Rik19753

CORREA!!

Let's go Correa, time to shut up those obnoxious Yankee fans.

I love Julien as much as the next guy, but putting him at the top of the lineup right away seems like a little too much. And that's not because of the mental aspect, just that we don't know how quickly he is going to adapt to the majors. I hope he is hitting leadoff in a couple of months, but he needs to prove he belongs there before he can claim the spot. Also, I just realized that while the idea of Julien hitting leadoff is enticing, it is not that different from having Gallo leading off. Both draw a ton of walks, but those come with the downside of a lot of Ks. It's interesting that Julien in my mind seems like a perfect leadoff hitter, but I can't embrace the idea of Gallo hitting leadoff.

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.

Twins are playing great and I don't want to take anything away from that, but this Astros team sure looks beatable. The team that wins the AL Central may actually have a chance to get a bye.

These new additions are absolutely killing it! FO deserves a A+ so far.

It's so nice to have good pitching. I'm 23 and I don't think I've ever felt this good about a Twins pitching staff.

Miranda's hitting the ball hard but not getting rewarded at all. I hope he sticks with this approach because the results are going to come soon.

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.

Larnach looks much more disciplined in his at-bats compared to previous years. Very encouraging.

I'm pretty sure that blow outs aren't the only situations that qualify as low-leverage, given that the majority of Pagan's innings in his career have come in that situation. I think some more common situations are if you are down 2 or 3 runs in the 6th, or maybe up 4 runs in the 8th. If you were to think of a scenario in which the Twins are down 2 in the 5th, having a 3.00 ERA RP pitch the next 2 innings instead of a 5.00 ERA RP would result in a few more come-from-behind wins during the length of the season.

First of all, let me be clear that I'm not trying to justify the FO's decision to bring back Pagan for 2023. I was one of the people that was upset that he wasn't traded, and I would still rather not see him on the Twins this year. But since he is back and there is nothing we can do about it, we might as well find something to be hopeful about, and this piece of data gave me a slimmer of hope. As we all know, at the end of last year, Pagan was relegated to lower leverage situations and he thrived. In September, he had easily his best month as a Twin, as he held opponents to a .567 OPS in 12.0 IP. This in itself is somewhat encouraging, as there may be a chance that he changed something in his repertoire/approach that led to this success. But I think the actual reason for his success was not because he changed how he pitches, but because he was in less stressful situations. Pagan's career numbers in Low/Medium/High leverage situations Low: 179.1 IP, 5.47 K/BB, 1.51 HR/9, 3.77 FIP Medium: 95.1 IP, 3.71 K/BB, 1,60 HR/9, 4.05 FIP High: 56.0 IP, 2.83 K/BB, 2.73 HR/9, 6.03(!) FIP As we can see, Pagan has a history of thriving in low leverage and struggling in high leverage. While he seems to give up HRs no matter the situation, his 5.47 K/BB in low leverage is tremendous. This number would be a solid 6th out of 46 qualified pitchers in 2023, ahead of aces like Gerrit Cole, Yu Darvish, Max Fried and Shohei Ohtani. On the other hand, his 6.03 FIP in high leverage is beyond terrible, Of the 347 pitchers that had at least 50 IP in 2023, only 5 had a worse FIP. If this trend was seen for only a single season, it would be best to not read into it too much. But when the sample size is 300+ IP, it is hard to ignore. There are some players that wilt in stressful situations, and Pagan definitely seems like one of them. If the FO realizes this and deploys him in the right situations, Pagan could be a dependable arm in 2023.

Fangraphs recently released its 2023 top 100 prospects list and three Twins prospects made the list. They were Brooks Lee at 19th Royce Lewis at 55th Edouard Julien at 75th Those rankings are similar to other prospect rankings, so no huge surprises there. One mild surprise may be E.Rod's omission. Fangraphs cited his injury concern and high K% as reasons that he didn't make the list. But what caught my eye was the 47th ranked prospect, former friend Spencer Steer. Yes, Steer was ranked ahead of Royce Lewis. Now, I've looked at several prospect rankings and have never seen Steer anywhere close to 47th, so it's probably safe to say that it is not the national perception. In reality, I have a hard time thinking any major league GM would choose Steer over Lewis. However, I am a big believer in Fangraphs and they seem to be right often when they are bullish on prospects that are generally not regarded that highly, so I am a little worried. When the Mahle trade happened last year, I think most (myself included) were pleasantly surprised that the headliner was Steer and thought that the price was cheap compared to the Montas and Luis Castillo trades. But in Fangraphs' rankings, Ken Waldichuk (the main piece in the Montas trade) and Noelvi Marte (main piece in Castillo trade) are ranked more than 40 spots lower. Were we wrong to think that the FO had gotten a good price on Mahle? I shudder to think that the Mahle trade may turn out to be even worse than it seems right now. Is it possible that Steer is a better prospect than Royce Lewis? And did the FO get fleeced in the Mahle trade? Let me know what you think.

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.

But you don't trade away pieces if you can get the same thing without giving up anything. Trading Ober and Canterino for May is like paying $10 for something that can be had for free. The comparison shouldn't be May vs. Ober and Canterino it should be May vs. (Best FA RP that can be signed for the amount that May is paid), Ober and Canterino So unless the FO believes that May is better than any available FA RP, they will have no reason to give up even their last ranked prospect for May. Much less Ober and Canterino.

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.

While that is certainly true, this year could be an exception. Since it is already very slim pickings at this point, I think the FO would dish out a lot of money to any worthwhile player if it is on a 1 year contract, like they did with Gallo. Guys like Eovaldi and Drury are unlikely to take 1 year deals even if you give them a lot of money, but I think 1 year, high AAV deals are just what relievers like Kimbrel and Britton are looking for.

I really like Gordon and I think he needs to be more than a utility player. He hit the ball harder than everyone on the team besides Buxton last year and was 5th on the team in xwOBA. He is clearly one of their better hitters and the Twins do not have enough good hitters to have the luxury of having Gordon as a backup. The FO and some fans need to stop assuming that his power is a fluke just because he doesn't have a ton of muscle. I think you play Gordon/Garlick at LF to go along with Buxton and Gallo in the outfield(assuming Kepler is traded). Gordon's .793 OPS vs righties and Garlick's .839 OPS vs lefties would make for a great platoon. Just get him into the lineup as often as possible, he should be getting the same amount of hype and expectations as Miranda, Kirilloff, Larnach and Royce.

The A's seeing something in Ruiz that others don't still doesn't explain the trade. If the other teams really did value Ruiz like BTV, the A's would have definitely asked for more even if they were 100% sure that he would blossom into the next superstar, because you would never ask for less than what the other team is willing to give you. I think it's more likely that every team is higher on Ruiz than his prospect rank or his value on BTV.

I like this idea. Farmer is great against lefties, with a .837 career OPS vs. a .650 OPS against righties. If they intend on using Farmer as the utility guy against lefties and Nick Gordon against righties, I like it. On the other hand, if they plan on Farmer being the Opening Day SS, I hate the move. If they aren't going to spend their money on SS, where else are they going to spend their money? I have a very hard time thinking they have a shot at signing the likes of deGrom, Verlander or Rodon. Unfortunately, I think the latter is a much bigger possibility than the former. I just have a hard time thinking that the FO would pay $6MM for a utility player when they are so obsessed with their cap space. I don't think they have completely ruled out signing a top SS, but I think this is one of the moves that we have seen time and time again in recent years where they prepare their fallback option beforehand so that they have a backup plan for whenever their feeble attempt at signing a top free agent inevitably fails.

I think this trade means that the Twins don't have any intensions of signing a top SS in the free agency market this year. If they were seriously considering signing Correa or Bogearts, it is highly unlikely that they trade for Farmer as a backup when he himself makes nearly $6MM.