LyleCole

I think the situation is a bit more complicated than this. 1. What do we really know about the players that were truly available at the deadline and the demands those teams were asking for them? We are making assumptions about the market and the Twins entry into that market. I think we were in a position that we had a lot of minor league players on the "untouchable" list (Jenkins, Keaschall, Lee) and probably overvalued other players like Festa and Varland to make any deals. 2. I think the Pohlads have been a notoriously cheap organization. We made the playoffs in the Mauer-Mourneau era, but that was usually because we won the least competitive division in MLB. But, I think another $10-15 million invested in those teams, relatively small dollars especially once we moved into Target Stadium, would have made the team true contenders. 3. Minnesota is a cheapskate sports state to begin with. Our owners have always hidden behind the "small market" claims, but in reality the entire state is essentially anti-sport. Our local advertising revenues are amongst the lowest in professional sports. One way I always demosntrate this is that Minnesota is by far the largest state that has only one D1 football program and one D1 basketball program. Iowa, a state with HALF the population has two D1 football teams and a DQ FCS football team, and three D1 basketball programs. Alabama, a state of comparable size has six D1 FBS football programs, 4 D1 FCS football programs, and ten D1 basketball programs. We still have not failed to make the playoffs, but it is rare that a late season addition really changes things around. And sometimes, even successful deadline trades look bad in the long run. In 1987, the Tigers made a deadline trade for a starting pitcher named Doyle Alexander. Alexander went 9-0 down the stretch with a 1.53 ERA helping the Tigers win their division by 2 games. But he went 0-2 against the Twins with a 10.00 ERA, and in the next two years with the Tigers he was a 88 ERA+ pitcher. The pitcher the Tigers gave up was a 20 year old 1985 22nd draft pick that had a 5.73 ERA in 1987. John Smoltz. More than the trade deadline, I think we just did not get enough pitching depth to start the season because of the payroll limitations. It also hurt that Duran was out and wasn't 100% effective. Girffin Jax and COle Sands were good. Alaca was decent. They lack a leftie in the bullpen and they cannot assume that some of these 32+ year old arms are going to be effective. Make a point to get a solid arm in the pen next season, then if Brock Stewart or some other player bounces back they will have great depth. But the Twins will most likely instead RELY on Brock Stewart to bounce back.

End of the minor league season, and one of the sad parts about that is considering the futures of some of the players in the system. At the lower end of the minors, they always have another step up to look forward to, but when you reach AAA level, for many players there is no more upward mobility. Looking at the Saints players by age: 24 years old Patric WInkel, Yunior Severino, Payton Ecles, Jair Camargo, Travis Adams, Christian MacLeod 25 years old Alex Isola, Maddux Houghton 26 years old Anthony Prato, Carson McCusker, Will Holland, Brent Headrick 27 year old Chris WIlliams, DaShawn Keirsey, Michael Helmon, Josh Winder To reach that level of baseball, you were almost always the best or amongst the best players on your team: little league, Babe Ruth, high school, VFW, college, even professional baseball. But that next step is a difficult one. I expect a few of these names to move organizations for new opportunities, and a few might have more AAA level time to play out. I simply wish them all the best.

Short term trends in baseball are essentially meaningless.

LOL. There is a strong tendency for players to revert to the mean. Christian Vazquez has been in the major leagues for 10 years. He has hit over 280 in 2 of those seasons (2017, 2020). He is a career 255 hitter with a lifetime 303 OBP. Moving him to the leadoff hitter based on this small in season sample would be foolish. But then, they led off a guy with a 294 OBP today.

Only a satirist would propose a hitter with a .257 OBP for the season and .303 for his career as the leadoff hitter. As Bill James, the father of all of the modern analytics demonstrated, the critical thing to scoring runs is to get runners on base, particularly the person who leads off the inning. THe best OBP players should be the leadoff hitter and the clean up hitter. The concept of having your best hitter bat 3rd I think is wrong even though most managers do it. James thought it should actually be the power hitter in the lineup that has a lot of strikeouts batting before your best hitter in the cleanup spot, That could generate a lot more good pitches to hit because they would not want to put runners on ahead of your best hitter. Also, your worst hitter should hit 8th, rather than 9th. The 9th hitter should be in position to set up the top of the order if they reach base. I think if I was doing a lineup for the Twins it would be Correa-MIranda-Buxton-Lewis-Wallner-Jeffers-Kepler-Larnach-Castro

One suggestion I would have for the Twins is Trevor Bauer. He is pitching in Mexico and seems to still have his stuff from video I have seen and the statistics, including a 19 strikeout game. I don't know what his contract situation is in Mexico, but bring him in on a AAA contract.

1. Emmanuel Rodriguez I have him ahead of Jenkins because of proven performance. A career .940 OPS who mixes hit, power, and speed. 2. Walker Jenkins #5 overall pick in a stacked draft, he could have more power upside than Rodriquez with a solid projected floor for a 19 year old. 3. Luke Keaschall This guy has professional hitter written all over him. Might be a bit aggressively ranked because I don't think all of the power will follow him to the MLB level, but the OBP should. 4. Kaelen Culpepper Most recent first round pick. This ranking is assuming he shows he can stay at SS, eliminates his chase, and shows he has a bit more power than anticipated. 5. Brandon Winokur Another 19 year old who is holding his own in professional baseball. Probably more slated for corner OF than SS he is playing, but he has the potential to leverage his great size to be a solid hitter. 6. Charlee Soto Going from young to younger. The 2023 draft is well represented on this list. Soto has the raw stuff to be an ace, but at just 18 years old there is still a lot of development. 7. Zebby Matthews One of the college group of 2022 draft college arms (Matthews 8th, Connor Prielepp 2nd Morris 4th, Kyle Jones 7th, Cory Lewis 9th, CJ Culpepper 13th). Matthews has improved his velocity and in the early break from the gate is in the lead. 8. Marco Raya Based on age and stuff, ranks here and ahead of Festa and other pitchers. Aggressively pushed to AA at age 20 he seems to have hit a bit of a wall there. While he is holding his K/9 level his BB/9 almost doubles at the AA level. Plus, while they have been uncharacteristic aggressive in promoting Raya, they are incredibly conservative in usage. Raya has averages only 3 innings per start in his career and has pitcher only 154 innings to date. 9. Andrew Morris In the horse race to the big leagues, Morris is stride for stride with Zebby Matthews and there is no guarantee which will reach the big leagues first (and there are still dark horses in that race if they can get back healthy). 10. David Festa Solid stuff, but it appears to me that the results do not match the potential.

It also has other features that make it unlike all of the other drafts that make the selections somewhat strange. MLB draft is the only professional draft in which trading draft picks (with the exception of the limited trades they allowed in recent years) isn't allowed. MLB draft is also the only draft that selects high school age players without any draft right follow on. And, it is the only draft in which there is an explicit draft pool so it isn't just the signability of the player it is fitting that signing into the cumulative draft pool. I personally believe that the draft rules should be constructed so that the best players are selected first. I would allow teams to trade draft picks just like all of the other professional sports. That means if a team has a potential problem with signing a draft pick (especially at the top of the draft) they can trade the pick and get extra compensation rather than being forced to select another player. I would return to the draft and follow rules so a team can sign a player they drafted up to the next draft at a minimum. I would consider allowing a team that drafts a high school player to retain the draft rights of that pick until the next draft cycle that player is eligible (junior year if player goes to college).

Perhaps. But it isn't necessarily worrying it is questioning the draft strategy.

Again, you can only play one 3B per game, and these guys are limited defensively to 3B, 1B and then DH. IF they all are great picks, then great. But that is not likely and I would much, much , much prefer that we develop 3 MLB starting level players at 3 different positions than 3 of the same.....

If Lee and Lewis are gone in 3-4 years, I have no interest in being a fan of this team. And while it is "great" to have multiple MLB starting caliber prospects for a position, it actually creates difficulties in developing them and maximizing the value of the prospect.

The problem is they have to play somewhere. From what I have Culpepper might have plus fielding potential as a 3B, but the other two are more limited on the defensive spectrum. There is the additional problem that somewhere these prospects bump up against players like Brooks Lee, Royce Lewis and even Jose Miranda.

What I don't understand is selecting three college infielders with consecutive picks that are all kind of 3B types. I am sure they have their own projection plans that they know better such as converting a player like Amick to corner OF or even 1B. I don't think that baseball drafts should be based on "needs", but I think they have a slew of college pitchers like Zebby Matthews and Andrew Morris in the AA and A+ levels to want to use any of their top 69 on that "demographic" (a new term I dislike). On the other hand, the Twins system really lacks younger pitching talent outside of Soto and Raya so I like the pick of Dasan Hill and I would look to finding some other HS pitchers in the next couple of rounds and concentrate my bonus pool on them to get them to sign.

I would go with Mike Sirota, OF Northeastern with next pick.

I am sure there are more college SS/3B left to draft......

Billy Amick is a Twins type of pick.

Debarge's slugging percentage with wooden bat in Cap Cod summer was .297. Don't get the selection.

They might have an underslot deal with Culpepper and then target one of the LSU players committed players with the comp pick at 33.

Watching Andrew Morris on the mound reminds me 100% of Jack Morris.

I remember being at a Ft Myers game and seeing Ernie De La Trinidad in the on deck circle. They listed him at 5-9, but he wasn't even close to that height. It is amazing he could play minor league baseball with his size but he had no power whatsoever.

Pretty much what I was thinking. Maybe my definition of "pipeline" is a bit different. To me that refers to a process were the team drafts and develops players for their major league roster. I thought that is the standard definition, but it certainly isn't in the Twins case. If you look at the Twins pitching staff just 4 of them were drafted and developed by the Twins: Bailey Ober, Griffin Jax, Cole Sands, and Kody Funderburk. Of those four, I would argue only two (Ober and Jax) have truly established themselves in their roles. Sands and Funderburke are fringe level relievers, although Sands has had reasonable effectiveness as a converted starter this season. The strength of this team has not been drafting and developing pitching prospects, although I would argue that since their first draft (the Royce Lewis Draft) they havent really emphasized developing pitching at the top of the draft. Since the 2017 draft, outside of Centorino and Prielipps who both have major injuries and Charlie Soto (2023 draft pick), they have traded every other pitching draft choice selected in the first 3 rounds (all in 2021 Chase Petty, Steve Jaijar, Cade Povich). Top of the draft pitching isn't a priority and they appear to see these choices as trade assets rather than pipeline development. The strength of this front office era has been making trades that brought in quality veterans and selecting very good hitters (although a weakness in this organization might be its training staff who cannot keep their star players on the damn field). IF we ever get a full season of a healthy Byron Buxton and Royce Lewis it will be a miracle.

Is there something to this organization or is it just plain bad luck? Before the season started it looked like finally the time had come when we would have Byron Buxton and Royce Lewis in the lineup at the same time... with Brooks Lee and Walter Jenkins in the minor league pipeline, and other quality players surrounding them LIKE Matt Wallner and Carlos Correa. Lewis goes down 2abs into the season. Correa goes down with injury. Lee goes down with injury. Jenkins goes down with injury. Buxton, Wallner, and several of the other players start the season off with major slumps. Kepler goes down too. Looking at players in the current order with more than 25 at bats on the season, we have two hitters, Jeffers and Kirilloff with batting averages over .250. We have 8 with .206 or lower batting averages (Sanatana .135, Julien .200 Castro .119 Buxton .200 Wallner .080 Farmer .071 Vasquez .115 Margot .206). (Kepler has a .050 average on the DL). If the player isn't hurt, he is slumping with the exceptions of Jeffers and Kirilloff. Not a good start. Does this team lack in preparation during the spring training to make these hitters break out so slow? Does our training staff throughout the organization lack skills to keep our players healthy? The injury issues with our prospects has been a long term problem for the organization. I assume it is just bad luck. And while it is still early, the Twins next game will be 10% of the season. The hole isn't fully dug, but it is being dug deeper each game. Hopefully with the weather warming up the bats will turn around and they will get healthy. In some ways they are lucky to be 6-9 with the start they have had.

I think a small handful of players improve as the quality of pitching improves, at least in the OBP statistic. Prato's best season as a professional baseball player was last season in AAA. His 990 OPS was 160 points higher than any season on his way up the minor league ladder. He was a sub-.750 OPS guy in the lowest minor leagues. Then jumped when he hit A+ through AAA, essentially improving every year. But then his career shows other flukes too. Like his .553 OPS to start the 2023 year in AA after his successful 87 game debut in AA in 2022 were he had a .822 OPS. It is pure speculation, but I think that small handful improves because as the pitching quality improves, a ball is a ball and a strike a strike (in most cases), while at the lower levels it there is more error to the calls.

Which one of the Twins left handed options do you think present a defensive upgrade to a hypothetical right handed hitting platoon option? There is a reason why the Twins did what they did last year.

And all of that is true, but then, what are the right handed hitting outfield alternatives? In 2023 they had the following right handed hitters on the roster; Michael Taylor, Byron Buxton, Jordan Lupelow, and Kyle Garlick. They even played Kyle Farmer in the OF for a handful of games. Obviouosly if healthy Buxton would be the main right handed hitter but he was unavailable in 2023. It is assumed the entire reason to trade for Manuel Margot is that he is a right handed hitter that can reasonably backup Buxton in CF. He has a solid platoon split with a .760 OPS against LHP vs. .664 vs RHP, but since he hits from same side as Buxton would only work as a platoon partner for Wallner or Kepler. One thing I think the Twins should try this spring training and then to start the minor league season is putting Jose Miranda in RF. Of course, in 731 career professional baseball games he has played the OF exactly 3 games so it might be a defensive stretch. He is a big guy, but reasonably athletic once he gets moving. Adding some corner outfield and being a right handed hitter might give him the value he needs to make the major league roster in the future.