Hawkeye Bean Counter

Culpepper is ahead of the curve. The initial analysis was a bat first with limited power, and questions on his defensive position. What this article has really undersold was the defensive expectations. The report on him was a player that likely couldn't stick at short and would have to be a 3rd or 2nd baseman. Meaning whatever bat skills he had would be going against better offensive players than shortstops. There is 1 line - Keith Law stating he can now be an above average shortstop. That completely changes Culpeppers profile and how good the bat needs to be. If he is getting positive WAR on the defensive side of the ball at short stop, his improved power and bat to ball skills will really start to stand out. Its why Law moved him into his top 50, even with the improved bat his profile is likely still a top 150 prospect if he is a 3rd baseman, but solidifying himself as a SS has really increased his value. . I agree we will know more when he moves to AA, but this is looking promising.

1 year later, in a draft that supposedly looked weak the Twins hit this draft out of the park. 1. Culpepper looks like a legit shortstop, and the bat is outperforming expectations. Looks like a legit prospect. 2. Debarge - firecracker, decent bat, great speed, good defense 3. Amick - the bat appears to be real, and the defense is better than anticipated 4. D. Hill - Looks like a legit SP prospect. 1.8 ERA in A ball as a 19 year old and 14+ K/9. Absolutely ridiculous. 5. Diaw - may be the Catcher prospect we have been clamoring for.

It may be odd, but would rather take this than Tommy Johns. If our approach is putting more strain on the back but less on the arm and elbow, I am ok with that tradeoff.

I really think they caught Pablo's injury fairly quickly. I am hoping it is on the shorter time table for Pablo. Honestly though, this is a year where we seem like we can handle an injury to one of our better pitchers. Now, we just can't compound the injury and have more.

Seriously what are we doing here. Lets trade some of our better players this year because they are doing well. I am all for accumulating value and assets, but this is just moronic. If you want to adjust the plan after the season, or we suddenly start to fall apart and you can get great value I would be ok with it. However we seem to have more than enough trade bait if we need something this year. You have Keashall, Debarge, K. Culpepper, Eeles and Schobel, and I would say Lee that you have ample infield options options for the foreseeable future. You could easily trade 1 or multiple.

Or he could just play the Athletics more often, a .870 OPS for the month of June in an extremely small sample size hehe. Personally I think he is coming along and will be a solid hitter especially if he can lay off the high pitch more. My guess is the hit tool continues to improve, he is an extremely hard worker and intelligent and 24 years old. I would be surprised if he ends with a batting average of .260 to .280 in most years with developing power.

Actually, the Pablo thing sounds more preventive than anything. He was pitching but felt discomfort. I will say this staff does seem willing to take the long approach. We have the pitching depth. Rest him for 2-4 starts and get him healthy and rested. Bats are willing to punish weak bullpens. I am still concerned about the bats against better pitching.

This front office has been fairly strategic except when forced to do something. I feel like they forced the trades in 2022 trade deadline, although in hindsight although we didn't get a lot out of it, it doesn't appear we gave up a major player either. If someone wants to overpay, I am sure they will listen. If they think there is an option at a qualifying offer and potential draft compensation I am sure they will take that into consideration as well. Paddack seems to have found trying to get more soft contact and not going for the strikeout as much. He does not have the multiple years of success like other pitchers that got 60 million year contracts, and there is likely more concern with Paddacks elbow so he might actually be discounted a bit. He might actually be one the Twins would be comfortable if he accepted a QO. Like I said you would need a lot of things to go right.

Ok, so this discusses trading a pitcher who has performed well in a small sample size but the underlying numbers are not as good as the surface ones, and then thinks we can get something valuable for Paddack. Just seems very odd. You have Paddack for $7.5 million. Unless someone is going to blow you out of the water with a bat or a top 100 prospect why on earth do you trade him. You won't get the value of his current performance, like 1/2 to 2/3rds because of the peripherals. So you ride him. If he does really well you have options at the end of the season, and possible draft compensation. Its a long ways off, and no different than Kepler. Its a situation that likely won't come to fruition, but if everything fell right, you get a full year of good Paddack and a draft pick. That sounds like the best outcome.

I would have thought they would have caught myocarditis - inflamation of the heart from a virus. If can overcome it, goes away in a month or two, or possibly may need rehab. That honestly sounds like what you had if I were to guess.

Pitching is crazy expensive anymore. The recent recollection where it backfired was Martin Perez with Texas. he was looking for the big payday but took the Qualifying offer. Based off the pitching contracts from last year, if they think Paddacks health and performance can be a long term solution, I think he could easily get 50 million over 3 years.

This was always the version of Paddack that we wanted. The contract is finally paying off, now is not the time to trade him. Lets say he has a great year, we can offer him a QO if we wish, he can accept or deny and then we have the possibility at draft compensation. Currently teams can gain significant value through the players who achieve bigger contracts like Sonny Gray, and or drafted players getting rooking of the year or MVP. All are difficult options, but if you can hit, you get another high end draft pick. My preference is let Paddack pitch, we may end up with much more than we could have reasonably expected.

Schobel is just getting ready to be 24. This is his 3rd full year of minor league baseball. He is not old by any metric. He is still under league average age, just barely. But he is pushing himself to be up to AAA where he will be relatively young again. The other issue, is if you are a solid hitter at AA, you will likely make it to the big leagues. I still think this is a bit of small sample size, but he looks confident, strong and making solid contact and getting on base. Right now Schobel isn't just organization filler. Yes he is most likely a utility or backup player at the MLB level for us, for another team he could be a 2nd baseman. At the very least he has pretty decent trade value.

This is why, even why when they were performing poorly I had high expectations. This is a quality pitching staff, that has the depth - going 8 deep that can allow the starting pitching staff to stay fresh throughout the year. We don't need them to continue to pitch when dealing with a dead arm. Take some time off and let Woods-Richardson, Festa or Matthews. The real advantage is the depth of the relievers on the staff. You have a number of solid relievers with Duran leading the charge again this year. We can still have a bad outing like Sunday against the Royals, but day in and day out they do their job. I still anticipate the hitting to get much better once Wallner, Buxton, and Keaschall getting healthy. Clemens has also been a find. This is a team that can compete in October.

Darren Bowen has been a pretty interesting prospect the last 2 years. The issue has always been he was a 1 to 2 pitch pitcher with primarily his fastball - which has pitched as hard as 98 mph but primarily works in the 94-95 range. Which for a starting pitcher generally doesn't work unless you are Joe Ryan, even if those 2 pitches are well above average. He had some really good starts last year, but my guess is they really began to work on his pitch mix and work on new pitches which caused inflated states last year. With the Twins usage of the slider, the guess was they were going to work on this. From early sample size this year, my guess is he has developed the slider and curveball further which has really allowed his fastball to shine. What I had heard from Seattle fans, was although Bowen was the less heralded prospect, he actually had the much higher ceiling than Gonzalez. Gonzalez at best is going to be a bat+, low to medium power, slow runner with defensive liabilities. Unless the power greatly develops, That is even with me liking Gonzalez, in this day and age though the Arreaz of the world have limited value, and unless the power really starts to develop for Gonazalez which at age 21 is still a possibility. So far for the year the ERA of 2.73 and whip of .939 is really good. However walks per a nine is back up to 3.8 and SO/9 is the lowest he has had at 7.1/9. Hits have plummeted though to 4.6 per a 9. Basically means he is inducing a lot more weak contact. Which can be good, but is effectively a back end starter. The SO percentage needs to begin to increase back to that 9-10 level per a nine, before I would really start to get excited about his prospects. His effectiveness relies on creating weak contact which has much more variability in results than a strikeout pitcher. Even still he is a top 20 prospect easy with a 2.73 ERA in AA. For a lottery pick type pitcher that is pretty solid return so far.

That could have gone a lot worse. Just need the bats to show up. Top of the line up.

Clemens with another walk off hit. Damn has he been clutch.

frick

Feel like we got Eddie Guardado out there.

3 inside heaters to get 1 out.

Its 12:10 - is the game delayed?

Gabriel Gonzalez is regaining that prospect shine. .333/.387/.550 slash line is very pretty. He is crushing high A pitchers right now. I had always been skeptical of how he would do as he climbed the organizational ladder, especially with just a meh season last year at A+. He very well could push himself into the top 10 prospects again.

What is the issue with Bader?

Any update on France? Hopefully precautionary and he is feeling better.

I think the streak continues with a double header win. Hopefully we can get to the bullpen early in the first game.