Hawkeye Bean Counter

He has hit .250 once in his lifetime, the thing is can the Twins get his batting average closer to .250 than .190? The higher it goes the more valuable he becomes. He has had an over .800 OPS 4 times. Last year the threshold for a top 30 hitter was right around .800 OPS. The goal is that Gallo would be higher than that.

There is 2 things you aren't accounting for, 1 is a more compact swing, 2 is less shift. He should have an additional hit to his total as well for what was counted as an error in the Kansas City game. I don't anticipate to hit at this level. However, if he maintains a .250 batting average he will be a top 30 hitter in the MLB and that is valuable.

I disagree, they started having prospects and ammunition to do the deals they needed to get the type of pitchers we needed. We traded away our 1st round draft pick high school pitcher for Sonny Gray. That was over a year ago. That was 18 months ago. The got Ryan at the end of 2021. They got Maeda in 2020 Health wise the cumulative affect is starting to show up now, due to health and other reasons. It just feels like more has been done. No the difference is they have been gradually getting to this point, we had a health issue with Maeda. We have better catching now to help the pitchers. We also have a better bullpen and better starting pitching which help out each other. You can't rebuild a pitching staff overnight, and the Twins haven't even though it feels that way. As to the pipeline, we have a couple options at higher levels, and we have traded away 4 of the decent pipeline arms for help on the major league team. Even still to have the arms in the major leagues, Paddack available for future years, Varland, Winder, SWR, Balazovic and any other arm that might surprise us in the future. That is light years better than the past. I will stop here as we each have our own opinions.

Quite the change from you were done with this front office 😂 As stated then you have to take the emotion out of a singular signing, lack of signing ect. They have a template and follow it. They continue to gain value on the margins, and the decisions generally always seem to have a positive impact to the organization. The cumulative value is starting to show up. Now can the higher salary players continue to perform. We will see. Here is the thing, they keep taking big swings. The contracts they do are friendly to the team. They keep plugging away. We need to rebuild the minors again and this draft will help, but the front office has done a good job of having immediate success, using trades to continue to be competitive and continue to draft well to keep the pipeline fairly well stocked. We went from a weaker team with a stronger minor league last year, to the opposite this year. The entire organization is light years ahead where it was 5-6 years ago.

I think Lopez can be a closer, but I do think there is a learning curve. However I am completely fine where he is slotted now. I think the Twins wanted him to regain his confidence this spring, and he has done exactly that. Jorge has regained more of his control and whiff percentage, although 3 strikeout inning will sure help. We are definitely in the small sample size, but the performance is similar to 2022 beginning. Which tells me a couple things, the first is, his performance last year wasn't a fluke. 2. Is that he likely wore down as the year went on last year which caused possibly a lower arm slot with less movement as the year went on. I think the Twins and Jorge will be cognizant of the arm level and will continue to work on that. I also think Jorge will be better prepared to handle a full seasons worth of work.

If Dollander is available at #5, effectively #4 if we want to out pay the rangers, I think the Twins take it and run. We are also only 150k below the Tigers and only 150k above Seattle who has the 6th, 29th, 30th pick. I think Dollander will regain a little of the feel as the season goes on. You don't find many pitchers that can pump up to 99, and has 3 other mlb pitches. Yes he may need a little coaching, but other than Skenes those both look like strong building blocks to any rotation.

This was the one trade that I felt was an overpay but it happens. As to this trade it really comes down to Steer vs Miranda. I think they will provide fairly equal value, but either one of the 2 players was going to be our long term 3rd baseman, and both may ultimately get bumped by Lee. CES is purely a big bat with some injury history. Most likely a DH bat but again not a whole lot of spots for him. I feel this is good for the Twins if they can extend Mahle, and of the pitchers I think he is the one most likely. If not we will get a draft pick, or comp pick. I think we lose this trade unless an extension occurs. However, its similar to how we got Joe Ryan. The issue was Mahle was never going to be that final piece.

If Larnach becomes a healthy solid player. That leaves us down to Kiriloff, who with Gallo currently playing the way he is, we look protected at 1st. Then the last question mark comes down to Polanco at second. Can Polanco get healthy and stay healthy. If not you have Julien waiting in the wings who could be our lead off hitter of the future.

Wow just looked at Langfords stats . . . wow 1.488 OPS. Gonzalez is 1.055. Looking like we will get a really good player at #5. Will come down to do teams want bats or pitchers.

What makes the draft crazy is when a team wants to save money for later in the draft and pick a lower prospect to save a couple million. I don't see that happening in top 4 picks but it could. Dollander, Skenes, and Crews definitely seem like the top 3 right now. If anyone of those 3 drops you take them.

Likely picked Dollander Crews Pool of possibly available - Langford, Skenes Waldrep, Clark Gonzalez Next Tier and wildcards - Bradfield, Lowder, Mitchell Its too hard to follow, but right now these are the players I am focusing on. Langford Gonzalez are you college batters Clark has the potential to be elite. We will have a very good pitching prospect available at our pick most likely. Waiting to see injuries and performance. Bradfield has elite speed, depending how this season goes with stealing could prop him up a bit. Lowder has the stuff. Mitchell would be the best Catcher available.

This is a year for Martin to prove his skills. To me he is a .280 to .300 hitter and a .400 OBP player if he can continue to progress and make it to the big leagues. Personally I think of last year as a 1 off year for him. I think he needs good health and confidence, and I think he finally started gaining that confidence towards the end of last year and it rolled into fall ball. With his speed I think he will be a good asset in the outfield. I don't think his defense will make it at SS, possibly 2nd, but might as well use the wheels in the OF.

Boy it appears time plays tricks on us a bit. When we started the offseason it was clear the team was trying to manage the roster with a lot of potential possibilities that they thought the offseason would go. I think they thought they had a shot at resigning Correa but they weren't sure. They wanted Miranda preferably at 3rd and still do. So in a very short order we traded Urshela and then got Farmer for essentially the same price we got Urshela for. Yes Urshela is better than farmer but it made sense at the time. Ultimately we are talking about 9-10 million dollars for Urshela. We then used 11 million on Gallo. The real question is between those 2 who has a better year, my bet would be on Urshela but I could see Gallo winning that. We have some flexibility with this roster, and overall I don't think losing 1 year of Urshela is really that big of a deal. Zips is expecting .280 average .340 OBP and 15 home runs for Urshella. They expect Gallo to have .195 BA .330 OBP and 25 home runs. effectively slightly more upside with Gallo just on expected stats. Eh, we won't know until we play out the season but the offseason went over about as well as anyone could have expected, and if the biggest thing we can complain about is we would have been better off with Urshela than someone like Gallo . . . well lets just say we must not have too much to complain about.

He had like 48 innings of elite production now almost 3 years ago. Now he purposefully did not pitch last year, to hurt his draft stock (it may have done so anyway). Even with the workout, his 3 major pitches are still there. The control was a tad off last June but still rusty. I fully expect him to be very strong at A and A+ ball this year. I have no doubt he will be the ace on each team. His talent is that good.

We only need 1 Pagan. Maybe Barnes could offer a little more upside. I think Pagan performed better in August Sept.

Priellip is far from a lotto ticket. However, he had limited innings success and basically 2 years of not competing. He looks like a #1 or #2 from the left side. We still have to wait and see what he looks like in getting the rust off, however I really think this is going to pay off, and was the reason the twins were willing to trade off our 2 lefty prospects from the 2021 draft.

So we give up Evan Sisk and Cruz but will have possibly added Alexy, Ortega and able to retain Enlow. We gained some lottery arms and gave up a couple and gained an excellent defensive RH OF. The twins keep improving on the margins. I’m still waiting for them to pull the trigger on Kepler. I don’t think the Twins could have a drawn up a much better off-season.

Umm . . . We are creating more of a pipeline, but also realized we used 3 of our better pitching prospects from the 21 draft class to get the current pitchers we have. I personally like it. We can utilize them for now, and worst case flip them for an awfully good prospect at the deadline. We have never said before we have too much pitching. We can now let these pitchers develop in AAA rather than sending them to the wolves. We have a couple projects in AAA this year we have picked up off the scrap heap I am happy about. For long term Pitchers we have Joe as #1. Then I personal think Varland will be the next best pitcher of the next group. I hope 1 of Ober/Winder can stay healthy enough to be a quality pitcher. Personally that is a pretty good pipeline. Add in SWR, Priellip, Raya, Festa and Balazovic, I think the starting pitcher pipeline will be ok.

This is a great position for the Twins to be in. Miranda gets another year to show us what he can do at the MLB level, and 2 is we can get a better baseline of what Lee can do at the pro level by seasoning in AA and AAA. We have seen players hit a wall at AA or AAA - however, Lee who has a very good IQ and work ethic will most likely do fine. he is a high floor, medium to high ceiling. He will likely not be a superstar, but a very very good foundational piece. We are set to continually have a very good infield for the foreseeable future.

I have no concerns with Arreaz wanting a bigger contract and getting paid what he feels he is worth. Even still this is a very good trade possibly great trade. If López is a #2 pitcher for us for the next two years it is worth trading Arreaz along with the two prospects. I expect Arreaz to regress with being in a stronger division. A .290 -.300 average hitter is still good but with no power it is not worth López potential. Arreaz was a great Twin and I hope he proves me wrong and gets the payday he deserves.

I keep thinking back to Moneyball, Do we care about batting average . . . no they get on base. Arreaz gets on base .380 of the time. There is an aspect of being able to move players on the basepaths, but the issue with Arreaz is with the shift he will be the worst defensive 2nd baseman in the league. He then will be clogging up 1st base or DH at bats. You need some power from 1st and DH and arreaz just cannot do that. Getting back to moneyball, we have a player that can easily replace Arreaz in the next year or two. It is Edouard Julien. In AA his OBP is .440. he gives about the same quality of defense, maybe slightly more range than Arreaz. So effectively what I am saying is we have players coming up that are effectively duplicates of Arreaz value, they just get there differently and will likely be able to man 2nd base unlike Arreaz. To then be able to get a #3 pitcher (with 2 years of control) for Arreaz (4 years of control) is a steal in my mind. Add in you Salas who is currently our #13 prospect and then a lottery pick. Other than the personal love for Arreaz I just don't understand those being upset with the trade. Arreaz had a .385 batting average in 140 at bats against the White Sox and Kansas City. That means a 1/4 of his at bats occurred against what was weak pitching (for white sox primarily occurred against replacement pitchers last year). The only team with semi weak pitchers in the NL East is Washington but they were much better than Kansas City. Essentially I am saying he had inflated stats. Arreaz will have to be a 10% better player next year just to maintain the stats he had for the Twins is my opinion and I don't think he will be able to do that. If he is a .290 hitter with no power then almost all of the value of Arreaz is gone. We can love the player yet at the same time know that this was a very very good deal for the Twins.

Enlow and Ortega both passed on waivers. So effectively we now have 3 lottery arm type pitchers in Alexy, Enlow and Ortega. Hopefully one of them can take the jump up.

If the Twins offered it, it tells me a couple things, this new surgery method is looking pretty good and they are confident in it. 2. They like Paddacks talent. I actually thought his fastball primarily sitting at around 93 was lower than what I was expecting from him in the early spring. Maybe that increases a tad after the surgery. I think the Twins were also able to get a little more consistency to make him a better pitcher in the few starts we saw him than when he was with the Padres. I have a feeling people are going to be pretty happy about that trade at the end of the day.

I will take a different opinion, Correa didn’t save the off-season. This board was going through the bottom dregs only a week ago. The statements were numerous . One signing does not take us to euphoria. What it is and what it does is he following, you have to be able to spend money and have at minimum 2 stars you have on long term contracts to supplement with young players and the proverbial role players. We were able to lock in the star and spend the money on what appears to be a reasonable contract. We still need a lot more things to fall into place and finding a #1 SP is the major piece we are still looking for, No one will know if this was a good contract for at least 3-4 years. I am always one looks more at the long game than letting emotion overcome the current circumstances. At the same token I am generally optimistic and expected from the beginning for Correa to resign with us and as things were going sideways posted my reasoning why I thought the Twins would come out on top with a 6 for 210 mil contract as my base case.

I actually agree that Torri has a shot, at the hall and will be more revered by his peers. To me he was just a tad light on the counting stats. I think if he gets over 2500 hits, slightly more homers, and over 200 steals, he is viewed as basically a shoe in with his defense. If he pushed to 400 home runs he is a 1st ballot hall of famer. I think he should be in, I think compared to his peers he comes in a tad light for the writers.