Otto von Ballpark

The Twins best chance of keeping Rosario was to offer him arbitration, and his estimated arb award was $10 mil. It's possible that Rosario would have signed with us for $8 mil after we non-tendered him, but it's also possible that may not have been enough to top an $8 mil offer from Cleveland, if he felt insulted by our non-tender and/or could see the writing on the wall here with Kirilloff and Larnach.

Above the game logs at Baseball Reference is a nice summary of RBI opportunities: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.fcgi?id=rosared01&t=b&year=2021 RBIs in 278 PAs 41 Actual Runners on Base 165 (85-54-26) Avg. MLBer w/ 278 PAs 31 Avg. Runners on Base 167 (84-54-28) Rosario has done well this year in RBI, with +10 over the average player. But note that, despite being on a poor hitting team, his RBI opportunities are about the same as an average player too. That's probably due to batting 4th/5th behind a good hitter or two (and the poor Cleveland hitters may be failing in their own RBI opportunities and leaving those baserunners for other players like Rosario?). FWIW, Kirilloff has the exactly the same positive RBI rate, with average opportunity, just in fewer PA: RBIs in 161 PAs 24 Actual Runners on Base 98 (47-35-16) Avg. MLBer w/ 161 PAs 18 Avg. Runners on Base 96 (49-31-16) Larnach on the other hand has a low RBI total compared to average, but even more opportunities than average too. Not a large sample yet, of course: RBIs in 152 PAs 12 Actual Runners on Base 116 (57-41-18) Avg. MLBer w/ 152 PAs 17 Avg. Runners on Base 91 (46-29-15)

What are you basing this on? Cleveland's two switch hitters have no platoon difference for their careers. Hernandez: .732 OPS vs RHP, .731 vs LHP Ramirez: .852 vs RHP, .845 vs LHP I'm also not sure where you are getting the idea that the Coulombe decision is entirely platoon-driven. As you seem to acknowledge in an earlier post, he may have been the Twins best promotion candidate right now: Coulombe is no star but he might be worth a look, and this would seem to be a good opportunity. Also, a platoon consideration wouldn't necessarily be limited to how Cleveland performs vs LHP. It also gives them a different look from the Twins relievers who will likely follow in the game tonight, especially since Rogers pitched last night. Also gives them a different look between RH SP Berrios yesterday and RH SP Maeda tomorrow.

Luke Farrell will be placed on the injured list with an oblique strain to make room for Danny Coulombe. Cody Stashak is headed to the 60-day IL.

The Altuve HR that prompted this topic was of the solo variety — no runners on base.

I think there may be a bit of a "self-preservation instinct" at play there, similar to running into outfield walls. Buxton is just so aggressive, even at the plate, I think he is less likely to protect himself on certain plays and pitches. And he's been having tremendous success with that approach at the plate, so who can blame him?

Kind of weird that the Tigers cut Burrows loose, with option years remaining, without much of a bullpen audition. We know ARI, BAL, PIT, TEX, and COL all passed on claiming him too.

Sands is on the IL now too. There is no shortage of AAA reps.

And one of those sub-500 PA seasons was the 1994 strike year — Griffey only missed 1 game out of 112 Seattle played that year.

I've seen that article before but they use HBP per PA. I'd like to see an analysis using HBP per pitch, as the number of pitches has risen in modern times too. Could still be going up, but not as dramatically as claimed?

Seems difficult. I assume the Saints were already in (or in route to) Columbus, OH, last night and the Twins game is at noon in Minneapolis today. We have a day off on Wednesday so we can be pretty aggressive today -- Duffey and Robles didn't pitch last night, Colomé only threw 7 pitches, and it was Farrell's first appearance in a week so I imagine he'd be good for a back-to-back. It might even be Dobnak's throw day, if they needed him in an emergency? He started on Saturday. The off day tomorrow would let them reset the rotation as needed. Also, Ober did complete 5 innings vs Houston 11 days ago. Maybe part of pulling him early (50-60 pitches) in some games is so they can lean on him a bit more when they need to (70-80 pitches?).

The Twins don’t really have a pitcher they can send out at the moment, though. I guess they could replace Buxton with a pitcher, or Gordon, but that makes it a little tougher to deal with the Buxton and Donaldson situations. They do have an open spot on the 40-man. FWIW, Duffey and Robles weren’t used last night, and the team has an off day Wednesday. It should be interesting to see how they handle the Ober start today, but they might be able to hold off on an additional pitcher for a bit.

Just before the trade deadline maybe? Rob Antony was at the helm when we traded Nunez and Nolasco/Meyer.

Actually TR was still here for the 2016 draft -- he wasn't fired until July. He got to stew a few months in the "total system failure."

I should note that Baseball-Reference's projection system seems like the simplest -- based on their team "Simple Rating System" for the past 100 games (even spanning seasons), with no extra accounting for things like injuries or roster changes. That means the White Sox rating/projection is still benefitting from Madrigal, Robert, and even some Jimenez, even though none of them will be on the field in the near future. Fangraphs and Prospectus rely more on their individual player projections and forecasted playing time. I'm not sure about 538.

Yes, kind of like 2017-2018 -- except if we're reloading for 2022, we'd have to be much pickier about what kind of returns we'd take (we don't want more marginal guys clogging the 40-man roster).

That's a good barometer. I think getting Buxton back has been just as important as sweeping Texas. There aren't many rentals that should require top prospects this year. Story maybe, but the Twins likely aren't interested in an infielder. My dream target is Scherzer, if he's healthy and the Nats are willing to deal -- he's the kind of acquisition that could get us dreaming about breaking the postseason curse too!

Normally I'd agree -- but the Twins already sold when they were on the fringes of contention in 2017-2018. The front office might have to be aggressive in 2021 to try salvaging their own future here.

That's true, and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise -- we'll need a pace of steady gains in the coming weeks if we want to be buyers, not just a winning streak right before deadline day.

(WARNING: Very small numbers ahead.) Here's a round-up of the Twins 2021 postseason odds, by various systems, as of today (Monday June 21). Baseball Prospectus: 16.2% Fangraphs: 2.5% 538: 2% Baseball-Reference: 0.4% Whoa, Baseball Prospectus takes a bold stance! Somehow we gained 4.5% on our odds there in the last day -- maybe due to Buxton's return? As you might have guessed, all of these systems give the Twins higher odds of winning the division than winning a wild card. So it seems our best path to the postseason is a strong comeback paired with a Chicago collapse. My perspective is that we shouldn't get too discouraged by these odds yet. Obviously we need to keep winning, but keep in mind, these odds are evaluating a binary proposition -- do they make it or not? -- but there is a slightly wider range of interesting outcomes that have the Twins getting back in the race at some point. Also, these projections are a snapshot of what we know about rosters as of today -- but rosters can change, especially around the trade deadline. With that in mind, the trade deadline this year is Friday July 30 at 4 PM EST. Here are the Twins opponents leading up to that date (34 games): CIN 2 CLE 4 CHW 10 KCR 3 DET 11 (including a doubleheader) LAA 4 And here are the White Sox opponents (31 games): PIT 2 SEA 3 MIN 10 DET 3 BAL 3 HOU 3 MIL 3 KCR 4 We're 12.5 games back today. If we can make up 2-3 games head-to-head with the White Sox, and 2-3 games otherwise, that could put us within striking distance at the trade deadline, where we could potentially augment our roster for the stretch run. FWIW, Twins will miss Bieber and Plesac vs Cleveland (and Perez is still out), and Danny Duffy likely won't be back when we face KC (but he could be back by the time the White Sox play KC next). Trout will probably be back for the Angels-Twins series, though. One potential disadvantage is that Twins have the more "compressed" schedule in this time -- after Wednesday this week, we have no scheduled off-days until the All-Star Break. And coming out of the break, we have 14 games scheduled in 13 days before our first off day. Of course, if we can actually get on a roll, playing every day might not be so bad! What do you think? Have I converted any pessimists to optimists?

Just to clarify, the Barraclough deal is a minor league one. Twins 40-man roster is still at 39 after losing Shaun Anderson (and not counting Colina on the 60-day IL) so we'd have room to add someone like him, though.

I'm a 2021 optimist too, but my take is that while the odds of completing the comeback and going to the postseason are very low, the Twins could still make things interesting.

Larnach has done some nice things, but in terms of the Rookie of the Year award, Adolis Garcia is just behind him in wRC+ and wOBA -- and he has a lot more PA and plays CF. Larnach should narrow the PA gap the rest of the way, but on the flip side, there is still plenty of time for someone like Wander Franco to close the PA gap with Larnach too. Heck, since this tweet, Baddoo has actually passed Larnach in wRC+ and wOBA (and he's not a slouch in OBP either). To the extent that Baddoo's performance feels unsustainable, his BABIP of .375 is identical to Larnach's so far (although he typically had lower BABIPs than Larnach in the minors). On the pitching side, Luis Garcia for HOU has been good although it remains to be seen how many innings he can throw. Apparently, Emmanuel Clase still qualifies as a rookie too.

Arraez has only played about a season’s worth of games so far, and not all at 2B, so it makes his defensive metrics a little hard to judge. FWIW, here is his Statcast defensive page — OAA (outs above average) is the all-inclusive measure, and Arraez is at -15 at 2B so far: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/visuals/statcast-infield-defense?type=Fielder&playerId=650333&startYear=2019&endYear=2021&result=&direction=&normalize=undefined&roles=&esrGT=0&esrLT=1&evGT=0&evLT=125&distGT=0&distLT=200&batside=&viz=null

No way to draw this conclusion from just 23 games (13 for Garver, 10 for Jeffers), and nothing in the rest of their careers seems to support it either. (Garver’s 2019 breakout began on the short end of an alternating arrangement, and Jeffers did just fine in his 2020 debut starting 19 of 35 games.) More likely that they were alternated because both were struggling mightily at the plate, not the other way around.