Rik19753

The offseason additions, which seemed uninspiring before the season, has really carried the team. Besides the two that you mentioned, I can pretty much find a positive for every player they added. Joey Gallo: His tremendous power, and solid on-base skills have been crucial given the early season offensive struggles. He provides good defense as well. Christian Vazquez: Offense hasn't been great, but the I think we can attribute at least a part of the resurgent pitching performance to his game calling behind the plate. Willi Castro: Wasn't impressed by him at the beginning of the season, but he seems to do a lot of things well that don't show up on the stat sheet. He's played every position besides 1st and C and has 3 DRS (defensive runs saved) according to Fangraphs. He seems to run the bases well (4 steals) and hits the ball decently hard. His defensive flexibility has definitely allowed Rocco to be more aggressive with in-game substitutions. Pablo Lopez: Hasn't been great recently, but the upside is clearly there and he is at worst a decent No.2. Brock Stewart: He looks a lot like Pagan from last year, but without the HRs. As long as he keeps the ball in the ballpark I think he's can be at least a mid-level reliever, which we sorely need with Alcala struggling and Thielbar injured. Kudos to the FO for seeing the value in these players. They were exactly the types of additions we needed to shore up our depth.

That's a really tough slate of opposing starting pitching. A week ago I would have had a hard time envisioning the Twins scoring more than 3 runs against any of those pitchers, but this last weekend has sparked a little hope. Even so, I would be very happy if the Twins leave LA with a 3-3 record. In order to do that, tomorrow's game is looking like a must win. Syndergaard seems like the softest of the pitchers, and we have Pablo pitching. If we lose that game it feels like a sweep at the hands of the Dodgers seems inevitable.

This blowout win gives the Twins a +43 point differential on the year, which is 5th in the Majors. The teams above them: Rays, Rangers, Braves, Dodgers The teams right below them: Orioles, Cubs, Mariners, Astros, Blue Jays That is some pretty great company. Looking at the records of the other teams on this list, one could argue that the Twins should actually have an even better record. Oh, and the next best AL Central team is the Guardians, who have a -23 run differential and are 22nd. I'm going to be really disappointed if we don't win the division this year.

Yeah, Polanco has been great in those situations. He completely slipped my mind.

When looking at these type of stats it's important to compare to the league average. It's to be expected that Ober is better against righties, as he is a right-handed pitcher. Likewise, every single SP is better the 1st time through. So to make an argument that Ober is not suited as a SP, you need to compare with the league-average stats to prove the point. Also, we have to consider that Ober is still a young pitcher and far from a finished product. Even if he is bad against lefties now, he could add another pitch to his repertoire that is more effective. To suggest that a young pitcher is more suited as a RP when said pitcher is still getting the feel of the majors is premature IMO, especially when he has already proved he is competent. If we keep doing that we would not be left with any young SPs.

While I'm too lazy to look it up myself, I'd like to know how the Twins have performed in all high leverage situations in the last couple of years. It seems to me that the Twins perpetually fail in high-pressure situations, which has led to the prolonged postseason losing streak and the abysmal records against teams like the Yankees. IMO there just aren't, and haven't been, many players on the Twins that instill confidence when the game is on the line. Arraez was one of the few players that didn't seem to be fazed by those big moments, but obviously he is gone now. I thought Correa would be that figure, but that still hasn't happened. Buxton has come through sometimes, but I don't think he is particularly "clutch". I think we really need players that are confident enough in themselves to embrace those high-pressure situations, like some of the younger stars of the game do. The Twins seem to have too many nice guys that are humble and self-doubting. While I value those traits in the people that I interact with, when it comes to players, I think some level of arrogance and overconfidence is necessary.

Great post. I think Gordon is very underrated amongst Twins fans and his unluckiness to start the season hasn't helped. I've seen people saying the Twins should outright cut him, which I feel is absurd. One very interesting fact about Gordon is that while his expected stats are remarkably similar to last year (.261 xBA in 2022 and .260 xBA in 2023, .464 xSLG in 2022 and .460 xSLG in 2023), he has completely changed as a hitter. This year he is striking out in only 7.5% of his at bats (which is lower than Arraez's career K%!!!), whereas he struck out 23.7% last year. On the other hand, he is barreling the ball a lot less (9.4% in 2022, 4.9% this year) and his hard hit rate has gone down as well (44.3% to 39.3%). When a change like this happens, in most cases the player is being less selective in the pitches he swings at, thus it results in more balls in play but less quality contact. However, in Gordon's case, he is actually swinging at fewer pitches this year than he did last year. On the other hand, when he does swing, he isn't missing. His swinging strike rate has gone down from 15.2% to 9.8%. This is a HUGE change. For reference, Sano has a career 15.9% swinging strike rate, while Correa has a 9.2% swinging strike rate. This leads me to believe that he can actually sustain a low K% (not as low as 7.5%, but maybe a K% in the low teens) while maintaining his quality of contact from last year, which would lead to tremendous results. I'm very excited to see how Gordon plays this year, maybe more than any other young Twins player besides Royce Lewis and Edouard Julien. I hope he starts getting more regular at-bats to show his worth.

In no way am I saying that the Padres won the trade. It was definitely a lose-lose trade. Nor am I mad at the FO for not hanging on to Rooker. Both the Padres and Royals gave up on him, so it isn't just this FO that couldn't figure out how to unlock him. I just wanted to point out that if (and that's a big if) Rooker keeps hitting like Yordan Alvarez, in a few years we will be lamenting the fact that we traded Rooker in that trade more than the fact that the trade brought Pagan here. I find that both funny and sad because the trade was probably already one of the worst in recent Twins history just for the pain that Pagan caused last year.

Brent Rooker is no longer an afterthought in the Paddack/Pagan for Rogers/Rooker trade. When we look back on this trade in a couple of years we may very well talk be talking about the trade shipping Rooker out of Minnesota instead of it bringing Pagan to Minnesota. I can't really blame the front office because it isn't like they didn't give him a chance, but it sure would be nice to have him on our team right now. What's ridiculous is how he has almost halved his K%. We all knew the power was there, but how does one get a 28 year old to suddenly cut down on his K% so drastically? As a bonus he is walking as much as he is striking out, while still hitting the ball hard as often as anyone in the league. The A's may be horrible, but they still know how to get the most out of players.

I think the only way Polanco will get traded is if both Lewis and Julien really break out this season. We need some level of consistency and that lineup looks far too young and inexperienced IMO. Here is how I would approach each position: C - Jeffers and Vazquez are a fine duo, no changes to be made here. 1B - Kirilloff, Miranda, Julien rotate. Unless Kirilloff comes back and puts up middle of the order numbers I don't see him being handed a full-time job next season. 2B - Polanco and Julien. Polanco mainly plays with Julien covering for him sometimes. 3B - Miranda and Lewis. Against lefties, Lewis plays 3B, Miranda plays 1B, and Kirilloff goes to the bench. SS - Correa and Farmer. CF - Lewis, Gordon and Buxton. If Buxton is healthy enough, he plays CF against lefties, allowing Lewis to play 3B. LF, RF - Some combination of Larnach, Wallner, Gordon and Farmer. With the first 3 being left-handed and with the abundance of infield depth, you have Farmer play the outfield more in order to get his bat in the lineup against lefties. DH - Mainly Buxton if he can't play the field. Julien when Buxton needs to sit. By my count, this is 13 players. The defense would be around league-average and the offense is probably barely in the top 10, with upside to be a top 5 lineup in MLB. One of the best things about this lineup is how cheap it is. Besides Buxton and Correa, everybody is homegrown. On the other hand, the downside is that it lacks top-end talent besides Buxton and Correa. 2 or 3 of these players need to step up and become middle-of-the-order bats if we want to have an elite lineup.

We all need to calm down about the decision to leave Maeda in the game. Sure, it looks bad when the offense scores 6 runs afterwards and Headrick ends up pitching a great game. But when you go back to the top of the 4th, when the Twins were down 5-1, did anyone have the slightest bit of confidence that the Twins would be able to score 5 runs in 6 innings, with a lineup missing Buxton and Polanco? And that's not to mention that when you are banking on Headrick pitching 3~5 innings, the Yankees are inevitably going to keep adding to their lead. Even if we had made a pitching change, we would have needed 90th percentile performances from both Headrick and the lineup to even have a chance of winning. Also, while the lineup ended up scoring 6 runs, that only happened because the Yankees allowed them to. German started the 7th inning when he had already given up 5 runs, that would never have happened had it been a close game. German would have been pulled after giving up 3, and we would have been facing the best of the Yankees' bullpen. The equation is just so much more difficult than subtracting the 6 runs from the 4th inning to say that it would have been a tie game in the bottom of the 9th. Believe me, I am as disappointed as everyone that we couldn't witness a Twins sweep of the Yankees. It sucks that the series ended like this, giving us a bad taste in the mouth. But we can't blame Rocco for everything that goes wrong. Kenta and the defense let us down. It happens.

Game over.

It feels like they are not trying to win at all with this lineup and defensive alignment. Absolute shame when they have a chance to sweep the Yankees. It must be deflating if you are Maeda.

Good for the D-Backs for cutting bait, especially when they are still on the hook for a lot of money. I don't want to make everything about the Twins, but if it were the Twins front office, I don't think they would be willing to admit their mistake and move on as quickly as the Diamondbacks did.

The question is, who is in that "core group"? Other than Correa and Buxton, I don't see anyone that we can confidently point to to bounce back. That scares the hell out of me.

Correct. Speed is taken into account, mostly for weakly hit balls where faster players may be able to beat out the throw more often than slower hitters. But since speed is accounted for in the formula to increase the accuracy of the expected stat, the fact that the Twins have some slow runners is already baked into the numbers. Thus, there should be no "speed hit", or a "speed bump", for that matter.

In most cases, when an offense that has the likes of Buxton, Correa and Miranda struggle out of the gate, it is mostly a matter of bad luck and small sample size. That is what I thought was contributing to the Twins' early offensive struggles. Until I came across this on statcast According to xwOBA, which is calculated using K%, BB% and expected AVG/SLG for batted ball events, not a single qualified Twins player is performing above league average. In fact, besides Solano, who is the closest to average, nobody is even particularly close. Now, this doesn't include Gallo and Julien, who may be 2 of our better hitters. But it is very worrying to me that as bad as the offense has been, they deserve to be every bit as bad as they have been. Looking towards the future, I think we can categorize these hitters into 3 groups. The Studs: Buxton and Correa. The chances of them ending the season below league average are slim to none. The Sophomores: Larnach, Miranda and Gordon. All showed flashes of their potential last year, but none have looked particularly good so far. The Fringe Veteran Bats: Solano, Taylor and Vazquez. While Solano is decent offensively, I don't think we can rely on any of them to be consistent offensive forces in the lineup. The ceiling is probably league-average seasons for them. Considering that we at least need to have 4 players on either side of league average to have a competent offense, it is absolutely crucial that at least 2 of Larnach, Miranda and Gordon join Buxton and Correa on the other side. While I still have confidence that the 2022 version of Miranda will show up soon, I'm quickly losing confidence in the other two. Even with rebounds from Miranda/Larnach/Gordon, we definitely need to add some big bats via trades if we are going to be legit contenders. I hope the pitching can keep the team in contention until the trade deadline.

Man, does Lopez look good. As good as Arraez is, the front office made a smart and necessary move by getting Lopez for him. Good job by them. Beyond excited to see Julien in the lineup tomorrow. Hopefully Correa can join him.

I see that now that the Astros can't bang on trash cans, they are sending spies to other teams to strike out and ground into double plays at the most crucial moments in the game. Maybe we should bench Correa for this series? 😄

What is with the Solano hate? He went 2 for 5 with a walk, at least save the complaining for when he goes hitless. Of course, Julien is the more exciting player with the brighter future, but if someone is going for him, it's Willi Castro, not Solano.

Very true, especially the Astros. With Altuve and Brantley out, the lineup doesn't seem nearly as scary as it always does. The top 5 of Pena, Bregman, Tucker, Alvarez and Abreu is menacing, but after that it reminds me of the Twins lineups from September of last year. Not to mention we are going to miss their 2 best starters, Valdez and Javier. I haven't felt this optimistic about playing the Astros in years.

Sure, Urshela is the better overall player, but Farmer is a better SS. And I think that is all that mattered to the FO. if they had Urshela and not Farmer, and if, god forbid, Correa were to get injured, it would be Gordon, Polanco, or Urshela filling in. Heck, they don't even have Palacios anymore. So that move was necessary. Also, it is debatable whether Urshela is actually superior to Farmer. Farmer has 3.3 WAR in his last 2 seasons, whereas Urhsela has 3.1.

I like it. The best defensive OF in the league just got better. I guess this signals the end of Celestino though. Really would have liked for them to give a chance to Evan Sisk. But it is nice that J.A.Happ actually provided some value to the team after all.

While the statcast numbers paint a nice picture, the fact that Kepler does not produce at the level that his underlying numbers suggest he should is ancient history to everyone that has been following the Twins. The front office should be texting all of these numbers to other general managers to get them to bite. I'm sure some GMs who have not been watching Kepler play every day will look at the numbers and see a buy-low opportunity. And I have nothing against Kepler, I think he is a great personality but his fate was sealed when Gallo signed. Although it makes one wonder who would possibly trade anything of value for Kepler when they could have just signed a very similar player in Gallo for 4M more.

I don't think the FO should be getting any praise even if they were to sign Correa, at least not yet. And that's coming from me who is a lot higher on this FO than others. Two teams that are practically begging free agents to take their money backed out of deals with Correa, and given the recent injury history of trade acquisitions/signings by this FO, you would have to wait for at least 3 years (or dare I say, a WS victory) to give any kind of credit to the FO. It would also not change the fact that they were one fluky Correa injury away from having an absolutely horrendous offseason.