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HeresWaldo

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Everything posted by HeresWaldo

  1. HeresWaldo
    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.
  2. 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.
  3. HeresWaldo
    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.
  4. HeresWaldo
    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.
  5. HeresWaldo
    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.
  6. HeresWaldo
    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.
  7. HeresWaldo
    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.
  8. HeresWaldo
    They traded away the largest contract in team history.
  9. HeresWaldo
    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.
  10. HeresWaldo
    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.
  11. HeresWaldo
    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.
  12. HeresWaldo
    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.
  13. HeresWaldo
    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.
  14. HeresWaldo
    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.
  15. HeresWaldo
    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.
  16. HeresWaldo
    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.
  17. HeresWaldo
    I liked the idea in the minors because it can let you keep more starter candidates a bit stretched out, but I have been thoroughly unimpressed by it in the majors. Most of the guys they've put in this role and left there are hurt - and to be clear I'm not blaming the role for that, pitchers get hurt and I get that, but it does make it hard to evaluate - and I dont love that guys are less stretched out as starters while still not going max effort as relievers. It's a kind of cool idea I guess, and I like it in the lower minors to manage workload while stretching more guys out at level where you don't know what their future role should be, but I'm not going to believe in it at the MLB level until someone manages to throw 85+ healthy innings with decent results. Maybe I'm old school but to me the long man should either be a Rule 5 guy you want but don't trust yet or one of many mop up men the roster churns through, and I don't love having real prospects both not be starters and not be late inning relievers.
  18. HeresWaldo
    Defensive metrics are tricky to evaluate. Even setting aside questions about how they're calculated, teams value defense so highly these days that the sport doesn't really have bad defenders anymore so "average" keeps getting better. The bar for what plays are supposed to be routine keeps going up. I'm glad Lee's days as a shortstop are coming to an end but I do wonder what the metrics will say about him at 3rd. He strikes me as the kind of player who will look really good there but stats won't like because he isn't fast and everyone not playing 1st or DH is fast now.
  19. HeresWaldo
    The Bradley trade is definitely looking like the best of the bunch at this early date, but even that one I'm not sure we can safely call a win yet. Bradley looked absolutely spectacular to start the year and Jax was horrendous in late innings for the Rays in April. However, the Rays are now stretching Jax out as a starter and he's looking pretty dang good and Bradley is hurt. Additionally, while it's possible Jax regresses as a starter, I think we need to acknowledge that pitching models see an element of smoke and mirrors to Bradley's dominance. Pitching+ rates Bradley as essentially an average starting pitcher (99 rating so 1% below league average but well within the margin of error to just say he's average). I'm not saying this is a bad trade by any means. If they both turn out to be mid rotation starters the Twins won in terms of age and team control. If Bradley somehow beats the models and sustains his strong start the Twins win by default regardless of what Jax does. But there's still a real path here where Jax turns out to be a pretty good starter and Bradley either has nagging health injuries all season or just regresses in the ways models expect, so it feels too soon to say the Twins definitely won this one.
  20. HeresWaldo
    I'm happy for Martin and have enjoyed watching him succeed, and I agree it's been a great story, but I'd caution against anyone seeing this as a breakthrough. He's got a .405 BABIP, low barrel rate, low bat speed, and low average exit velocity. Maybe he's the next Luis Arraez, but it's much more likely big regression is coming. He can still be a likeable and useful platoon bat/pinch runner even if he regresses, but he's probably not a key offensive piece in the long run.
  21. HeresWaldo
    I'm a Raya believer but they've got to stop messing around with this multi-inning nonsense. They're using guys like this in the majors and minors, and I'm all for trying stuff but it pretty clearly isn't working. Ramp him down and go max effort. Same with Sands and Morris in the majors. It's fine to piggyback prospects just to make minor league innings fit together, but once it's time to join the MLB bullpen they really need to put a focus on max effort innings because those are the ones that actually matter.
  22. HeresWaldo
    I'm generally opposed to letting players go this early because the samples are so small. If we always cut players who looked bad through this point in the season we would've cut Carlos Santana from the 2024 team, and it's always important to remember the value of patience. That said, I think Outman might be different. He didn't make sense as an acquisition in the first place, looked absolutely terrible in a meaningful role last year, and doesn't really fit the current roster. Austin Martin probably isn't a good center fielder but he's at least Willi Castro level out there, so he can be the occasional backup which is Outman's only real role. If Buxton got hurt you wouldn't want Martin out there every day, but they'd also be able to call up someone from the Saints and both Rodriguez and Jenkins can supposedly play center, so it still wouldn't be Outman's job. Outman doesn't hit, runs fine but not well enough to be a pure pinch runner, and can play center but not well enough to make up for the bat. He's probably not the worst outfielder in baseball and maybe someone would pick him up off waivers, but he just doesn't fit this roster and probably shouldn't have made the team on opening day.
  23. HeresWaldo
    Definitely fair to say some aspects of Savant require larger samples, but there are useful small sample things on there. For example bat speed requires a single digit number of swings to become useful, and we also have enough on him to know a decent amount about his sprint speed - although sprint speed is not as consistent year to year across the sport. His bat speed is pretty bad. His sprint speed is above average but well short of elite. Unless he made these a priority this off-season (which is possible, we'll see in spring training) it's fair to extrapolate this season's likely trends from last year even with small samples. Barrel rate is another story, and if he can get to enough barrels maybe he can overcome the low bat speed, but the lack of home run power and mediocre raw sprint speed are both probably real.
  24. HeresWaldo
    His Savant page is absolutely terrifying. Time will tell, but for what it's worth ZIPs projects him to be basically identical to Trevor Larnach. Roden: .260/.342/.379, 100 OPS+ Larnach: .249/.325/.404, 100 OPS+ Projection systems vary, but none of them see him as a likely breakout candidate or more than an okay platoon bat. If he can actually play center that would make a big difference, but I'm somewhat skeptical about that. He's fast relative to guys like Larnach and Wallner but he's much slower than guys like Austin Martin and James Outman. If he was right handed he could be a great 4th outfielder, but as another lefty he mostly seems like depth.
  25. HeresWaldo
    Brooks Lee is not a shortstop, Culpepper is probably not a shortstop, and the thing I think is overlooked in this piece is that Marek Houston is probably not a major league shortstop any time soon. Houston could become a quality major leaguer given time, but right now he just doesn't have a major league bat, even by the standards of glove-first guys. Last year (admittedly tiny sample at both levels) he hit .370/.424/.444 at the A level, which sounds awesome except he did it with a .488 BABIP and a .074 ISO which says he got unbelievably lucky while hitting for no power. When they sent him to A+ he hit .152/.220/.239 while still displaying zero power. Right now the question for him isn't if he could clear the Mendoza Line in the majors, it's if he can clear that mark at AA before the end of the year. To be clear, this doesn't mean we should give up on him, but he needs a lot more time to develop if he's going to be a replacement level or better player in the majors. Fangraphs puts his ETA in 2028 which seems about right. Internal help is not coming, the cavalry is not on the way, and if this team is even remotely serious about competing in '26 or '27 they are going to need to make a meaningful trade (the kind that costs a heck of a lot more than Trevor Larnach) to fill this hole.
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