Rod Carews Birthday

Nice deep dive. It puts a little science behind what I would observe as Joe Ryan still being a young pitcher who is developing and tweaking his repertoire. Based on what I have read about him, he seems like a really smart guy who will actively look for ways to improve himself. We can only be encouraged by what this year has brought so far and we can hope it will continue if this is truly a team level approach. As for Joe Ryan, I think he's going to have a very long and very successful MLB career.

The original question was what is Royce Lewis' ceiling this year and beyond. This year is tough, but I expect a slightly above league average showing the rest of the year with solid defense at 3rd base. Beyond this year, I think his ceiling is Carlos Correa, maybe with a little more power and speed, but a little less defense. But then again. . . who knows?

The Twins front office did not sign a .200 hitter for $200 million. They signed a player with an exceptionally strong track record of being a solid hitter and stellar defender, probably to a contract he would have gotten elsewhere if his free agency were totally opened back up. He's been struggling for a while with plantar fasciitis (it's really unpleasant - I've had bouts of it on two different occasions), which has certainly not helped. If you're making .200 the over/under for Correa for the duration of his contract, I'll take the over on that all day long. He's got a track record. He will heal and improve. A bad third of a season doesn't take Correa from being a star to being a bum. Exactly true. There are plenty of issues with the offense. The absence of a table setter doesn't solve the problem. Pitching is MUCH more difficult to acquire than hitting. Now if they can only find some hitting!

Mid tier reliever Dan Schatzader, washed up Steve Carlton, and very useful Don Baylor. They weren’t swinging for the fences but they were actively engaged.

It may likely be that he is very nervous about going out there and playing CF because it is where he got injured while "learning" the spot on the fly. He's obviously a good enough athlete and defender to handle the job, but confidence is an important thing and he desperately doesn't want to get injured again. The infield spots, being much more familiar to him make him more comfortable.

I agree completely on Kepler. The time has definitely come to move on. But I'm disappointed you didn't post the unrealistic things. That's where all the fun is. You know. . . the trade of Willi Castro for Aaron Judge or the trade of five of our starting players for a good relief arm!

EVERY trade involves uncertainty and frequently one team "wins" the trade and another "loses" the trade based on the statistics that the players accrue. However, that simplistic analysis doesn't take into account the specific contribution made to the mix by a particular player in a particular situation at a particular point in time. It is impossible for the Twins or any other team to wind up on top of the trade every time, or even really most times. I think both the trades in the article fall into this category. Yes, Mahle got hurt and therefore didn't produce, but injuries are the great wildcard. Trade deadline deals are especially fraught with difficulty. Either a contender, desperate to remain a contender, overpays for a player that they think will put them over the top. OR a team with a pending free agent sells a player too cheaply because the market just isn't there in the right way (i.e. you have a third baseman and none of the teams in contention need one). At the end of the day, the best trades are the ones in which both teams realize value, or at least the value that they sought. That way, both teams live to trade again another day and we can see good healthy player movement from team to team.

Was the 1987 Twins team a juggernaut? They won the World Series that year. Remember this is the team that had Les Straker as their third starter. They had three hitters with really good years, Hrbek, Puckett, and Brunansky. Everyone else was league average or much worse -- Laudner at catcher was a 65 OPS+, Lombardozzi at 2nd was a 70, and Gladden in CF was a 76. By the standards set for last year's (and presumably this year's) team, they should have sold off pieces and rebuilt. At some point, you have to go for it. Only one team wins it all and 29 will have guessed wrong, so it's easy to be critical in hindsight. I'm glad they stuck with that 1987 team, because not only did they win with it, the foundation was set for the 1991 team that was definitely better. If I recall, they won the World Series that year as well.

I’m sure the Twins developmental staff does ask this question, but it still comes down to the right thing said at the right time from the right person when the player is just ready to hear it. All coaching (and band directing) is like that. If it wasn’t, I’d have fixed my golf swing a long time ago!

Sounds like a guy who wants some attention and this is a good way to do it. That’s unfortunate because I thought he was a pretty good guy. Here he just talks in circles like a self crowned expert with all of the answers. Who does he think he is? A TD poster?

And the sun shines a little brighter this week. . . .

That last paragraph would certainly make the game exciting to watch!

Ideally, as everyone has said, Buxton would be playing CF almost every day and the question would be answered for at least the next few years. Barring that happening, I would like to see them sign one of the better free agents to play CF. Free agents only cost money, not prospects. A fall back for me would be to get Austin Martin back on the field ASAP and have him become a CF. He's athletic enough and if he can get hit anywhere near how he did in the AFL, the problem could be solved. It cannot be said enough that Buxton at DH is not a good play overall for the team. Yes, he might be a top 5 DH. However, that combines with a #29 CF, offensively speaking. A young player like Julian, Wallner, or Larnach (assuming all are healthy) would likely be a top 10 or 15 DH, which when combined with a CF Buxton who would likely still be top 5 in CF, is a much better overall result. CF is a position that Buxton has played all of his life. He may now have old man bad knees, but he would certainly still be able to play at a good level (maybe not gold glove, but still solid). He is a player that needs to learn to play the position within reasonable parameters and not like superman. The results would be just fine and the team would benefit. It's called maturity.

Nitpicking a stat or two, like his starters didn't go deep enough in games or the hitters aren't hitting in clutch situations, as justification that Rocco is a bad manager doesn't do justice to the complexity that is a manager's effect on a game. Conversely, he's not the reason they broke the HR record in 2019. I completely agree that managers get too much credit and too much blame. It really is about the players. Manager of the Year awards are generally an award for "We didn't expect this team to be this good, but they were." I recently retired from a situation (not coaching) where individual talent played a very big role in the final result. Sometimes my group had the talent and we were outstanding. Sometimes we didn't and we weren't so great. I'm positive that i didn't deserve the credit in the outstanding years as I had the personnel that would succeed unless I got in their way. I also know that I did some of my very best work in some of the years that we weren't so great. I'm pretty certain that the same applies to Rocco and the Twins. At the end of the day, as others have said, Rocco Baldelli seems to be on the same page with management, appears to have buy in from the players, and probably deserves the extension. He's a known quantity for management -- decidedly better than the randomness that would come from a new manager who may or may not be as capable.

Never say never for the right trade, but this one seems unlikely due to the high cost in prospects/players involved. The good news is that while his ceiling may be a mirage, he does seem to have a pretty high floor, so it's doubtful he would implode completely. At this point, however, I'm much more concerned about the offense. While it would be great to have a leadoff hitter with a .400 OBA, 40 steal speed, and 25 homer power, I think it's a little more complicated than that. Getting the "right" player who can be a sparkplug could be the best deal, even if it's not a big name.

You're right in that the Ohtani stuff seems pretty ridiculous, as well as out of character for the Twins. However, as far as players to trade, Shannon Stewart was acquired for Bobby Kielty, who was a nice promising young player but definitely not a star in the making. There are quite a few players in that category on the team. Stewart was an amazing catalyst, or maybe the guy in the right place at the right time for it all to come together. I remember not being overwhelmed by the trade at the time, probably labeling it as OK - like trading for Fullmer last year, but the team really took off after that.

Yes it can. I too have suffered with it. I'm hoping he has a more aggressive treatment plan than I had though. This is the same problem that took down Shannon Stewart in 2004 (although I think he had it in both feet - yikes!), the year after the trade that brought him to the Twins and sparked a spectacular last half of the season in 2003.

I'm not sure that these are the right players to trade for (they might be, but I'd like a little more time for this to sort out) at this point. No matter what trades are in the works, the Twins are going to need to part ways with some middle infield talent in the next couple of years. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. Young Infielders mostly with the Twins Kiriloff, Miranda Important Young Infielders in the MInors Julian, Lewis, Lee, Martin, Salas, and ??? assuming no one flames out Certainly some of these guys could (and maybe should) move to the outfield, but at the moment you have at least seven guys for three positions, because Correa is going to be at SS and this assumes that Polanco leaves as well. Maybe one (Julien? Miranda?) becomes a full-time DH, assuming that Buxton goes back to CF. That makes certainly one or two expendable in the right trade. Much as the Mahle trade hasn't worked out, this is why Steer and Encarnacion-Strand were expendable last year and why it's not really a crisis for the Twins. It's also why the Twins could be in a pretty good position to make some offers this summer as well. For the right trade, anybody is available.

I'm a B-. Starting pitching is an A. I'm not sure when we've had starting pitching like this, certainly for the top two, but the others are no slouch either -- and that's with starting two guys who started the season in St. Paul. Bullpen is a C. We've got some really good stuff at the top like Duran, but also a little Pagan at the bottom. There's been a lot of bad luck and also a lot of pressure trying to protect a 2-1 lead so if they allow two runs in four innings, they blow it. They need a PR person working for them. Offense is a C-/D+. Situational hitting sucks, but we're middle of the pack in runs scored, and ultimately, that's pretty important. It's easy to get frustrated, because we all want the team to go 162 - 0 for the season, but the baseball season is ridiculously long and every team will have at least a dozen absolutely stupid losses due to errors/bullpen blowups/etc. We're playing at an 85 win pace, which was about what the oddsmakers said at the beginning of the season (not me, I was at 90 for the over under). My disappointment factor is high right now, but I also know that it is a LONG season and if we can play at an 85 win pace, just a regression to the mean in the hitting will put a lot more games in play for us.

In my experience teams are labeled "special" more in retrospect, after the season, than they are apparent when they are in the midst of the race. There are a few exceptions, like the '27 Yankees, but it is mostly revisionist history. In the Twins' case, the 1987 team was only special in that it got really hot at the right time and couldn't lose in the Dome. The 1991 team was better, but it wasn't an amazing juggernaut either. If only special teams won championships we could more easily identify them and the playoffs would lose their usefulness.

Agreed. There will always be ebb and flow to the bullpen arms. This week's world beater is next week's bum. That's the way that it is. In looking at the options that were out there this past offseason, it appears that about 30% of them would have been good options. The worst part is that those 30% of relievers wasn't very predictable. Some of the "great" arms aren't producing while some of the lesser ones are. I do think trying to pick up someone at the deadline is in order, particularly if you can have an additional year of control, but until then, let's sort out what we have and bring some guys along.

I sincerely doubt that it is about admitting (or not admitting) that they were wrong. They have certainly DFA'd players that they have owed money to in the past, and will again in the future. More likely, they are trying to get value out of a player who they perceive has some hidden value. Unlocking something in a player with potential is what all teams try to do. Also playing into this is whether or not they have someone ready to go to take the player's place. Those players listed above are all examples of former Twins (or prospects) who have been unlocked by other teams. That's where the big value is. In the Pagan situation, I would likely have pulled the trigger by now, but I'm really not sure who they have to jump in and take his place. He appears to have a "rubber" arm and can be thrown out there frequently, albeit with subpar results -- or more accurately, with pretty good results followed by an unmitigated disaster. It is truly uncanny.

And exactly this is why he is a big time pitcher. He's only going to get better and better!

I would agree that things got a little bit silly last night, but I also know that there will always be outliers to the “strict” adherence to what fans think would be wise. If the Twins with Solano had scored a couple of runs and Garlick’s HR was the game winner, some would talk nonstop about how clever the substitutions were and what a genius Rocco was. Would I have done it? Nope. Was it completely outlandish? Probably not. Platoons are generally more successful in the short term, but as stated, probably aren’t great for young players in the long run. Others may disagree, but I’ve always been of the opinion that there are very few genius managers out there who will win and lose games frequently all by themselves. They are always captive to or beneficiaries of the personnel on the team. If we had the best manager in the league (whoever that might be) the record is probably similar because the hitters aren’t hitting. It seems likely that we are just not used to seeing good starting pitching and bad hitting so the whole world is off kilter and it must be the manager’s fault. The “I can’t believe Rocco can’t get these guys to hit” statement is just more convenient to make than the “I can’t believe how well Rocco has these starters pitching.” Rocco is signed for a couple more years. With a couple of division titles, he’s probably earned it. Cheering for the Twins is going to be more fun and less frustrating than nitpicking the managerial ups and downs of the team.

Wow! This is an amazing tool. Thanks for making this happen!