jmlease1

Trout is an amazing player and the best in the game right now. But he's a different player than Hank Aaron. If Trout can be this kind of player though his 30's like he was in his 20's...then he's the greatest of all-time. but Hank Aaron was legitimately great through his entire 30's too. It's so hard to be great for so long. And Trout, for all his brilliance has never had to deal with the same kind of crap that Hank Aaron endured

Hank Aaron was insanely great. To be so consistently great for so long is just unbelievable. He won an MVP and deserved it, but could have easily have won several more (biggest barrier: Willie freakin' Mays). Top 10 in MVP finishes 13 times, including 8 top 5. More all-star nods than anyone, and again: deserved them (19 of the 21 were legit all-star caliber seasons, which is nuts). Led the NL in HRs at 23 and at 33 (with 2 others in between). Aaron was as good a hitter as anyone in baseball at age 37, his 18th year in baseball. He won RBI crowns, batting titles, gold gloves...just an amazing player. It's hard to believe we'll ever see a player like Hank Aaron ever again in baseball.

I'd rather spend $8M on a depth starter than that kind of money on a reliever. It's just got much higher potential for real impact. He's the #4, behind Pineda, but expecting all your starters to be healthy the entire season is unrealistic, which is why you don't want to go into the season needing to fill 2 slots in the rotation from unproven guys in your system: those guys are probably going to get their shots anyways as we go 7-8+ guys getting starts. It's possible Happ is cooked, but that's why this is a 1 year deal. It's not a major splash move, but it's a "raise the floor" move and those have been critical to the team's success in the Falvey/Levine era: trying to make sure they don't hand off piles of innings to guys who can't pitch/aren't ready to pitch in MLB. Yes, you need top-end talent to compete for a title, but reducing the number of ABs taken and innings pitched by bad players is also important in getting you there in the first place.

I think this is a solid depth signing. He wasn't bad for the Yankees last year and isn't far removed from being really good. but we'll see how much he has left in the tank. I think you always need depth in starting pitching, and this helps. price seems about right?

just I was not happy with this trade at the time, mostly because I wasn't a huge Capps fan (he did really well that first year) and more over I was already on the "don't over pay for reliever because he's a closer" train. And that applied to trade or free agency. I just didn't think Capps was worth giving up a guy who looked like he was going to be an excellent hitting catcher for a decade. Capps was actually better than I expected that first year, but went back to being just another reliever afterwards and his career ended early. But he was overvalued for what he actually did and people got fooled by small sample size a little. Ramos never really lived up to the hype; he made 2 all-star teams, but he didn't really deserve either of them and ended up being a good but not great catcher who struggled to stay healthy. This goes down as being a bad trade because Ramos' value was pretty dang high as a prospect and it felt like the twins panic-traded for an ok closer and didn't get the dominant arm they really needed. It could have been worse.

So because he didn't get a chance early enough in his career, you want to write-off his upside? He doesn't have the 98mph fastball, so ignore his results and bury him. What a waste. (also, Guerrier had an 11 year MLB career.)

The writer's whose opinion I care the least about at the Athletic is Jim Bowden's.

Stashak is an interesting bullpen option. I'd say his viability as a higher-leverage guy depends on his ability to not give up hits at this point. He can get Ks, he doesn't give up too many BBs, he keeps the ball in the park at a very reasonable ratio. If he can keep the H/9 down around the levels he did in the minors (and did in 2020) then he's going to be a guy you can count on, not just to come in and get you through the 6th inning, but to come in and get you out of a jam too with runners on base. I'll be watching to see where his WHIP goes this season, especially his h/9. If he's giving up better than a hit per inning, then he's a middle reliever who comes in to get you an inning or so, best served coming in at the start of an inning with a clean sheet. You worry less about relievers giving up more on the BB side than giving up hits as part of WHIP when they also have high K rates because they're keeping the ball out of play when runners are on base. But if you're a guy that gives up too many cheap singles consistently...then the value in higher leverage situations declines. Stashak's ability to get Ks, keep the ball in the park and not hand out too many walks gives him real value as a reliever. His ability to ascend in the bullpen rankings will depend on how well he keeps guys from getting hits. He's useful regardless, but how much versatility he can give will be interesting to watch. I definitely think he should be a contender to pick up some of those innings from May & Romo.

I think if we'd signed Hendriks and/or Hand the article would have been written. It would have been along the lines of "He's good and makes the bullpen better, but is it the best use of our resources?" Which I think is fair. Would I have wanted Hendriks? Sure, in a vacuum. In a world where the Twins have no financial constraints. Do I want him at what the ChiSox paid him? I don't think so. He's getting a premium as a "proven closer" and it's just so rare that those guys add enough extra value consistently over relievers that can be found/made at much lower prices that it's usually not worth it. (I do think it's ok to pay a bit of an extra premium to retain your own players; continuity can matter, showing loyalty can matter for organizational reputation, etc. but even that has limits)

I was interested in Kluber...but $11M is pretty high for a guy who might be completely washed. This is the advantage to being a team like the Yankees or the Dodgers: you can toss an extra $3-5M on a contract and not care about it. On a 1 year deal they can basically out-bid anyone and it doesn't really matter. I wonder what it will take to bring back Odorizzi on his version of the 1 year "prove it" deal? I don't think he's getting the kind of multi-year deal he wants and a 1 year deal to show he's healthy and rebuild his value with an organization he likes and has had respect with makes sense, but what's the number to get it done? $5? $8M $12M? Kluber has a better track record and higher ceiling, but a much more serious injury to return from. I'm thinking it's $8-10M, but who knows. I would sign him as the 4th starter. LeMahieu never seemed like he was on the Twins radar this offseason. Frankly, he never seemed likely to leave the Yankees at all and barely seemed to be on the market. The international signings look interesting, but both SS are lottery tickets at this point. That said I'm glad to see the Twins continue to make investments in the international market: they've had success in developing guys this way before. I'll admit, I do worry a bit about grabbing guys who are 16 and have so much physical development to do: I do think that gets harder to project, and you can end up having to make some hard decisions about Rule 5 when they're still deep in development mode. And with the minor leagues contracting...where and how do they play?

They're a good team, but the only thing Moncado has on Donaldson is health. Moncado has had exactly one good year as a hitter, and if he doesn't repeat it this year it'll be a classic fluke year. He's not a significant defensive player, either. Tim Anderson has a flashy BA, but Polanco has just as much ability in getting on base, so if he's our starting SS he can compete. in 2019, when Anderson was grabbing praise and a batting title, Polanco was the better player. Yes, on D too. Luis Robert has a great future...but Buxton is still more talented, and despite the injuries last season was more productive. Basically the only thing the ChiSox lineup in the field really has on the Twins as currently constituted is health...and it's really hard to project health.

I'd vote for Rolen; he was a truly great player, despite the injuries. He was a better player than Ken Boyer (who I do think is a fringe Hall candidate who hasn't gotten the consideration he deserves). Rolen was a better hitter, even in the context of their eras and arguably a better defender too. Rolen wasn't just a good defender, he was a great one, the standard by which everyone else was measured by during his time. The only knock against Rolen is he played at the same time as Adrian Beltre, who was significantly healthier. Rolen was the better player IMHO (thought not by all that much), but Beltre's ability to stay on the field gave him much more overall value. Health matters, but Rolen was so good when he was on the field that he's worth induction. And it's not like Rolen didn't have a long and productive career: he played 17 seasons, he played over 2000 games. Elite glove man, excellent hitter, just a great player. 3B is underrepresented as it is, we should leave out a great 3B like Rolen. I've come around on Billy Wagner in recent years. Relief pitching is a position in baseball, we've enshrined relievers before, so why not one of the best in Wagner? It's not really his fault he pitched in the era of "the closer pitches the 9th" and he was absolutely dominant. The WHIP, the ERA+...he was destructive out there. He basically had one bad year once he became a closer...one! He was still dominant at age 38 in his last season. He was better than Lee Smith. He was probably better than Trevor Hoffman. I'm in on Wags. Andruw Jones is a tough one for me...he was so good in Atlanta. A spectacularly great CF. From age 20-30 he's a no-doubt Hall of Famer...and then just evaporated. The last 5 years of his career are just kind of sad. 1 ok year in Chicago surrounded by 4 awful ones as he bounced from team to team. But those early years...I think he did enough to ignore how fast he collapsed. The peak is too good to ignore, and it's not like he was only great for 3 years; he deserved every all-star game he made and probably should have been tapped for 2-3 more. And that defense was so ridiculous. I wouldn't vote for Omar regardless of the allegations against him; he was a wonderful player to watch, one of the most beautiful players to watch on defense...but a rotten hitter and his elegance on D almost certainly is overrating his good (and often great) play, but he's not Ozzie Smith and never was. He played forever but there's a good reason he was only a 3 time all-star. I'm out on Schilling, a great pitcher who I have no interest in giving a Hall of Fame platform to spew vitriol and hatred. He's not being penalized for being "conservative", or even supporting Trump (Mariano Rivera is well-known for his conservative beliefs and support of Trump was elected unanimously, and many other players and hall of famers are similar; baseball is very republican-leaning), it's because he's taken things far beyond anyone else, using his position and platform to spur hatred and violence, with no remorse or understanding, and believes he should be free of consequence for his actions. Some committee can reassess him after he'd dead as far as I'm concerned. We are not required to grant him this honor, despite his skill on the field. I'm still on the "get more distance" train for the steroid guys. There are a lot of good arguments for and against putting them in or keeping them out; we should have them all. But I'd age them off the regular ballot and let a later committee hash it out on these guys as we get further removed from those wild wild west times.

Feels like Billy Smith tried to play the Yankees and Red Sox against each other and get them in a bidding war and then both of them bailed out completely and he went to the 3rd place team out of desperation and convinced himself their prospects were worth it.

Who knows what his mindset was at the time, either. Maybe he wasn't interested in trying a bullpen role and was convinced he was a starter. Maybe the Twins didn't see anything that made them think he could make that transition (it doesn't work for everyone). The Twins missed on him, but so did a lot of people. He retooled his career relatively late and managed to still get someone to take another chance on him after he'd flamed out as a starter in a few places. Good for him.

well, the ChiSox have done what you would always ask of a team once the window to contention opens: spend some money on veteran players to fill in holes, shore up weaknesses and position yourself to be go for it. Have they done it correctly? I think it's hard to say. Some of these move look better than others: Grandal: could be the big mistake. catchers don't usually age well and as a hitter if his bat declines at all it's going to be disappointing if he has to play 1B or DH...which brings us to the next guy. Abreu: He's likely to regress from pandemic season; it's hard to believe he'll lead the league in slugging again at age 34. That's a number that screams small sample size. But his bat should still be quality...but he's also gonna be playing more and more DH, because a) Grandal may need a home and he stinks defensively. Kuechel: he was exactly what they needed last year. I didn't want the Twins to sign him, and I was probably wrong. (assuming he doesn't completely collapse this season through age/injury, but it seems less likely) even if the last season is a bust on this contract, I don't think they're likely to truly regret it. Lynn: Hard for Twins fans to like this guy after he was a such a dog for us and then did well everywhere else. But again: the big hole for the ChiSox was starting pitching. They really needed a 3rd guy they could count on and Lance Lynn has been that everywhere he's pitched except MN. It's a good move for a guy I will never cheer for, ever. Hendriks: They are rolling the dice on him staying good well into his 30's. This and Grandal are the big risks: relievers are fungible and it's rarely worth paying a premium and committing big cash to a closer, and catchers generally age badly. Maybe he'll be fine because he's got relatively low mileage on his arm. Maybe the last two seasons are predictive of where he really is...but I kinda doubt it. it's more likely that he pitches like the 2015-2017 version: still very good, but there's as good a chance he's 2018 Hendriks as there is he's 2019 Hendriks, which is way 3-4 year deals at big money for closers scares me. But they seem to be loading it up for this year, and their team is looking pretty good. A top three rotation of Giolito, Keuchel, and Lynn is playoff worthy. Hendriks, Bummer, and Foster looks strong in the back end of the bullpen. They've got talent in the lineup, including some star power with guys like Jimenez. The question is probably whether they have enough quality depth up and down the roster to ride it for a full season. (and whether their manager should still be managing) They've been aggressive and the Twins have not. But I have to keep remembering two things: 1) you evaluate the off-season when the off-season is done, not every time a rival makes a move, and 2) "winning" the off-season doesn't actually get you any hardware.

I liked the rumored packages from the Yankees and the Red Sox better than the Mets by a lot, so I will always wonder what was really out there. It felt like at the time the Twins were afraid to trade with the Yankees for some public relations reasons and that the rumors about the Red Sox interest weren't that solid (i.e., they weren't really "in" just trying to raise the price for the Yankees). Go-Go was incredibly fun to watch in the outfield, but he was just helpless at the plate as a Twin. Would things have gone better if he'd had better/more development time? It seems likely, since he never set the world on fire as a hitter in the minors and had been an awful hitter in the majors for the Mets. Defensively, he was ready but offensively he needed more work. But buy, his D was great until he started losing that incredible speed. I recall Guerra being talked about as the guy with big upside, and it's a reminder that a-ball guys in trades are often just lottery tickets and will bust out much more often that blow up. Humber & Mulvey were over-valued by the Twins because they were "close" to being MLB ready, I think. No way does the current office make that mistake today.

apparently the Cleveland ownership is trying to recoup all their losses from 2020 in a single season. Gross.

The list looks about right to me. I might quibble a little with some of the individual positions, but the reality is there's not much difference between a guy being ranked 8 or 10. Garver is probably the toughest call on the whole list, I think. His value is higher if he's 2019 Garv. If he's 2020 Garv, he doesn't make the list at all. If he's 2018ish Garv...this is pretty close? And we just don't know who he is, if 2019 was a fluke or not. If 2020 should just be written off as a fluky, injury pandemic year. It's a really tough call. I'm excited to see Kirilloff in MLB this year.

Man, Tommy Herr was a disaster. It wasn't a good trade from the start; Herr was already on the downside and had zero pop in his bat and trading a younger player for an older one like that is iffy unless the old guy really has the track record. And Herr didn't: he was a 1-time all-star and never played that well before or after. The change to clubhouse chemistry was more damaging than the loss of Brunansky's bat; Bruno wasn't a good fielder and was only a pretty good hitter. Drew walks, hit for some power but didn't have an elite tool. Herr wasn't even that bad on the field, considering how few 2Bs in MLB hit worth a damn back then and his D was fine. but it messed up the team and he didn't want to be there. Randy Bush was good enough with the stick that we didn't really miss Bruno's bat that much (Bush was almost Delmon-like in the field, though). Kicked off a run where the Twins really struggled to find a 2B until Knoblauch arrived: Herr (clubhouse cancer, but good on the field), Lombo (can't hit), Backman (couldn't hit the AL), Newman (couldn't hit). Three guys who couldn't hit and Tom Herr. Blech.

1) sure, but it should also account for changes in role. but ZiPS doesn't appear to have that ability. 2) Is it, though? It does account for injuries by players: guys who have been historically healthy and playing full time get projected to do the same, and guys who haven't been healthy don't get projected to play a full season. So how does a projection for someone like Rortvedt work? He's never gotten an AB in MLB, has 2-4 players ahead of him on the roster (depending on what you think of Astudillo as a catcher and the AAA guy they signed)...why would he get projected to get the same level of ABs as Jeffers? And the idea that Rortvedt is a significantly better defender at this point and that his offense would be fairly close to Jeffers so that he'd be more valuable is a bit silly. I'm a huge Rortvedt guy and even I know that Jeffers is far past him right now.

The biggest challenge with ZIPS is when you start drilling down into individual players. The Maeda example is perfect for this: regression towards the mean is pretty reasonable after last season's excellence...but projecting him to have ANY relief appearances shows they aren't accounting for his changed role with a new team. The Twins aren't going to push him into the bullpen absent some really strange circumstances, so this shows a flaw in their projection systems. ZIPS also assumes that players with an injury history will continue to be injured when doing these projections; that's not an unreasonable assumption, but it's always a chancy thing. I think the biggest surprises are a) how relatively unimpressed these projections are with Kirilloff and Jeffers; those ratings feel conservative to me, and again reveals one of the things I find the most frustrating about projection systems: they struggle to spot the young breakout guys. the projections on Astudillo, who I simply don't see getting anywhere near this much playing time in 2021, combined with the projection on Rortvedt. Clearly ZIPS likes Rortvedt's defense, but I'm not seeing him have this big of a role in 2021 (much as I like him) and Jeffers is going to get those ABs IMHO.

All good trade targets, although I'm a little less excited about giving up a pile for Story unless the FO is really confident on being able to resign him without needing to dump a ton of salary everywhere else; I'd really hate to do a deal that dropped a bunch of top-end prospects for a guy that only sticks for a year. Those kind of deals don't usually work out well in baseball. (see also, Alexander, Doyle) I like Gray and I think he'd be a good fit for us to fill out the back end of the rotation and see if Wes Johnson can up his game a bit more. Marquez is definitely worth giving up a serious package for: the contract is good, the peripherals are there...but I think the analysis above is right: he's going to be hard to chisel out of there unless they dump Arenado's contract and start the rebuild.

This. I think teams are realizing that paying a premium for a "proven" closer is usually a poor use of resources, and multi-year contracts for relievers has higher levels of risk not because of the talent of the pitcher but just because of the fungible nature of the position. It's tough to succeed as a starter without 3 effective pitches. As a reliever, you need one dominant offering and one other pitch that is effective playing off the first pitch. Which is why you're seeing starters who have that one dominant pitch and can't get their secondary stuff up to snuff continuing to have success converting to the bullpen. The secondary effect of that is you are having additional internal options for teams to develop bullpen options for the MLB club, because it's not just guys coming through as relievers. With the chain continuing to fill, what's the incentive to pay FA guys premium salaries? The days of paying "closers" $10-15M AAV contracts is done, and so is giving guys that kind of money for 3-5 years. You're going to see a lot more guys getting non-tendered as relievers from now on I think as clubs reset the market on relief pitching. If Taylor Rogers doesn't have a great season, he's going to be non-tendered too because the team probably isn't going to pay him $8M when his FA market value is $5M or less.

Look, either you think the Twins are a smart, professional operation with a good coaching staff and a plan for their pitchers...or you don't. If you're on board with the former, then this looks like a reasonable value play: talented reliever with some good peripherals but a bit of a control problem. If things go well for him then he's a fine late-inning option who will get plenty of Ks. His floor looks like Matt Magill from 2018-19 if things don't go as well. If you think the twins don't know what they're doing, if you only think you can get reliable relief pitching by signing big names, if you think moves like this are a waste of time & roster spots...then you're not gonna be very happy with this. And probably aren't going to be very happy as a Twins fan. strong bullpens have become more and more important in recent years with starters throwing fewer innings...but relievers remain the most fungible position in baseball. It's the easiest position to fill, rarely worth paying premium amounts for, and the small samples they have year over year make them the hardest to project. Robles is a great example of this: in 2020, he was awful...but it was 16 2/3 innings. He was roughly as bad in 19 innings with the Mets in 2018 and then immediately turned it around for the rest of the season in roughly twice as many innings with the Angels as he pulled it back to the mean. Might he have done the exact same thing in 2020 if he'd had enough innings? Seems likely. So why did the Angels move on from him? Probably the same reason a lot of people thought the Twins might move on from Taylor Rogers: not sure the arbitration number was going to match his performance. He was almost certainly going to get $4M+ in arbitration, even coming off a rotten year. Despite how strange it seems to us, everyone gets a raise in baseball arbitration, no matter how bad the year they had. Would they have kept him at $2M? They might have, but Robles also might have been ready to get the heck out of there after a) having a bad season, and maybe thinking that the Angels didn't really have that much respect for his talents after non-tendering him.

I'm more interested in getting in a power righty with a proven track record than spending all our bullpen money on another lefty. Hand is good, and I'd be happy to have him, but I'm looking for the replacement for May right now. Alcala can fill some of those innings, but we need a righty more than another lefty.