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jmlease1

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Everything posted by jmlease1

  1. jmlease1
    it's possible Sonny Gray has never thought he should come out of a game in his entire life. It's like asking Buxton or Lewis if they can play that day: even if a limb was falling off they'd say yes. Ask Gray if he's got another inning in him and he's going to say yes. It's both admirable and foolish. He had a good first season with MN followed by one of the best seasons of his career. If coming off one of the best seasons of your career, where you were the runner up for the Cy Young award you're mad at the team for how they handled you to the point of not wanting to come back? Maybe you don't have the first damn clue what's actually best for you on the field. but Gray wasn't going to sign here because we weren't going to give him 3+ years at $20M+ per season. I would argue the Twins made the correct choice in making him the QO, then letting him go when he declined.
  2. jmlease1
    I'm not sure these seasons do much to refute my point: Julien's 2023 was substantially better than Cave's 2018, and Julien produced more in his 2+ seasons than cave did in 7 MLB seasons. Cutting off everything from Cave after 2020 doesn't make him a more impactful player. was Julien bad last year? yes he was. There's literally no one arguing that he was good last season. If this is about Baldelli's relationship to Cave & Julien, then skip the 2018 season when Molitor was his manager? Cave was an ok-ish bench bat and 4th OF his first couple of seasons in MLB. Then he stopped hitting and was basically a replacement level player after that. Julien had a great rookie season and a bad sophomore slump after MLB pitching adjusted to him, he was less lucky, and struggled to adjust. He's made a substantial adjustment this season and so far hasn't got any breaks with it, but there are promising signs (barrel%, hard hit%, etc) as well as ones that are worrisome (chase rate). but he doesn't really look like Jake Cave.
  3. jmlease1
    he's 10th in games played and ABs so far this season. (and would almost certainly be lower if Brooks Lee wasn't hurt to start the season) You'd prefer more Mickey Gasper? the Cave comp is weird: Julien has already been more productive in his 2+ seasons than Cave was in 7, and Cave never had a season as good as Julien's 2023. If Julien can't improve over last season he'll likely be gone and/or fighting to try to get a roster spot. But I'm always amazed how quickly people want to give up on him, though: dude produced in 2023, and now people act like that never happened and he's trash with no upside left. If Julien can reduce his chase rate while getting the kind of barrels he's been registering so far, he should see better results. We'll see if he can do it. It's a good sign that he's been able to change his approach up from something that was working for him for a long time, but clearly he's got work to do.
  4. jmlease1
    this is the thing though: they're clearly not just doing it based purely on pitch count or number of times through the order. They're also looking at his velocity and factoring in his illness and lack of innings so far. Whether or not they made the correct decision in this case, we'll never actually know, but it's not a dogmatic "ope, you're going to face the top of the order for the 4th time, so out you go!" This is why so many of the "Rocco manages off a spreadsheet" and the anti-analytic arguments are unpersuasive. cherry-picking 1 or 2 bits to reach a predetermined conclusion doesn't convince many people of anything, just encourages those that already agree. I don't think Rocco has done a particularly good job so far; there have been decisions that were questionable at the time that have not gone his way, and basically none of the levers he's pulled have worked so far. But in baseball I always lay the vast majority of the blame on the players. Even the actively bad/stupid managers aren't going to substantially change a team's destiny. Look at the White Sox last season: would a good manager have made them an average team? No. At best we're talking about going from historically bad to just regular bad. Sizemore was ok as a manager when he took over, but the team still stunk. (even the fire sale didn't make much impact; Fedde was the only guy playing well, maybe gets them a few more wins, but it was the end of July with 2/3 of the season already done and dusted.)
  5. jmlease1
    Huge bummer for Martin, who didn't pout about going back to AAA but instead put his energy on the field, hitting well and showing improvement in the field. Sucks to see him going down like that, especially when he's on a heater. Glad to see Winokur get a hit (his reaction tells me the ofer was getting in his head) and hopefully that gets him started. He's been very cold so far. GG and Amick are both off to great starts in Cedar Rapids, which is very nice to see. GG looks healthy and his power production is back to where we thought it would be. he seems like someone who if he stays healthy and on track will be looking at a midseason promotion. Amick is doing almost everything you could ask for from a draft pick in his first full year pro season; the only possible concern is the K's but it's a small thing for a guy who's hitting so well.
  6. jmlease1
    It's absolutely hilarious to invoke Earl Weaver in an anti-analytics screed. Earl was one of the forerunners of modern analytics in how he constructed and ran his teams. But we've also seen that Baldelli generally lets his starters go as long as anyone in the league...when his starting pitching is good. But he (and this is true of most managers today) doesn't just go "well, it's one of my best guys, that's the most important thing". This kind of decision is one that there's literally no way for the manager to win on: if he pulls Ober and 'pen implodes, he's an idiot. If he leave him in and Ober melts down, he should have known better. If he leave him in and Ober cruises through another inning, then it's all because of Ober. (and he'll get killed if he goes to the bullpen for the 8th too). Even if the bullpen gets through the inning, he's going to get hit for pulling his starter "too early" and using up his bullpen. Baldelli made a significant mistake in letting Ober start in StL while needing more recovery time. Since it was the start of the season there's no reason they couldn't have shuffled the rotation or simply given Dobnak the start. that's a case of him probably trusting the player too much. Now people are mad because he supposedly didn't trust the player enough. I think Baldelli has some problems with lineups and bullpen usage. But he's generally been good at handling the starting pitching. Last night was just one of those ones where it went sideways. the problem is, he's getting the worst possible result on these kinds of decisions that ight normally go his way most of the time right now as the team flails. This magnifies the impact of those choices and makes him look worse than he probably is. If the team doesn't score more runs and win more close games it's not going to matter much: he'll eventually get fired. Baldelli is like most managers in baseball: he looks good when his players are good and are healthy. He looks bad when his players are playing poorly and his got a bunch of injuries to deal with. Right now, too many guys are still playing poorly, especially on offense.
  7. jmlease1
    it's part of why I mentioned his WHIP. having a great K/9 tells you things about someone's stuff, how dominant they are, etc. And K's help you out a lot when you allow that baserunner with no outs. But the WHIP also tells you some things about where they're at through the number of baserunners they're allowing. You can survive in the minors letting people on base at times, but it gets much much harder in MLB and that weak contact sometimes does turn into hard contact in bad ways. I don't think we know yet how hittable Morris is yet. It'll be interesting to see where Morris is at after 5-7 starts. He's clearly got talent and is doing fine so far.
  8. jmlease1
    Really hope it's nothing serious with Walker Jenkins. feel like the Twins deserve better luck with prospect injuries. Great start to the season for Morris. he's another guy like Zebby who shot up through the system in a big old hurry last season, so it's good to see him doing well in AAA. It'll be interesting to see where his peripherals are as the season goes along and see where his K/9 and WHIP are sitting after a few more starts. results matter the most, but I'm a little concerned he's going to start giving up runs in bunches if he's not able to K a few more batters and limit the baserunners. Wonder what the internals look like on winokur; is he just a little off? because right now he's having a dreadful start. Hopefully he just needs some warm weather? Culpepper & Amick certainly don't seem bothered and it's good to see two guys in their first full season of pro ball off to a nice start while being moved fairly aggressively.
  9. jmlease1
    Ryan was great. Did a fine job in keeping KC down, and was efficient in getting there so he got through 7, which was great for the bullpen. He looks fully recovered from the injury from last season, which is great. We need him. Maybe all the Twins needed was nice weather? Nice to see the defense add rather than subtract too.
  10. jmlease1
    It is a question, isn't it? Winokur is playing some CF, deAndrade & debarge are both playing 2B, but I'd think someone needs to get pushed up to AA or slid back to Ft. Myers. Maybe the good start for DeAndrade gets him to Wichita faster?
  11. jmlease1
    He didn't hit last season in MLB because he was battling injuries. defensively, he was our 2nd best SS last season behind Correa, our best 3B (looked excellent there), and while he had a couple of errors at 2B it was a small sample of innings and otherwise looked good there. he also hit the cover off the ball in AAA last season (hello, .974 OPS!), so I'm not sure what another 200 ABs in AAA are going to prove. When he comes up, he's starting every day at 2B or 3B.
  12. jmlease1
    Gasper. yes, it's a small sample, but he hasn't looked good at the plate, and while I love his willingness to learn another position on the fly, he looks more like a guy without a position than Julien. I agree with Sixel: the others might have futures (even if they're scrabbling like so many Twins hitters), hard to see much with Gasper so far. but the most important thing is getting Brooks Lee up here as fast as he's healthy. he'll improve the D at 2B and at 3B (if they slide him in there) and I still believe in his bat if he's healthy.
  13. jmlease1
    Zebby is looking great so far; nice to see his velocity high on the fastball. It's a small sample, but he seems to have no concerns facing AAA hitters. No fear if he gets called up to take Pablo's spot in the rotation for a turn or two...and I hope that if he does well the Twins start thinking seriously about giving him Paddack's spot. He's off to an excellent start. A little concerned about Winokur, who is definitely scrabbling at the plate. Doncon is off to a slow start as well. Hope it's just early season/cold weather/small sample noise. Culpepper and Amick are both off to good starts, however and that's nice. I've heard Culpepper is good enough at SS to potentially stick there and he's hitting like a first round draft choice for sure. It'll be interesting to see how they manage time in the field for him & DeAndrade (who is also starting well). Amick is interesting and someone I'm going to be paying more attention to. Like the quick start to the season from him and the XBHs, but the K's are something to watch. Would love to know more about where his defense is at and whether he can stick at 3B? Wouldn't mind seeing him develop as a 3B-1B guy.
  14. jmlease1
    2020 was a weird season but the Twins did make the playoffs. It was weird for everyone and we were one of the better teams in the AL. 2022 was going great and injuries utterly ruined the season. that's not on Rocco. It's totally underplaying just how bad the injury situation was to say "injuries played a part". we were signing outfielders off the street, and even with a patchwork rotation (Ober hadn't overcome his injury troubles yet, so it was Ryan, Gray, and Pray) the Twins were somehow tied for 1st on Sept 4th. 2023 also was an improvement over 2019 in playoff results; we beat a Toronto team that had 5 all-stars, 2 gold glove winners, and the league leader in strikeouts (Gausman was a really good pitcher that year!) I generally think that Rocco has been fine, and I frequently think managers are assigned too much blame credit when a team wins and too much blame when they do poorly. That said, this season very little has gone right: his moves mostly haven't worked, both in the ones he's made and the ones he hasn't. But what happens if they can Rocco at this point? Are things going to change significantly with Jayce Tingler as the interim? Are they really going to pull someone off the street to run the team with someone else's coaching staff? Last night's game was unbelievably frustrating, because seeing pitchers not able to throw to 1B is crazy. Hawk was definitely trying to cover for the pitchers a bit on the broadcast, talking about how hard it is to go from throwing a pitch and being all amped up to tossing a ball gentle to 1B. but Jax wasn't even close. France doesn't get to that with a ladder. Was Jax just gripping it too tight because he knows he's been crap so far this season? Ragans is a really good pitcher, and had a generous strike zone at times, so the fact that the Twins ran up his pitch count and saw the backside of him after 6 with the game tied wasn't terrible. Pablo looked like he was matching him, so it stunk to see him go out with an injury. but Maki not apparently knowing what was going on, seems very odd. It's not like there's a language barrier. I don't really understand putting Gasper out at 2B. Julien is sitting right there, and while he's not a great defensive player, he's far more experienced at 2B. Either he can play it or he can't. Julien was already starting, so you had a LH hitter in the lineup against the LHP pitcher anyways. These kinds of decisions are starting to pile up on Rocco, though, and they have to start working or it's going to be someone else's turn.
  15. jmlease1
    Please stay healthy. Just that. The stuff is electric and if he can get the changeup a little sharper (I'm guessing he rarely needed it before with such a strong slider-fastball combo) then he could be a monster. but can his arm hold up? please stay healthy so we can find out. I think I'd prefer him going to the bullpen sooner rather than later, because at the end of the day i think that's where he's most likely to thrive...and stay healthy. But I could be wrong: which is going to be harder on his rebuilt wing, trying to grind through 5-7 innings once a week or going max effort 2-3 times a week for an inning or so?
  16. jmlease1
    probably can't do it now, or at least not until the all-star break without either an injury or some off-days. But might have made a lot more sense to start the season. I'm unenthusiastic about paddack as well, but as long as he's healthy he's going to get some additional chances; having him in the "5th" spot makes him the easiest to skip IMHO. not sure how we'd get there, but it might be a better way to structure your rotation in general, rather than go "best-2nd best-3rd best-4th best-5th best".
  17. jmlease1
    Would the Twins be better off from a bullpen standpoint if they sequenced their starters like this? Lopez-SWR-Ryan-Ober-Paddack? Since they seem to not let SWR go as deep, but he's also less likely to get skipped for health than Paddack, wouldn't this fit better and give you a better chance of not overstressing your bullpen? Ryan and Lopez are both pretty proven as inning-eaters (as much as anyone is in today's game), and even when they're not as sharp they have the best chance of gutting out 5-6 innings, while also showing an ability to go 6-7 with reasonable consistency. probably too radical, and would bruise someone's ego too much by their placement.
  18. jmlease1
    the cedar rapids group is an interesting bunch this year, 5 position players on the top 20 prospect list, it's going to be very interesting to see who separates themselves this season. Winokur is athletic but streaky. DeBarge might be one of those guys that needed aluminum bats to hit for any power? Culpepper is a guy I like and am excited to have him in a full season of pro ball. GG is off to a nice start and has some things to prove. Amick looks like he knows the strike zone, so be interesting to see if he can make enough contact. (I like him 10% more because he's going by Billy rather than Bill/Will/William; something about it just feels like baseball, lol)
  19. jmlease1
    I'm unimpressed with how the Twins are handling long/middle relief currently. They need to have 1-2 pitchers who can give them 2 innings without being cooked for three days and the continued 1 inning only usage isn't working great. Varland is young and was a starter until recently. there shouldn't really be an issue for him to throw 2 innings, but he's already seems to be defined as a 1 inning guy. Either he or Sands or Topa should have been asked to throw 2 on Sat so we weren't looking at 4 guys throwing back to back on Sunday. Of course the fact that Paddack hasn't been able to pitch 5 yet and neither has Ober is a bigger issue...but they mismanaged Ober's first start as well; maybe not such a bright idea to run out the guy who lost 8 lbs in one day because he was so damn sick after just giving him a banana bag? the starters can't keep running out early exits; we've had 5 starts from 3 guys that have totaled 18 innings. If Ober and Paddack are both going to stink, we're in for a rough ride. I would also say that babying SWR shouldn't be an option, so we'll see what they do today. But at 82 pitches through 4, is it really unrealistic to ask him to go out for another inning? he'd been limiting the damage and half of his innings were clean and efficient. Either you trust him or you don't. Rocco & Maki have not impressed with the pitching management so far, and it's fair to criticize, because while some of this is on the players (WTF is wrong with Jax?) some of this is also about actual choices.
  20. jmlease1
    20/20 hindsight. 2017 draft is an interesting one: to date, no player in the first round has put up 10 bWAR yet (though Greene is very close). No pick in the top 10 has more bWAR than Lewis except for Greene. the #3 pick has already been traded once, and the #4 pick is already out of baseball. the #5 pick had one quality season before turning back into a pumpkin, getting hurt, and getting traded. easily the most productive player in the whole draft was a 2nd round pick. It's a good reminder of just how many variables are involved in player development and what a crap shoot even a top pick is. Royce still has tremendous talent, and it sucks that he can't stay on the field. I understand the dilemma he's got: try to ease back a little to stay healthy vs play as hard as he has his whole life. It has to be hard to make an adjustment, especially when it's something related to effort. But he needs to find a way to stay on the field. he's shown he can do special things when he's right. It sounds like his rehab is progressing; absent a setback it sounds like we will see him in May? I doubt they'll send him out for more than a week or so on a rehab assignment. Hopefully it's beginning of May and he can get rolling again.
  21. jmlease1
    I think his hands and footwork are ok. His arm and throwing are the biggest concern with him, and you can see some of his worst problems fielding happen when he's thinking about the throw and starts rushing. I think he could do fine at 1B with enough reps and a good tutor, but he's got to hit. And he has to learn to not take his struggles at the plate into the field as well, which I think we saw last season. Julien showed notable improvement at 2B in the second half of 2023 but that evaporated in 2024, especially when he was flailing at the plate. I still like Julien and he hit well enough in 2023 for me to think it wasn't a fluke. But it's really on him at this point. He has to do damage on hittable pitches and show better pitch recognition. He knows the strike zone, which is critical, but has to be able to consistently hit pitches in the zone. He's got a way to go, and hasn't done much with his early season opportunity yet. Of course, neither have a lot of hitters for the Twins...
  22. jmlease1
    Easy to see why Hill is #11 on the Twins prospect list. That's a very nice start to the season, and I'm happy to see him in A-ball rather than in rookie ball. Lot of upside with him and I'm excited to see how quickly he develops. Thrilled to see Prielipp pitching. Health is the most important part for him right now, and I really don't care that much about the results yet. Not sure if they should keep developing him as a starter with his history; just don't know if his arm can hold up to the pounding and with his stuff he could be a deadly weapon in the bullpen.
  23. jmlease1
    Disappointing to see Ober labor through only 4; he's an important part of this rotation and they need him to get deeper into games. Hopefully the increase in velocity is a sign that he's getting closer to where he was last season. Good work by the bullpen, but I'm a little surprised and disappointed that Varland is being used exclusively as a 1-inning guy; I don't think they're very interested in pitching him back to back either, so why not let him go 2 especially in a game like this where you needed 5 relievers to finish it? Seems like they've decided to run 7 1-inning guys and a long man, which I don't love. But the bullpen did a nice job in what they were asked to do, and you can see why people were high on this group going into the season. I'd like to see the offense be more consistent; one big inning and then nothing is a bit nervous. But when they put up 6 runs on the board, I'm not going to complain too much about how they got there. Hopefully things are starting to warm up with some guys and they can get rolling. A win is a win, and now they're in position to take the series. Let's goooooo...
  24. jmlease1
    Twins didn't pay Margot anywhere near $10M. Remember, a significant chunk of Margot's salary was being paid elsewhere. It still was a trade that didn';t work out, but the Twins FO didn't pay Margot $6M more than Taylor, even if Margot made $6M more. And the Twins clearly wanted Taylor back, and this is where agents and pride get in the way. Twins would have brought Taylor back for $5M, but he wanted more like $8M and wouldn't come down...so he ended up signing for less with someone else. You see this all the time where guys can't take less than they think they're worth from their current squad, and then when their market is settled and there aren't a lot of choices left, they go elsewhere for less rather than admit they were wrong about their team's offer.
  25. jmlease1
    Miller was 18 with a great glove. It's not unreasonable to think "hey, we'll work with this kid, develop his hit tool, he'll get stronger and hit enough to be a possible SS". A lot of times with a late first/compensation pick/high second you're looking at guys that have 1-2 elite tools or guys that have 3-5 good tools. Not crazy to take a swing at a guy like Miller, especially when it's hard to find players who have the chops to be superior defenders at SS. It's why the Dodgers were interested even after a couple of years in the twins system where he didn't hit much. but he sure looks like a guy who can't hit. Doncon will be at 3B or 2B sooner rather than later, but his bat is interesting and has potential. And he has the advantage of being a year younger than Miller.
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