LA Vikes Fan

Sorry to hear about Sano, but this really does give an opportunity to Miranda, and maybe even to Arraez to establish himself as the team's primary 1B. It's probably about time to move on from Sano given his inconsistency and now we're being forced into it.

My prayers are with you and your wife in this difficult time.

I think that's the actual plan and the right plan. I expect Lewis to be in AAA playing SS every day unless Correa gets hurt. Lewis is the SS next year unless Correa stays (seems unlikely), and needs the SS reps. I don't expect he'll be in MN this season until at least August or September.

That makes sense. So it's Godoy and Sands optioned to AAA, Sano and Garlick to the IL, Miranda and Moran up. Roster goes from 28 to 26, still have 14 pitchers. All good, although I would like to see Smeltzer get another chance given how well he is pitching in AAA. I think they are going to leave him there as the #8 starter behind the starting 6 and Winder since we don't have another starter at AAA ready to start in the bigs unless Sands gets it together. The rest of the AAA starters are all AAAA fill in types.

You the man. That's exactly what they should do as a plan. Kepler is a good glove in the OF and is now hitting (who would have guessed? not me). Arraez needs a place to play against RH pitching and IB is the only spot left for him where he doesn't hurt us in the field. Pair him with Miranda and if Miranda plays well, trade Sano if we can.

I agree and Memorial Day may be optimistic. Kirilloff has to get over the mental part of playing with a potentially chronic injury. That takes some time. I'm thinking after the All Star break, particularly if an Arraez/Miranda platoon is at least adequate at 1B.

I agree. The interesting thing to me is what do we do if Garlick also has to go on the IL. He isn't my favorite player but you guys were right - he does mash lefties. Maybe we go defense against lefties with Kepler and Celestino in the OF and Miranda takes the DH spot? I'm not a big fan of Sanchez as a DH and even less so when it means the only 2 catchers are both in the lineup. Also, who would we call up?

Ueshela isn't coming off 3B, Sano is coming off of 1B, and Arraez and Miranda will get that spot. This tells me that Sano is going on the IL. Good idea, because he will get a few days off, then be sent to AAA on a rehab assignment to find his swing. Miranda is coming up to be the RH hitting 1B, RH DH, and fill in 3B. Gordon is the backup middle infielder/ occasional OF. Garlick may be going on the IL as well. Godoy goes back to AAA and we're down to 26 with Sands going back to St. Paul.

I think the cuts are now pretty clear with Sano ailing. Arraez is now the every day 1B and Gordon moves up to be the primary utility IF. That leaves room for Celestino to be the 4th/5th OF behind a starting group of Buxton, Kepler, Larnach, and Garlick (Garlick only against LH starters). Assuming Garlick didn't earn himself an IL stint after walking off the field today, here's what I see: Sano to IL Godoy to AAA Everything else stays the same unless Garlick has to go on the IL and then I could see Miranda coming up as essentially a backup 3B/RH DH since Arreaz is now the starting 1B. Lewis would be the more obviously ready player but I have to think they are going to leave him in AAA to play SS every day unless and until they have a good reason to think Correa will be around more than 1 season.

Correa is coming back nicely and just maybe Polanco is starting to come back to his norm. I like seeing Kepler hitting the ball the other way; he might actually be the middle of the order bat we desperately need. We're still one middle of the order guy short of a complete lineup. Larnach maybe? No on Sano. Any way we can trade an A ball guy or two and get Nelson Cruz back?

Whoever is working with the Kepler on his hitting deserves a big Raise. I think we’ve seen him hit the ball to the left side of second base more this year than he did all of last season. Now he’s doing it with some power, I think a home run and a double in the last few games. If he can keep this up, get dad to .250 to .270 with the same power as before, we now have found our number five hitter. And we need one bad.

Nice write up. My only question is the defense; it seems like it's been better than middle of the road. I may think that because its better than it was and/or watching Detroit and Chicago give away games in the field. Still, I just think the defense is one of the reasons we've improved and a main contributor to the success of the rotation.

It's not that Sano isn't a competent MLB player; he is. He just isn't good enough to be the 1B/middle of the order bat on a contending MLB team. He's plenty good enough to start for a .500 team, but I don't want to be that. A contending team can't wait 2 months for a guy to heat up to slightly above average. We should always be evaluating players on whether they can contribute to a team contending for a championship. If they can, they stay. If they can't, you look for an upgrade. They play until you find that upgrade but you don't stop looking. Simple as that. Sano just isn't good enough to be what we need - a solid 1B/DH who hits in the middle of a good lineup. I wouldn't cut him slack, I'd look for his replacement. Weirdly enough, we may have found his replacement in Arraez and/or Kirilloff.

I agree but I do wonder a a little about our MLB ready depth. There isn't anyone burning up AAA except for Lewis, who will stay in AAA to be ready to replace Correa at SS. We're having a hard time finding an everyday LF, and Laranch seems to be our only real hope unless Kirilloff re-appears. On the SP side, the only real go to at AAA is Smeltzer, who doesn't seem like he is more than a #5 SP/long reliever. I know we have pitching depth at the MLB level in Winder and some AA guys but it's a long way from AA to the majors. I agree that we have more depth than last year. I don't think we have a lot of depth overall. I think the Twins success this year is heavily dependent on continuing good health.

Pull Stashak. Leaving him in is tempting fate. Also, what happened to Ober? Injury?

Keep Smeltzer as a starter in AAA for now We will need starters t the MLB level by June given the injury history and checkered track records of Gray, Bundy and Archer. I also don't see the team letting Ryan, Paddack or Ober go more than about 150-160 innings this yea given none of them pitched over 110 innings last year - Ober 108 total, 92 MLB, Paddack 108, all MLB, Ryan 92 total, 26 MLB. There will be 30 starts this year for guys outside the 6 now in the rotation. WInder can take 15 of them, leaving 15 for somebody else. That's what we really need Smeltzer for.

Love he idea of those 3 in the rotation all year, but we probably won't get more than 150 innings apiece out of them and probably a little less. I actually like what we've seen of Paddock so far - he could be a solid #3/#4 type for the next 3 years we have control of him. Add in Gray and it actually looks like a MLB rotation. Who would have thought? The big issue is that none of these guys look like 180 plus inning guys based on their past so we will need depth. I'm actually kind of bullish on Winder, less so on Archer. Looking at AAA, the only starter going well is Smeltzer. We're starting guys like Jake Faria, JC Ramirez, Chi Chi Gonzalez, and Derek Rodriguez, with the kind of predictable mediocre AAA results. Be interesting to see what we do when we need to go beyond the 7 guys we have on the MLB roster.

I'm with you. Better defense means better pitching and Ryan used it last night. I love the idea of getting Arraez in the lineup at 1B or DH and only occasionally in the infield. Keep Correa, Polanco and Urshela in the infield as much as we can - all 3 are waaaay above average at their positions and really help these guys out.

Kepler hitting like he did last night or over the last week would sure help fix the big hole with this offense - the lack of a #4 or #5 hitter. Even better he hits left handed and the other 2-4 guys that can hit are all RH except Arraez. I don't think it's likely but ... a girl can dream, right?

Agreed. The two players going down at the end of the week are Celestino and Godoy unless Sanchez still can't play,. Then it's Celestino and Sanchez to the injured list. The roster crunches come when Gray is ready to come back and Kirilloff is ready to be elevated. When Gray comes back., either Jax or Stashack goes. When Kirilloff is ready, we have to lose either Larnach back to AAA or DFA Garlick. While I would prefer a DFA of Garlick with Larnach playing most days in LF, Kirilloff at 1B, and Sano as a part time DH and back up 1B, and I think the more likely result is Larnach back to AAA to play in LF every day.

With the rule change allowing for 14 pitchers, I think this becomes a much easier decision when we cut to 26. We have a 14 man pitching staff now. We Gray is ready to come back we jettison the least effective of Stashack and Jax. Right now, I think that's Stashack but I'm not sure he has options like Jax does. We now have our 14 man pitching staff. We cut to 12 players by reducing ourselves with three-man bench, a 2nd catcher (Sanchez) a super utility (Gordon) and then which ever 1 of Sano, Garlick, Larnach or Arraez isn't playing LF, DH or 1B that day. Celestino goes down to AAA to play centerfield every day and we lose Godoy assuming Sanchez is ready to play. It is a little tempting to go with 3 catchers since they like to have Sanchez DH when he is not catching, but that leaves no room at the Inn for Garlick unless you want to keep him and send Laranch back down. I think Garlick stays for now. The harder question comes when Kirilloff is ready come back. I think at that point we to make a decision between Larnach, Garlick and Sano going off 26 man roster to make room. While performance to date suggests Sano would be the one to go, you basically have to trade him or keep him and he has no trade value right now. Moreover, it's not like the other 2 are burning up the league and somehow forcing the Twins to keep them on the active roster. I think the likely result is that when Kirilloff comes back, we choose between keeping Garlick or Larnach. My guess is that Larnach will go back to AAA unless he gets on a hot streak that's more than just hitting the ball hard, but actually getting hits and not striking out so much.

This is great to see. I agree that Kepler was getting shifted to the bench. High hopes that there is a .250-.270 hitter with 20 HR power and a .340 OBP in Kepler if he can hit the ball to LF. Even better if he can find some power to the LCF gap. Then he really is a keeper.

I agree with you there. Kepler is better than the present alternatives, and probably still is even if/when Kirilloff comes back and plays LF. We saw last night what a good glove in the corner OF can do and what it can't when Grossman butchered the play on the ball hit by Sano. Frankly, for all the talk we heard about the glut of corner OF prospects we supposedly have, it looks like we are short in that area at least in the high minors. I just think we need to understand what Kepler is - a good fielding corner OF with a below average corner OF bat. He hits 6 against RH pitching, 7 against lefties (although he's hitting lefties better than righties this year) and plays every day until somebody better comes along. We can win with Kepler playing every day IF we get a consistently good hitting LF or 1B that can hit 4 or 5. Still working on that.

I agree. A "breakout" for Kepler would be for him to hit .250-.260/.330/.460. Not bad, but hardly a middle of the order bat. Still a serviceable piece on a good team as the 3rd best hitting OF and his glove brings real value. He seems like he's make strides and he MIGHT improve to be a solid starter/#6 or #7 hitter in a good lineup. It really seems unlikely he will be anything more that that in his career. In other words, a solid complimentary player but not someone who is a core carrier of the team. By the way, let's stop talking about how Kepler's 103 OPS+ makes him an "above average hitter". It makes him a roughly average hitter when you include everyone that plays, including catchers, shortstops, second baseman, and center fielders - all positions where the glove work is more important than the offense. Kepler is a Corner OF. He needs to hit better to play that spot. I would love to see the average OPS+ for corner OFs. I can't seem to find anything recent on the internet. The only one I found is multiple years old and says that the average OPS for a corner OF is .819, with .756 as "replacement level". Kepler's career OPS is .... .756. Replacement level if one believes these old stats. I'd love to see some updated or better ones. Still, this validates what I at least think Kepler has been - a good fielding OF with a below average, replacement level bat for a corner OF. I hope he adjusts and is better this year, I really do. But let's not pretend he's been more than that in his career.

I understand the author's point and agree with it, but only to a limited extent. We all know what Sano is as a baseball player- a steaky hitter with power who provides negative value on defense. He will carry the team for a couple of weeks at 2 or 3 junctures this season. He also will drag us down and cause us to lose games by missing opportunities to help the team like his brutal at bat in the 2nd last night watching 3 strikes go bay with a men on second and third and no outs. Inexcusably bad at bat. The question is does that provide what you need from a 1B/DH on a good, contending team? The answer is a resounding NO. no advanced metrics can change that answer - he's just not good enough if our goal is to actually contend. Do we have anyone any better? I think Arraez is easily better against RH pitching so at most Sano should be the weak half of a 1B platoon. Kirilloff might be better so he should play every day when and IF he's ready. Bottom line is that Sano should be at most a part time player, trade bait if anyone will even give us a A ball lottery ticket or two for him, and gone after this season.