jmlease1

It's very easy to ignore Ty France's hot start (small sample, hitting against minor leaguers, hitters are supposed to be ahead of pitchers, etc), but it doesn't mean that he hasn't found his swing again. I wasn't a fan of the signing, and I especially didn't like how he seemed to have been handed the starting job before spring training even started. But fair play to him, he's gone out and done what he needs to do to show the possibility of a rebounding Ty France. I have concerns about his defense; he's never shown a lot there, although he seems to be pretty good at digging out throws in the dirt, which would be a benefit for this team. And maybe his range improves with a fully healed heel. But anyone who thinks he's going to be a plus defender will be disappointed. I'm hoping for average, and won't be surprised if he's well below that. What gives me the most skepticism about his hot start and prospects with this team is his 2023 season. He really fell off from his earlier success in that season, with a bad drop-off in power. If he hadn't crowded the plate effectively (league high 34 HBP) it would have been a pretty poor offensive performance...and would have looked a lot like 2024. Last season he had a real injury that he battled through. What happened in 2023? I hope everything I feared about France when he signed is wrong. The good spring training is a fine start, but there are still plenty of questions to be answered if he wants to show he's earned the job and not been handed it on scholarship due to "veteran" status.

I feel pretty good with Wallner as the starter. The power is incredible, and he makes enough contact for it to pay out. While it would be great if he could get better jumps on the ball in RF, he's good enough out there and the arm is definitely a weapon. He's not going to get as much credit for it, because there's not really a stat for bases stopped because the runner was smart enough not to test Wallner's arm and didn't go for the leg double or first to third on a single or something. Runners seem to already know he's got a cannon out there, so if he's fielding the ball cleanly they're not going to run the risk. The K's aren't fun, but the light tower power makes it worth it. He's been a good RF. He's going to have a stretch or two that will be ugly, but he's also shown that he doesn't expand the zone too much even when he's struggling, which is the sign of a disciplined hitter. The depth right now isn't great? Larnach can certainly play there (I would assume that they would slide him over rather than waste Bader in RF), but there's not a lot of natural RF guys in the wings if Wallner goes down. Fortunately, he appears to be made out of oak? Wallner has been very productive. Hopefully we can get a full season of that.

You refuse to understand that Eddie Rosario has not been good since leaving MN. He's been paid $28M for -1.1 bWAR. That's AWFUL. I don't care how much heart you think he has, he wasn't even a quality starter his last 2 seasons in MN because while he still hit well enough (107 and 116 OPS+ his last 2 seasons in MN) his defense was bad. Poor thrower (missing cutoff men, throwing to the wrong base, etc) who no longer got to balls because he lost steps in the OF. Who cares if he was available when he sucked? (BTW, he also started missing time after leaving MN) Twins got better production for a lot less money over the last 4 years from the motley crew of Larnach (who is pretty good), Gallo, Margot (who was awful, yet still more productive than Rosario's heart), and Gordon. Happy for Eddie who got paid and won a ring, but equally happy to not have him on the roster and sucking. LF should be fine this season with Larnach as the primary, Bader & Castro backing him up, and Rodriguez & Keaschall pushing for an opportunity.

So you admit that we've been better since he left and the only reason to keep him is an intangible that can't be measured? How much did you like Eddie's "heart" when he swung at a pitch that wasn't near the plate, overthrew the cutoff man by 19 feet, etc? Look, I liked Eddie as a player and he was pretty good for us for a few years (really really good for one season, solid enough for several others, at least as a hitter) but his best ability was availability. He had a great NLCS, but otherwise wasn't actually very good in the playoffs for Atl in their title run. The problem with recent Twins teams hasn't been a lack of heart, it's been a lack of health. I'm not wrong about this. And frankly, accusing the current players of not having enough heart is pretty insulting to them. Please feel free to tell Ryan Jeffers, Royce Lewis, Carlos Correa, Pablo Lopez, Bailey Ober, Griffin Jax, etc that they have no heart. I'd love to see that. I think LF is going to be ok this season as long as Bader doesn't play too much against RHP. But I'm looking forward to seeing Emma seize the job and hit line drives all over the place.

Considering Eddie Rosario has produced a net fWAR of -0.4 over those 4 years, I'd say the Twins did the right thing in declining arbitration with him. He hasn't been a starting quality player in years, and looks completely cooked. We may not have adequately replaced Eddie, but it wouldn't have been any better with him. Larnach has been better, if inconsistent and not healthy enough. As awful as the Margot Experience was last season, Rosario was worse. I think we have LF patched together well enough for this year with Larnach, Bader, and Castro getting most of the time there, but I worry about Bader getting too much time over Larnach for defense, while flailing at the plate. Bader should not be starting against RHP unless Larnach is injured. But this is definitely a position where the team is waiting on a prospect. Fortunately, we have multiple options in Rodriguez and Keaschall that are getting closer every day.

I would love to be proven wrong about Ty France. It would be awesome if he's found his bat again and his crappy defensive stats last year were entirely due to injury and he's actually learned the position well. But I'm not going to take spring training stats all that seriously. That said, I'd rather have him starting out well than flailing. Paddack is going to be very interesting. can he maintain velocity from start to start? If the changeup back and a weapon? does he have enough on his fastball to not get beat up on it? Has he got the slider down or will he need to go back to the curve? Great to see Keaschall hitting comfortably. I still think he's going to need some time in the minors and probably won't be ready for a spot at least until he's able to throw effectively, but he's got the talent and the drive and I love seeing players like him try to force a decision by just playing really damn well.

just a shame about Canterino. Poor guy got his arm wrecked in college I think and has never been healthy enough to show his quality at the pro level for very long. I don't think anyone was counting on him to contribute, but he's always had the talent, so it stinks that he's not going to get a chance. He's certainly put in the effort to try and get healthy. You just feel for the guy. Glad Matthews isn't seriously injured. He's important depth for the starting pitching and if he were set back too far it might make the team have second thoughts about shifting Varland to the 'pen. (Especially if Raya's injury lingered too). I always assumed at least one of Topa/Stewart wouldn't make it to Opening Day, and I feel like the Twins did too. Certainly looks like Castellano will have a chance to stick as the last man in the bullpen, and I'm enthusiastic about having Varland throwing gas for us from the jump. Hopefully Rodriguez's ankle responds quickly, but it's very good news that the thumb surgery seems to have worked for him.

I think Mauer got more stick for NOT taking a hometown discount to stay? (and of course, there's the local media types that blamed him for getting injured or told us we shouldn't like him taking walks, etc) But there's definitely a part of the fanbase that believes that spending a large chunk on market rate stars limits the team too much, which is part of the self-imposed payroll limits of ownership...

Julien was excellent in the 2nd half of 2023. OPS of .829 and showed marked improvement defensively. i won't deny that he had an awful 2024, but it's not like Ed Julien's 2023 was based on just a fast start that vanished (a la Gallo). Julien was legitimately good in 2023 and deserved his finish in the AL RoY rankings. If he's figured out his problems and made real adjustments, and shows he's ready again there's no reason he can't be the Twins starting 2B. How much is he going to gain in AAA? even in a rotten season of 2024 he had an OPS of .803 in AAA. (which isn't exactly amazing, but for a guy trying to get his head on straight after flailing dreadfully in MLB?) I'm really surprised how many people have quit on Julien after 1 bad season.

Evidence suggests otherwise. (It's not an uncommon failing in MLB, to be fair) They like Paddack, they like his stuff, they're paying him to be a starter, and his trade value goes down quite a bit if they shift him to the bullpen. I generally agree that he shouldn't get a spot in the rotation on scholarship, but that's how this team rolls with their veterans, especially ones they acquired from elsewhere. They got burned hard by not having enough depth before and to my mind may have overcorrected. Especially now that we're seeing a strong wave of starting pitching prospects hit the high minors, they should be more aggressive in cutting bait on veterans who don't perform. Of course, I'm also the fool who wanted Kepler cut in 2023 at midseason and was ready to put Carlos Santana out to pasture in the spring of 2024.

For me, the best case scenario is a real competition between Julien and Lee and one of them goes out and wins it, rather than the other getting the job by default because one of them was still flailing badly at the plate. Either one has the ability to be a fine 2B for us: Julien has a higher ceiling as a hitter, while Lee is a much more advanced defender. I like Julien's ability to get on base, and he should be allowed to run more if he gets on. Lee's contact skills are excellent and presents a higher floor. I'm perfectly fine with either of them going out and winning the job. I vastly prefer to have Castro as a bench player. he'll still get plenty of ABs, but he's overstretched as an every day player and his flexibility makes a real impact later in games. When you can pinch hit Castro in the 7th for so many positions and then not need to make another change to your defense, it's a big deal. His speed and baserunning can also be deployed more situationally when he's not having to start. He also gives you great coverage for when someone does pick up a knock and needs a day or three off. feels like martin's days on the dirt are running out. He's ok at 2B, but is more of an emergency option now IMHO. Besides, if he doesn't improve as a hitter (and show he can handle the OF he's not on the roster anyways) Keaschall is coming on strong, but let's see how he responds to the injury. He did a great job last season moving up levels and playing through the bum elbow for as long as he did, and position players usually respond faster and more consistently to that surgery it seems...but it's still a big one. We have enough depth to afford to give him time. A little surprised to not see Eeles listed as a prospect? But he's very hard to judge right now. remarkable 2024, and smashed every challenge he faced. he's an awesome story. But it's also one season and a relatively small sample against advanced competition. but if he hits like he did last season in AAA, at some point you have to start taking him seriously, even if he's already 25. Happy to have him in AAA right now.

heh. there's a real possibility that any new owner will do something out the gate that will be splashy, news-worthy, attention-grabbing, and...dumb. New Owner Syndrome is definitely A Thing. (these are almost always monumentally successful people who haven't had anyone tell them no in quite a while, and they frequently think they know more than anyone that came before them; humility isn't exactly a common billionaire trait! And the ones who buy sports teams these days seem to like the attention) I'm just so ready to be done with the Pohlads as owners. They're far from the best, but hardly the worst...but they are dreary. They're not particularly passionate about the team, only a few of them really seem to like baseball, and they don't seem to care much about winning. They haven't lit the world on fire with their business decisions (and have made some real bungles), and have notable examples of putting the fans second (at best). Their priorities seem to be don't lose money and don't be embarrassing. Winning? much less important.

@%*&#$%!!!! Can we just for once get some good injury luck with our top prospects?!?! None of these injuries look particularly serious and shouldn't have any long-term ramifications, but...GOD. If I had to pick, I'm most concerned with Rodriguez. Because it always seems to be something. He's super talented, so it sucks that he's missing so much time battling through one ding after another.

The Wolves have a high payroll, but they're not #1. Try Boston. But Glen Taylor has made a lot of bad decisions as owner of the Wolves, including deciding to sell but not sell and then trying to back out of the sale for...reasons. Ans considering his age and the fact that no one else in his family seems interested in owning professional sports teams, having Glen become the next Twins owner seems a recipe for chaos. Not sure what kind of owner Justin Ishbia would have been, but it's not entirely fair to assign all of the mistakes his brother has made as majority owner of Phoenix to him? But even if you do (and there have been many), from a business side, there's a lot to like about what the Ishbias have done in Phoenix at least from the fan perspective. But baseball is also just a different type of operation than the NBA. Baseball has minor leagues, the NBA functionally does not. Baseball has no real salary cap; the NBA has a restrictive one. Baseball doesn't have picks being a substantial trade commodity; it's a huge thing in the NBA. So to me, the NBA experience of Mat doesn't prove what the MLB experience would have been for Justin. But the real interest an enthusiasm for Justin Ishbia is a) he's not a Pohlad, and b) he's the only name we had. And it says a lot about the current ownership that those small crumbs were enough for people to be very disappointed that he's now out.

I think it's good to buy this kind of lottery ticket for the minor league system. But he's really struggled with consistent contact, especially against more advanced pitchers. Happy to take a flyer on a guy with his prospect pedigree and see if he's someone who needed a different style, or simply more time to mature, or maybe just to feel the twinge of desperation in the back of his head to get the message through. He's obviously not just flailing at everything (nice OBP in the minors), but he's also not getting hits. He looks like an extreme long shot to me.

IKF has been on an interesting run as the somewhat forgetting piece of this. excepting for half a season in Toronto, he's been generating his value on the defensive side, but has been quite good there. As long as he gets to stay on the dirt, he's a useful player, but the Yankees in 2023 thought throwing him in the OF was the best decision. whoops. I think the rangers are ok with the way things turned out, but expected more from Garver. I think the Twins are fine with the way things went, because we'd much rather have Correa than Donaldson, and prefer even with the injuries to have Correa over IKF. I'd say it didn't work out all that well for the Yankees in the end. what a shame...

Nice to see some LHP with real upside in the starting pitcher gaggle; it'll be fun to watch how Carpenter and Hill develop this season. While I don't subscribe to the theory that you need to have a LHP in your rotation, it'd be great to have a quality one emerge and offer something different. Pitcher development is pretty difficult and there are so many potential potholes. Even guys that are looking great and widely seen as top prospects can flame out right at the precipice. The fact that the Twins have so much depth among their starting pitching prospects reflects that I think, and the need to have as many tickets to the dance as possible. Lot of fun guys to look through this year, with a bunch in the high minors that are looking ready to get their first shot. That's pretty fun. It should be interesting to see who (if anyone?) will rise up from the lower minors this season: with so many possibilities, I suspect someone will rise, especially the way we've seen guys jump up 2-3 levels in one season recently. Soto sure looks like he has the upside. Might have been a good risk on the HS kid.

He's got all the talent in the world, but the missing ability has been availability. It sucks that he simply hasn't been healthy enough as a pro to really show what he can do. He's been a pro for 6 seasons, but only pitched in 3 of them, and even there he's only thrown 85 innings. But goodness, in those innings he's been FILTHY. sure the control isn't immaculate (35 BBs and 10 WPs in 85 innings ain't great) but all the other peripherals around him are fantastic. I'm glad they're moving him to the bullpen. Hopefully that lets him show his talent and can keep him throwing all season. I think we'll see him in MN this season if he stays on the field. We've got multiple relievers with injury issues (Stewart, Topa especially) but there's always a need for another guy at some point. Canterino has the stuff to compete. Hope he stays healthy. He's got a thunderbolt for an arm, and it sucks that he hasn't been able to really show it as a pro. (would I send my kid to pitch at Rice? heck no. they'll need a generation to wash off the stink of the number of arms they wrecked)

basically, what you've posted here is the reason why we had a change in the front office and overhaul of our minor league system... but it's notable that the "guys below them" are: a guy who couldn't stay healthy & didn't become a decent reliever until his 30's (Chargois), a backup catcher who can't hit his weight (Rortvedt), a decent 1B who didn't figure it out until he was 29 (Wade), a catcher whose struggles to stay healthy have made him inconsistent and unavailable and on his 3rd team (Garver), a guy who in 2017 hadn't done anything yet (Miranda), a guy who had a serious injury in 2017 (Arraez), and a guy who flamed out as a starter and needed to go to the bullpen to be great (Jax). none of the other pitchers listed below probably deserved to be listed higher at the time, and all it really shows is how starved we were for real pitching prospects. Tyler Jay? he was up there on scholarship, same with Kohl Stewart. the cupboard was pretty bare in 2017 when you think about it. I like where we're at right now a lot better, even if some of the guys in the minors as starters might not make it. Who do you like better, Festa or Gonsalves? Matthews or Romero? Raya or Jay? Lewis or Stewart?

Miller is an excellent defender and a legit SS. He's also a zero at the plate, and unless he shows he can do some damage soon, he's going to struggle to be anything more than an emergency guy. Because now he's facing AA pitchers who can control the strike zone better (he notably stopped taking walks after promotion) he's going to get overwhelmed by better pitching. It's one of the things that's impressive about Keaschall: he kept taking the free passes at AA. Sure, the OBP went from ridiculous to simply excellent, but the approach was still there. Pitchers couldn't just pump a good fastball down the pipe on him, because he would punish them for it. Not bad for 21 in AA with a bum elbow. I'm really high on him, he's doing everything right so far. But I'm not going to squawk if he starts in AA (where it might be warmer), plays every day, and gets in some good defensive work at 2B, CF, etc. I don't feel like he'll be there that long, but he's still so young and relatively inexperienced: he's basically at 1 full season's worth of ABs and DH'd for a pretty good chunk of those games because of the elbow. Twins have pushed him pretty fast so far (faster than wunderkind Walker Jenkins, in fact) so I really don't have any concerns that they're going to hold him back.

there seemed to be implicit criticism of the Twins handling of Keaschall in your statement. i apologize if I misinterpreted.

I'm a big fan of Keaschall, and he's doing everything right so far, but the Twins are also promoting him aggressively, so I'm not really understanding the poke you're taking at the franchise for apparently not slotting him in as the every day 2B when he's coming off a significant injury in his first full professional season. Technically, he's in his 2nd year as a pro, but "year 1" was 31 games at the end of the season. It's fantastic that he rolled all the way up to high A at age 20 in his first exposure to pro baseball, but 31 games is a small sample, especially when spread over 3 levels. he did great in his first full season in 2024...but that wasn't actually "full" because he had a significant injury that required surgery. Keaschall looks like he has all the tools and the right attitude. he appears to be smart, hard-working, and coachable, with real talent and physical ability. but starting him back in AA coming off a significant injury is more than reasonable, and if he's as good as we think he is, he'll be in Saint Paul by midseason, and probably get a cup of coffee in MLB before the year is done. that's an awesome trajectory for any player.

I'm concerned about 1B, because I think the Twins are likely to give France a lot of reps there, and I just don't know if he can be good enough. I'm sure the heel injury was a real issue for him last season, but his respectable OPS before the injury was mostly because of a hot May; he started pretty slowly and the .646 OPS in Mar/Apr has nothing to do with injury. He was awful in Jun/Jul, decent in august, and bad again in sept/oct. blaming it all on the heel might be letting France off too easily, especially since he wasn't all that good in 2023 and didn't have any injury excuses. Given how the Twins have treated veterans in the past, will France get too much rope if he sucks? i fear he will, even if Miranda is knocking the cover off the ball. I'd rather roll with Miranda as the primary: the hitting upside is simply higher, and the defense isn't likely to be any worse (and could improve if Miranda can get coached up a bit, become more familiar/comfortable there, etc). But Miranda does need to show that he can stay healthy through a full season and be impactful.

My only really issue with Christian Vazquez as a backup is that the self-imposed payroll limitations of ownership make his salary problematic and of better use elsewhere. So few catchers in MLB are league average or better hitters these days that a quality receiver who isn't dreadful at the plate is a pretty good option as a backup. Of course, Vazquez started out the season (despite reporting in the "best shape of his life") so horrifically that hot streaks in July & August still couldn't bring him up to par. And he, like most of the position players, was awful down the stretch. (.413 OPS in Sept/Oct! eek.) If he can be around his career average OPS+ (81), he'll be a useful backup. If he can't, then we'll be well rid of him and his salary in 2026, even with his solid defense and ability to work with a pitching staff. Jeffers is the real key. The expectations were high after such an excellent 2023, and when he was good in 2024 he was very very good...but when he was bad he was rotten. he had a slump in June, and fought his way out of his, but was cooked in Sept/Oct like so many on the roster. Giving him that much DH time probably wasn't really worth it. Hopefully he can catch 85-95 games, and add in maybe another 5-10 at DH against LHP (he did a nice job smacking LHP around again). there's no real replacement for Jeffers in sight (I did like the Cartaya acquisition; if they can get him right he might be a real contributor in the future, but that's a bit of a lottery ticket) so they need him to be productive.

Considering the programs the pitchers are coming from have an interest in seeing the player get drafted highly and become a professional baseball player, is it really a surprise if their high school/college program has them on the gun slightly faster to try and increase some hype about them? Unless they're a first round prospect they might not get very many outside scouts getting an independent reading...