jmlease1

Unfortunately, luck and health are two factors that are mostly outside of a player or team's control. But they are also important factors that can be the difference between greatness and not. I'm not giving up on Buxton. He's a terrific talent who looks like he's putting it together at the plate and is already elite in the field and on the bases. He also seems like a genuinely good dude too. I don't think his injuries are a matter of him "getting it" at this point: he's had some bad luck and that's the way it goes.

It's a really really good collection of hitters. I'm not sure how to structure it, but I really wonder about the effect of a lineup with no real holes in it. Because that's one the areas where the Twins are really excelling right now: there's no breaks in there. There are no easy outs and there are a ton of players who can do real damage if you make a mistake (Donaldson, Cruz, Kepler, Garver, Sano, and Rosario are all guys who could hit 30 dingers in a regular season. I mean, wow.). The worst hitter in the lineup is...Buxton? Last year he was nicely above league average with a 114 OPS+. Rosario? You can get him chasing, but he's also a guy who can hit anything and drilled 32 hrs last year. There aren't all that many teams who don't have at least one guy as a regular who hits below league average. Yankees did last year, so did the Houston Bucket Thumpers. When you have zero holes in the lineup, and you have a guy who can challenge for a batting title, multiple guys who could run for the hr title...yeah, this is one of the best lineups in baseball.

To be the ace, you have to be able to get deep into games. Even if you kill it for 5 innings, you still can't be the ace if you're consistently coming out without finishing 6. Part of the responsibility of the #1 pitcher on a staff is turning that outing that saves the bullpen, and I'm just not sure Odorizzi can do it consistently enough. He doesn't finish off guys fast/easily enough. I'm not saying he's not a good pitcher, and I'm very happy we brought him back for another spin. I was happy when we acquired him, and it's definitely paid off. But I think Berrios has better odds of being the ace, especially in a short season. Berrios seems to have some challenges staying sharp/strong during the long grind of the season, having some noticeable dips mid/later in the year. The shorter season may work to his advantage. But regardless, he's shown he has the stuff to be the guy.

Rooker? The bigger issue is having a guy whose true position is CF being ready. Celestino is still a few years away; the defense is probably good enough already, but he's likely to get overwhelmed at the plate. Royce Lewis can probably do it, but a) they'd need him to spend at least a chunk of a minor league season learning the position right now...and once he moves to the OF it's hard to see him ever coming back to the INF. And despite Polanco and Arraez being locked in right now in the middle INF, I doubt the Twins are ready to move their top SS prospect out of there. Dang it, Buxton just may be too injury prone. This sucks. I hope it's just a sprain and everyone (including me) is overreacting.

Fernando Romero should be pushed down. Between ineffectiveness and his visa problems, he's a non-factor. It's a shame, but it's hard not to think of him as a bust.

It'd be nice to have Kuechel on the Twins rather than the ChiSox, but I didn't like the contract for him then, and I don't like it now. And I'd certainly rather have Donaldson over Kuechel. That's the thing with Cron or Smoak; I would have been fine bringing Cron back at a reasonable price, but I'd rather have Donaldson and moving Sano. Smoak would have been a good replacement for Cron...but I'd still rather have Donaldson. You can't have every player, eventually you run out of spots. Kuechel is the only one we really had room for that we could have let a lesser player go...but the contract means we don't have the room to sign Donaldson, and I think he's more impactful. Maybin is the only one that's really in consideration for a "The Twins should have signed this guy (and not gone the route they did)" IMHO. But I understand why they like their young OF depth...and if Maybin was looking for an everyday role, he wasn't going to sign here, because no way does he beat out any of the Twins starters. So he's probably not really in consideration.

A bit unfair. They should pro-rate his suspension too.

So what happens with Pineda's suspension? Is that pro-rated based on the relative length of the season?

I'm wondering if some of the decision-making around this year's draft and going heavier on hitters might be some risk mitigation and belief that these hitters are more projectable? It's an interesting draft. I have no objection to grabbing up college hitters and while there seems to be a belief that the team is well-stocked on corner OFs and 1B/DH types, it wasn't that long ago that we struggled to find a consistent option at DH and until Rosario/Kepler arrived we cycled through a lot of guys in the corners. Depth is good. In baseball more than any other sport, I believe in drafting for talent over need because of the uncertainty with draft picks and the typical length of development. Hopefully, the Twins are evaluating well? The first round pick seems fine on talent/value. There seems to be some reasonable questions on the second rounder.

I think it's reasonable to have less faith in top 100 lists and so forth this year compared to other years with the pandemic ending seasons early and reducing the ability to scout. There are reasons to be skeptical of the pick, but also interesting signs of projectable skills and talent.

I can understand cutting the draft back, but I'm having trouble understanding why they're going down to only 5 rounds. seems excessive to me.

oof. you can see why current Twins fans reflexively keep saying we need more pitching. NOT a strong era for starters.

The rotation was excellent at the top but fell off pretty rapidly afterwards. I think I still put Liriano in there over the crew of Baker/Silva; injuries are what sapped him as a Twin but the upside and elite stuff were better than the rest of them. Baker only had 2 good seasons with the Twins in this decade, Silva really only had two good seasons... Milton's best skill was chewing up innings even if he wasn't often great; he might have been the most valuable from that group... which is not great.

The more I think about it, the more I would pick Kubel to DH over Ford. Kubel had a number of seasons where he was a solid hitter to go along with his one excellent season (which he was the primary DH) and Ford really only had the one. It's a shame we only really got to see Kubel in MLB after his knees were wrecked.

ooof the middle infield was rough in the 00's! Guzman..Bartlett...neither great, both had one really good season that they never repeated as a Twin...I guess you give it to Guzman on longevity? 2B was a wasteland, Punto is probably the best choice even if we saw his best play when he was at 3B. Yuck. It's also sad how bad DH was for the Twins during this decade...look at all the ABs Jason Tyner ruined for us there! Honestly the failure to find a plus DH might be the biggest failure of the regime during those years: it shouldn't have been that hard to find or develop a player to just hit to give more quality. Lew Ford is...a reasonable choice? Oh dear. Otherwise it's a pretty impressive roster! 2 MVPs loads of all-stars...

I think he can still stick there for 3-4 more years; while the defense isn't good, he's not exactly the Butcher of Cairo out there and he's still in his athletic prime. If he continues to work on his defense, there's real opportunity for him to improve, particularly with his arm where he can improve his mechanics, strength and accuracy. There is a better recognition of defensive metrics and teams are more reluctant to put bad defenders on the field, I don't think it's applying to players like Polanco. The defensive crunch is taking out one-dimensional sluggers who simply can't play at key defensive positions. Guys who are plus offensively and can survive defensively up the middle will still get a pass until their defense just makes it impossible to play them there and Polanco isn't in that position. Partly because his defense, while poor, isn't unplayable and partly because the Twins don't have a better solution pushing to make the field. BRef's WAA shows the Twins were 9th at SS and that's because of Polanco. You'd love to add some additional defensive value, but as long as he hits like this you don't worry too much about his defense unless it really falls off the map. He's got more seasons at SS in him for sure.

Overall, I think this is a pretty fair breakdown. I think Hunter vs Mauer is a really interesting conversation; both have been accused of being overrated as defensive players, both played positions that were highly impactful defensively before shifting to positions that are much less impactful. It's a really close call there I think? Kaat was probably as elite as Buxton at his position as a fielder, but I think there's just more impact in CF. It's a fair call. It's interesting how few SS are represented here and how many 1Bs are. (and Vic Power and Don Mincher didn't even make the list)

Aguilera was the winning pitcher of game 6 in the '91 WS, not game 7 of course. Also took the loss in game 3. Great pitcher, did a fantastic job for the Twins for a long time, but I'd put him behind Joe Nathan. Aggie had better results in the postseason than Nathan but outside of years of service that's the only area where he outpoints Nathan. Too small a sample size to push him ahead of Twitchy who was just insanely great with MN.

I find it really odd that Shane Mack couldn't attract attention from other teams back in '94, but maybe it was a case of baseball owners colluding again. Maybe they all thought he was never going to be the same player he was in 91-92. But considering how well he was playing in 94 that's a pretty stupid judgment for everyone to make; '93 looks like the anomaly not the predictor. I loved him as a player. He's not a forgotten player to anyone who loved the Twins in the 90's.

Even if arbitration wasn't officially frozen...how do you go in to an arbitration hearing asking for substantially more money if you didn't play? I think baseball is going to find a way to have some kind of a season; truncated, maybe played without fans in the stands, but I don't think the entire season will get wiped out, but maybe that's just me. It would be a tremendous shame if a player like Eddie Rosario never played another game in MN.

Hard to know if he would have spent the whole career in MN without the concussion, but I feel pretty confident they would have at least tried to keep him for another contract...and I think it's likely he would have given at least a little hometown discount to stay. I dunno if he would have been a Hall of Famer; always hard to project, but the concussion almost certainly cost him 10-15 bWAR which would have put him in the same collection with guys like Gil Hodges and Don Mattingly even with no additional seasons at the back end. Getting cut down in the middle of his best season and having the effects of that injury lead into his worst season as a pro is a huge bummer, not just for his HoF case, but for what baseball fans missed seeing. Love Justin Morneau. I'm so happy he's stayed connected to the franchise and is part of things now. His era with the team is a bit of a lost era filled with what ifs and almosts, but he was still a wonderful player to watch.

I hope Blankenhorn can maintain that positional flexibility. He'll be a much more valuable prospect if he's a guy who can play 2B/3B/OF and have a nice path to the majors. If he gets pushed down to corner OF, I'm not sure he's going to hit enough to force his way ahead of guys like Larnach or Kirilloff. Good to see that he's embracing that aspect. He could be the replacement for Marwin on this squad if he continues to develop. I thought Blankenhorn might have stalled out after a disappointing 2018, but he really did a nice job in 2019 showing he had more in him. Hopefully he'll be able to actually get some paying time this year, he's at an important stage in his development.

Honorable mention to Tapani pitching out of the jam in the top of the 8th in game 2. Just watched the game again on FSN the other night, what a gutty performance by Tap! I would also put the Gagne-Knoblauch decoy on the list. I don't care what Lonnie Smith says, he got fooled and it was brilliant.

I think you need to take a closer look at Radke, who was probably better than you remember, and a better pitcher than Jim Perry to beat. Radke compiled 45.6 bWAR for the Twins in 12 seasons; Perry only reached 26.3 bWAR in 10 seasons with the Twins. The ERA+ is the same, but Radke did it over an additional 575 innings pitched, and while doing it in an era where pitchers were already not going as deep into games. Perry's Cy is nice, but a) his best season was probably '69, not '70 and he didn't deserve a Cy in either year. Radke's best season ('99) was as good as anything Perry ever put up, and he was just as good in '00. Radke put up 4-6 seasons that were all-star quality (Perry had more 2); how exactly is that average? Radke's rep gets pushed down because he played in a high scoring environment for some pretty rotten Twins teams. Take 1999: he was terrific, but went 12-14 on a rotten team with an incredibly anemic offense (Koskie & Cordova were the only ones who were even above league average; Coomer led the team in HRs with 16. Good lord, only 16. on the 2019 Twins that puts him in 9th place, barely jumping ahead of Marwin). A putrid squad overall, but Radke was great. It's hardly his fault the Twins squandered his best years with such awful teams around him. Even then, he clawed out a 20 win season in '97 on a team where the next 3 starters combined for 22 wins. Bottom line: Brad Radke was a heck of a pitcher.

Molina peaked in 2012 too, had a similar season to Posey. (I'll admit, I've always wondered a little about Molina's big jump in offense from 2011-2013, but maybe he did just hit his peak from 28-30. As a catcher.) It's always a little depressing to look back and recall that Mauer was having another monster season in 2013 before the concussion. He could have ended up with another 7 bWAR season, which would have put him in some pretty rarified air: very few catchers have hit that summit twice. (Bench x3, Fisk x2, Carter x3, Piazza x2) A lot of HoF catchers never cleared that height at all (no for Yogi, Rodriguez, Campy, Dickey, Hartnett...) Probably the best catching season no one remembers is Gary Carter in 1982. Fisk got hurt in '79 and Carter took the title of "best catcher in baseball" and didn't give away the belt until '86 and you can make a pretty good argument the only player in all of baseball better than him was Robin Yount (who had an insane season for Harvey's Wallbangers).