HeresWaldo

I really don't know what to think of Taj. Models like Pitching+ aren't super impressed with him because the command is so bad and he doesn't really tunnel well, but if teams are going to repeatedly swing at cutters in the dirt like the Guardians were earlier this week maybe it doesn't matter. I'm inclined to think he's going to regress when teams force him into the zone, but it keeps not happening, so who knows. For what it's worth I threw together a quick graphic that compares the two and there's a real argument Jax is better, although as a big fan of stuff I do have a soft spot for Bradley. I'd probably take Bradley of the two, but it's a lot closer than I think a lot of people are making it sound in this comment section. It's also worth noting this graphic uses full season numbers so it includes Jax's brutal start as a reliever. If you filter to just his starts he absolutely dominates in this comparison.

To be honest my takeaway from reading through these trades is that the Twins should keep Ryan. The Brewers have a much better trading and development track record than we do, and even with that being the case a lot of these returns were just okay. In exchange for four All Stars they got a solid regular, a reliever, a couple interesting but unproven starters with big question marks, and a few okay prospects. And that's the return received by a team that's great at this. I get that this is a depth sport and they've increased the quality of their depth which has some value, but there are Willi Castro and Kody Clemens types available on the waiver wire and cheap part of the free agent market every single year. I mean no offense to either of those guys because they were both really good with us, but if you're giving up stars you need to get more than these guys in return. Smart teams don't give up stars to get quality depth, they find or develop it cheaply.

Fun fact: Varland would be the Twins most valuable pitcher if he were still on the roster. He's ahead of both Joe Ryan and Taj Bradley in bWAR this season.

Martin is a perfectly usable bench piece and I have no problem with them having given him a shot at a bigger role when there weren't better options available and he was playing well, but I don't think his decline is at all surprising. March/April OPS was .899 but his BABIP .373 and his ISO was only .109. An .899 OPS driven by lucky singles and hustle doubles was never going to be sustainable, so the fact he fell off isn't at all surprising. I still like him as a platoon bench bat / utility player / pinch runner, but it's not surprising he didn't work out as a regular given this offensive profile and limited defensive value outside corner outfield spots. I suspect this is probably where Keashall ends up as well for much the same reasons, although hopefully he can offer a bit more value in right/right matchups.

He doesn't have the power required to be a good regular out there. I'm entirely willing to believe he can be a useful utility guy/platoon bat and I don't think people should be giving up on him, but I don't think he's a regular. Maybe he'll hit .300 and prove me wrong, but I doubt it. In a lot of ways I like Keashall and think the Twins should put more emphasis on fairly fast athletes like him when building their bench, but if he can't hit for power and can't play good defense at a premium position there's a pretty low ceiling in modern baseball.

100%, but on some level isn't that the same thing? Half the cheap "rebuilding" teams in baseball aren't going anywhere and with some truth serum would admit they know it. Sucks that we're one of them, but the rebuilding syntax isn't new. Sorry if this comes across as overly negative. Again, I liked your piece and I love this team and want to see it win. I'm just past the point of believing in any part of this org not named Byron Buxton. Im open to liking more players and believing in the front office that assembles the group, but this FO isn't doing it.

They traded away the largest contract in team history.

Two things on this: 1) This is a well written piece, but I feel like the headline says it all. These were just stories. A bunch of these guys might end up having decent years but the Twins fielded zero breakout candidates on their ML roster, and outside of Minnesota none of this regression is a surprise. So yeah, it sucks, but also it's not unexpected. 2) The lack of more convincing positives to focus on seems to be a conscious choice made by this front office. Fair to say a majority of blame rests on cheap ownership, but this front office has seemingly gone out of its way to limit this team's upside. There were players they could financially afford on the trade market and they didn't trade for them. Fine, they like their prospects and they didn't want to give them up. But then they didn't call up the prospects, and that's entirely on them. Even as I type this we're watching crap shortstop play while a prospect just sits around waiting for a shot. To me this dates back to at least the 2024 trade deadline when they didn't acquire pitching because Luke Keashall *had* to be treated as off-limits. And I like Keashall fine, but if you refuse to ever push your chips in what's the point? It really feels like what's left of this front office ran out of bold ideas 3 years ago and is just waiting to be fired.

I have a hard time worrying about a guy this young with this much stuff, especially since we know he was pitching through a minor finger injury. This is a good piece, not trying to denigrate it, but let's see what the next 50-100 innings (and for that matter his first 50 IP next year after he's had an off-season to work on stuff) look like before we panic. The way I look at it is this: would I be happy if he was a prospect in another system and the Twins traded something meaningful to get him in return? For me the answer is still an easy yes, at least for now.

Not disagreeing that he might be able to find a way to do it, but for the record his command numbers since coming off the IL are almost identical to his command numbers during his hot start. The big difference is early in the season batters were chasing cutters in the dirt and taking middle/middle fastballs for called strikes instead of knocking them into the seats. His stuff and command numbers overall this year are almost identical to his career numbers.

Even with the Rays giving him a single target to aim for he couldn't consistently hit the zone in Tampa Bay, not surprising he's still missing here in MN. His Stuff and Command numbers via the Stuff+, Command+ and Pitching+ models are almost identical to what they've been his entire career, with the biggest difference being the league making slight stuff improvements around him. The idea that having him read scouting reports would be the reason he broke out was always a bit silly. His main problem wasn't sequencing he could adjust with more information, it was command and it always has been. The good news is the stuff plays, so either he can continue to be a streaky starter who will eventually get onto another hot streak, or if the Twins ever get their rotation figured out he could probably be a great reliever.

It's a super interesting idea. My main concern with it is that from an implementation standpoint, for it to work I'm pretty sure the only non-Swarzaks you can afford to carry are one inning power arms acting as late inning specialists. That means 9-10 guys in this role, a couple of late inning specialists, and at most one true starter going every 5th day, so you'd be converting Joe Ryan/Pablo Lopez type starters too, not just the scrap heap guys. That doesn't make it a bad idea necessarily but I have a hard time seeing any team buying into the idea that their innings leader for the year is some playoff caliber starter they limited to 130 innings over 40-45 appearances.

Well personally I'm skeptical that's actually going to happen. But assuming a cap/floor system survives negotiations four things are worth keeping in mind. First, I think we're getting hung up on the "highest paid catcher" aspect here. It's technically true, but a QO isn't even a top 30 contract in the league by AAV, so it shouldn't cripple a team's ability to spend. Second, with a cap system in place it will actually be advantageous to front load some mid tier contracts because too much long-term dead money on the books later could hurt more than big up-front dollars. You can't do this with every contract of course, but it's not inherently bad to do once or twice. Third, on the point of "building a team around him" I get what you're saying but I don't think that's the goal. I view him as a high end regular borderline All Star type of player. Roughly 20 million for one year of a guy like that is about the normal price. Fourth, I know this is going to sound laughable given who owns our team, but they don't *have* to stop spending when they hit the floor, and there's absolutely no way they hit the cap before the end of the 2027 when he'd be a free agent again anyway. To me the question is where do we find a catcher better than Ryan Jeffers for the 2027 season? I don't see one anywhere so I'd happily overpay him while avoiding any long-term commitment.

Not only should the Twins make Jeffers the QO, I'd argue it's the only offer they should make him. Love that dude but he's already not a great defender and he's playing a position that ages terribly. Overpaying him for one likely productive year is fine, and I wouldn't want to give any non-superstar catcher a multi-year deal. Worse case scenario is he accepts it, plays poorly, and it's still just a one year deal adding coverage to a position where we've got no better options.

Austin Martin was and remains a perfectly useful major leaguer. It's on us as fans if we thought he was going to sustain his hot start. The great eye is probably real but he has no power so his walk rate is probably never going to be elite because pitchers dont fear him. When he was on a hot streak in April he had a BABIP of .373, which obviously wasn't sustainable. In May his BABIP was .269, which is closer to the real him but somewhat unlucky. He's also been extremely unlucky to start this month. Put it all together and he's got a BABIP of .301 for the season and a corresponding WRC+ around league average, which seems about right for a guy with good contact skills, a good eye, and zero power. I do expect his WRC+ to fall a bit more just because his high early walk rate likely wasn't sustainable and hasn't fully normalized yet, but as long as he keeps it north of 90 he can be a good defensive useful player. His overall results are probably about right for the real him, it's just all been hot and cold streaks instead of evenly distributed production. The good news is an average-ish bat with a decent glove can hold down the spot for a while, and somewhere down the line he can be a great platoon/bench player.