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whosafraidofluigirussolo

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Everything posted by whosafraidofluigirussolo

  1. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    My god... Take the lefty-lefty matchup, with an on-base machine at the plate, over pinch hitting to get the platoon advantage that's highly likely to evaporate when the other team counters with a new reliever.
  2. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    I don't think I've ever, literally ever, criticized Baldelli for doctrinaire handedness-based decisions with the lineup, pinch-hitting, and the like. Pinch-hitting Vázquez for Julien when down to their last out here feels like a move made by someone who doesn't want to win.
  3. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    Probably all of us would like to see Jeffers start more, but realistically I don't think we can expect the Twins to shift the shares of catching much more than giving Jeffers slightly more than half the starts; this looks like the most winnable pitching matchup in a series where they've taken the first two games already; and they have a tougher opponent in the Rays coming up tomorrow. All in all, it's not a bad situation to see Vázquez in the lineup.
  4. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    From what I remember reading about Gallo leaving the Yankees, he pretty openly said that it had affected him personally when NY sports media and fans amplified the way he already knew, himself, that he wasn't performing. Between that and the context in the Post piece, which speculates "Gallo’s edginess that might not mix well with New York," I would interpret that "edginess" means more "being on edge," and less "has an edge that some teammates don't like."
  5. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    The Twins playing Texas two weeks in a row provides plenty of opportunity to hear the broadcasters mispronounce the name “Taveras”
  6. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    Yep - the latest report added Moore to the Guardians' waiver claims too. Definitely starts to sting a little bit when the 2nd-place team chasing the Twins adds THREE of these freely available players.
  7. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    Not to get too far into the weeds on this, but the Anderson transaction doesn't imply that these are revocable waivers (which did indeed go away with the second trade deadline, as far as I know.) The way I understand it (which is probably incomplete), under the old rules with waiver trades, a team could pull its player back from waivers even if another team claimed him. So a team placing a claim was trying to claim the right to negotiate a trade. With the old rules, if the Angels put Anderson on a revocable waiver and (let's say) the Reds won the claim, if they didn't offer a trade the Angels wanted, they would simply pull Anderson off the waiver and keep him. This is why teams put a lot of players on the old revocable waivers, because they could gauge potential trades and there was no risk of losing players for nothing. So I think the actual current situation with Anderson is an option the Angels had when he cleared a different kind of waiver. On an outright waiver, a team could have claimed him and would owe only his salary for the rest of the year. If no one claims a player on outright, the original team theoretically has the right to keep him in the organization without giving him a 40-man roster spot, except that Anderson should have had enough service time to reject an assignment to the minors. So assuming he cleared outright waivers, the Angels probably knew he would choose free agency and they'd still owe the rest of his salary, so they just kept him and re-committed the roster spot to him. I'm pretty sure that's a way that a player can be waived and not change teams.
  8. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    Hard to say whether Garver's comments really indicate any bitterness about being traded. That may be reading too much between the lines. But I did wonder—leaving aside whatever one may think of retaliatory HBPs; I think they're usually dumb—if there had to be a plunking, did it have to be Garver? I know he and Gray never played together, but it seems unnecessary to choose to hit a guy who used to play for your team and seemingly never had a reputation as anything other than a good teammate.
  9. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    A few recognizable pitchers have hit or cleared waivers recently: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2023/08/the-opener-diaz-albies-recent-dfas.html Mychal Givens would have been a worth a look as a medium-leverage reliever within the past couple years, and is a wild card after rehabbing an injury basically all year. Chasen Shreve (who I knew nothing about before reading the post about his DFA, other than his having an unusual portmanteau of a first name) has decent peripherals even this year. Dinelson Lamet was a good starter...maybe 3 years ago? The Twins bullpen doesn't really have a black hole spot at this point where any of these guys would be a clear upgrade. However, since they'll cost nothing more than the prorated MLB minimum, they shouldn't need a 40-man spot, and Keuchel's roster spot presumably isn't safe... maybe someone here is more interesting than a typical waiver castoff?
  10. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    Pitch 2 contact is BACK, folks
  11. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    This is a good point—it's hard to see why they couldn't have found some suitable #20-something-ranked prospect who they could stomach giving up to add depth to the bullpen. (Guessing you meant Robertson instead of Peterson?) I also wonder whether they really couldn't have found a rookie-ball player the Mets liked just a little more than whoever they got from the D-backs for Tommy Pham...that was never going to be a costly deal and he seemed to make a lot of sense as a role player.
  12. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    I know the BTV trade simulator can show some real flaws—and particularly at the trade deadline, the higher value placed on proven MLB players relative younger/MiLB players' upside will deviate from the formula that puts an "absolute" trade value on each player. However, for what it's worth, the simulator values Larnach alone more than Raley and Pham together. The Mets certainly have money to throw around, but I don't know what backs up the claim that they have "no standards." Certainly with their last big deal, they used their spending power to pay down Scherzer's contract with the precise purpose to get a particular prospect, or level of prospect, back. Even with the Lindor trade a couple years ago (leaving aside how the subsequent contract extension looks) they didn't touch their top prospects to make the deal.
  13. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    If the Twins were looking to trade with the Mets, they could get both - Brooks Raley should be available in addition to Canha and Pham.
  14. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    This trade will make it extra fun if/when Giolito signs with the Dodgers as a free agent.
  15. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    Not that I think there's any real reason to worry about Jenkins signing, but I looked this morning and I believe he's the only first-rounder still unsigned, and one of only about 4 unsigned players in the top two rounds plus compensation rounds. They're making us wait!
  16. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    It was a homecoming of sorts for Joe Ryan. The Southern California native took the mound... Ryan is from Northern California so it may have been more of a homecoming than you describe here - he's from Marin County just outside of San Francisco.
  17. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    This makes me think of Miami's recent decision to option their young starter Eury Pérez. He was a top prospect and he's been good in the majors, so the report was that they're managing his innings due to the limited number he'd thrown in past seasons (and I don't think they made any secret of that fact) and wanted him to save some bullets for the playoffs. The Twins would be in a different situation—they have a decent chance to make the postseason by winning their weak division but have a much worse record (and maybe less hope of playoff success) than the Marlins, and Ober's in his third year, not a rookie. But it does seem like the same logic could be at play. If they right the ship enough in the second half to make the playoffs, I think Ober belongs in the playoff rotation, at least in a four-man one.
  18. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    This makes me think of Miami's recent decision to option their young starter Eury Pérez. He was a top prospect and he's been good in the majors, so the report was that they're managing his innings due to the limited number he'd thrown in past seasons (and I don't think they made any secret of that fact) and wanted him to save some bullets for the playoffs. The Twins would be in a different situation—they have a decent chance to make the postseason by winning their weak division but have a much worse record (and maybe less hope of playoff success) than the Marlins, and Ober's in his third year, not a rookie. But it does seem like the same logic could be at play. If they right the ship enough in the second half to make the playoffs, I think Ober belongs in the playoff rotation, at least in a four-man one.
  19. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    If Keuchel does join the rotation, then another interesting question that follows is how the Twins manage a 7-man bullpen. How might the roles or workloads change if they subtract one of the lower-leverage guys? Will they be more apt to rotate pitchers through the last spot or two to keep fresh arms in the pen (not that they haven't been doing a lot of that already)? If a starter was otherwise healthy but a little gassed at some point, would this lead them to try a "tired arm" IL stint in order to skip a couple turns and temporarily return to a 5-man rotation and 8-man bullpen? Of course if a starter had an injury where he truly couldn't go, the impact of that IL placement would be minimized by having a sixth starter already on the roster, too. Interesting to consider the possibilities.
  20. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    I enjoy reading about and keeping an eye on the draft even though I only know about the first-round(ish) players what I read on here and a few other places online, and I don't know who the later-round players are at all. Here and there I'll pull up the write-up of a player drafted by another team just to see who one of these random guys is, so I just discovered the tidbit that the Astros just drafted a graduate student: Jake Bloss, 99th overall pick, a pitcher. Seems like he was still eligible to play because he had gotten his undergrad degree in 3 years, so he kept playing when he moved on to Georgetown to start a master's degree, and seemingly got better. No particular meaning there, just not an origin story for a draft prospect that you see often.
  21. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    I’m sure there’s been a ton of rumor going around Twitter about these scenarios and not all of it is equally based in fact, so I’m cherry-picking one that sounds more promising, but: https://twitter.com/KyleAGlaser/status/1678060066111647746?s=20 Jenkins at 1-1 would take the one top-5 player who Twins fans seem least excited about off the board, and that … seems good?
  22. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    "Maeda's pitching ahead of the IL stint – especially the final start, where he gave up 10 earned runs – did not inspire confidence." I wouldn't put much stock in that start as an indicator of Maeda's future performance, since he likely was pitching hurt.
  23. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    On the last Gleeman and Bonnes podcast, they made a good point: Gray himself said, "I wanted to stay in the game, but I always want to stay in the game; I never want to get pulled." Taking it at face value, that means there will be repeated instances, and many of them, where Gray's manager makes a decision to pull him from the game that Sonny doesn't like. Of course, if this is happening to some degree all the time, some instances will be ridden with more conflict than others. Certainly there must be times when Gray exits the game with 6 or 7 innings or 100+ pitches and the decision is less controversial. It's understandable how this could have been a more conflict-ridden case, but I don't think we can conclude that either this start or Gray's history with the Twins is causing a rupture between the player and the team.
  24. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    That’s about what trading a AAA reliever who’s been DFA will get you.
  25. whosafraidofluigirussolo
    We could see Martin end up with a similar positional role to Gordon (2B/LF/CF/emergency SS) and a similar offensive role to Donovan Solano (high contact, OBP, top of lineup, modest power.) That's not a top-end outcome for a top draft pick and prospect, but he'd be useful if that's the role he finds in the majors.
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