WarPath1211

Mendez is a great offensive prospect: great contact skill, good raw power, solid plate discipline. But he does have one crippling weakness: he hits way too many groundballs for a guy with his raw power and lack of foot speed. Before last year, Mendez routinely ran GB rates of around 60%, and this year, he's cut it to 54.5%. For reference, the major league leader last year, among qualified hitters, for GB rate was Christian Yelich at 56.7%, and nobody else was above 54%. Yelich has made a career out of GB rates in this mid-to-high 50s territory, and he's been productive, but his best, MVP-level years came when he cut the GB rate to about 50% or less. You can be a solid hitter with a GB rate in Mendez's neighborhood, but your power output is going to be depressed to the point where you probably won't ever be a great hitter. Mendez will need to improve in this area to be a truly great bat. He is still very young and has made some promising steps this year though, so he may be on the path to doing that.

In starts lasting over 3 innings so far, I'd say Jax has one excellent start (5 IP/1 H/1 BB/6 K/1 R), one okay start (4 IP/4 H/1 BB/3 K/2 R), and one bad start (5 IP/4 H/4 BB/1 K/0 R) that he was really lucky to not surrender a run in while giving up 4 hits and 4 walks with 1 strikeout in 5 innings. So while the ERA is shiny, the actual results have been mixed. I'm not surprised Tampa is trying this because the trade didn't really make sense for them otherwise from a value standpoint. Even 4.5 years of a mediocre starter is probably more valuable than 2.5 years of a great reliever. The way they've chosen to build Jax up is a little unorthodox, but I think it makes some sense. A lot of guys who move from the bullpen to the rotation fade late in the season as the inning count gets higher. But if they work up gradually so that they aren't expected to handle a starter's inning workload over a full season, maybe you can avoid that late fatigue. As for how Jax will do in the future, it's hard to say. He's a very, very different pitcher from his early starting days with the Twins, and he will probably evolve more as he transitions to a starting role again. Jax didn't throw a single cutter in his relief appearances before beginning to start this year, but he's now throwing a cutter about 10% of the time in the starts, and his slider usage has gone down. In Jax's most recent start, he only threw his 4-seam fastball 8% of the time, a far cry from the 20%+ rates of his other starts. So there seems to be a good deal of tinkering going on.

I know this is a really late reply, but I do figure I should cite my sources and open up more data possibilities for the curious. For the slash line, this is just freely available on the player pages on milb.com in the splits section: https://www.milb.com/player/gabriel-gonzalez-694224 For the batted ball metrics, I used Gabby's page on https://tjstats.ca/, which pulls data directly from the Statcast API: https://tjstats.ca/player/gabriel-gonzalez-694224/?id=694224 There is only pitch-tracking data for AAA and low-A though, there isn't publicly available Statcast data for other levels.

Gonzalez has been overall disappointing so far in AAA in 2026, no doubt, but he's actually been substantially better against lefties than righties, as the article notes. It's something I noticed a bit ago, particularly with regards to slugging. Against RHP, AAA 2026: 133 PAs, slashing .193/.278/.319, 85.5 avg. EV, 30.4% hard hit rate, Against LHP, AAA 2026: 64 PA, slashing .263/.328/.544, 90.6 avg. EV, 40.0% hard hit rate He just hits the ball way harder way more often against lefties. So I'd expect him to get the start tonight against the lefty Tolle, and then we go from there.

The two things I'll really be watching for Royce in AAA are the whiff rate, and the swing decisions. The whiff rate ballooned from an already below-average 26.7% in 2025 to an unconscionable 37.6% in the season-to-date in 2026. You can't swing and miss at that level in the big leagues unless you have absolute gargantuan power and outlier plate discipline, neither of which Lewis has. The swing decisions are little more nuanced because Royce bottom-line wasn't chasing pitches out of the zone at a substantially higher rate than he has in the past - he was always a bit of free swinger, but it wasn't debilitating. But the bottom line number doesn't tell the full story in my opinion. This year Royce was being pitched way, way out of the zone and swinging at those pitches with alarming frequency. Pitchers were giving him 13.7% of pitches in the "waste" zone according to Statcast, where league average is around 10%; Royce was swinging at these non-competitive pitches a whopping 15.6% of the time, while league average is around 6-7%. He simply cannot chase garbage this much. Consequently, Royce is only swinging at 70% of pitches in the heart of the zone, down from his typical high-70s rates of the past. IF you are a free swinger, you have to, HAVE TO, do damage on mistakes in the middle of the zone with high frequency, and Royce hasn't been doing that.

The two things I'll really be watching for Royce are the whiff rate, and the swing decisions. The whiff rate ballooned from an already below-average 26.7% in 2025 to an unconscionable 37.6% in the season-to-date in 2026. You can't swing and miss at that level in the big leagues unless you have absolute gargantuan power and outlier plate discipline, neither of which Lewis has. The swing decisions a little more nuanced because Royce bottom-line wasn't chasing pitches out of the zone at a substantially higher rate than he has in the past - he was always a bit of free swinger, but it wasn't debilitating. But the bottom line number doesn't tell the full story in my opinion. This year Royce was being pitched way, way out of the zone and swinging at those pitches with alarming frequency. Pitchers were giving him 13.7% of pitches in the "waste" zone according to Statcast, where league average is around 10%; Royce was swinging at these non-competitive pitches a whopping 15.6% of the time, while league average is around 6-7%. He simply cannot chase garbage this much. Consequently, Royce is only swinging at 70% of pitches in the heart of the zone, down from his typical high-70s rates of the past. IF you are a free swinger, you have to, HAVE TO, do damage on mistakes in the middle of the zone with high frequency, and Royce hasn't been doing that.

There are rules on how many pitchers can carry on the 26-man roster nowadays, they can only have 13 until September. The Twins right now are already at 13, and most teams carry that maximum all the time to be able to play bullpen matchups more aggressively. So it'll have the be position player to sub in for Gray and probably one on the 40-man unless a DFA/trade is made, and a move like that seems unlikely to accommodate such a short absence. That leaves Gonzalez, Mendez, Lewis, and Wallner as the only healthy options in AAA. Kind of an odd group to choose from. Wallner was sent down a bit ago and has been bad in AAA. Lewis was just sent down and hasn't even made an appearance yet. Gonzalez has been struggling badly this year in AAA, although he's perked up a little lately. Mendez was just promoted and has hit well in AAA, but it's only been 12 games. I think the question was posed because there's no obvious choice. As someone mentioned above, it may come down to the handedness of the pitchers faced during Gray's absence. So I think the safest bet is Mendez, who's been an ascending guy the last couple of years. If they were healthy, this would be Roden or Rodriguez for sure, but because they aren't, let's go with the other LHH outfielder who is hitting well.

I don't have high confidence in it either, at least that it's accurate with reasonable precision. It's just another data point, in addition to Fedko not being selecting in the Rule 5 and the Twins not adding him to the 40-man roster, that is essentially saying it doesn't believe in Fedko. The premise of the article was that the Twins organization doesn't believe in Fedko, so I was providing another example beyond the Twins. What a stats-based projection system like ZiPs does tell you is that guys like Fedko, who don't really hit in the upper minors until their mid to late 20s and don't have outlier physical characteristics, generally don't amount to much in the big leagues. Maybe Fedko proves the projections and perceptions wrong, that does happen with some late bloomers. But the odds of that happening aren't good in my opinion. And the Twins, with the logjam of major league-ready outfielders, aren't in much of a position to give Fedko a chance when there are higher probability prospects.

Yeah, this wasn't a post in defense of Outman. I even mentioned I expect Outman to get the boot in some way before the end of the year. But even when he does, there's a pretty long line of prospects before I think Fedko would get the call.

Worth noting that projection systems don't love Fedko either despite the nice surface stats in AA/AAA. ZiPs projects his 3-year WAR to be -1.3 with a .220/.300/.360ish slash line if you gave him 400-500 MLB PAs a year over that time. Guys like this who really don't start to hit in the upper minors until 25 or so, and aren't great defenders/atheletes, don't tend to work out. I do agree he has done enough to at least deserve a chance at a cup of coffee in spite of all that, but with the 40-man so outfielder-heavy right now, I don't know if that chance will come with the Twins. The line is just really, really long to get young outfielders major league looks right now. Roden and Rodriguez deserve first crack once they are healthy due to performance and option clocks, and then you have Mendez already on the 40-man and doing well early in AAA. Then you have Wallner and Gonzalez, both struggling in AAA but already on the 40-man so they can't be dismissed, and Walker Jenkins, who isn't on the 40-man yet but as the organization's top prospect, can't be dismissed. So even if the team, say, trades Larnach, trades or releases Outman, and maybe we even factor in a possible late-season Buxton "injury" if the team is out of it, it's hard to see a path to a 40-man add and MLB time for Fedko. Even in terms of older, fringier prospects in AAA right now you have Ben Ross who is having a breakout similar to what Fedko did last year. However, Ross is a bit younger and profiles as a better defender, and has utility to play both the infield and the outfield, which might make him a more attractive add to the 40-man roster in the offseason.

As a note, Brock Stewart actually just got put back on the IL after pitching only 2 innings for the Dodgers and is expected to be out for a least a few weeks with a completely separate foot injury, guy just can't catch a break. So I don't really view Outman for Stewart as a trade loss, more just damaged goods for damaged goods, and leave it at that. Both players exchanged were very high risk, with a small chance of high reward, but the reward hasn't played out for either team. Both guys are non-tender candidates this offseason, although the Dodgers may tender Stewart with their infinite money on the off chance he happens to be healthy and effective for one of their playoff runs.

I don't think Diaw is being developed with the intent he's an everyday player either in the OF or at C. Diaw's path to the big leagues in my mind is as a very rare type of utility player, a guy who can serve as a backup catcher but also as a backup outfielder, unlocking other possibilities for the rest of the roster. For him to develop in this way, he really just needs reps both at the plate and on defense, and to do that he needs to be healthy, which was an issue in 2025. So far this season he has 10 starts at catcher, 10 in the outfield, and 5 at DH. His development timeline may be pretty unusual because he is a very unusual prospect. He needs to be 40-manned in December 2027 to avoid the Rule 5 draft, so he has 2 years to try to reach AAA (or find enough success at AA) to have a real shot with the Twins.

Part of this is just the pitches Martin is seeing right now. Only 45.0% of pitches Martin has seen this season have been in the ABS zone, which is tied for 191st out of 234 hitters with at least 80 PAs this season. He is simply not getting that much to hit, and his plate discipline has served him well in laying off bad pitches. But I expect, given Martin's lack of power, that he will start to see more pitches in the zone. The walk rate will definitely drop, and he probably won't walk more than he strikes out over a full season, but he should get more opportunities for balls to drive, and it'll be up to him to adjust. So the walk rate will inevitably go down, I agree with you there, but consequently the xBA and xSLG may very well go up as pitchers are forced to come in the zone more. Martin has also mostly faced lefties so far, but with Wallner's (and to a lesser extent Outman's) struggles, he will get more opportunities against righties. He has been great against righties so far this year, but was merely okay against them last year in his hot finish, we we'll see how he adjusts in that respect as well.

Truth be told, Brooks Lee in my mind really only has one path left to being an above-average MLB hitter, and he's currently following it, at least right now. Brooks really doesn't hit the ball hard. He's decent at making contact and avoiding strikeouts, but he chases too much which suppresses his walk rate, and he's too slow to get much out of a slash-and-dash profile with groundballs and liners in the gaps. So how does a guy who doesn't have raw power or speed, and with decent contact skills but middling plate discipline, produce offensively? Well, Brooks has been doing the one thing that can make this work: he's pulling the ball in the air down the line at a high rate. You don't need as much power to slug as the fences are closer down the lines, and you don't need as much speed either to get extra bases. This is pretty much how Isaac Paredes has succeeded for years despite below-average at best raw power, raw speed, and athleticism, by poking balls in the air dead-pull. However, Paredes probably also has better plate discipline than Brooks has displayed, and Paredes also has been passable in the field, while Brooks has been below adequate thus far. I think it's reasonable to think Brooks can improve in these areas to fit this profile long-term; he certainly has a better chance of that in my mind than suddenly gaining a ton of raw bat speed or being able to run faster. There is a path, but I think it's become clear that it's narrow given Brooks' lack of athleticism.

Really gutted for Mick here, it looked like he was starting to put it together. Even if he doesn't need elbow surgery, inflammation this early in the season is not a good sign. Hoping for the best that he can be back out there in a few weeks and that this stint is a distant memory later in the season. Looks like Prielipp will get the starting nod on Wednesday but I wouldn't be surprised if Rojas is maybe tabbed to piggyback off of him.