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August J Gloop

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Everything posted by August J Gloop

  1. August J Gloop
    So let's examine the odds. The average for all balls in play is right around .300. So that means just putting the ball in play is 3/10 to get on base. The whole choke up / make contact approach has a best case of a double, but overwhelmingly favors singles. Is being on first better than striking out? Yes. Is getting to first worth surrendering most extra base opportunities? Seems less clear. There's a lot of run expectancy to study. They struck out in 26% of their at bats. That's rough in isolation. They were 6th in WRC+ and 10th in overall runs. That means their league leading K percentage didn't hurt them THAT much. We know that there were stretches where it was very difficult for them to score. It definitely means that if the K% could come down a little, the runs would definitely go up. I doubt we'll see a complete overhaul of the approach. But that there will bean emphasis on not getting to two strikes and having two approaches with 2 strikes. I'm certain that with nobody on, they will not favor the put it in play approach outside multiple run deficits and bottom of 9th on situations. Then, there probably will be a little more focus on reaching base. Overall, I'm sure their number crunching had concluded that the strikeout is a worthy risk in exchange for the HR/ double.
  2. August J Gloop
    It's probably OK. People need a chance to grow.
  3. August J Gloop
    Rocco does a good job with what actually matters. Making the team believe they can win together. Baseball players are inherently self centered and self motivated. The hard work is getting them to give that up and think of the team as a team. To that end, Rocco is great. He is a person who believes in the whole platoon advantage and how to best put players in spots to succeed. The trouble is that requires players to be comfortable with their weaknesses. That's why he's a good manager. He's not the only good manager the twins could have, but he's a good one.
  4. August J Gloop
    Why not? What is wrong with telling someone who hasn't thrown a single inning in two weeks, nor a successful start in over a month that he's out there to face that brutal lineup once. Let him know he can air it out for a max of 3 innings hopefully 9 batters and get out of there with a 0? How is that a bad plan in that situation? If Sunny hadn't laid the egg the day before it wouldn't have been the plan. They would have been running ahead and said Joe give us a good start, 5-6 please. And then if he'd looked shaky they'd adjust. But they knew it would be a tall order in the tough sitch and set him up to succeed. And in the end the plan basically worked.
  5. August J Gloop
    But did you look at the data? In two innings Joe gave up 4 hard hit balls, including one that hit him on his body. It's very likely that they wanted him to get through 3 innings vs two, but 3 was definitely the plan, and when that third was going to feature Altuve and Bregman, it was time for Joe to go out. I would argue that was a direct result not of some front office machinations or Rocco being under the sway of spreadsheets, but of Joe Ryan hiding an injury and being reasonably ineffective the back half of the year. That lead to him not being fully prepped for a longer start. Even in the start he wobbled through the lineup once. I'm certain the hope was to win the game and ultimately the series and have a shot at building Joe up in later starts. An elimination game is not the time to be like 'go gettim Joe'.
  6. August J Gloop
    Wallner and Larnach are not in the minors because they are inferior fielders to Gallo and Kepler. They are there because ownership is not ready to move on from their contracts / pay them to play for the opposition. There is little chance that right now Larnach would be worse that Kep on either side of the ball. He's faster, younger and actually seems to care. And while I agree that Wallner is behind Gallo and Kep, his arm will make up for a fair bit of his range limitations. And Wallner actually is pretty fast, so eventually his D could be a plus. There really isn't any reason now to have those two continue at AAA while two vets with limited upside struggle with a .500 club. Another possibility would be to DFA Kep and bring up Miranda or Williams and have a platoon at first with Kirilloff. Let Gallo be everyday RF for another month and if he doesn't get it going, replace him with Wallner or Larnach, whoever is still raking at AAA.
  7. August J Gloop
    Kepler is better right now than he was at the end of last year. Would you trade for him now? Of course not. It's just fantasy land stuff to think they really had any offer that wasn't garbage. Gotta stop telling yourself any different. It can and should be argued they should just eat his contract and let him go. Larnach is as good, if not better and is would only add 400K to the total or whatever the prorated rest of the season looks like. Gallo out for Wallner. Might as well see what you got there.
  8. August J Gloop
    The Twins have hit and pitched better than CLE. No reason to change that this weekend.
  9. August J Gloop
    BA is a bad predictive stat for a simple reason: it can't differentiate between the instances that a batter made contact 'worthy' of a hit and when they got a hit because of luck. It does work well in the context of OBP to tell how often the player got on base vs an opponent. Arraez doesn't get many hits due to luck, but he does get hits because of risk avoidance. It would be quite easy to turn Arraez into a .200 hitter by playing the outfield in about 7 steps. But that would be bonkers, because he could burn you any time with a slightly deeper fly that led to extra bases. It wouldn't be worth the risk, since giving up a single to Arraez is not generally that bad with no runners on, due to pretty terrible base running. If the Marlins had two consistent hitters behind him, Arraez would be scoring more. Gallo gets walks because he strikes out. Pitchers are willing to test him, since going in the strike zone 3 times increases the likelihood of a deep fly. But since Gallo's best swing profile results in frequent whiffs, the risk/reward of walking him is OK. It beats the alternative of a computer breaking bomb. My guess what broke Joey in the Bronx was a philosophy change (maybe internal, probably a mix of that a organizational) that valued trying to make more contact. But as he tried to alter his approach, he just made even less contact and of it was also less good contact. The pop up homers in Yankee stadium everyone dreamed of never materialized. And by the time they flipped him to LA, the season was lost for him. I'd rather have Arraez and Gallo and Lopez, but if I had to pick two it would be Gallo and Lopez. I just prefer power and pitching to singles. I wouldn't even start Arraez in a Twins lineup. I'd hold him for a key situation in each game where he could get 1-2 runs with an at bat runner at 3rd, tie game? Arraez time. Bases loaded after the 7th? oops look who it is.
  10. August J Gloop
    It wasn't a bad trade because of the injury. It wasn't a bad trade because of the prospects they gave up. It was a trade you don't make again because Tyler Mahle was like bitcoin, consistently predicted to explode in value but ultimately doomed to crash. The Twins obviously preferred him to Luis Castillo for some reason, since the only meaningful difference in the Castillo trade was an extra not very good minor league pitcher. The funny sidebar to all that is essentially the Reds traded their two best starters for four infield prospects. Noelvi Marte was the headliner for Castillo and his prospect ranking took a tumble, and looks to be the 3rd best overall prospect in the deal now. Anyway, if the Twins had not been locked in on Mahle, they easily could have beat the Mariners to the punch with something for Castillo instead. It's likely that CES and Steer and Hajjar would have been on the move in that deal as well as probably Enlow. It's weird that they prized Mahle so much over the clearly better Castillo. Of course, there is the not zero chance that Sonny Grey played a part in that. Perhaps there was some scouting or other inside info that lead the team to buy into the bump on Mahle rather than the consistently good performance in Castillo's career. In the end, though the prospects surrendered aren't that big of a deal since CES and Steer would likely still be behind Miranda in the Twins depth charts. Hajjar already got dumped by the Reds, so no worries there. It's just too bad Mahle didn't get to play for the Twins in any meaningful way.
  11. August J Gloop
    They have Joey Gallo at first, and Alex Kirilloff waiting to come play there, too. Both of them are good first basemen. Gallo could very likely find himself with some gold if he keeps 80% of his current plate production up. Bux is on a pace for 2.8 WAR as a DH. That includes the terrible slump in NY. Now that he's hot, who knows where that number could get to. Obviously, we want him in CF playing healthy cuz then he's an MVP candidate. But he is functioning well as a DH.
  12. August J Gloop
    Ober just hasn't been that great to kick Kenta to the pen for. Madea piched about as well while hurt in 2021 (106.1 IP, 4.10 FIP, 1.2 WHIP. 9.6 K/9) as Ober has for the duration of his MLB career (149 IP, 3.92 FIP, 1.13 WHIP, 8.8 K/9). It seems like a waste to have him at AAA, definitely. I just don't see how you don't wait til Kenta has had a couple starts under his belt to be sure he's not getting back to normal, first. Hard to hold his last start against him in the 'can't go deep narrative'. In the other two he'd gone 5 and then 6 innings. If he can't go 6 in the next couple, we probably have something to worry about.
  13. August J Gloop
    After last night, they're on a pace to score 693 runs, surrender 486 and win 99 games. Which would be 9 or 10 games under their pythagorean expectation based on the runs. That does track, since they're currently 1 game under the expectation. Safe to say we all know which game it was. I think we can cool it with the 'on a pace' stuff, since single games still play pretty heavily into the pace. Heck, yesterday EJ was a failure. Today his OPS+ is 121, with a pace for 46 homers and 70 singles. Several key contributors have hit way below career averages. It can (and should) be argued that Solano, Gallo, Vazquez and Jeffers have been better than career based expectations. Julien's contributions weren't figured in, so that makes 5 people giving more than you could expect. Maybe Larnach is right around where you might expect. Kepler and Taylor are definitely around where most would think. But Bux, Miranda, Correa and Gordon? Way below. The offense will improve just through regression and some of these reinforcements. The pitching probably will decrease a little because of the same. However, P Lopez and J Ryan have added to their arsenals so improvement is very likely sustainable. The other three have been solid throughout their careers. While I think 99 might a big number, we are looking at what would (if healthy) should be a 90 win team this year.
  14. August J Gloop
    I would assume Julien as he and Gallo are kind of redundant hitters. Eddie has a good idea of what he needs to work on at AAA and go keep the rake on for when they need him again.
  15. August J Gloop
    Good to remember this is the first major injury outage for Polo. It might be a big one that has damaging impacts on his skills, but he has shown great durability until now.
  16. August J Gloop
    I just wanted to check that you seriously were using 4 games to draw a conclusion on a hitter who has shown great promise and is 24 years old. It's good to have a baseline for any conversation.
  17. August J Gloop
    I heart this deal. It keeps the rotation solid. It's cost controlled for next year which won't put them out of the running for a high end free agent pursuit.
  18. August J Gloop
    Turn out like Julien? Assuming you're not trolling, how do you mean? To say they're surely going to fail is no different than being sure they're going to go great. There's no doubt that the prognosis for AK is bad. I can't imagine anyone is actually counting on him ever contributing again until he's had a few months of health after these terrible surgeries. Polo has had one season since his suspension where his OPS+ has been below 110. If he's healthy, there will be good offense there. Lewis has done nothing to suggest he isn't going to be a valuable player. Aaron Hicks had 4 straight really good seasons with the Yanks, and now injuries are getting him. Even Rooker is raking in Oakland right now.
  19. August J Gloop
    I would peg the chance of Brooks Lee appearing in MLB before September somewhere between 'fat' and 'zero'. He probably won't hang around AA much past May if he keeps up his current pace, but will need to work on 3B & 2B and rake at St Paul to get up to Target Field. He's clearly a talent and will be making the team start to consider plans. Of course a Correa injury changes the calculus, but let's not think about that. If we see him at St Paul taking reps all over the diamond, then we can start getting excited. an INF of Lee (2B), Correa, Lewis (3B, let's watch that ACL on DP turns) and Miranda (1B) seems like a real offensive boon and good defensively as well. Although, this year, I'd probably vote for Miranda staying at 3B, Gallo at 1B and Polo at 2B. Bux in CF, Lewis in LF and Larnach in RF. It's cool to have so many options. I probably will have changed my mind by the time I hit submit.
  20. August J Gloop
    Graterol has more impressive stuff, but Maeda has been as good a pitcher since the trade, apart from the whole injury thing. Even this year, they're taking different routes to the same place. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/kenta-maeda-628317?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/brusdar-graterol-660813?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb
  21. August J Gloop
    Did you buy the BSN stream directly or did you authenticate with your other service creds? The second way has no blackouts, the first as far as anyone knows can't carry the Twins games live. Considering how well run BSN is, it isn't beyond comprehension that they got the twins to agree and just didn't make a thing out of it or are just violating the agreement anyway.
  22. August J Gloop
    Kenta has thrown 9.2 innings, Ober 6. It is 100% ridiculous to draw any conclusions on either from that data. Both are coming back from injury damaged seasons. Both will need time off this year to be as healthy as possible for the hopefully long playoff run. And no, the Twins didn't get hosed in the Maeda trade. He and Graterol have provided roughly the same number of good innings for their teams since. All that being said, I do think the Twins will want Maeda as a relief ace toward the end of the summer, but because he's actually been good at it. And it would be a smart move for him for the end of his career.
  23. August J Gloop
    I have my doubts this dude will ever throw a pitch for the big club. I don't think his standing is too high or anything, I just get the bad luck vibe from him and his situation. This is the sort of vibe I hope I'm totally wrong about. He also reminds me of the jock character in a high school drama who antagonizes the lead until the third act reversal and becomes the best friend in the sequel.
  24. August J Gloop
    They already have a good bullpen. Adding now is at the cost of existing players. I know, I know Pagan singlehandedly cost us the division. (I'm only kind of exaggerating.) They probably shouldn't have kept him, but the staff sees something there to build on (Great strikeout rates, an improving groundball rate). But he's legitimately the worst pitcher currently expected to be in the 'Pen. With the Sanchez signing, they have 9 AAA starters in the fold. There's no way that they're not thinking about Sands, Winder, Varland as possible + relievers for this year. Varland could be a high 90s 1 inning dude and have a great season. Sands and Winder could easily pitch in the mid 90s as well in relief roles. Headrick could be a strikeout machine ALA Johan's first couple seasons out of the pen.
  25. August J Gloop
    There aren't any current 40-man spots for relievers. Considering the number of decent options still on the market, they're just waiting until they can 60-day Lewis and Paddack. If they then like where the price sits for Moore or Chafin, they'll get to signing. Ken Giles might be good choice vs Fulmer. He's apparently healthy now. We'll see.
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