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Nashvilletwin

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Everything posted by Nashvilletwin

  1. Nashvilletwin
    You nailed it. It’s one thing to have the players, it’s another to get them to maximise their potential. Hopefully, we find the right leadership and system to make that a reality.
  2. Nashvilletwin
    Looking ahead to ‘24, could our core starting four infielders be Miranda, Lewis, Lee and Arraez? If so, who plays what position? Let’s assume Lewis is at SS. Could Lee play 2B with Miranda at 3B and Arraez at 1B? Or is Lee at 3B, Arraez at 2B, and Miranda at 1B. Regardless, that’s a strong (and pretty cheap) starting core infield. (Just for kicks, Larnach, Buxton and Kiriloff in the outfield. Jeffers at C. Gordon, Wallner, Isola and maybe Martin as core backups. Not too shabby. Lots of money left over for FA pitching and whatever hole we need to fill, i.e. catcher, etc.).
  3. Nashvilletwin
    …..too bad we aren’t built for April through September.
  4. Nashvilletwin
    …..and we wonder why we haven’t won a playoff game in forever….
  5. Nashvilletwin
    Perhaps the best stat posted all year to demonstrate why this team really is not as good as we all hoped/thought they were. You want to actually win the Pennant, let alone the World Series? Well, you’d better figure out how to beat the best teams more consistently. Sure, the power 5 are comprised mostly of the biggest spenders, but we are being outperformed by every single team. This destroys the old, lame excuse “well, we don’t spend enough and those teams have an unfair advantage because they have bigger markets and better owners”. Nope - our pathetic record against the best teams is about leadership, culture, confidence, and getting the most out of your players, Our players are plenty good enough to be much more competitive against these teams. I sure hope the Pohlads read the TD.
  6. Nashvilletwin
    We all know the old saying: “You pay your money and you take your chance”. But this pattern goes beyond “bad luck”. Maybe we somewhat knew what we were getting with Paddack. Maeda produced for a while - we’ll see if and how he comes back. But as trade deadline deals, the Mahle and Dyson trades were beyond terrible. So sorry, but not all of us believe in “bad luck”, particularly when it happens over and over. Our owners are savvy people and won’t/shouldn’t fall for the BS excuse of “bad luck” if that is what the FO is offering up. Someone has to be accountable. BTW, it looks like zero wins vs. the Dodgers, Astros and Yankees over the last three series with them this past month or so. Do we blame that on “bad luck” and all the injuries as well? Bottom line: If you believe in “bad luck”, your organization will be mired in mediocrity in perpetuity. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Twins, your business, hell, even your love life. If want your “luck” to change, you do something about it. Period. The Pohlads didn’t just fall off a turnip truck - they understand that.
  7. Nashvilletwin
    Or Mahle may never be any good again. Who knows? The point is that based on current expected value, we have lost this trade. It can’t be argued otherwise. Yes, I agree - we traded for a pitcher to help us now and next year. But he can’t help us now and his expected value next year has decreased substantially. Meanwhile, the assets sent are performing at or above expected levels at the time of the trade, At this point, based on expected returns, we have lost this trade, potentially big time. I hope it turns out differently. But the bigger picture is the pattern of our FO getting fleeced for injured arms. Fool me once, shame on you; twice shame on me; three times is an absolute joke.
  8. Nashvilletwin
    Re the jury, it’s back. Sure, he returns next year (but I’ll take the under on Mahle next season as well - hope I’m wrong). But, the bigger point is that Mahle was a trade deadline acquisition in order to help this year. That is why we gave up so many assets for him. If we wanted to trade for him in the off-season, the price would have been much lower (especially now that he’s shut down with unclear expectations for the future). The trade was a disaster. Yes, we got fleeced. Again. For the third time. The egg on the face of our vaunted FO is getting hard to wash off. Lopez will be part of the pen next year, but expectations should be tempered - expect an every other day 6-7th inning type role behind Duran, Jax, Thielbar and the two other relievers we’d better add in the off-season. Fulmer may or may not be resigned - it’s beginning to look less likely.
  9. Nashvilletwin
    Nice win today, but I’m having a hard time getting over how badly we have been fleeced on the Mahle, Paddock, and Dyson trades. It’s crazy how bad our FO did on those. I can’t believe the Pohlads fall for the bs excuses the FO must be offering up - the owners should be livid.
  10. Nashvilletwin
    Fleeced again. What is that - 3 times now in the past couple of years? To all of us who say “Hey, we have him next year though”, I’ll take the under next year too. Honestly, how can anyone defend these trades? We spend years developing young talent, then ship it off in exchange for damaged arms. It’s embarrassing, pathetic, and inexcusable. Who is accountable? Anyone? First time, you get the “hey it happens” excuse. Second time, “guys, seriously now, bad luck or not, we need to be more careful”. Third time, hell, they’ll probably fire an intern.
  11. Nashvilletwin
    This includes 4 games against Cleveland with a WE% of 89% and above and 6 games overall. Geez.
  12. Nashvilletwin
    Nice night down on the farm for some of our top prospects, et al. Don’t look now, but some of them could be major leaguers next year.
  13. Nashvilletwin
    Gordon’s progress is an incredibly important development for the Twins - not only this season as we enter the stretch run with lots of injuries, but also next season as we look to continue to build our roster cost effectively. The silver lining of our injuries (particularly Larnach, Kiriloff and Buxton) has been the emergence of Gordon. Without those injuries, we might never have known what we have in Gordon - which is an everyday starting calibre position player. Gordon now provides great flexibility in terms of roster construction and budget management. In particular, if we are looking to reposition a few dollars into the pen or a starter, Gordon’s emergence allows the FO to have frank discussions about Urshela and Kepler if desired.
  14. Nashvilletwin
    All great comments on this thread. Bottom line: Bundy has been at least satisfactory in his role and at his cost. He’s done his job. Well done. However, as a 4-5 inning guy, he’s not worth his option cost next year. Ideally, we’d find a better option at #5 offering similar results but with greater length and lower cost. We shall see how the other options develop. If somehow he ended up as our #5 at $5-6MM, and repeated his performance this year, well, things could be a lot worse. In fact, that would be pretty darn good. Pagan is gone. Period.
  15. Nashvilletwin
    Aaron Sanchez has filled in admirably and was a solid mid year addition by the FO. He could still play a meaningful role down the stretch and may be a better bet in a must win start than Archer. BTW, feel free to add a couple of runs to any starter’s ERA with that home plate ump yesterday. Talk about a tight strike zone - it looked like you basically had to throw it in a thimble to get a called strike. Tough to get the start when that ump is behind the plate.
  16. Nashvilletwin
    Best all around game in a long time, maybe all year. Played like pros tonight in all facets of the game. Could also have been Correa’s best game as well. Love to see more of that going forward.
  17. Nashvilletwin
    Yawn - not sure I really care either way. The intrigue is fun to talk about, but, in reality, wake me when he decides. If he opts in, super - he’s a pretty darn good player and maybe rebounds a bit from this absolutely disappointing season. If he opts out, we can roll with the $35MM and Polacios and Lewis next season at SS and beyond. $35MM would go a long way to improving our pitching staff - say a solid #2 starter and two really good relievers. Who’s to say which model wins more games? Either way, we have a strong enough young core and enough FA budget to put together an interesting team with or without Correa. Having said that, I’m not convinced anyway that with Rocco at the helm, they will get over the hump and make the playoffs, let alone win a playoff game or series. Doesn’t matter much too me. Six of one or half dozen of the other - I’m still going to watch every game and cheer for the Twins
  18. Nashvilletwin
    1. Gray is not part of the trade discussion. We will see how healthy Mahle is over the next 14 months. 2. Like I said - tongue in cheek, but Lopez just seems to get hit hard. 3. Rocco is who Rocco is. FWIW, and it ain’t worth much, IMHO he’s not taking us to the promised land. 4. Injured or not, I would still never throw Buxton a strike. He’s still too good when the ball is in the zone and too undisciplined when it’s not. 5. My bad on Arraez. So our best two hitters are making less than $3MM. Point is still valid. Agree that theoretically Larnach and Kiriloff are not among our best five hitters - but they both were performing as such when they went down. Correa is hitting .182 with RISP. He needs to produce like Lee Majors x 6, but is more like x 3 with the benefit of inflation. Kepler is really struggling and, except for one year with lots of HRs, he is who he is. I’d never trade Larnach, Kiriloff or Gordon for Kepler and if all four were healthy, Max would be riding the pine.
  19. Nashvilletwin
    Observations (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) from last night: 1. The Reds fleeced us just like the Giants did a couple of years ago. 2. You need to pay attention if you are sitting anywhere near the field when Lopez is pitching. 3. Rocco is like modern America - not willing to manufacture anything. 4. By now, the league should have discovered the best way to pitch to Buxton - basically just don’t throw him a strike and let him get himself out (occasionally he may walk, but that’s no big deal because he won’t steal and if he does happen to get a hit, it’s almost never a single anyway). Literally, I’d never throw him a strike. 5. $65MM for our #2-5 hitters last night. Meanwhile, our best two hitters are making a grand total under $1.5MM. Add in Larnach, Kiriloff and Gordon, and arguably our best five hitters (before the injuries, granted) are making under $5MM.
  20. Nashvilletwin
    Agree. Thank goodness for Sandy Leon. Walks up to the plate and calmly (and perfectly) executes a safety squeeze. Honestly, how many other Twins could do that as well as he did? Also gets a runner to 2nd for Arraez to drive home. Good for Sandy and good for Rocco to put the play on. We should not underestimate how important that first run was given the penchant for this team not to show up offensively. These little “baseball” plays matter a lot.
  21. Nashvilletwin
    Dick Bremer in the bottom of the 11th with Ward at the plate: “Pagan is averaging one and a half strikeouts per inning pitched.” I turned to my wife and with much sarcasm said: “Yeah, ok, so that’s the good news. The bad news he’s averaging giving up one dinger per inning pitched as well.” Two pitches later - LOL. So hard to waste an outing like that by Bundy - he pitched his heart out. Claps for him. Btw, here’s a riddle. How do you make sure the Twins don’t score a run in an inning? Answer: have them get a man on second with no outs.
  22. Nashvilletwin
    Love this analysis. It’s nice to see the data proving what you think your eyes are telling your brain. A couple of observations: 1. Love to see improvement in OPS RISP. But as the saying goes shouldn’t some key Twins players should learn to walk before they even try to run? There should be a new stat: MRO - Moving the Runner Over (with less than two outs). We scored an incredibly important run last night because Polanco moved the runner on second over to third on a groundout behind the runner followed by Arraez’s bleeder through a drawn in infield. That, my friends, is called BASEBALL. Buxton’s and Correa’s MROs are probably about 0.100 each. It’s actually fairly pathetic. Forget OPS - this team could improve dramatically just by raising their MRO. 2. Think about the data above. Now think about this: Correa, Kepler, Sano, and, yes, even Buxton - $67MM.
  23. Nashvilletwin
    Observations from last night’s game: 1. Correa will not opt out unless he takes something along a 5 yr $100MM deal. Nobody is paying him $30MM+ on any sort of a mid-long term deal. Up four times last night with at least one runner on (three times with no outs!) and couldn’t even move the runner over except once with a weak grounder off Kimbrel’s foot. It was pathetic. 2. First it was the pitching staff, particularly the bullpen, where we didn’t have the horses. Now it’s the position players. The lineup card is brutal to look at each night now and yet we sit bona fide big leaguers (Arraez and Urshela on back to back nights). 3. We want to beat the big market teams? We have to play excellent, flawless FUNDAMENTAL baseball. That means no errors, dumb base running mistakes, grooving 0-2 pitches, throwing to the wrong base, managerial missteps (almost nightly), etc. This is how we’ve won in the past under TK. Sorry, touching the third rail here, but good fundamentals starts at the top. We have NEVER played good fundamental baseball under Rocco.
  24. Nashvilletwin
    No. The question will be managing the pipeline given the understanding and reality that the current list of projected starters is still not good enough and will require augmenting So, when unfortunately, Correa opts out, and, along with Sano and Sanchez departing, an additional reliable #1 or #2 starter would be a good use of some of the cash (with enough left over for a really good platooning catcher and a couple of solid BP arms. Some of our supposed “starter” depth could be used in the pen (can you imagine a pen of Lopez, Duran, Fulmer, Jax, plus another great FA and two of our excess starters) or break glass in the case of injury role. Going into ‘23 ideally we would have a starting corp of: FA, Mahle, Gray, Ryan, and Maeda with Winder, Ober and others ready to fill in with the inevitable injuries and poor performance. With the pen described above, that staff would be enviable.
  25. Nashvilletwin
    I guess we stick with the analytics….. I fully understand and respect your rationale and I see the reasoning. Arraez can theoretically play four positions: 1B, 2B, 3B, and DH. Miranda, Polanco, Urshela, Buxton and Arraez are your five players for those four spots. Miranda plays vs. a lefty. Check. Polanco plays for sure as a switch hitter. Check. So we are down to Urshela, Arraez and Buxton. Urshela is probably a better 3B than Arraez and Miranda. So the best defensive lineup, on the margin, is Urshela at 3B and Miranda at 1B, beating out the next best choice of Miranda at 3B and Arraez at 1B. Plus, Urshela has a higher OPS vs lefties. Urshela starts. Check, And Buxton has to be the DH, right? Can’t leave him on the bench. Check. Heck, maybe the next five games are scheduled against right handed starters - so best rest Luis for use the rest of the week. Check, Check. All that makes tremendous sense. Yet, I still disagree. There is no one on the Twins that I’d rather have hitting 4-5 times a game or with a runner on base (in scoring position or not), regardless of the lefty/righty matchup, than Arraez. Analytics, shmalytics. Arraez in the lineup with his bat and energy simply gives us a better chance. That’s what the eyes and gut may suggest. But the arguments against that are good and understandable. The data and AI say sit Arraez. It’s an analytics world.
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