanco is still on a very good contract. It will be especially interesting for Julien if baseball moves to an automated strike zone by the time he reaches MLB. Might help him stay good in terms of controlling the zone. If his power production from the AFL translates for him next season, he could be a monster at the plate. I'm really glad to see Martin having a strong AFL season. His lack of power in Wichita this season was concerning, and it's good to see him back to showing elite contact skills but with a little more pop behind them. Still a small sample size, but it suggests that maybe the approach he's working with right now can be successful for him, especially with his speed. I think he should start in AAA, but he's definitely someone that should push Celestino if he has to move off the infield long-term. I have trouble assessing the pitchers the Twins sent to the AFL; when you only have 10-15 innings to judge a player that stats aren't as helpful. It doesn't take much to blow up someone's ERA, WHIP, etc. Shreve seems to be making a case for himself, though? Maybe he's the next Laweryson.

Let's not overstate things here, ok? Hard to say a trade involving a reliever cost the Twins 2019, when they won 101 games. Would Pressly have been useful in the playoffs? Sure, but it wouldn't have changed the fact that our high-powered offense only scored 7 runs in 3 games. or that our "best" option to start Game 2 was Randy Dobnak. Not trading Pressly wouldn't have done anything to change the fact that Kepler, Sano, and Garver (key players all season for the Twins) did nothing in the playoffs or that Buxton was hurt. Hell, the bullpen in 2019 was pretty dang good for the Twins, with Rogers, May, and Duffey all having excellent seasons...and we didn't give up anything of note for ether Dyson (a bust) or Romo (excellent down the stretch). is anyone clamoring for Lewin Diaz or Jaylin Davis? (if you really want them, pretty sure we could acquire them quite easily) Would have loved to have Pressly on the team, but it was a reasonable trade a the time (the Twins were 8 games back of the division and even further back in the wild card) and you can't predict injuries. Alcala looked very promising in 2020 and was developing well in 2021, and was expected to be a significant contributor this season to the Twins bullpen before he got hurt. If he bounces back from the injury he could be a weapon in 2023, because he's absolutely death to right-handed batters already. Celestino is a talented CF who will be a quality 4th OF and backup CF option if he continues to develop as a hitter. He was thrown into the fire too soon in 2021, and I think that's colored some people's perception on who he is. I'm not going to hammer the front office because they couldn't see the Alcala injury coming 3 1/2 years before it happened...

Doubtful. Maeda had a great first year with the Twins and was incredibly important and impactful for us on a team that made the playoffs and won a division title. Even with this year being lost to injury and last season being partially wiped out, we still have gotten more value out of Maeda than Graterol has produced. Starters are still more valuable than relievers, and Maeda finished #2 in the Cy for us! Graterol is a useful reliever, but is he better than say...Griffin Jax? (awfully similar stats when you look at WPA, bWAR, ERA, WHIP, FIP for last season. Graterol only clearly pips Jax in ERA+, but Jax pips him on one of the greatest abilities...availability.) No regrets about that deal; we got what we needed.

It is still a team game. Which is why the twins fell apart this year and the Astros didn't. MN: 4th most players on the IL in 2022. Houston: 4th least. MN: 2nd most days lost to injury in MLB. Houston: 3rd least. healthy, the Twins had a quality roster (most evidenced by their early season success, before they were down to starting the 8th OF on their depth chart). When you have a decent enough roster, then you also need star power to compete at the highest levels and get you through the playoffs. It's where stud pitching really comes into play, but also at other positions as well. Correa's an elite talent and that's where I want to spend the team's big dollars. Pena is still under team control, and having young players step up while on small salaries is almost always important (and worked out nicely for the Twins in 2019, when Garver was making $575K, Berrios $620K, Sano was at $2.7M, Buxton $1.8M, Rogers $1.5M, May $900K and Polanco & Rosario didn't clear $8M between them). Finding a home-grown SS is something the Twins have been trying to accomplish since God was a corporal and we haven't been very good at it...but that's about the only way you get that kind of production at Pena's price. Our most successful attempts in the last 40 years are probably: Greg Gagne, who never made an all-star game and we acquired from NY as a minor leaguer. Jason Bartlet, whose 1 all-star appearance game after leaving the twins...and we didn't draft or sign him either. Christian Guzman, who did make an all-star team as a twins SS...once, and we traded for him too. And then there's Jorge Polanco, who made the all-star team at SS, but was moved off the position because he's not very good defensively at SS and couldn't stay healthy there. (and even injured this season had a better year at 2B than all but one of his years in MLB at SS) It might happen with Royce Lewis when he recovers from his latest knee injury, or Brooks Lee, or Noah Miller...but we've missed a lot here. Correa is a finished product and ready to go.

That Diaz contract is bad. A 5 year deal for a reliever coming off a career year at $20M per? Yikes. He was awesome this year. He's been awesome before. But he's followed up an awesome season with a disappointing one more than once (see also, 2019 & 2021).

There's no question that getting another catcher is a need, but there are a fair number of "good defense, no hit" catchers out there than can be had for relatively low cost and won't vanish on Day 1 of FA. There's a much smaller number of complete catchers than add offensive value and quality defense, on any team. It has to be addressed, but it's less pressing than say, SS where our in-house options are: Polanco (who isn't a SS any longer), Gordon (who the Twins have never seen as a SS in an MLB capacity), Lewis (who won't be ready until mid-season at the very earliest, and possibly not at all because injury), Martin (never played above AA and has questions about his ability to field the position), and Lee (just barely arrived in the organization and has only a handful of ABs at AA). At least with a healthy Jeffers we have a catcher who most non-Twins fans would consider a starting quality catcher. I think the reason Jeffers gets bashed so much is the curse of familiarity: we see his Mendoza line every day. Fans of other teams would look at his stats and go "at least your guy hits the occasional dinger!"

I wouldn't DH him only, but I look at him as a guy I want to play 140+ games per season as healthy as possible. That might mean he only plays 80 games in the field as opposed to 100+? He certainly is starting to look like he's more than competent at 1B, which doesn't hurt a bit.

i think the best argument for moving Arraez off 1B is just to give his aching knees more rest. but despite not having great height/reach and limited familiarity with the position he did well. Correa certainly passed the eye test for me and I wasn't surprised to see him ranking high and getting GG consideration.

In theory this is true, but assumes that the new teams immediately changed directions and/or the player stopped doing the things that were making them successful and healthy, and I think that's an assumption that you simply can't make. Beyond that, Garver had injury problems with the Twins before getting traded, Odorizzi's last season with the Twins was wrecked by injury, and Taylor Rogers missed a huge chunk of time in his last season with the Twins as well. (and with Cruz, isn't it just more likely that Father Time finally caught up with him?) So I don't think these are great examples for how a return to TwinsLand will improve performance and/or health. If Rortvedt were a minor-league FA would I try to sign him as AAA depth? Sure, because he's a talented defender even if he can't hit and as a lefty hitter maybe they could find something to unlock still, however unlikely, but as a minor league depth guy why not have the kid from WI? But it's hard to have much confidence that he's going to have a big bounce back as a hitter post-injury when he's never hit before.

I'm sorry, but what indicators are there that Garver would have been healthier if he had stayed a Twin? We were one of the most injured teams in baseball last season. I was one of the biggest Rortvedt backers there was, but there's very little to suggest that he can hit at the MLB level, especially considering his minor league track record and the fact that he turns 25 this year. The power potential we were hoping for has never materialized (he's slugged over .400 exactly once in his career at any level), he doesn't make tons of contact, he doesn't make lots of hard contact, and his best stint as a hitter was 2021 in Saint Paul over 34 games...which might be small sample size rearing it's very ugly head. I really don't understand the drive people have to dump Jeffers. He works well with pitchers, calling a good game and getting them extra strikes. Even if pitch framing goes away with robo-strike zone, that means Jeffers can (and almost certainly will) focus more on blocking the plate and potentially throwing. I'm not sure why people think that when pitch-framing goes away he'll suddenly be useless back there. Jeffers pounds lefties, which is certainly something this Twins team needs (Rortvedt doesn't hit anyone). he's also still under team control and pretty cheap. I'm certainly interested in Narvaez, but as a partner for Jeffers.

One of the reasons his memory still shines so brightly for many, especially in MN is because of the nature of that first senate campaign which was strongly supported by young people, many of whom were getting involved in politics for the first time. The Wellstones didn't just inspire those people to help with his campaign, they inspired them to public service beyond it, and so many of those people who "rode the green bus" continued to work in politics and government afterwards. That has an almost generational impact, and when that life is cut tragically short in magnifies the impact of memory. I was working in DC at the time for the Pentagon, and was in a meeting when their plane went down. When I got back to my desk, I had 2 voicemails, 6 emails, and a post-it on my monitor from my boss asking me to come see him so he could break the news gently.

Angels & Marlins both did this. Doesn't seem to have done anything for them, and both were in states that had other teams. Not sure a rebrand to represent less territory would do anything to help them market the brand.

It's fine, but weirdly I'd miss having the red dot on the top of the cap.

I'd love for this to be the deal, but I don't think this comes very close to getting it done. 8 years might be sufficient, but the AAV falls short of what I expect Correa to be asking for and frankly what I think the league will see as his value. As you've noted, the $35.1M wasn't a coincidence and pride matters to both players and agents, so an expectation that Correa will now take less salary in AAV than he made this season in his next contract feels very unrealistic to me. I would expect any deal for Correa to need to break the $300M barrier, even at 8 years. That shouldn't be an insurmountable task for the Twins, and Correa's skill set suggests that even if he needs to move off of SS down to 3B that he has the ability to continue to perform at a high level throughout the duration of the contract. Will anyone offer 10 years and $400M? I suspect that's probably outside the Twins willingness to go. But they should have the ability to punch up to $40M in AAV if they want to and Correa is the sort of player that I would be willing to make that investment.

Well, let's look at the players they brought in for 2021: Correa (played 136 games) Sanchez (played 128 games, mostly at catcher) Urshela (played 144 games) Bundy (made 29 starts) Archer (who made 25 starts...but never showed he could stay healthy for extended innings work) Gray (made 24 starts) Pagan (made 59 appearances...even if we wished he hadn't) So the investments for 2021 actually worked out ok from a health perspective. but we had injuries all over the place from the guys carried over from the previous year and up from the minors (Sano, Maeda, Kirilloff, Larnach, Jeffers, Buxton, Kepler, Lewis, Polanco, Ober, Alcala, Garlick, Winder, etc) and critically a lot of them piled up at the same damn time. Some of these guys it was reasonable to bet on them not staying healthy (Buxton, Kirilloff, Sano, maybe even Lewis and Winder...but the last two weren't guys that were being counted on for this year, really) and they certainly didn't have Maeda in their planning as anything other than "Maybe he'll be able to contribute late". But should they have predicted/planned for Kepler, Polanco, Larnach, and Jeffers all going down? I dunno. A lot of these guys who were hurt in 2022 were healthy in 2019 & 2020, when the twins won a lot of games.

It certainly sounds concerning if isola has that as some kind of tic! Sometimes throwing quirks like that...grow. Twins probably need to be looking at investing draft capital in the catcher spot. Is Martin Royce Lewis fast? Byron Buxton fast? I was definitely pleased with his number of steals last season and his efficiency, and I'm assuming his speed is one of the reasons the team isn't worried about his ability to slide into the OF if an infield spot doesn't work out. Speed guys can be awfully fun, and the triple is still the most consistently exciting play in baseball (seems like most inside the park HRs are the result of a catastrophically bad play in the OF, which is less fun). Would love to see Martin blazing around the bases for triples!

Narvaez is interesting; he's got basically no power in his bat, but he can get you some singles and hop on base enough against righties that he'd be a good fit to play with Jeffers. I think Jeffers is better behind the plate, but Narvaez wouldn't be a detriment back there. He'd be a good fit, especially if the team still thinks there's more to be gotten out of Jeffers. I'm more nervous about Barnhart, I'm afraid. He really struggled at the plate last year and his platoon splits collapsed on him; seeing how his OPS+ has steadily declined over the last five years, I'd be very concerned that he doesn't have much of a bounce-back left in him at this point. With his defense also on the decline, I'd be worried that he's just aging out as a catcher. I think finding a RH bat for the OF shouldn't be too hard or too expensive, and I think it's reasonable to get another RH arm for the bullpen (following the "Sonny Gray or better" rule I think that benchmark has to be "Michael Fulmer or better") as insurance for if Alcala isn't healthy or can't stay healthy. But SS has to be the priority. But I'd try to lock in a catching partner soon, because it's a real need and I don't see ready options in the minors. I like your Narvaez idea!

Jeffers, even with an injury, caught more games in MLB last season than Garver & Rortvedt combined. Plus, we traded off two catchers who could stay healthy and got one back in Sanchez who also produced more value in MLB than both Garver & Rortvedt combined, so...I think this one was actually a pretty smart move by the twins front office. If they had left things in place the way they were, we still would have been in trouble at catcher, since Garver wasn't healthy and Rortvedt wasn't healthy. Enough with the Rosario nonsense. He was awful in 2022, and awful for 2/3 of 2021. We got more value out of Trevor Larnach than Rosario has produced since leaving MN even with the injuries (which, BTW, Eddie has had enough of on his own). Nick Gordon wasn't just a better LF this past season than Rosario, he was substantially better. The Twins front office absolutely made the correct decision there, even with all of the injuries that wrecked our outfield. I still let Eddie move on (with thanks for the adventures) every single time. I would have done it even knowing that our top 5 OF were going get hurt. In terms of Wild Pitches getting by, Jeffers did fairly well and the twins as a whole were 11th in MLB. they were worse on Passed Balls, but the difference between where the twins were and league average was exactly 4 passed balls. for the season. So he seems to have done fine in blocking the plate. He's not great a throwing out baserunners, and may have regressed a little there, but the running game is also less impactful than it ever has been in baseball. Jeffers has been coming under a lot of fire on this board, and he does need a partner behind the plate so we're not relying on him quite as much (mostly because expecting any catcher to handle 140 games or so behind the plate seems like folly these days), but he was better than anything Chicago or Cleveland threw out there.

It's really hard to know with the pitchers, but I suspect they are unlikely to debut in 2023. I think we will see Martin & Julien in 2023 (Martin solves depth issues at multiple positions and Julien seems poised to hit his way on to the club. I get they might have Isola playing some 1B in the AFL, but is he can't stick at catcher, then I don't think we ever see him in MLB. He doesn't hit enough to play 1B even if he's actually amazing at it. He's a really interesting prospect to watch next year to see where our catching depth is, though. Julien is a terrific draft story for the Twins. 18th round pick! You could write off his 2021 if you wanted to as him being a little older for the level, but he crushed it on 2022 at AA as well and was pretty well in line for that level of competition. His understanding of the strike zone is awesome and he's doing a great job of taking his pitch and punishing it. Really looking forward to seeing how he does in AAA and if/how his power production develops. Right now he's an on-base machine who can do some damage, but if he continues to grow and becomes at 25+ HR guy without losing his current levels of contact? that's very exciting. developing these late round picks into legit MLB players is really important for the franchise. It insures you against a high pick busting, give you more prospect capital to make trades, keeps the prospect pipeline flowing, and keeps the system strong. Julien won't do much to move the needle on prospect system rankings (he's going to get dinged for not being a high pick, for not having "elite tools", for being older and less projectable, etc) but his emergence is part of what made it ok to deal Steer & CES last season.