LyleCole

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.

This is a back of the roster type of trade that 10 years from now few people will remember. I would have preferred the Twins locking in a higher quality CF given Buxton's injury history (it is very sad that we have to almost assume Buxton missing significant number of games every season). I think this puts a lot of pressure on the roster for Willi Castro to duplicate his 2023 106 OPS+ season, a huge ask for a 87 OPS+ player before the 2023 season. I share the same sentiment that many have expressed: just give this roster spot to Austin Martin and see what he can do. Can he duplicate his OBP rate from the minor leagues? If he can he could be a valuable player for the Twins at a fraction of the cost and I would rather he prove it at the major league level at this stage in his career than in the minors. But I think this trade answers what the Twins management feels about Martin at least for the 2024 season. One thing for sure, it would be nice to finally see Byron Buxton and Royce Lewis have a full season in the league and a full season together. This team can be a contender if the brief glimpses we have seen of those two potential MVP players can ever be put on the field for the majority of the season. We could have two guys with OPS+ > 150 and several supporting players like Julien and Wallner above 120.

There is a big red flag in the rankings in my opinion, at least with pitching prospects. There are essentially 3 groups of pitchers in your top 20 rankings and they all have the same problem. They simply are not pitching at the volume of a MLB starting pitcher. I know this was brought up in some of the profiles, but Marco Raya averaged 2.85 innings/start in 22 starts in 2023. David Festa averaged 4.18 innings/start. And those are the elite pitching prospects of the organization. The middle group, a collection of mid-round college pitchers did not pitch many more innings/start with Cory Lewis averaging 4.60 innings/start, CJ Culpepper 4.10 innings/start and Zebby Matthews 4.77. These pitchers are barely getting through 2 times through the order so the limited usage is essentially inflating (or for pitchers I guess deflating) their statistical performance. Then there is the third group of top-20 prospects: Canterino and Prielipp, two highly touted college pitchers with amazing stuff that never appears on the mound. Canterino was drafted in 2019 and has pitched 85 total professional innings or 17 innings per year. Prielips has pitched a total of 34.2 innings in NCAA and professional baseball since 2020, 8.7 innings per year. I get why they are ranked. I want them to do well just that the odds of success are so limited based on this start to their careers. The other pitchers on the list are Charlie Soto, highly ranked because of his draft position and age before he has even debut in professional baseball and Woods-Richardson, a pitcher that is probably going the other way on prospect lists, a guy who was a young phenom but just never got over the hump to make it for extended time in the majors. What this list tells me is that the Twins are going to have to continue the trend of trading positional prospects for starting pitching if they want to continue to compete and hope that they can have a bit of luck. The other point I would make is that if you look at last year's starting rotation all of the pitchers that had minor league experience (Lopez, Gray, Ryan, Ober) all averaged more than 5 innings per minor league start. I get the concern over injuries, but arm injuries happen. We have had a lot of them in the system despite being very cautious.

I was at the Ft Myers game last night. I hadn't been to a Miracles game (the MIghty Mussels name is lame so I havent converted yet) in a while. The game was absolutely boring for the most part. The reason is that all of the pitchers from Ft Myers and the opponents were junk ball throwers, throwing under 90 mph, and they could not throw strikes. The only player for Ft Myers that played in this game that had any real upward potential is Twins 2023 2nd round draft pick Luke Keaschall. He was just 1-4 with a walk and a K, but he hit the ball pretty hard and was robbed of a hit to lead off the game. He is a very active player with a noisy approach to the plate that I think the Twins need to work on a bit. He was all over the field and I made the mental note that he had to be the hyperactive kid whose mother could not wait for baseball season to start to give him something to use his energy on. 2023 6th round pick Jay Harry played 3rd base. HE seems like the typical mid-round middle college middle infielder draft pick. He hit the ball hard a couple of times but what will make him or break him was tonight he only had warning track power. HE seemed like a solid player who handled his chances in the field but will not be a strong enough hitter to have a chance at a big league career. The most impressive player in the game was the Pirates 2023 13th round draft pick out of San Jose St, Charles McAdoo. After FM starting pitcher Jose OLivares started the game with his slider dead on, striking out the side which included the Pirates 2023 2nd round pick, their 2019 comp-B pick Lonnie White (he was the Beer Batter whose two strikeouts yielded 30 cumulative minutes of $2 Coors Beer), and their 2023 3rd round pick, McAdoo stepped up to the plate and hammered the first pitch of the 2nd inning over the center field fence about 1/3 of the way up the big green fence they have to create better visibility for the hitters. He wasn't done. IN the third inning he hammered another home run just to the left of his original. What was most impressive about McAdoo was how he adjusted to the pitchers. When the Miracle brought in Samuel Perez, a small pitcher who literally threw every pitch under 84mph, with most of his pitches being 76 mph curve balls, it took a couple of strikes to adjust. Then he hammered another base hit. Overall, McAdoo was 6 for 6, with 8 RBIS and 4 runs. Every one of those 6 hits was absolutely scorched. The FM pitchers would see him on the on deck circle, and still walk the hitters in front of him. McAdoo has started his professional baseball career 11 for 16, with a double and 2 home runs, plus 3 walks vs. 1 K. He is hitting .688 with a .737 OBP. His OPS is 1.862.

Trading for a relief pitcher gives me the shivers. The fact is, the Twins have been much better SELLERS at the trade deadline than BUYERS. Last year's trade deadline moves will probably be a net loss for the team and previous history essentially demonstrates the same. Looking at just relievers at the deadline, we can go back to 2010 and the (in)famous Matt Capps trade. While I think there is some tendency to overvalue Wilson Ramos, the catching prospect we gave up for Capps, he had a long MLB baseball career with the Nationals and other teams, putting up 9 solid years with a career OPS+ of 102. Capps actually pitched reasonably well in helping the Twins into the playoffs, posting a 2.20 ERA and 16 saves in 27 appearances in the "rental year". But he was much less effective in the two follow on seasons for the Twins. The Twins repeated the closer deadline trade in 2015, trading Chih-Wei Hu to the Rays for veteran closer Kevin Jepsen. Jepsen actually pitched reasonably well (statistically) in his rental season, posting a excellent 1.61 ERA, and 10 saves in 17 appearances. The Molitor 2015 season was the last effective year of Glen Perkins, but Jepsen couldn't get anyone out the next season so the only thing that made this trade a non-negative is the prospects we gave up for Jepsen did not pan out. The Twins made a pair of reliever acquisitions in the 2019 BOMBA season, getting Sergio Romo from the Marlins and Sam Dyson from the Giants. Dyson was almost immediately sidelined with arm problems (similar to the trade for Mahle last season) and just was not effective, with an ineffectiveness that led to 2019 being Sam's final season in the major leagues. Romo was just a marginal MLB reliever in his tenure with the Twins. He posted near his career average ERA in 2019, 3.18 and that jumped to 4.05 in 20 appearances in 2020. By then he was a 38 year old player who was just a low end player his final two season in the major leagues. Again, the only thing that made these two trades not be a loss is that Davis and Lewin Diaz, the primary prospects we traded away never established themselves as major league hitters. I think these trends, along with the 2022 trade deadline moves raises two questions: 1. Is the Twins staff doing a proper due diligence approach to the health (including mental!) of the pitchers they are acquiring? 2. Is there something to the surface level trend of the reliever we acquire being somewhat effective right away, but then having that effectiveness drop off when the next season starts? Josh Hader is in the final year of his contract and is being paid $14 million. Any team evaluating a trade for Hader is acquiring him as a short term rental. The key to the trade is the value you need to surrender. Would the Twins give up Tanner Schobel and David Festa? Would that be enough to get the deal done? I probably would do that trade. But that would be the upper bound of the deal.

I did some analysis over the past 15 years of Twins draft choices that received outsized signing bonus over the past 15 years. 2008 BJ Hermsen 6th round $650,000 2008 Michael Tonkin 30th round $270,000 2009 Steve Liddle 15th $200,000 2010 Dallas Gallant 23rd round $122,500 2010 Kelly Cross 26th round $100,000 2011 Austin Malinowski 16th round $175,000 2011 Trent Higginbotham 26th round $195,000 2012 Zack Larson 20th round $190,000 2018 Laron Smith 25th round $125,000 2019 Edouard Julien 18th round $493,000 Only 2 of those players ever reached the major league level: Michael Tonkin (who is back in the majors with Atlanta after several years of exile) and Julien of course. The success rate of major league draft picks is marginal at best and most of this money allocated to signing these mostly high school players seems to be money down the drain. The Twins could perhaps adjust their draft strategy to target the higher ranked college bound high school players, The top undrafted player on MLB.com draft prospects was Roch Cholowsky, ranked 44th with a UCLA commitment. Do you utilize a pick of one of the college pitchers they drafted in the 15th - 18th rounds and take a shot at him or a similar prospect? The Twins went far above draft slot to sign 3rd round pick Brandon Winokur ($1.5 million bonus vs. $859,700 slot value) and a bit over slot to sign Dylan Questad. So they already have significant bonus pool money committed to these two signings. However, I question the new trend to give out 6 figure signing bonuses to the college players they drafted in the later rounds, including a couple of draft picks who were college seniors like 17th round pick Kade Bragg. Nothing against Kade, but he was a college senior that really had limited leverage in his signing. In the end, the data suggests that these flyers are probably big wastes of money. The utilization of this money, especially if it is over pool and taxed at 75% is something an organization should do seldom, if at all.