HeresWaldo

There's a good argument for judging guys based only on what they did instead of worrying about what it means for the future, so do with this what you will. But it's worth noting that the baseball changed a lot mid-season this year. Drag started the season near record highs, then fell off a cliff in early June, and from there on it was a more homer-friendly environment than any recent season except 2019, the year of the home run. Genuinely not trying to be a bummer, but it's worth keeping in mind that some of the second-half power surges we saw from guys hitting wall-scrapers might not mean much for the future. There are others, but in particular I'd keep this in mind for Lee and Keaschall, given the shapes of their seasons and their average home run distances. Both can still be quality players of course, but it's plausible we just saw their career best power months. Inversely, this says something pretty alarming about guys like Royce Lewis who were supposed to have big power but didn't show it even in a 2019-style environment.

You and I are defining "good" differently, and that's fine. I can absolutely see why if you believe he's had 13 good starts you'd take issue with my stance. I hope similarly you can see why a sabermetrically-minded person like myself who sees a total of four good starts would view things differently.

For sure, but most guys at least pretend they're aiming for the shadow zone and he just doesn't seem to care. If it's working for him I'm on board, but I've never seen anything like it. There are 48 qualified starting pitchers in MLB right now. He's tied for 5th best stuff by Stuff+ but is 47th out of 48 in Location+. The results basically back this up with one of the 10 worst walk rates in the group but also an excellent strikeout rate. Put another way the models think he's got Jacob DeGrom's stuff with Robbie Ray's command.

I still can't figure Bradley out. The stuff is so enticing but I don't think I've ever seen a good starter misfire into one of the batters boxes as often as he does. The attached visual is his locations from last night, and by my count more than a third of his pitches thrown outside the zone missed by so much that they ended up in a batters box, were spiked in the dirt, or could have hit someone in the head.

Okay let's do that. These starts represent 84 innings pitched, during which he struck out 70 guys for a 7.5 K/9 or 21.5 K%, both of which are solidly below league average. The ERA and FIP in these starts are unsurprisingly quite good since we're limiting ourselves to only starts where we already knew the results were good - 2.14 ERA/3.42 FIP - but this is overwhelmingly driven by the extremely lucky .239 BABIP and 0.86 HR/9 rates. So yeah, if we filter down to the starts where the guy with a 6th percentile barrel rate and 6th percentile exit velocity against doesn't give up homers and the defense is good behind him, he looks good. If these were starts where he was regularly punching out 10+ I'd totally agree with you, but even in this extremely overly filtered data set he's pretty clearly getting lucky. Now, if what you're saying is I'm still missing the point because these are still averages I'm using and the results in those game were good, that's fine, as long as we're clear that those individual game results are not at all predictive of future performance.

Thanks, I appreciate the thoughtful response. You're welcome to use the stats you prefer, but be aware that Bill James himself referred to Game Score as "a kind of garbage stat that I present not because it helps us understand anything in particular but because it is fun to play around with." The thing to keep in mind about Game Score is that it's heavily driven by the number of hits allowed, which means it's driven by the defense behind the pitcher on any given day. Zebby has a .269 BABIP this season, so it makes sense that Game Score would like him, since the defense behind him has generally been good. If we look at stats known to be predictive of future performance, like K%, K-BB%, and FIP, he's been a solidly below-average starter this season. These poor overall results make sense because we know that in addition to his low strikeout rate he is allowing extremely high average exit velocity on contact. Per Baseball Savant, he's in the 6th percentile in average exit velocity, which would generally mean a high BABIP, not the abnormally low BABIP he's actually allowed. This suggests he's been quite lucky on balls in play, which is what makes the poor topline results so discouraging to me. I'm by no means saying this makes him a guaranteed failure going forward. Baseball development isn't linear, and it's certainly possible he takes a step forward this offseason or could be converted into a great reliever even if he continues to struggle as a starter. All I'm saying is that his numbers this year haven't been great, and the predictive stats support those poor results, so as far as I can tell, there's no strong reason to bet on him being good next year as a starter.

What are you basing your faith in this pitching staff on? Zebby has had a couple good starts but overall has looked terrible, and his FIP is even higher than the not good results. Festa and Abel are fun to dream on but neither has shown the ability to make it through a season and both have iffy major league track records in the innings they have thrown. Pablo is one of the easiest people in the world to root for and I am rooting for him, but guys often look shaky in their first year back from Tommy John surgery. Bradley and Ryan are the team aces, and I'm open to believing in both of them, but we've seen this year that they can't carry this pitching staff on their own. Kremer is okay and I have no problem with that trade, but he's a 4/5th starter. None of the prospects are concensus elite guys and none are clearly ready for the majors. The bullpen has some decent arms in it but lacks any real high upside weapons and is dangerously short on depth. In the bullpen the only guy I really trust is Morris, plus maybe Hoffman if he continues to age well. I'm open to your premise that they don't need to rebuild from scratch as an organization, but if they really want to compete they're a minimum of 4-5 playoff caliber arms short between the rotation and bullpen, and that's if you really believe in the prospects. Edit: I posted this graphic elsewhere but am including it here too because I think it's useful. This is a table of the bullpen arms who threw a minimum of 20 IP this year and are currently Twins or were primarily Twins this season. I think this is valuable because I directionally agree it feels like the bullpen has gotten better, but I think that's us as fans accepting the impossibly low bar this team set on opening day. If we compare the guys we currently have to the league instead of comparing them to the even worse guys we used to have, I think it becomes more apparent why I'm concerned about the 2027 bullpen.

As a big Bailey Ober fan who doesn't want to see him pushed out of the league I wouldn't mind it, but I don't think it would solve the problem this bullpen faces. The bullpen now is a heck of a lot better than opening day, but it's still got a real lack of upside, and adding Ober would only make that problem worse. I threw together a graphic of Twins relievers who have thrown enough pitches this year that the Pitching+ model can get a decent read on them, and it basically thinks this bullpen is every bit as bad as they looked. What this group needs is more arms that throw hard with at least fringe average control.

As the impending free agent and plausible retirement candidate, Rogers is unlikely to be back next year, but they're going to need to turn over more than one bullpen spot if they are serious about fielding a better team. Minter is also on the way out the door which clears a second spot, but he's another lefty and that still leaves no obvious open spots to upgrade the righty part of the bullpen. One of the current right handed options will need to either be optioned to AAA or outright replaced if they want to avoid repeating this year's mistakes again.

Twenty-ninth feels low to me, but broadly speaking, below average sounds about right. Buxton is amazing, but he's hitting the scary part of the aging curve. I hope he plays his whole career as a Twin, even if that means an extension, but we're rapidly approaching the point where it's not a safe bet that he can carry an otherwise mediocre team on his own for weeks at a time. Pablo is a fabulous dude and a very good pitcher, but he wasn't a stuff monster even before the injury, and he'll be 31 next year with all the question marks that come with returning from Tommy John surgery. Joe Ryan will also be 31 and still hasn't put together a complete, successful major league season. People keep insisting Taj Bradley is making developmental progress, and I'm not saying he's bad. He's a solid player. But his numbers are basically identical to previous years: the great stuff is still there, and severe command issues are still limiting his ceiling. The young guys are exciting, but none of them are true four- or five-tool players. For serious organizations in big cities, the answer would be to take all this legitimately good depth and fill the gap by signing that missing superstar in free agency, but we all know that isn't happening. Even if they spend, it won't be $400+ million on a single player, so I do think this organization is a bit stuck. I still think they're a lot better than 29th in future value, but measurably below average sounds plausible.

Trading Rodriguez would be a huge mistake for two big reasons: 1) You're absolutely right there's a logjam of bat-first players in the organization, but Rodriguez is the only one with plus power. I'm not saying everyone on the team should be a three true outcomes guy, but someone has to hit for power, and it doesn't look like it's going to be Larnach, Jenkins, Mendez, Keashall, Martin, or Gonzalez. 2) This organization is in desperate need of upside, and any Rodriguez trade is going to bring back less upside than he has. Yes there's a chance he turns out to be a bust or he can't get past the injuries, but if he's healthy and pans out he's the only prospect in the system with 30 homer power potential and solid defense. This org has plenty of floor, what it needs are the Rodriguez types. If he goes bust in hindsight it'll look dumb to have kept him, and I was on board with trading him years ago when he was still far away. But trading him off the AAA roster where he's playing very well would be nuts.

Maybe I'm being overly generous, but I really can't find any way to put this on the players. As I watch the Marte drama play out in AZ, I find it really striking how hard this Twins team works. Byron Buxton can barely stand up, needs surgery, and is still pushing himself because he wants to lead by example and show what work ethic looks like. Pablo López has been around all year, including road trips, even though he's recovering from an injury and can't play. It sucks that they're both missing time, but I don't blame anyone for getting hurt, and I think there's a real argument this is one of the hardest-working clubhouses in baseball. I put the blame 90% on ownership for not providing the needed resources and 10% on the front office for not having any sort of bold vision to use their limited resources aggressively.

He's hitting .411/.488/.795 this month. Even setting aside the .411 batting average he could be hitting .250 instead and a .795 slg would still be absurd. He's also walking as often as he strikes out and instantly becomes the best defensive outfielder on the roster other than maybe Kreidler, at least until Buxton is fully healthy again. I'm not saying he'll instantly be great because even amazing prospects often struggle in their first taste of the majors, but he could not have forced the issue more than he did.

To me this is a classic example of an expectations mismatch. To be clear I really like Clemens and think he's been an excellent find, However, taken in context Clemens is having a career year as a bat first good utility regular. He's a lot like Willi Castro in that he can play everywhere but not well defensively, and he's got a great bat for a guy who can play everywhere, but it's not actually a great bat compared to the league's great bats. Again, to reiterate, not a criticism because he's been great, but if he was a former top prospect people would be absolutely furious he hasn't found a defensive home, and instead we're thrilled he's providing the value of a good regular.

Zoll is a smart dude and I know the front office has access to data we don't so I hate to be dismissive, but I think he's pretty clearly wrong. Alan Roden has played in two of the three most recent games. He has below average bat speed, a below average barrel rate, below average sprint speed, and is hitting.230 with no power playing corner outfield. Josh Bell is on an absolutely ridiculous heater, but his overall season numbers are basically as projected and he could sit once a week if needed. Buxton is going to miss a game or two per week to protect his health, which is fine but Keashall is a butcher in center field so those ABs could easily go to Jenkins. Just by giving him Roden's spot and backing up Buxton he can easily play 4-5 times a week. If they rest Bell once a week to play him more that would get him to essentially a full workload while upgrading the defense in center on days Buxton is out. If they really just think he's worse than Roden in right and Keashall in center, fine I guess, and like I said I acknowledge they have data we don't. But I just don't see it.