Otto von Ballpark

It's official: Waddell has been DFA'd, to make room on the 40-man for Larnach.

Larnach has not played CF in his professional career to date (only 172 games). Doesn't look like he played it in college either. If Buxton is out for the next 2 months, the relative difference between Cave and Broxton seems like a pretty trivial concern.

Maybe if Kirilloff and Arraez weren't already on the shelf too? With all these injuries, they're not dropping Cave yet, and they probably need a corner hitter more immediately than a defensive CF.

Various sample sizes, some very tiny, but Larnach's wRC+ has been incredibly stable at every level of his pro career so far: R: 139 A: 149 A+: 148 AA: 148 AAA: 152

I'm sure there will be an article on this shortly, so you can save up your hot takes for it, but just to spread the news: Buxton to the 10-day IL, and Larnach will be added to the roster. Another move will have to be made to make room for Larnach on the 40-man roster.

Not trying to send anyone down a rabbit hole, I was genuinely curious. I found this list of the top 100 all-time deals by total value and clicked the years column to sort them by length: https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/contracts/sort-value/all-time/limit-100/ I think just about everyone on this list was significantly ahead of Buxton's durability, at the time they signed their deals. JD Martinez missed time but he had been an OF and was signing to become a primary DH. Ellsbury had a reputation of missing time, but when he signed his 7 year deal, he basically had 4 seasons equal to Buxton's lone "full" season so far -- he had missed one full season and another half season, but wasn't consistently held back every year at the time. Unless Buxton suddenly channels Cal Ripken Jr. between now and the end of 2022, I think the market takes durability into account enough to prevent him from getting an 8-year deal. He can still get big money and a good number of years, but probably short of 8. Correa could be an interesting comp, although I think at least part of the reason that he and Judge haven't signed extensions is their lack of durability so far.

Is there a top free agent that has signed long-term with anything comparable to Buxton's current history of missed time?

Yup. Like it or not, our only option with Sano right now is keep him on the roster, trade him, or release him (and eat the remaining ~$20 mil on his deal).

That means we are second in line for waiver priority! Let's check the waiver wire... hmmm, Albert Pujols?

It feels like some segment of the fanbase is demanding this sort of thing constantly, though. Here we are, just 30 games into the season, and we've already moved our closer to a lower leverage role (twice?), we've promoted Rooker then Kirilloff and inserted them into the everyday lineup, and we replaced Jeffers with an untested Rortvedt. And with Thorpe and Dobnak starting this week (the latter in St. Paul), all signs point to us being very close to swapping out Shoemaker too. All this while without an active minor league from which to evaluate and select reinforcements. I think that's a reasonable amount of activity, given the length of time and circumstances. I'd expect the activity to pick up a bit now, as the minors have begun, especially if certain slumps or injuries continue much longer.

I can see an argument that the Twins should have added another relief pitcher instead of Shoemaker, and trusted Dobnak as the 5th starter from the outset. But that doesn't mean the path they chose was "insane" -- nothing in Shoemaker's or Dobnak's recent histories suggests they couldn't be reasonably competent in the roles the Twins gave them. And given what else we know, about the rest of the pen and the offense, that alternative scenario alone probably doesn't flip 4 losses in a month.

I'm not disputing that 11+4=15; I'm disputing the idea that swapping Dobnak's and Shoemaker's roles would have flipped the outcome of 4 losses. Looking at the actual losses in Shoemaker starts and Dobnak relief appearances, as I did my previous post, I'm not even convinced that 1 of them would have flipped (and probably no more than 1). Dobnak relief losses: 1. April 1: tie game going into the bottom of the 10th, we were 81% likely to lose this game when Dobnak entered anyway (and he only gave up a single and a groundout to take the loss) 2. April 13: Dobnak actually pitched pretty well, 1 run in 3 IP, but we lost by 2, 4-2 3. April 16: Dobnak pitched poorly, letting 3 runs score in his 2.1 IP plus leaving two baserunners who the next reliever allowed to score too -- but we lost by a whopping 7, 10-3 Even replacing Dobnak with a relief pitcher who retired every batter he faced may not have been enough to flip any of these losses to wins, much less replacing him with Shoemaker. Shoemaker starting losses: 1. April 11: Shoemaker wasn't great (4 runs in 5 IP) but was in line for the win until Colomé turned a 1-run lead into a 2-run deficit in the 9th 2. April 20: bad start, but we were shut out 7-0 in a 7-inning game 3. April 25: 2 runs in 5.1 IP, left trailing only 2-1, but we lost 6-2 4. May 1: terrible start, but we lost 11-3 anyway (with all 3 of our runs coming late) Even giving the pen an additional 2 run cushion may not have been enough to flip game #1, and the rest were likely doomed by our offense apart from whatever Shoemaker did. This isn't to say that Shoemaker has been good, or Dobnak's role has been correct -- just that it's very hard to flip 4 losses in a month from a single marginal move such as this.

Cubs only sent a nominal amount of cash to San Diego in that deal: $3 mil out of $62 mil remaining. I suspect it was to cover the $3 mil bonus Darvish was due to receive for his 2nd place Cy Young finish in 2020. And it seems the Cubs' primary "buyer's remorse" was about their team's overall ability to compete in 2021, rather than anything specific to Darvish or his contract.

And my defense of Shoemaker doesn't extend indefinitely. Shoemaker's only making $2 mil -- he should be fairly easy to cut as soon as we are ready to do so. (And from his comments after his last start, I think Shoemaker understands he is on exceptionally thin ice now.) I suspect tonight's start from Shoemaker may be his last as a Twin, if he doesn't show immediate and significant improvement. Dobnak would be eligible to return for Shoemaker's next scheduled start (May 13) and he should be stretched out enough to throw 80+ pitches.

Read the rest of my post. Hard to imagine any starter doing better than 2-3 in those 5 starts, given our pen and offense. On the Dobnak side, he's been tagged with the loss in 3 games out of the pen but again he's hardly the sole reason we lost those games. One he gave up a lone single in the bottom of the 10th inning after a Colomé explosion in the 9th and our offense was shut out in the top of the 10th. The other two, you could remove all of the runs credited to Dobnak from the final score and we still would have lost (our offense again scored only 2 and 3 runs, respectively). And if you're simply swapping Shoemaker into that Dobnak role, it's quite possible the whole thing plays out exactly the same. That swap sure as heck isn't flipping the outcome of 4 games in a month without some very specific hindsight machinations.

Your calculations might be off? We're 11-19. Take out Shoemaker's 5 games completely and we're still only 10-15. And in Shoemaker's 5 starts, he won 1 of them and was in line for the win in another until a 3-run Colomé implosion. In our other 3 losses in Shoemaker starts, we scored 0, 2, and 3 runs, respectively. It's quite possible that a more effective SP would have still produced a 1-4 record in those games, or perhaps only 2-3. (And it's not clear that Dobnak would have been particularly more effective overall.)

At the time we decided to sign Shoemaker, we had only 4 starters locked in. Dobnak had an iffy finish to 2020, Thorpe was terrible last year, and basically all of our SP prospects had a lost season too. Add to that, general COVID uncertainty (Happ tested positive just days after we signed Shoemaker) and the fact that all pitchers were coming off reduced workloads in 2020, and adding a veteran SP like Shoemaker was not particularly controversial. Shoemaker is no world-beater, but he had a career 103 ERA+. And it's not like he was clearly cooked -- even after an injury absence, Toronto turned to Shoemaker to start a playoff game last year and he was effective (albeit in a short outing).

It is like OPS+, if you know what that is. Or to break it down a bit further, it’s like OPS as a summary of a player’s hitting performance, with the advantages that 1. It is calculated relative to league and park 2. It weighs the relative importance of getting on base vs slugging toward scoring runs

Other divisions could be weak too. Fangraphs projects the White Sox to win it with 86 wins right now, and 2nd place at 82 wins. With the White Sox injuries, I think they have some downside on that projection too. Could easily see this division winner slotting among the 5 worst listed in this article, which all finished with 82-85 wins: https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-teams-worst-records-in-postseason

They do need to start winning soon, although the 2021 AL Central also has the potential to be one of the worst divisions of the last 25 years.

We should have kept the DOME field advantage!

It is a bad suggestion, but I don’t think he is suggesting they should put Pujols in LF. More like, 1B or DH and then Vaughn to LF. But 1B is Abreu, and DH is Mercedes, so Pujols doesn’t really fit there either. Or bat off the bench? Designated pinch hitter for Billy Hamilton in the late innings? Would be a funny and fitting move for the LaRussa White Sox, in any case.

Finding a Twins angle to the Pujols news:

At 87 pitches, with 7-8-9 coming up, I think Pineda probably should have stayed in for the 7th. Not that he had been super-sharp -- I'm guessing Baldelli didn't want Pineda to put a runner on and have to bring in a reliever mid-inning when the top of the order came up again. But limiting bullpen exposure to potentially 2 innings might have been worth it, I think.