Otto von Ballpark

All I was responding to was this: Kirilloff is not even 2nd after Rooker for me. Garlick has been the best hitter in ST. Granted it's spring training. He also had 100 pt higher OPS at the MLB level in 2019 compared the Kirilloff numbers at AA. Garlick's AAA OPS was over 1,000. His history suggests he is better prepared to play at the MLB level. Garlick, despite an option and 2+ minimum salary years remaining, was passed over by the 24 worst MLB teams *twice* this offseason. That tells me more about his MLB readiness than his passable first 53 PA in MLB (ignoring his awful next 23), or his OPS while repeating the PCL at age 27 with the lively ball used at AAA in 2019: https://mlb.nbcsports.com/2019/09/03/triple-a-homers-increased-by-nearly-60-percent-this-season-thanks-to-juiced-baseball/ As Jayson Stark of The Athletic notes this morning, that number includes a 59 percent increase in homers in the Pacific Coast League over last year and a 57 percent increase in the International League. Stark talks with a baseball executive who tells him that, from a development perspective, the PCL has now become essentially useless, and they are sending prospects to Double-A instead because the juiced ball is preventing clubs from accurately assessing players. If we're talking a 2 month opening for regular MLB starts, I'd at least be open to the idea of Kirilloff skipping AAA. I wouldn't automatically hand it to Kirilloff, but I wouldn't give it to Garlick by default either. At the very least, I would have played Kirilloff through to the end of spring training before making my decision; more likely, I would have sought other alternatives in the offseason. Off the top of my head, Bellinger (142 wRC+) and Conforto (160 wRC+ in 197 PA but trending down, 118 wRC+ over his last month) are not exact matches for Kirilloff's 127 wRC+ performance in AA coming off his wrist injury, but nothing bright-line disqualifying. Their teams didn't have to consider a cancelled 2020 and delayed 2021 minor league season either -- Bellinger was promoted from AAA to make his MLB debut on April 25, a scenario not possible for the 2021 Twins. Nor did their teams prefer Garlick as a 2-month MLB starter!

One start in spring training wouldn’t mean much. You’d need multiple starts to stretch out beyond a reliever’s workload anyway. And both guys are coming off health issues. I’d actually be surprised if they transitioned either one to starting during the 2021 season — seems more like a “next offseason” thing — but the White Sox have been a little surprising lately.

May actually didn’t walk that many guys as a starter in MLB, or even ultimately fail as a starter. He walked 7 in the disaster that was his very first game, but the remaining 9 games as a rookie he only had a 7.6 BB% (he gave up a ton of runs, though). Second season, 16 starts, 1.9 fWAR, 20.3 K%, 5.0 BB%. (League was 17.0 K% and 6.7 BB%) ERA was 4.43 but the league SP ERA was 4.14. I don’t know if that would have held up over time, but he never really got a chance to start again after that.

There's no perfect metric to compare between levels and leagues (and nothing is going to rescue selective small samples like spring training and Garlick's 53 MLB PA in 2019), but wRC+ is going to have fewer flaws than the raw OPS numbers that you quoted. if you include the postseason -- just 5 more games -- Kirilloff's season OPS would have climbed to .793, or a ~127 wRC+. Considering he started the year playing through a wrist injury too, that number isn't noticeably different than, say, Bellinger's AA wRC+ of 142. Bellinger had another ~90 PA at AAA but it's not clear that those 90 PA were critical to his development. I don't want Kirilloff to skip AAA, but with the AAA season starting a month late this year, if the alternative to sending Kirilloff down was 2 months of starting Kyle Garlick in a contending season, maybe I'd rather give Kirilloff a shot first. Of course, in a non-Rooker world, I'd probably just use Arraez a lot more in LF (maybe I would anyway!). Maybe Garlick could hang around as a 4th or 5th outfielder -- roles for which he's not in direct competition with Kirilloff.

I think you make a fair point about Thorpe, but those K differences aren't *quite* as dramatic as they look due to changing contexts. The 2019 IL K% was 22.8%. Even just a few years prior, in 2014 for Trevor May, it was only 19.4%. Thorpe still outpaces his league by a wider margin, but the league difference wipes out over half his K% advantage over May.

I wouldn't go that far. Garlick's 2019 and AAA OPS figures have been in hitter's leagues. His 2019 MLB wRC+ was only 114, with a 35.8% K rate. He's probably not as bad as his 2020 Phillies numbers suggest, but I'm not terribly eager to find what midpoint he could settle at. (ZiPS projects him for a 72 wRC+.) By comparison, Kirilloff was in a pitcher's league in AA and posted a 121 wRC+, despite a wrist injury in the early part of the season -- then had an insanely good AA postseason that's not reflected in those numbers either.

It's not the spot, though -- it's the playing time. Astudillo might play once a week -- and there's nothing wrong with that! That means everybody else is healthy and hopefully productive. They can always reassess later and use the spot differently. You missed Arraez in this analysis -- he's got a 3 WAR projection and might be our best leadoff hitter. I hope he gets more playing time than just backing up 2B/SS/3B. Garver and Jeffers might benefit from a DH or 1B game too. Also, there's no DH for the first 3 games of the season, so that takes 3 more starts away from our best projected hitter in Cruz. (And while I sympathize with the Cruz rest theory, I trust that the Twins are aware of his age and are already taking that into consideration with their current roster plan -- they don't need Kirilloff for that purpose.) And all that just to get Kirilloff irregular at-bats over a month of MLB, without a set defensive position, starting his service clock before he's even a MLB regular, after a cold spring training, 1 active game in 2020, and no career AAA experience. Seems sub-optimal to me. And none of this is set in stone. If Rooker looks really overmatched the first few weeks, we can always swap him for Kirilloff. If someone gets hurt, we can make a move too. If those things happen, or Astudillo is somehow starting 50% of games, and the Twins won't promote Kirilloff, I'll be right there criticizing them. But right now, I just don't see it. The current roster construction and expected playing time distribution look perfectly rational.

The White Sox have said they still consider Kopech and Crochet as starting prospects, although both will open the season in the bullpen (in part to help manage their workloads). They're probably the White Sox strongest SP depth right now.

I get that you don't like Astudillo or a 9th reliever, but neither of those spots have anything to do with Kirilloff. Kepler, Cruz, and Arraez are projected 3 WAR players. Sano's projection is only 2 WAR but he was a 3 WAR guy in 2019 and the team is committed to giving him a chance to do it again. These are not the guys we want to bench so we can achieve playing time equity across the whole 26-man roster. I laid out the numbers in my post above, but trying to give even half-time starts to Kirilloff would have a noticeable impact on other roster goals. Kirilloff is a very good prospect but his performance and experience to date do not suggest any particular urgency to try to squeeze him in right now at the expense of these other goals. Mind you, I don't necessarily think your plan is bad -- I am excited to see Kirilloff too -- but I see nothing wrong with the plan the Twins are apparently choosing either.

This is a good summary of who is left:

Fangraphs has those, but the 2020 data isn't loading for some reason. You can still view previous years: https://www.fangraphs.com/players/max-kepler/12144/spray-charts?position=OF&type=battedball&pid2=12144&ss1=2018&se1=2018&ss2=2019&se2=2019&cht1=battedball&cht2=battedball&vs1=ALL&vs2=ALL

There is a spray chart for hits in the upper-right corner of his Statcast page: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/max-kepler-596146?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb

They can always swap Thielbar out for another long reliever once the season starts and the need arises too.

Wolfson says today that the Derek Law opt-out isn't until August 1st (unless an opportunity in Asia comes along):

Thanks for running the numbers! I'll try another way. There are 29 scheduled MLB games before the AAA season starts. First 29 games of 2020, Kepler had 3 games out of the starting lineup, Cruz 2, Sano 4. That's 9 starts off the bench for those 3 spots, plus 29 more for the starting LF. Of course, we not only have Rooker and Cave available for those starts, but also Arraez as a super-sub. Plus one of Garver/Jeffers might benefit from a few additional PAs too. Maybe you have a distribution as follows: Rooker 20 Cave 8 Arraez 8 Garver/Jeffers 2 You can quibble with this on the margins (and tossing a couple starts to Astudillo on the end of the bench would do just that), but trying to get a meaningful number of PAs for Kirilloff in this mix would defeat the purpose of rostering Rooker at all, and also likely negate one benefit of the Simmons signing (which allowed Arraez to become a super-sub).

Starting Happ on the IL would just set him back more, no? There's no official rehab games to pitch, so it would just be more simulated games in extended spring training for those 10 days. With an 8 or 9 man bullpen, guys with options, and a stretched-out Dobnak likely to make the club, they don't even need Happ -- or anyone -- to be at full innings-eating capacity in the first week of the season.

If they want to keep Dobnak stretched out, they could use him out of the pen on a fairly set schedule. For example, they could plan to piggyback him with Happ or Shoemaker, throwing at least 3-4 innings after the starter leaves. The pen is big enough, and enough guys have options, that they can always shuttle guys back and forth with St. Paul if there's a short start or injury or something, so they're not locked into any particular configuration.

MLB.com actually has spring training stats dating back to 2006, selectable in drop-down menus on both the team stat pages and the individual player pages, so we can check it out! https://www.mlb.com/player/max-kepler-596146 Kepler's career spring training line is poor overall, at .204/.268/.292 for a .560 OPS in 272 PA. And actually each individual spring has been fairly poor too, with the exception of 2019. In spring 2019, he had a .957 OPS and 3 HR; he's never hit a spring HR outside of that year, and never topped a .601 OPS otherwise either. 2019 also happened to be his best regular-season performance at the plate, with 36 HR and a 123 OPS+ (and also the year when the league as a whole hit a high-water mark for HR, prompting some changes in the baseball now). I still don't think the spring samples are large enough to be particularly meaningful. Maybe this spring is a minor harbinger against a superstar breakout, but still no reason Kepler shouldn't be able to hit his ZiPS projection for 2021 (113 wRC+, 2.8 WAR).

That could have been a valid approach, especially if Kirilloff had forced the issue. But the approach they chose for now appears valid too. We've already made investments in Kepler, Sano, and Cruz, and probably want to play them as much as possible while they are healthy. Plus there's value in giving a full evaluation to Rooker, to help gauge his place on the roster in the future. And while their roles aren't critical, there's still value in evaluating Cave, Astudillo, and the 8th/9th reliever in limited time that will inform 26-man/40-man decisions going forward. If someone gets hurt and/or more playing time opens up, we can always call up Kirilloff anytime we want -- there's nothing irreversible about this approach.

We don't want Kirilloff to be a platoon player? I doubt it's a straight platoon either.

Tell that to this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPWNmtK-SJA But seriously, pitch selectivity is pretty much built in to the modern hitting approach, not necessarily for working walks but just getting the best pitch to drive. And professional hitters aren't casting that approach aside in spring training games like it's batting practice. As of now, the league-wide BB% this spring is 10.2%. The 2020 regular season was 9.2%. Some of that is on pitchers of course, but some is still due to the baseline offensive approach. In 2019, the spring training walk rate was 8.7%, exactly the same at the regular season non-pitcher walk rate. For one player like Kirilloff, or even one team like the Twins, it's such a small sample that I don't think we can draw many conclusions from the stat line alone -- but I also don't know that we can universally dismiss a lack of spring training walks either.

I think there's also the potential risk of injury. If Kirilloff were to get injured before he was optioned, he'd have to go on the MLB injured list and accumulate MLB service time. That's why prospects on the 40-man roster generally get sent out earlier than other players, as soon as their path to making the team closes. FWIW, the team will gradually be increasing spring at-bats for MLB regulars, but they also want to evaluate other minor leaguers too -- to help determine classification, positions, call-up priority, maybe even next winter's 40-man decisions, etc. With Kirilloff, all of that is pretty much settled already -- he's already on the 40-man and staying there, he'll be assigned to AAA, and he'll likely come up as soon as regular MLB at-bats open up at one of his positions. Sure, giving him continued reps would be nice, but it probably has less marginal net benefit than giving those reps to other guys at the moment.

The Twins official site beat writer said Broxton does *not* have an opt-out at the end of spring training: There's actually a good chance of the Twins being able to hold on to Broxton without breaking camp with him because he doesn't have an opt-out at the end of Spring Training. https://www.mlb.com/news/twins-inbox-can-broxton-make-the-team

I think that in the modern game, and particularly on this team, pinch-running would be the smallest part of the role, by definition. The Twins only pinch-ran 43 times combined over 2019-2020, and they're generally not attempting steals either, so the relative difference between Cave and Broxton as pinch running options is minimal. The difference between their career batting lines, on the other hand, is worth about 7.9 Rbat prorated to 228 PA (which was the 2019 PA total for both of them). On defense, the career gap between Broxton and Cave, prorated to Broxton's 2019 innings, would be about 2.3 UZR or 6.6 DRS. Broxton turns 31 soon, though, which could be a negative factor in his defensive projection going forward? Cave's advantage in ZiPS projections, including defense, is about 8.2 runs (or 0.8 WAR) prorated to 228 PA.

Astudillo has a few games at first this spring (and previously in his career). Blankenhorn has a game there this spring too, although he hadn't played it in the minors in 6 years (since rookie ball). Garver's had a few innings there each season, Rooker has some games there in the minors and college but none yet this spring.