Rod Carews Birthday

Obviously this stream of thought has gone way off the path, and for that I apologize to the original author, any moderators, and anyone else who got drawn into this. My original intent was to demonstrate that sometimes, what seems like a high number (97%) isn't actually that great in context. Maybe I needed to be more direct and less esoteric. Would you be satisfied with an airline pilot who only crashed 3% of the time? I think not, and we shouldn't be satisfied with that either. Now back to silly season. I have more than 40 years of experience both playing in and conducting bands and orchestras at many levels of achievement. I know how they work. I was speaking from real world experience. This description cherry picks information and then misinterprets it into all levels of distortion. It's really OK. You can disagree with me about umpire accuracy and not approve of my analogy. I will not continue it.

Last thing first. . . I like the comparison with Mauer in that he never really developed the ability to destroy the early cookie. If he had been able to do that, he would have gone from Hall of Famer to "inner circle" Hall of Famer. A career like that of Mauer would be a dream! However, I'm pretty sure your description of a professional symphony orchestra is not very accurate (at least not ones the caliber of the Minnesota Orchestra or the Chicago Symphony). The type of music they play is such that all of the players have complicated parts to play. The thought that only a select few can play all of the notes is a long ways from reality unless the orchestra you are talking about is a middle school orchestra. Last time I checked middle school baseball players aren't minor leaguers, or even close. A professional orchestral player is able to and expected to play all of the notes, not just 75%. So, yes. One percent is pretty impressive. Yes, calling balls and strikes is difficult, but we should be talking about the very best of the very best umpires, not just a bunch of guys off the street. They need to up their game or get out of the way and let automation take over.

While that sounds like an excellent record, it’s actually not. Generously, more than 50% of balls and strikes are easy calls, so that means that that success rate drops down to less than 94% for balls that are actually borderline. Seems less impressive now doesn’t it? Let me put this another way. In my real life, I am a musician (a conductor actually — insert joke here). If you go hear the Minnesota Orchestra, or where I live, the Chicago Symphony, how many mistakes do you think those musicians make? On a note by note basis, it’s way less than 1% and probably less than 1/10 of 1%. They should be able to do that, because those players are absolutely at the top of their game. They’re major leaguers, if you will. To me, that means major league umpires should be able to do that as well. Now let me scare you. A number of years ago, a company published a piece of music for high school band with mistakes written intentionally into the music just to prove a point about music education and the accuracy it involves compared to other subjects, like math. The number of mistakes were about 5% and when the band played the music it was awful — unrecognizable and unlistenable. I can’t easily draw the line from high school musician to professional umpire, but it does make you think a little. Back to Mr. Rodriguez. . . I agree with @ashbury that this is a terribly difficult one to predict because of the crazy amount of walks in his game. I too doubt that the (soon to be) lost walks will just translate into equal production, but I would guess that a certain amount of it will. My “realistic” pie in the sky comp for ERod is Curtis Granderson — a guy who hit a lot of home runs, struck out and walked a lot, but was athletic enough to also hit a lot of doubles and triples as well as steal a few bases. At a career of over 40 WAR it puts him in the Hall of Very Good and I would be beyond thrilled with that outcome. My floor is not a very happy one, because it hasn’t been identified yet. It’s probably Eduard Julien. Right now he’s teetering between figuring it out and becoming a successful major leaguer and not figuring it out and becoming a bust. When we know Julien’s floor, then we will probably know Rodriguez’s floor as well. Argh.

“While this skill is essential (especially with base stealing on the rise in contemporary baseball), a catcher's ability to manage a pitching staff, block, and frame are insurmountably more critical. Even though Vázquez excels at these ever-important qualities, any argument for keeping him and his bloated, expiring contract over the seven-years younger, $5.5-million cheaper, and vastly offensively superior Jeffers falls flat.” Not sure on this. But, correct me if I’m wrong, wasn’t pitcher ERA lower with Jeffers catching than with Vasquez catching?

HAMMER TIME!!!!!!

Hey! The A’s were bad but not THAT bad! 😂

So this takes him from ridiculous to merely good. I would expect as much as he ages. I like your analysis of an admittedly difficult subject to dissect. A good deal of it is that he has figured out that it is a fool’s errand to go all out diving and running into things. Otherworldly defense followed by injury doesn’t help the team nearly as much as being available. Eventually he will likely move to left field, but that is probably as much dependent on Rodriguez and Jenkins as anything else. Until then, I’m very happy to have him out there - JUST STAY HEALTHY!

A billion here and a billion there. . . Pretty soon you’re talking real money! 😂

Ahhh. The wonders of compound interest! I shed no tears for the Pohlads, but you are right, big time investments generate those kinds of returns. If they didn’t, no one would want to buy the teams.

Glorified minor league teams have records like the White Sox and are not competitive. I too would like to see more investment in the team, however, calling it a glorified minor league team is a little over the top. More investment will definitely increase the potential for success, but it’s certainly no guarantee. Ask the Angels. You’ve got to invest it wisely.

I suspect that there are all sorts of NDA’s being signed by people who are looking seriously at buying the team so they can’t disclose internal Twins information. That may also go the other direction a bit in that buyers may not necessarily want the world to know that they are in the market or that they are actively pursuing a team — either to reduce potential competition or for other reasons concerning their other business interests. My guess is that the Ishbia brothers leaked that information themselves, as they are really interested in buying the Twins and they actually want to advertise that fact. Other buyers may want to or need to be discreet for their own reasons. The article in The Athletic indicates that MLB is already doing some vetting of potential new owners. If that is accurate, this thing is moving along nicely.

That’s pretty impressive. Sometimes it takes longer than that just to sell a house! Let’s hope the Twins are on that same trajectory.

I’m not sure I’ve seen an estimate of more than $2 billion for the Twins, but regardless, I do agree with your last point. Perhaps the imminence of a sale has offset the urgency of shedding salary or trying to stick with a $130 million payroll. Don’t misunderstand, I still don’t think they will add a bunch, but maybe there is a bit more of a chance that the status quo will remain for the payroll situation. Maybe that’s part of the reason there hasn’t been a good old fashioned salary dump.

Trading Jeffers means at the end of this year you have no MLB catchers signed past the end of this year (unless they trade for someone else). I suppose it’s a clean slate, but I’m not sure it’s one I want to deal with.

Overall nice list. I will quibble here and there but I think you mostly hit the mark. The differences are what makes a list like this personal. My overall thoughts are this. 1. The three headed monster of frontline pitching is really a pretty wonderful thing because it makes everything else better around it. As stated, put them in any order you want and they are probably the best thing the Twins have going on right now. Add to that Festa and Matthews coming up the list and it seems very promising. 2. Not sure if it's nice or scary that we have two relief pitchers in the top 11. I was surprised that neither made MLB's list last night. They are both excellent and deserve the ranking (and I agree with the placement), but shouldn't we have position players that send them further down the list? Asking for a friend. . . 3. Byron Buxton probably belongs somewhere. He's signed for a while. When healthy, he's very good (in fact according to MLB he is the #3 CF in baseball right now). I don't think he's top ten, but I think he belongs somewhere below Carlos Correa. 4. I will always quibble a little bit with prospects on the list and you have several. All they have to offer right now is potential and hope. The chances that they all become good MLB players are pretty slim, so I just prefer to wait. Of the prospects(ish) on the list, I think Brooks Lee in particular is too high. He had a chance and showed pretty much nothing offensively. Now I know it's SSS but I think he's destined for utility guy status. Right now my feeling is that if he is actually that valuable, trade him immediately because his value has nowhere to go but down. I also don't really like Walker Jenkins as #1. Maybe he's going to be THAT good, but I'm not ready to crown him as our best asset yet. He's certainly valuable, I just think it's premature.

I think that it is still pretty difficult to project what Festa will do long-term in the majors. Your assessment that he has really big stuff is certainly true, but he hasn’t quite put it together yet. Hopefully this will be the year. If he can do that, I predict he’ll hit the top five next off season. I’m a giant fan of having two relievers like Duran and Jax in the bullpen. What a great tandem and I really don’t want to see it broken up in an attempt to put Jax back in the rotation. We have a solid rotation. If we thought that he would definitely be another Lopez/Ryan/Ober type arm, maybe it would be worth the gamble, but I don’t think that’s the case. As for Lee, and I know I’m in the minority in this opinion, I just don’t see him being more than an average-ish MLB player — and that’s AFTER he shows that he can actually hit in the majors, which he needs to still do. We’ve long heard that “his floor is high” even if his ceiling isn’t huge. At this point, we’ve yet to see that. Defensively, he’s a very welcome addition, which makes me think that his upside is more like a Willi Castro replacement rather than the #6 player on the team.

Glad to see some comparables, and while all arms are different, the track record seems pretty positive. I'm pretty hopeful that Ryan will be back to normal really quickly.

I so very much wish that were true, but count me in the club that says Castro will be the most difficult of the three trade candidates to replace. None of those guys has the proven defensive flexibility that Castro has and only Martin has hit (and barely, quality wise) in the majors. The other two are successful AAA guys without much pedigree. The success rate for guys like that is pretty low. Could they get lucky with one of them? Sure but the odds are stacked against it. Remember, even though Castro didn’t seem very impressive when the signing was made, he did finish fourth in the ROY balloting a few years earlier. That’s a pedigree that the other three can only dream about.

I like it. When it comes to conclaves, I would be more partial to Angels and Demons, where the frontrunners are all kidnapped and then . . . . The last man standing gets the job!

They seem like good signings, but as @Fire Dan Gladden said, they are soooooooo far away. It’s important, and they should keep doing it. Sometimes it works (Polanco, Sano, Kepler). I wonder what the overall success rate is with international signings. I think it’s even tougher to hit on a 16 year old international prospect than with the draft, which is already tough.

Since I don’t own a team that’s a tough question. Assuming we’re both dealing at least a little from slight surplus areas of our roster and that I need an infielder, I would offer up a #4/5 starter or a young outfielder or possibly even a catcher. If we really want a catcher, I would try to package Julien with Paddack. It won’t get you an all star, but it might get you someone that could split time with Jeffers and enable you to sell Vasquez to the best salary relief you can find.

I would love to have some players added, but it doesn't look like that's in the budget. Offensively, there's no black hole going into the season, which hasn't always been the case. They indeed have a number of individual question marks going into the season, but if they need three infield spots to work out, I choose to believe that at least three of Lewis, Miranda, Julien, Lee, Keaschall, and Castro will provide above average offense. Will one of them be bad? Probably, but it is also likely that one of them could be very good. I would rather give the at bats to someone with potential upside than to a washed up veteran or a quad A fill in. If you think they haven't had the bats the last four years, then we are probably letting the perfect get in the way of the good. You're absolutely correct that the bats aren't as good as 2019, when they were a murderer's row, but they were a lot closer to the top than the bottom for the past four years. Consistency was notably absent at the end of last season, but I think the bats will be there. If everything goes right, it's a 90+ win team -- the pitching could carry them there. If everything goes wrong -- injuries, etc, it's a 75 win team. My best guess is 85-86 wins. You can be not satisfied with that, but I'd rather be in a pennant race than relegated to the second division purgatory for a bunch of years. We went through that in the 70's, the 80's, and the 90's. It was too painful for me. They were so bad that I practically stopped following the team and had to keep relearning the players' names when they got competitive again!

I appreciate (and mostly agree with) your optimism Seth. The rotation and bullpen will be fine without any more moves. The lineup is a question mark, but not without potential. Much is being made about how much we have to improve our offense to compete. OK. Let’s roll with that. I think it is very likely that our overall numbers at every outfield position improve offensively — Wallner will be much better than Kepler, Buxton is as healthy as he is going to get, and Larnach or a committee should match last year’s production in Left. The catching tandem will likely be similar with Jeffers leading the way, but I would take the over on Vasquez offense, meaning there is improvement there. In the infield, keeping Correa healthy will be key. If he’s healthy he will put up the numbers. SOMEONE will step up at second base - maybe Castro, Lee, Julien, or Keashall. The first base/third base combination of Lewis and Miranda should do fine as well. Defensively, we will miss Santana severely, but I think a healthy Miranda (and maybe a little Julien) will replace his offensive contribution. There. I said it. I think that this year’s team with last year’s players can put up better numbers than last year’s did — at very least they could be a little more consistent.

Comparing the stat line of Lewis and Julien over the last two months of the season yields a much closer comparison. Neither of them were hitting a lick and Brooks Lee has yet to demonstrate that he can hit ANY pitches, let alone Major League breaking pitches. My point here isn’t to demean Lewis or Lee. My point is that you are being very dismissive of a player who came up and did very well. Now it’s time to adjust. Let him do that. This “unteachable” player has already demonstrated that he could get serious about his fielding and has had some results to show for it. It seems unlikely that he will be so “unteachable” with regard to hitting that he won’t be able to develop just like players like Larnach and Wallner (and for that matter Buxton a few years ago) didn’t develop. Oh wait a minute. . . they did.

Are we judging him by who is now or what he was in the past when he was just getting started? He has obviously developed since that time. As stated by others, stolen bases are not a priority for the team -- you can disagree with that philosophy (and that's OK, but not a part of this argument), but it is pretty apparent and true. His defensive stats, while not amazing, are definitely trending in the right direction enough to justify his holding the position given his bat. The Twins have definitely rostered worse defenders over the past few decades than Jeffers, please stop suggesting that he is terrible or unplayable like you have with so many other players on this site. A team full of Brooks Robinsons will probably only score 400 runs per season, so that is likely not the answer either.