singlesoverwalks

I want to add that the AL Central currently edges the NL West for the division with the fanciest shortstops. Correa, Tim Anderson, and Javy Báez beat Cory Seager and Tatís Jr. If Trevor Story signs with the Giants then we can debate it, but right now it's hands-down.

Correa >>> Simmons Gray < Berríos Urshela << Donaldson Jeffers < Garver Bundy = Pineda (hopefully?) Sánchez < Cruz Buxton could be healthier, veterans could have career years, young players could improve. There is reason for optimism. But the off-season still looks like a wash at best if there isn't more coming, especially given how bad the pitching already was.

LOST Garver (#1 C) Donaldson (3B) Rortvedt (#3 C) GAINED Sánchez (now the #2 C) Urshela (new 3B) $50 million in 2022-2023 budget OUTSTANDING NEEDS SS Pitching would be nice Adds up to a free agent shortstop signing coming.

I have figured out the Twins' strategy on pitching. (Clears throat.) Never spend big money on pitching. Small money on multi-year contracts is good. They'll do that (Maeda, Dobnak). They'll do medium-big one-year money (qualifying offer to Jake Odorizzi). But if you won't sign José Berríos at what he was willing to sign for, you simply will never sign any big-money pitcher to a multi-year deal. So, from this list, I would predict the Twins sign Michael Pineda.

My personal hobby horse is that the Twins' problem isn't that they don't draft good players. It's that they don't usually do a good job developing the players they do draft. Too many players get better after they leave the Twins.

Elite levels of rueful laughter.

This is not at all meant as a disparaging comment: I think managing his weight better would help him. He has performed best when his weight has been lowest. I think he goes home in the off season, eats too much home cooking and maybe has too many beers with his Dominican League buddies, and loses his edge. His agent should hire the man a personal chef and personal trainer in the Dominican Republic if necessary.

Trade Cruz and any other one-year veterans you can unload for some blazing minor league arms, sign some free agents, cross your fingers and hope the pieces fall into place (like Ober, Maeda, and Dobby get better, some current prospects work out, etc.). It has worked before. The best strategy in MLB, if you're not going to have a $200 million payroll, is often to be good enough to have a chance at contending.

I guess it feels like trading Berrios for minor-league pitchers is almost certainly giving up on 2022. It seems really unlikely that you would get starting pitching that would be better than Berrios would be in 2022. Once in a while you'll get a John Smoltz or Dwight Gooden who is an ace starting pitcher as a rookie, but it's really rare. Here are the only rookie pitchers who are better than Berrios in terms of Fangraphs WAR this year: Trevor Rogers (MIA) at 2.8 WAR, Ian Anderson (ATL) at 1.9 WAR. Berrios is at 1.8 WAR. In the last full season, 2019, there was no rookie starting pitcher who equaled Berrios's 4.3 WAR. So, it's possible to improve, but you would have to make a really good trade and probably get lucky. The most likely way you end up with a better pitcher than the 2022 Berrios is if Berrios gets injured, which is certainly possible, but then it's just as likely that the rookie replacement gets injured. If we don't need hitters for 2022 (I'm skeptical about that, but maybe it's true), then I might hold Berrios rather than trading. Maybe we can trade Nelson Cruz and Michael Pineda for some good 2022 arms (probably bullpen arms - it think it's more common to find rookies who can handle relief roles), put them together with Berrios and some free agents (not that 2021 has given us much reason to believe in our ability to find pitching via free agency), and have enough pitching to contend in 2022. Or, maybe we need to give up on 2022 and trade Berrios for a vanload of great low minors pitching prospects.

We're certainly going to need a DH, because Cruz will be traded. Sanó might be that DH, but boy, I dunno. Larnach could be the DH, but then we do have an opening in the outfield.

You don't have to get only low minors prospects for a top-30 starting pitcher. The Twins' model for a Berríos trade should be the Cleveland trade of Trevor Bauer (boooo) for Franmil Reyes + other prospects last year. Reyes was already in the majors with San Diego and performing well at the time, and he still has plenty of years left until arbitration.

And then Pat Reusse will pen an editorial about how an old-school ballplayer would have played the night after the asteroid strike.

Could anyone explain to me why Sanó wasn't used as a pinch hitter in this game? Ideally while it was still tied?

The trade hasn't worked out, but it was understandable, given the depth the Twins seemed to have at outfield, and their need for pitching. Trying to slip Anderson through waivers instead of Shoemaker was stupid. And it was the level of stupid that makes you think the front office is either on drugs or incapable of admitting they've made a mistake. I hope it's the drugs, but seems more likely that they want so strongly to believe in their own genius that they've invested themselves in Shoemaker's future value, which everyone who is not them can see is below-gum-wrapper-on-the-sidewalk level.

Agreed. If I were Jose Berrios, I would expect more than the talented but oft-injured McCullers - and I think the market would concur.

This could very well go down in history as an idiotic comment, and I think the world of Jose Berrios. But I think given the Twins' constraints, he's probably worth more as trade bait than as a free agent on that kind of money. If we had three other good starting pitchers and we were in contention this year, I would think it was worth it. But (constraint 1) the Twins need multiple good start pitchers, and (constraint 2) they're not a high-spending team (though the Pohlads could probably afford more). Almost every starting pitcher signed to a long-term contract breaks down with injuries at some point during the contract, too; Berrios seems much more durable and fit than most, but it would be silly to bet that he'll buck the trend. Berrios would fetch a king's ransom in prospects. He's exactly the right age, not owed much money, has exciting stuff, and has no significant injury history. There is always a market for starting pitching because every prospective playoff team needs 4 of them. If the front office is any good, they could really cash in - it could be a foundational trade for a run of good years. And as I've said elsewhere (when advocating trading Buxton), if you do it right, you don't have to "rebuild." Their goal should be to pull off a trade like Cleveland's trade of Trevor Bauer for Franmil Reyes and prospects last year. Cleveland just shifted gears and kept winning.

I would add that trading a marquee player doesn't necessarily doom you to losing seasons. Last year, Cleveland gave up Trevor Bauer in a three-team trade and managed to get a very good, young, controllable bat in Franmil Reyes plus other prospects. If you are good at your job--and I'm not saying our GMs are after this season--but if you are good you can avoid the full rebuild.

Atlanta needs outfielders aside from Acuña, and Byron is from Georgia (I say this while crying with a determined expression on my face).

Sometimes you have to rewrite your blog post a little more extensively than this.

I don't really get why Jake Cave has to be on the team.

That's a 19th century poetry reference, you philistines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron

For the record - and I can't take credit for this - his nickname should be Lord Byron.

Let's say you have a couple of players you really value long-term (Rooker and Kiriloff) and a couple of players who seem like decent wildcards (Astudillo and Garlick). The long-term guys look a little less ready than the wildcard guys. And you need ready players in the lineup every day, because you're a contending team. That means if you call up the long-term guys, and they fail, you can't bench them, so you have to send them down, which means you've burned one of their options. And their options are much more valuable than the options on the wildcard guys that you will burn when you probably, eventually, move on from the wildcard guys. Guard the valuable options, gamble with the less valuable options. Good roster management.

I still love Willians Astudillo, but I just want to point out that he has an 826 career OPS in spring training, and 747 career OPS in the regular season at the MLB level. His spring chicken promise is yet to be fulfilled. That being said, I'm glad he made the team.

His arm looks better than Greg Gagne's, and that's saying a lot. If his range is still there post-injury, it's definitely better than Gagne's. That would make him the best Twins shortstop in my memory.