Shobae

I know I'm coming late to this but I am firmly convinced that the Twins need to extend Duran this off-season. First and most importantly they can buy out one of his pre-arb seasons where he is basically being robbed of millions of dollars, that gives them more leverage then they will have at any point in the future. The other fact is that he is coming of a down season, which means he will be cheaper than if he puts up a 2022 level campaign at some point in the future. Now if you think, this season is more his norm then maybe you shouldn't extend him, but I am not very convinced by that. We know that velocity and having more than 2 pitches are general indicators of success and Duran has both of those. He isn't some FB only guy (which is his worst pitch funnily enough) who could be finished by one major arm injury. The reason you need to extend Duran is because you are extremely unlikely to get a pitcher with his caliber of stuff in the future, heck it could be decades before that happens. Also we all know what the high end closers are making in FA and that's not amount of money you want to be spending on a reliever. So it makes sense to lock up an elite reliever for his prime at well below market rate. Yes there is risk involved but if this team is willing to give Buxton 100 mil, then there is no reason not to extend Duran (arguably there is less risk than with Buxton). Also not having to worry about the number 1 in your bullpen for the next 4-7 years is something that any team should want. As for the actual contract itself I think that's perhaps a more realistic model, but personally I wouldn't do that it like that. Back-loading a deal when he's far more likely to be cooked while paying him basically what he would have made without an extension in his first 2-4 seasons makes no sense at all to me. The incentive for him is that he has guaranteed money but also has that now. I would probably start with 4/5 mil for this season which is massive underpay still for what you're getting even if you think 1 war = 4 (half of FA) he should be making at least 8. So I'd probably do something along the lines of 5, 6, 8, 10, 12.5, 12.5 guaranteed, which works out to 54 mil over 6 seasons, which is fair(ish) to both sides and I think would give Duran serious incentive to sign. I'm sure the actual contract would look different but my overall philosophy would be pay him significantly more than he would make in the first 3 seasons, as to spread it more evenly on the back end when there is more risk of him being washed/cooked from TJ.

Good to see someone talking some sense here. The vast majority of prospects don't pan out and hyping up guys based on a few months of performance is seemingly something people will never learn to stay away from. Even with the guys who have MLB experience there are many examples of guys having good rookie seasons and then never living up to that hype (Sano and Miranda so far come to mind). Wallner and Lewis certainly have some bust risk still, though I do think Julien has an average major leaguer floor because of his plate discipline. Unfortunately, the billionaires who are desperate to save less than 1% of the teams and their net-worth, means that people are talking about how to cut payroll and so I don't think you can blame them for that. With these self-imposed restrictions on the team you're going to have to start cutting corners, meaning less quality depth and more praying on prospects.

Good to see some good faith evidence based discussion around Baldelli, instead of the usual temper tantrums and anti-analytics rambling, for example, complaining that he pulled a certain pitcher in the 5/6th inning, with a career 4.85 ERA a third time through the line up. I agree that manager are generally give too much credit for game results and that it's rather difficult to find a specific and repeatable measurement of their contributions. But I do think that managers have an outsized impact in the playoffs and that's probably where their on field decisions matter most. Now for Baldelli's tenure he has managed 3 playoff teams going 3-8, but I don't know how much of the 19-20 results were due to his decisions or just the twins scheduled playoff disappointments. However, having watched every game except ALDS game 2 I thought Badelli did an good job this playoffs and I couldn't find anything to strongly criticize here. So when it mattered most he delivered and I think that is worth praising. The other thing I like about Rocco is his levelheadedness during the regular season and his focus on 162, which is important when you're playing a marathon like that. Hopefully, people will be more reasonable and reality based towards Rocco in the future, but I wouldn't count on it.

I'm by no means an expert on WARP (or any BP stats for that matter) but I do have a surface level understanding of how it works. The first thing to note is that 0.3 WARP doesn't really mean anything statistically, it's really within the uncertainty of any war type stat. But actually now that I go and look at the breakdown of the WARP components I am confused as well. Because Jeffers has -2 batting runs vs -12.2 for Vazquez. But Vazquez has 7.5 defensive runs prevented vs -1.1 for Jeffers. But if you do the nampkin math with the other components Jeffers still comes out on top for runs? So they could be around the same at best for Vazquez? like I said don't really understand WARP well enough to have the answer here. Though if I had to posit a guess here maybe it's something to do with their model or some other adjustments they do? Well I tried, but seems I can't explain it either, even looking at their defensive and offensive components. 😹

White Sox pulled off a heist here, imagine giving up a 50 FV prospects when you have one of the lowest ranked farm systems in the MLB for a projected 61 innings of 4+ ERA pitching. I thought teams figured out they were massively overpaying for rentals but it seems the angels didn't get the memo. Though as the fangraphs article mentioned they are basically desperate as heck so they're just blowing up the future to eek out an extra 2-3% of playoff odds. Though maybe Ohtani was pleased with the trade and rewarded the team with a 1 hitter and a 2 home run performance. So if it keeps him happy and productive this season maybe it's worth it after all. (well not when he leaves but nothing they can do about that).

Crazy to me how people are reacting to this trade. Lemme frame this another way, the twins traded a reliever with a career ERA over 5 for a reliever with a career ERA of 3.32. It's pretty clear that Floro has not only been a quality reliever since 2018 but also is a much better pitcher than Lopez (your peripheral of choice will confirm this), who is one season wonder. Past ERA over 30 innings is completely useless for projecting future performance, so Floro's ERA shouldn't be of any concern to twins fans. He looks to be a quality middle reliever (3-3.5 ERA), something this bullpen desperately needs given how much we see Jovani "14% walk rate" Moran selling leads in the middle innings recently.

Yeah situation wins in WPA/LI and you're right that his clutch score (WPA added in high leverage compared to WPA added in lower leverage iirc) is pretty bad. Also if you just use straight up WPA it's negative but if you actually adjust it for something he can't control, what leverage index he comes up to bat with, you see he's been adding WPA relative to the situations he's been in. So even if he sucks in high leverage his value in other contexts is enough to make up for that. He's certainly better than Jeffers on all counts except clutch (jeffers isn't god awful but still bad) but since Jeffers "only" strikes out 29.3% of the time and his a better context neutral hitter he gets a pass from most fans. Just isn't consistent thinking.

If he does retire good for him, he's made more money than 99.9999% of people ever will in their entire lifetime he certainly doesn't need to keep playing for money. If he wants to spend time with his family that's more important than baseball. Idk if he will retire but totally reasonable that he would think about it.

Sure, but the fact remains that Gallo is a better hitter, context neutral or sensitive, than most of the guys they employ. Unlike the other dude's who strikeout over a 30% clip on this team Gallo has elite power which is why he has the offensive production he does (only Julien has a higher slugging percentage).

Why would the cardinals trade one of their star players when they have a solid offense and many young talented players who could be competitive next year if they invest in pitching?? Goldschmidt is a different conversation given he only has a year and a half left, but come on why the hell would they trade a guy with 4.5 years left who gets butts in the seats??? The only reason I could see this being viable if you think that this is the move that's needed to unlock Jordan Walkers potential, but you better not be wrong about that. Even then seems extremely risky and like a bad business decision, not to mention how player would view your org if you traded a guy who didn't test the market because he wanted to stay there. Not exactly a great look.

I mean I don't think that trend means a whole lot given we're looking at a small sample (his PAs this season) of a small sample (his homers) of a small sample (the score when he hits them). Also if you look at the numbers Gallo ranks third in situational wins on the twins (150 PA minimum). Better Buxton, Kirilloff and Jeffers who with the exception of buxton get more praise for their hitting. Though if you don't adjust for LI or game state then Gallo ranks 6th in RE24. But I'm not super concerned about the numbers his style of play and how mad it makes people is far more valuable to me. Obviously if he's bad then yeah people are justified in criticizing his play (not as a person as often happens). But when he gets hot it's all the more satisfying to watch. And that to me is worth the 11 mil they spent on him this off season.

Slightly unrelated by since he was mentioned in this piece. Arreaz is an outlier, it's absolutely mind blowing to me how seemingly very few people contextualize what he is doing. The fact he is running a 5.2% strike out rate against the 2023 pitching staffs seems like it should not be possible. I don't know if it's ignorance or what but Arraez being able to make his approach work against this kind of pitching is just amazing, forget all this "throw back hitter" talk. Arraez is not a throw back because all of his comps were facing a starter throwing up 80s fastballs with little off speed usage. Meanwhile Arraez has a career .327 BA and 7.8 K% in the era for 93 mph being the league average FB and facing 4-6 pitchers every game with off speed pitches designed in a lab. His era adjusted batting average this year being third all time in the modern era further proves this. Telling guys to change their approach to be like Arreaz is like telling hitters to just put in some extra hours in the cage so they can hit like Mike Trout. It's nonsensical because you can count on one hand the number of major leaguers who have even close to his level of bat to ball skills. The next question becomes "why would the twins trade a guy with some of the best contact skills ever in single season?". Seems the twins certainly didn't expect Arraez to hit like this (though I did think he hadn't reached his peak yet, don't think most did) and that they didn't value that skill as highly as many fans do. As someone who has become a defender of the trade (seemingly) this framing doesn't make it look good at all and I can't really argue with it. As much as I enjoy Pablo Lopez none of his skills compare to Arraez contact ability. Also dunno about Martin making a good arraez replacement, at this point I'd be very happy that he even makes the majors given the performance and injuries. Also I don't think Lewis with his current hitting ability is much of a knocker with a .243 xBA, 31.7 whiff% and 32.8 sweet spot% (lg avg 33.1%). Obviously, this is a tiny sample and he could change his process, but there was way too much swing and miss in his game right now and poor launch angles for me to think it's viable currently.

A few things that looked wrong to me. First Alonso isn't leading the league in homers, that would be Ohtani, or the NL, that would be Olson. As for the Yankees you mentioned, Judge was absolutely raking when healthy but has missed tons of time, Stanton has been nearly unplayable this season, and rizzo and torres have be around average. The Padres don't have 4 MVP candidates or .900 ops hitters, they have 2 MVP hopefuls and only one .900 ops hitter (who you'd expect). Big names aren't really worth much on the field if they aren't healthy/producing. So other than the 2 factual errors this seems misplaced, when you actually look at the performance on the field. Also don't think the twins problem is that they don't have knockers, it's that they suck at executing their hitting philosophy. People talk about the strikeouts but a simple way to look at it would be for a hitter to be productive you'd have an inverse relationship between K% and SLG. The twins are running a historic strike out rate so we'd want an at least top 3 slugging percentage to go along with that, instead they are 20th in MLB, so bad results will follow. The other thing that wasn't mentioned here was the fact that knockers are highly susceptible to batted ball randomness and defense. If you're putting a bunch of balls in play and they don't go your way for a while then you're gonna be big time slumping. If you get into a pitch it's gone much more consistently than a ground ball goes for a single. To be clear I'm not saying hitters don't have control over their babip, but than it is extremely variable to factors they can't control. The question of how many of the same type of hitters you can have on your team really depends on their production more than their style. I think you can make arguments about how style causes certain production, but if you look at the best (most runs produced) hitters around the league the common theme is slugging or a very high on base percentage. And since the latter usually follows the former that has become the dominant approach. That doesn't mean that has to be the only style, but it leads to the most success for the most players. Twins problem is that they just don't produce runs and strike out too much. If they tried not to strike out as much I don't think that would really change their run production just the shape of it. I honestly don't know how you'd fix this problem as if you trade in what what little power you have left for some average, you'll just be producing a shittier guardians team with a little more pop. I guess you'd either have to get significantly better at getting on base or actually hit for useful power, but not sure what the method to get those results looks like.

I agree with some of this, you're certainly right that blowing this up is not the play but I think waiting for prospects is probably the road forward here. I think folks really need to ask themselves if they'd be ok with another 2022 type deadline, where we're watching Steer and Cano be valuable pieces for contenders while the twins have gotten nothing for them. Because any time you make a trade there is also a chance you're going to get fleeced. Personally, I would try and bring in maybe one or two bullpen rentals and maybe a guy who can hit lefties. This team really isn't worth much more. Since this line up cannot be fixed at the deadline, not with how conservative this FO is. If the line up is going to be good they A need to be more consistent, B need Buxton and Correa to hit and C need to find a solution to their lack of corner OF production internally. I think the twins need to keep all their promising young guys in place who will be useful in the next 1-3 years, unless they swap them for an area of bigger need. (ala the arreaz-lopez trade)

We all know this twins offense is going strong to beat the major league record in strikeouts, looking not just to beat the 2021 Cubs record but to demolish it. With by a projected 200 strikeouts over the Cubs. But there is another record chase that nobody seems to be talking about, though I feel like most fans have wondered "is this the worst team with the bases loaded of all time?". Well unfortunately I don't have access to public data about team stats with the bases loaded older than 2002, however if we look at that time frame the twins currently maintain the lowest ops with bases loaded in a full season (2020 royals who are worse are being ignored). The number to beat is .439 by the god awful 2012 Houston Astros, with the twins having a healthy lead at .414. However, there still quite a bit of season left here and just a few big innings could move their numbers past the Astros. Do you think they'll be able to pull of not only one but two records this season?