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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    Todd Van Steensel released from AA Chattanooga:
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    Our last two position player pitching appearances (Astudillo and Garver) have both come immediately after Matt Belisle appearances in the same game. That's a special kind of setup man!
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    Drake has had hundreds of professional innings for us to evaluate. Garver had literally zero. I think it would have been irresponsible NOT to pitch Garver last night, to see if he has what it takes to be part of our 2019 pen.
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    I hear Jack Goin may have taken the database with him. And due to the record payroll, the Pohlads suspended the raffle that was to accompany the emergency pitcher questionnaire, so perhaps employee participation was lower. First prize was supposed to be a mountain bike this year!
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    Lewis should debut either in June (after the likely Super 2 arbitration cutoff, like Correa and Lindor) or mid-April (after the 7th year of control is guaranteed, like Kris Bryant). These dates are largely irrelevant for the vast majority of players, but Lewis looks elite and thus they carry some significance, especially as a position player. Yes, the service time may prove irrelevant like it has for Buxton and Sano, but you have to cover that base in advance. The only question now is how quickly he can get through AA and AAA and stay healthy. June 2019 is probably a little too fast -- but it would be exciting! April 2020 seems like a good bet now, assuming health, with a fallback of June 2020 or April 2021 if he is slowed by an injury in the meantime. If the Twins deviate from those dates, it would be nice if his call-up was accompanied by a contract extension, buying out his arb years and at least one FA year.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    What if that someone is... Belisle himself? The Paradox of Matty B!
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    Anderson wasn't a first round pick. Maybe you are thinking of Tyler Jay? He will be eligible for Rule 5 this winter too. Anderson was a 32nd round pick from Brainerd who initially had to go to indy ball. Stewart, his K rate increased in his 3rd year at AA, but just a tick above league average. It is back down to well below average at AAA. He's giving up more hits than ever, although he is still getting grounders. Seems like he would most likely be selected for conversion to relief duty, and in that case, I am not sure he is in all that different of a position from last year.
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    Well, Stewart went unselected last year, has much changed this year? He wasn't exactly an under the radar type. Anderson seems like a classic older marginal type. I think if anyone selects him, they will regret it (like Bard, Kinley, Jones, etc.).
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    25-27% K rate isn't bad for a power hitter in MLB. But if it's below league average at AA, that suggests there could be further trouble up the line. He's not Adam Brett Walker but it's a concern, especially for a guy whose only value is going to have to come through his bat. (And Rooker's jump in walk rate since June 1st suggests he could be getting pitched around as his bat has warmed up, which might be contributing to his lower K rate in that time?) In any case, I don't see him as a good Plan A for MLB opening day 2019, and he's not Rule 5 eligible, so it seems like bad roster management to add him to the 40-man right now. If you want to challenge him a little yet this season, move him to Rochester just to see how he adapts to a different league again -- that's been a bit of an issue for him too.
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    The front office must simply be planning to remove Busenitz, Duffey, and Curtiss from the 40-man roster following the season. They're probably just being kept on the roster for now to improve their chances of clearing waivers. (Although Duffey would be eligible for minor league free agency too.) Similarly, Nick Anderson and Kohl Stewart can be controlled beyond this season even without a 40-man roster spot, as long as no one selects them in Rule 5. Bard, like Duffey, will be eligible for minor league free agency if he's not on the 40-man this offseason, but Bard is having a garbage season at AAA anyway. So I guess Duffey could be the priority? But they've had plenty of looks at him over the years, so I don't know...
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    I like seeing new players, and lord knows the Twins could use a phenom rocketing to MLB, but I think I'd be pretty upset rather than excited if Rooker debuted in MLB yet this season, given everything we know. He still has some contact issues, so I wouldn't want to trust him to skip AAA and be ready to contribute for opening day 2019, and it would be very poor 40-man roster management to add him this early.
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    Yup. WPA is a story stat. Not unlike pitcher wins/losses, RBIs, etc. A player's WPA is highly context dependent -- as Fangraphs says, "A player with a high leverage index may have a higher WPA simply because they happened to come up more often when the game was on the line." (Same applies to pitchers who happened to pitch more often when the game was on the line.) If you want to use WPA beyond telling the story of a game, to compare two players by WPA, you would want to divide by Leverage Index. See here: https://www.fangraphs.com/library/misc/wpa-li/
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    White was maybe close. The year before we signed him, 14 Rbat in 400 PA, compared to Morrison's 22 in 601. For projected DHs, they are about the same. Morrison had more health and was a few years younger, but White had much more of a track record. The other names I won't dispute. You could add the holy trinity of Ramon Ortiz, Livan Hernandez, and Sidney Ponson on the pitching side of the ledger. (Although the old Twins did also acquire/re-sign Pavano, who was probably a fair comp for Lynn.)
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    Aaron's leadership toward achieving his team's goal has certainly been more successful than Matty B's so far this year.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    If that is accurate, 8.0 K/9 isn't that impressive anymore. League averages across our minor league affiliates range from 8.2-8.9. That includes relievers too, so 8.0 is probably close to average for starters. (Although across 14 starters, having a cumulative average isn't necessarily bad either.)
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    This is sort of separate from grading the trades themselves, but I wish they would have tried something sooner -- even something small, or "addition by subtraction" -- to salvage the 2018 season, beyond (or instead of) adding Belisle.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    Odorizzi hits 5 years service time in 3 days, I think. And with that comes the right to refuse any optional assignment. So this isn't a factor anymore.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    Well, yes. I think some folks are factoring into their evaluation that the Twins haven't cut him yet. Is it fair to maybe make a conditional grade?
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    Keep in mind De Jong was on the 40-man roster -- Seattle likely had to cut him anyway to make room, and he's marginal enough that they didn't really care if they lost him on waivers. I think that's how we got 2 players for Duke, rather than any particular demonstration of scouting/negotiating skill. De Jong seems to join a bottleneck of marginal pitchers on the Twins 40-man roster. If he was a waiver claim, I suspect we'd be a bit more skeptical of his usefulness than you are in this trade grade.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    Worth noting it was long relief appearance vs the Orioles, with the Yankees trailing 7-1. (Sonny Gray got rocked, maybe Lynn will take his spot?)
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    Well, they haven't really traded for many guys at all. That might have been the issue, rather than not trading multiple prospects for major pieces.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    Don't be fooled by that line for Jake Reed. In July he had 11 K's and 5 BB's in 13.1 innings. He was the beneficiary of a .129 BABIP. He looks more like Alex Wimmers at this point than relief prospect. I still hope we have a better plan than seeing too many of those types yet this season. Anderson at least gets some K's, but even that isn't very notable anymore in the modern game.
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    This is fair. In fact, I wondered in another post whether they let the season stagnate too long. If they were thinking "addition by subtraction", they probably could have moved on from a couple other players earlier, and given Escobar and the rest a better chance to get back in the race before the deadline.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    I'm not quite so sure. How many other GMs have acquired 11 prospects in one week in July? There's an argument they went beyond normal GM talent procurement protocol, and took a brute force approach to adding quantity here, for questionable benefit (considering the depth our system already had). Maybe it didn't cost much either, but it's far too early to say this was unqualified success.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    Well, that's just regression to the mean. Fangraphs still projects them to have a better record the rest of the way, and it's not even close (.513 rest of season win percentage, vs. .462 today). Nobody's really disputing that, are they? That's a very different question than putting our best team on the field to challenge Cleveland.
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