HeresWaldo

Good catch and yes I am

Good Lord I need coffee, yes I 100% am.

Hancock isn't happening for a package where Larnach plays any kind of meaningful role. I like Larnach, but Hancock is the best pitching prospect in baseball and a concensus top 5 globally. He's probably off-limits under any circumstance, but in a world where we could get him the package would probably look something like him for Joe Ryan + ERod + another of our top 5 prospects. I keep seeing things on this site that suggest we should trade for him and I do not understand why anyone thinks that's got even a remote chance of happening. If hypothetically someone managed to trade for him the headline player going the other way would be a superstar capable of joining Julio as a face of their franchise.

"That doesn't necessarily mean the Twins are about to land one of baseball's elite prospects". Well don't trade him then. Tom Froemming pointed out last night that the Twins are actually tied for the 3rd best record in the AL since June 1st. In that span - which is a significant part of the season - they've been better than the White Sox, Guardians, Rays, Yankees, and Mariners who are also fighting for playoff spots. Yes Jeffers could bring something back in trade because he's good, but we could also just let him be a good player on our pretty good team and try to win some games in October. If the Yankees want to send us Lombard or some other team wants to make a clearly unwise decision on that level, let them. But why are we trading away premium players off a pretty good roster in exchange for prospects who wouldn't crack the top five in our minor league system? We should be lightly buying not selling.

Certainly fair to say that's how a lot of front offices now think. My problem with that approach though is if you follow that line of thinking you'll always end up focused on the future and never be able to justify trying in the now. Any good veteran major leaguer can by definition return more years of future asset control with theoretically similar or higher ceilings, but personally that doesn't interest me as much as just having a good team. Look at the Rays. They're the model franchise and they always maximize asset value. And yet they have managed zero championships with this approach. And honestly I'm fine with that because I'm not into Rings Culture, but they're also not drawing fans to the park during the regular season because they trade away every player fans fall in love with, and I think that's a huge problem. Personally I'm of the opinion that it's okay to try building something even if it means taking on some current and future risk.

That would certainly be one way to do it, and probably a way I'd be more supportive of. And to be clear I'm not trying to be a bummer here with my original comment. I just think people are vastly overrating how good the median outcome will be for the return we'd get for Ryan. Of course there's always a chance we get our next star because that's true in any trade (look no further than Cruz for Ryan) but on the whole that's probably not a likely outcome in the same way it's unlikely that Seattle wants to give us the best pitching prospect in baseball in exchange for a pitcher with lesser stuff and less team control. Where I'm at is that Joe Ryan is a really good and desirable player, but we're probably not going to get a kings ransom for him so why not just keep the really good desirable player and try to be a good team? And if someone wants to wildly overpay and send us a potential future Cy Young candidate let them, but short of that why not just keep the All Star?

They did work out though, that's my point. For guys of their prospect caliber, both reaching the majors for more than a cup of coffee across multiple seasons is a better than 50th percentile outcome. Prospects are fun to dream on, but outside the concensus top 10 or so most of them are going to turn out this way, especially in the 75-200 range where they were. Like I said, if the Mariners want to do something insane and send us the literal best pitching prospect in baseball who is also the global #1 on at least one major list, by all means let them. But if you focus on the kinds of less fun names that would actually be attainable in a Ryan trade suddenly it starts to look a lot less appealing and another Martin/SWR type of return starts to feel like a plausible result.

I suspect all of these headliner prospects are out of reach and I'd much rather just keep Ryan. If you can talk the Mariners into trading Anderson by all means do it but I seriously doubt they're that stupid. If they wanted a starter they could just call him up. The Athletic correctly pointed out that a decent comp for Joe Ryan right now is the Jose Berrios trade. Joe Ryan is a 2 time All Star with 1.5 years team control remaining coming off a 3.42 ERA season and carrying a 3.38 ERA into the trade deadline as of this moment. He's been worth 6.6 bWAR in the past season and a half. Berrios was a 2 time All Star with 1.5 years team control remaining coming off a 3.52 ERA season and carrying a 3.48 first half ERA into the trade deadline. He'd been worth 5.3 bWAR in the season and a half leading up to the trade. So maybe Ryan is a bit better, but Ryan also famously fades in the second half which could be a factor. I know it's fun to dream on robbing other farm systems, but just as a hypothetical, how many people would still want to trade Ryan if the fair return for him is Austin Martin and SWR? If the return is going to be a new 5th or 6th best prospect in the Twins system do we really want to lose a great player?

Houston's power surge is interesting, and if he can sustain it this could be a real breakthrough. His .352 BABIP at AA and .379 BABIP for the season are completely unsustainable though. Even if the power increase isn't real he can still be a useful glove-first guy so I'm not trying to be too much of a bummer here. However, for me at least I think we need to see him sustain this new higher ISO for another month or so before we start to call the offensive breakout real.

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.