Shobae

Yeah though the white sox have been unable to rebuild their farm system and keep adding to their current major league core, honestly their outlook looks pretty bleak to me. Especially when you compare them to the guardians, who as usual have this season already pulled two top tier starting pitcher rookies out of their backside. As the for the dodgers, I know everyone hates them but you really gotta give it to their baseball ops department. They have some of the best player dev in the league and they're not afraid to pay guys who they think are worth it. The fact they consistently pump out top talents with low picks like Vargas, Outman and Miller just to name 3 this year is pretty insane. (as for the rest of the org well I won't open that can of gay worms). Also I did think I could have mentioned kirilloff, but since he seems to profile as a 1B I think he needs to prove a lot more in terms of his hitting to put him in that category. I mean if the power comes back and the plate discipline sticks then I think he's easily the teams best hitter in the next few years. I gotta admit I had written him off before this season but I'm really impressed by what he's shown so far, even if there's probably some regression coming.

Wonder if there are any other twins fans in Europe here like myself. Though I grew up in Germany, now studying in the Scotland so I never really had anyone to even talk baseball with, unless I was visiting the family in MN

I will admit that the question between the angels and rays was a false dichotomy but I was trying to say that in baseball how good your average player is matters more than how good your 3 best players are. Also perhaps I was approaching this with a different understanding of superstar. To my mind a superstar is a guy who is so good that most baseball fans know who he is and has the performance to back it up as well. I think of Ohtani, Judge, Yordan, Trout, Verlander, Scherzer, Acuna, Betts so on. But if we're taking a more inclusive definition which you seem to have by your list I think the twins would have Mauer, Santana, Buxton and Morneau (maybe). But Buxton problem is obvious but I'd say most fans know him at this point but I think his superstar status as kinda faded this season. I wouldn't consider Berrios to be honest, he was an above average pitcher who's skill was durability and pitching deep into games. However, I think Lewis, Julien, Ryan or Lee could all reach the threshold you laid out, so there is some hope (also very possible none of them do). Is that enough to catch up? I'm not sure given the to undeniable stars the twins last produced where both in the early 00s. (also thanks for the compliment)

Joe Mauer was an all time catching talent (who has a legit chance at the HOF despite the injuries), you're not gonna see another player of his caliber on the twins for a long time just probabilistically speaking. I'd recon franchises have gone many decades without seeing a player of Mauer's skill, twins fans are lucky that he was the hometown hero who played here for his 10 seasons as a catcher. I guess Buxton would fit the mold but I think he's done as a superstar given that he needs play tons of DH to be able to stay healthy. Don't think you need to produce a young super star so long as you produce 4-5 good (3-5 war) players. Would you rather be the angels who had mike trout and some expensive replacement level players or the pre-franco Rays who were competitive with a bunch of guys no casual fan could name?

7.3% chance for them to win the division according to fangraph playoff odds, say I do not care. Though tbh I think the projections are a little high on the twins even though they've slipped down to a 65% chance to win the division. I think the actual threat as was the case last year is the guardians. Sure, the white sox have been playing winning baseball since may but they were bound to get some in because they weren't as bad as that disasterclass april. But that team is about as deep is a puddle, one or two key injuries and they're going the way of the Tigers.

I looked at Ohl's numbers because the strike out to walk rate did certainly peak my interest in him and make me wonder why he wasn't higher on lists. I think the answer lies with the career .277/.304/.424 slash line against. Looking at his career babip a .350 line doesn't look terribly sustainable to me but I think most agree that babip is affected by pitcher skill and it's certainly possible his "true" babip is in the .310s. So if you're giving up around a hit per inning on average I think that will be a problem moving up the system and facing better hitters. As for the death of the pitch to contact hitters, I think it mostly comes from the fact that strike outs are the best and most reliable outcome for any pitcher. If you can consistently strikeout 25% of the batters you face then a quarter of the batters you face will never even get the chance to reach base. Whereas if you pitch to contact that's subject to the defense but also the general randomness you get in baseball. One season you've got the balls landing in the right ways for you and it's going well, the next the balls seems to find every hole and you're struggling to get out of innings. Obviously you can consistently generate weak contact that any major league fielder can make an out on 98% of the time you'll have success but I think that's always been a rare and hard to maintain skill. I think a good example of this is last years cy young and perennial FIP beater Sandy Alcantara, who this season has gone from a 2.28 ERA last year to a 5.08 ERA (and 3.65 FIP 🤯🤯) so far this season. Now I think there is more going on here than just general variance of pitching to contact, but I think he illustrates that tight rope that even the very best contact heavy pitchers walk. (Though I don't think the below average ERA will last all season for him).

I agree with most of what stringerbell said though I do think at some point the FO has to start making some moves here regarding the position player side of things. There are 98 games left in the season for the twins (not counting the one that is currently ongoing) so lots of season left but at some point you have to act on the current data, without having the full sample of a whole season. That's after all what they get paid to do, make the difficult decisions when there isn't always as much data as you'd want. But I don't really know when that point is, 70 games in? 81? at the trade deadline? I do think the sunk cost fallacy is in full effect on Kepler, he should have been rehabbed/kept on the IL to let wallner's hot streak play out. Instead we've been treated to .129 with a walk and no XBH since his return. I think it's time to accept you messed up by not trading him at the deadline and cut your losses. Keeping him on the team longer just gives more evidence to confirm they are dealing with sunk cost. Secondly, is the approach of the hitters and hitting coach. I mean I guess it was a choice to pick up a guy with little experience from high A and send him to the bigs. Don't know how well you can deduce his specific impact on performance, but as has been pointed out many times on TD many indicators don't look good. I think changing the offensive approach is certainly needed because strikeout all the time with middling power and walk rates isn't a winning formula. But that is also going to take some time so it's possible they've already started working on that with hitters and we're going through the growing pains currently (lets hope).

Wanted to come here to say that this was by far Lopez best start and him showing why the twins traded luis arraez for him. Though all I found was a bunch of depressed twins fans shadow boxing against the hated analytics strawman. It's funny because if you actually take a look around the league and the least analytically inclined teams, some that come to mind are the white sox, royals and rockies (who's front office is the laughing stock of baseball). Not sure why anyone would want their favorite team to be run like those, but I know how this goes. We want the results of the Astros, Dodgers, Rays or Braves with the aesthetics and mentality of the "good old times of real baseball". I would also like to have my cake and be able to eat it too, but that just ain't the way of the world. I think there are a lot of valid criticisms you can make about the current state of this team, but "reject analytics, return to tradition" rings especially hollow to me. If you want analytic free baseball management I would highly recommend you to become a colorado rockies fan. Nobody cares less about "modern thinking" and "industry consensus" than their FO, sounds like a match made in heaven for some commenters here.

You know I was going to comment about the lack of specific information in the article other than the strikeout % of hitters and the team and how it seemed rather vague. But then this comment really makes it look like a fangraphs article. 😂 Just wait until you learn how the best team in baseball, the one that just swept the twins 13-3, runs their operation.

Also there is certainly some level of bad luck going on with Jax's ERA, but I don't think that's the topic of contention here. The more interesting question is who is the real 2023 Jax? Is it the third best pitching+ score among all pitcher with 20 IP so far? (I don't think so) Is it the 52 FIP-? (I don't think he's that good either) I feel like his K-BB%, which according to Eno Sarris is decently predictive in smaller samples, that is down from last season at 16.2% (league average for RP is 14.2%) provides a good estimate. So he is above average but certainly not elite according to strikeout to walk rate differential. His SIERA (a defense independent pitching stat but it also uses batted ball data) provides a similar evaluation, it was also better last year, with a 3.42 (lavg for RP is 3.92). I'd say that judges him as a good but not great reliever. So I'd say Jax has been unlucky but I don't think he's been the unluckiest man in baseball. Also I disagree with the premise that there is something going on here that we don't understand. Any small sample of a population can contain lots of noise in it and that very much holds true for baseball PAs/match ups. I think there are enough models, metrics and statistics for someone put together a decent evaluation of Jax, the question is what you listen to and what you're trying to establish.

Well the first thing to note is that neither fangraphs nor bref measure this data themselves so folks should be looking at the sources those sites are using. Fangraphs batted ball data is sourced from sports info solutions who use human video scouts to collect their data. In contrast, baseball savant use hawkeye cameras installed at every ball park to record batted ball data. I assume there is some programmed definition as to what a pulled ball, that could be relevantly different from that used by SIS video scouts. However, I can't confirm that with sources. As for bref from what I can tell they seem to get their batted ball data from sportradar, but I couldn't find anything on the specifics of how that's calculated. But all 3 are using different sources leading to different results, though I would go with statcast data if i wanted to look at pull% in this case.

I mean I think a lot of people are taking Buxtons health for granted here, the fact that he, through May 30th, played in 49 games is nothing short of incredible. It's entirely possible if he was playing CF regularly he'd be a month into an IL stint as was common for him. There is also no evidence that I can see suggesting he would even be able to play 40 games in CF up until this point. To my knowledge the best predictor we have of future injury is past injury and well don't think anyone on this team has more of those than Buxton. In terms of his performance it's certainly left a lot to be desired, while a .334 woba isn't necessarily bad it's certainly not great from a 15 million dollar DH even when we factor in that he comfortably the best base runner on the team. What's slightly concerning about this start is that his average EV, barrel% and hard hit% are all way down compared to the prior three season. That suggests that he's certainly lost a lot of power so far this season which if continued would be a very bad sign for the next 5.5 years of his contract. But I would honestly wait for a larger sample before panicking about that. Also I agree with everyone else here that they should start working in some CF games for Buxton, especially if the long term plan is to have him play in the playoffs. I think at this point Buxton is done as a full time CF, the question is what the split between DH and CF starts will look like for the rest of his career.

Well I'm glad we've got the armchair coach and psychologist on the scene. As I explained in my previous post, which part was curiously ignored, guys aren't going to hustle on each batted ball event principally because of the injury risk, I would guess. Would have to see what the literature looks like, but if you increase the amount of 0 to 100 sprints you make it stands to reason that it increases the probability of injury. Since most major leaguers can reliably discern when to sprint and when to jog out of the box there is little reward for the risk. But I'm sure even if I did consult the medical literature on injuries caused by burst activity in sports, there is nothing that would convince you otherwise. I am arguing against dogma here, an exercise in futility.

After the bases loaded masterclass of the 7th inning against Chicago, in the 4-6 defeat yesterday, I wanted to put to the test my opinion that the twins are choke masters with the bases loaded. Turns out the numbers confirm this opinion, as the Twins own an impressive .112 woba with the bases loaded through May 3rd (30 PA). How do they do it, you may ask yourself. Well, how about 0 extra base hits, a 3.3% walk rate and a .125 batting average to do the trick. So, in the first month of the season when the bases are loaded the twins line up turns into a slumping high A hitter. Now one might say "well there's no way their .125 babip is sustainable" true they haven't been lucky but even if they regressed back to a .270 babip they'd maybe be able to climb out of the celler and into 27th place behind the famed sluggers in cleveland. Now where this gets interesting is when we look at their woba with runners in scoring position. "Oh god I don't want to know" you say, but dear reader I present you with the 2nd best lineup in MLB with runners in scoring position. That's right, the Twins have a .391 woba with runners in scoring position, only to bested by the Texas Rangers. A robust .290 batting average with a 11.3% walk rate and .254 ISO makes that happen. I must admit when I first saw this on Fangraphs I thought that either that either I had made a mistake with my splits settings or the website was wrong. But fangraphs is very reliable and after seeing the bases loaded splits I'm going to assume this is right. So how is it possible that a team with a .391 woba with RISP is beyond awful with the bases loaded? Well a few thoughts, First, is the nature of small sample sizes which can produce these kinds of extreme results. Second, is that bases loaded only accounts for 11.3% of the Twins RISP PAs so it's not hard for this to be the case. Third, is the boom or bust nature of this offense that will score a ton of runs some games and then be complete cold in others. That creates a sampling bias in fans like myself who remember all the choking but properly weigh it with all the good performances. Finally, looking at their woba in high leverage situations, which I assume would include more bases loaded PAs than just RISP (total of 116 vs 266 PA), it's an expectedly low .236. Good for 28th in the majors. So it looks like the twins become peak Barry Bonds with RISP in low and medium leverage situations and then Sandy Leon in high leverage situations. How do you fix this issue? Well I don't think such a massive disparity between their total team woba, .314 17th overall, and bases loaded woba will persist through a full season. However, if they don't start changing something in their approach I would not be surprised if they are still in the bottom 6 team for bases loaded performance this season. The same goes for high leverage performance. Perhaps the plan from Rocco should be to avoid loading the bases at all costs. Correa comes up with runners on 1st and 2nd and no outs? DO NOT walk, DO NOT hit an infield single, DO NOT force an error from the defense. Striking out and any other kind of out is a far desirable outcome to any of those. If someone has any ins to the twins FO/coaches please rely them this information, it will most certainly boost runs scored. (explainer for non sabermetrically savvy people: Weighted On Base Average is an offensive stat that tells you a players entire offensive contribution at the plate, by using linear weights to calculate the run value of each outcome, ie 2B = 1.27 runs. It's adjusted to the same scale as on base percentage so you're intuitions about obp can be applied to woba, .319 is league average currently.)

It's a better at bat because Lanarch had a much better approach, that if you replicate it across a season, that will lead to much better results than free swinging into making soft contact into the ground. It's quite incredible how 2 good major league hitters can't manage to hit a ball out of the infield. I mean surely if buxton can do something at the plate it's hit the ball in the air? But it seems load 'em up leave 'em on is the twins hitting philosophy. Another defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, seems nobody in this division wants to win it right now.

Well look on the bright side, if he's become a hacker he could probably do a man in the middle attack on the white sox pitchcom and then know what's coming, I'm sure Correa would be supporting him.

To my knowledge Polanco still has nerves in his hands so he can feel how he hit the ball, which I think he's done a few times before, so I'd wager he has a pretty good feeling for whether or not he made ideal contact with it. He again to my knowledge, feel free to correct me, has eyes and 20/20 vision so he can see in what general angel the ball is traveling. Based on these two pieces of information he can make a pretty solid judgement on what kind of batted ball he has hit. But I'm sure all the armchair major leaguers here would be able to give him a few useful tips on how to play his game. No arguments 🤷‍♀️

I feel like Maeda should take over the long relief role so he can get some more reps with a lower workload and the twins can see how likely it is he can actually start games for them reliably this season. I'd like to see Baily Ober get as much MLB experience as possible tbh, so that we can get a better idea of who the true Ober is. Because since June first of 2021 he has a 3.27 ERA and 3.53 FIP over 27 starts and a 135 IP. If Ober turns out to be a guy who can be a good starter then he's obviously a key piece of your rotation in the coming seasons. If he's around league average after all then he's certainly a solid number 5 but not a guy you have to have.

I don't get all the fuss about Polanco not running out of the box, this looks like textbook hindsight bias to me. When he hit the ball it was barreled at 108 mph with a 23 degree launch angle off the bat. That is a home run almost all the time, so obviously guys aren't gonna be sprinting out of the box as hard as they can. This idea that you should be running hard on every batted ball until you know it's out/homer/safe is just pure fantasy, nobody is gonna accept that kind of injury risk. That the ball happened to be just 10cm too close to the field and stayed in play is just bad luck, nothing you can do about that. I don't know if its fair to blame Polanco for not being aware that the ball didn't go out, but seems more reasonable than him not sprinting out of the box. Even if he was paying attention (which I don't think he was) how the would you tell that it stayed fair, and didn't go out but bounce back into the field of play, from the base pathes? To me it just seems like extreme bad luck that the ball wasn't a homer. Also for those calling for Rocco to publicly call out Polanco, I'd suggest you read up on the tyler o'niel situation in St Louis and see if that's the kind of culture you want to be created by the twins. Though I can't say I'm surprised the twins lost this game given how god awful the bullpen was in the previous game. If they didn't have the umpire as their 10th player they probably would have lost that too, or at least taken it into extras. Big differences was the 8 runs scored vs the 0-11 with risp, but I would consider that pair of performances standard procedure from this line up. But look on the bright side folks, at least we ain't white sox or athletics fans.

It's rather odd to me that people are talking about Lopez getting pulled after 5.1 IP and 85 pitches, I feel like I was watching a different game. Lopez started out perfect through the first two innings, then had a walk in the third, a walk and a single to lead off the fourth and then a hard hit double, hit by pitch and a walk in the fifth. Does anyone see the pattern here? As for the pitch count I was going to say that part of the reason he was pulled was because he had pitched in two high leverage innings which there is some belief can create additional stress on a pitcher, however I wasn't able to find anything conclusive on that. I also don't know how the twins do it but I think it makes sense that he got pulled after that workload especially, as mentioned by others, that Thielbar had already warmed up and the royals best projected hitter was coming up. To me it almost seems like some people would rather see a starter go 6+ innings than see a win. As for the hitting, well the twins were already in mid season form with 12 LOB and 2 runs scored on 10 hits and 4 walks. We got treated to three twins specials (load em up, leave em on) and it only opening day. Kepler was entirely useless out of the lead off spot, Buxton was the best hitter of the game and we got some key hits by Rocco platooning well. Bullpen was lights out though so I've got to hand it to them there. Overall, don't think this is a winning formula against any serious team who will surely take advantage of Lopez struggles in the 4th and 5th and not roll out 5 ERA bullpen arms in key spots. But a win is a win so we take those. Sources for the multi-factor impact on pitcher injury beyond pitch counts: https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynemcdonnell/2014/03/20/advancements-in-analytics-and-medicine-must-provide-fruitful-results-for-a-pitchers-mechanics/

I would be rather surprised to see the Twins have a dedicated closer under Baldelli's management, though the only reason I'm not thinking this is completely unlikely is because there seemingly has been some rumbling about Duran being in a more traditional closer role. But I still think that the bullpen will be deployed based on leverage index and match ups. If that happens to align with Duran getting the most "saves" (dumb stat) then that's not surprising. But I don't assume he will religiously get the 9th

I'm thinking this team would most likely be in the 84-88 wins range. I think they've got a pretty solid floor and anything below 80 wins would signal serious organizational collapse, <20th percentile outcome for me. I'm more optimistic about the upside of this team but I think really a lot would have go right for them to hit 91 wins (80th percentile outcome). I think they'd need a strong performance out of the pitching staff to able to make that and there's just too much volatility. Also what version of the Buxton-Correa duo we get will be a big factor but perhaps an even bigger one will be whether or not we see someone step up with a good bat at 1B and a corner OF spot, which would massively raise the floor of this line up. Otherwise there's a pretty big fall off from the top 4 of the line up.

I am genuinely unable to fathom how any actual baseball fan would be anti-WBC at this point. The last tournament was absolutely amazing baseball to watch, high energy environments, big swings in win probability, big homers and outstanding defense and pitching. If you don't like watching those games I seriously question whether you like watching any baseball games at all. The pundits who come out with these rage bait takes I highly doubt are regular baseball fans and if they are then it's either a bit or they're just clouded by ignorance, bias and an engagement incentive. As for the tournament itself it will continue in 2026 and it absolutely should. Baseball is played globally and I think therefore needs a premier international competition like any other big sport. Just because it's not a big deal in the US, I'm sorry to say, doesn't mean a whole lot because the US is 1 out of 20 teams there and it's not even the biggest market for the tournament (that would be Japan). So the massive hype around the WBC in other countries is reason enough to keep it going for the MLB because you've got dedicated and large scale interest there. Finally, I think we can all agree that the WBC is good for baseball. As someone who watches rugby union purely on the national level the world cup is the biggest event. The same goes for the number 1 sport football. I see no reason why this shouldn't also be the case for baseball, which would help grow the sport to countries where baseball has either a minor or non-existent foothold. I think the onus is on MLB to try and market it better to the US audience, many of whom probably didn't even know it was happening (can't really blame them).

Briefly looked into this because I saw the word diamond in the ownership and got concerned but I am able to confirm that the company has nothing to do with diamond sports group. What I did find however is that Diamond baseball holding was founded in only 2021 and has been buying up minor league teams like crazy, according to their website they would now have majority ownership in 15 teams with the saints. Who is behind this big shopping spree? Well unsurprisingly it's a private equity firm called Silver Lake, never heard of it until now but they own DBH. So basically you've got wall street with majority ownership in the Saints now. I for one am extremely skeptical of this because these private equity firms don't just invest because they like the vibes. But we will have to see how this plays out.

I have no clue about Deshaun Watson because I don't follow american football in any capacity so I can't comment on the comparison here. However, the notion that the worst thing Pete Rose ever did was gambling on baseball is not correct. He is accused of having sexual relations with a minor when she was 14/15. He denies this but admitted to doing so with her when she was 16 and he was married and 34 and that it was legal in Ohio at the time. Now I could care less about legality here, the fact that he admits to engaging in such behavior is extremely vile and sufficient reason to never lift his ban from baseball. Mods feel free to remove this post if it's violating the guidelines, however I feel that it is important to educate people about the truth of Pete Rose's behavior since I have seen the "he should be in the HOF" sentiment a few times in online baseball circles. So we can all agree that Rose does not belong in the hall of fame ever. Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/01/woman-says-she-had-sexual-relationship-with-pete-rose-as-an-underage-teen/