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MeleMouth

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Everything posted by MeleMouth

  1. MeleMouth
    Most teams can do this fantasy "if everything goes right we'll be golden" game. Cleveland's payroll for 2027 right now sits at $39 million. Messick, Williams, Bibee, Cantillo, and Cecconi will all return, plus they'll have Logan Allen and all have that payroll room. K.C. will have Wacha, Lugo, plus the fantasy health of Ragans and Gonsolin, and about $60 million in payroll room to get to this year's number. ChiSox return four of their five starters, including deadline acquisition Castillo, as well as Schultz in AAA, who should be better next year, and maybe Smith will make a comeback, plus perhaps this year's success encourages the new owners to add salary. Detroit: Valdez, Ryan, Montero, Jobe, Anderson, Melton, Olson, plus a payroll right now that is 50% of this year's. All of them could tell themselves a story about good health and good fortune in development that gives them the best staff in the AL Central.
  2. MeleMouth
    I agree that they wouldn't have to trade Jenkins to get a Lopez-equivalent player, but still believe they would need to trade at least Jenkins to get a Correa equivalent. Reports this summer were that the Angels wanted Jenkins plus others for Zach Neto, and Neto is probably below Correa as a star, particularly if the goal is to excite fans, so it would probably require Jenkins plus a whole lot more to get a Correa equivalent in the trade market. Jenkins also probably isn't enough to get CJ Abrams from Washington, and Abrams also probably wouldn't excite fans like Correa did. FYI, both Neto and Abrams are around 3 WAR with three and two years of team control remaining after this year, respectively, as a way to triangulate Jenkins' trade value.
  3. MeleMouth
    There is only one possible "Carlos Correa move" in free agency this year, which would be to sign Skubal. That has maybe a 1% chance of happening and maybe a 10% chance of working out better than the Donaldson and Correa signings if it does. (Remember how everyone wanted to say "good riddance" to both of them within about 18 months?) The price for Skubal would also be much higher than the price for Correa, so high that it would eat most of the team's budget, making it difficult to plug any other holes. They could try to make a trade, superior to Arraez for Lopez, but to get talent superior to Lopez they would probably have to offer Jenkins plus another top prospect. That sounds like a good way to continue the Twins' streak of futility. (Since 2011, tied for second-worst playoff record in MLB; since Falvey's arrival in 2017, fourth worst in playoff wins among the 28 teams that have qualified for the playoffs, and absolute worst in winning percentage.) If Pohlad really wants to run the team well, he should tell his baseball experts to come up with a sustainable plan that requires two to three years to execute. Trying to solve years of meandering and oscillating by one or two big moves is what they keep doing; doing it again would be a good way to extend their mediocrity. We have to stop thinking in terms of quick fixes to deep problems.
  4. MeleMouth
    I would agree that the "second-half collapse" is a faulty premise, because the team basically performed a small amount above its ability for most of the year and now just had some regression. A 40-45 team becoming a 67-73 team is not a collapse. Early in the year, they had luck on batted balls and sequencing, resulting in better offensive stats than would be expected by performance, but many people mistook results for a true talent level and convinced themselves that a bullpen upgrade, removal of Matt Wallner (with Martin? Roden?), Royce Lewis becoming a star, and insertion of a couple of top prospects would lead to 1987 redux. But the overall talent level remains relatively low and regression to the mean is a thing,
  5. MeleMouth
    So there's no reason to blame anyone for the margins being thin in the first place? Nobody's performance to improve or upgrade? No mistakes to avoid in the future? It's hard to look at several years of Twins history and say that there aren't patterns of sub-par decision-making, poor roster construction, and failure to create and stick to good plans.
  6. MeleMouth
    I sure hope they limit Prielipp for the rest of the year. Save those bullets for 2027-28.
  7. MeleMouth
    Lewis is no Buxton. Lewis isn't terrible, but people have to give up on the idea that Lewis is on the verge of becoming an All-Star. One key difference from Buxton is that Buxton never displayed the lack of humility or unwillingness to take feedback that is common with Lewis. You can hope for a positive surprise in the future, but it is more likely that what we are seeing now is close to peak Lewis. Lewis has been better since his return, but his xwOBA over this time period - expected results based on how he hits the ball - is the same as Josh Bell's full season xwOBA, which is tied for 70th among 142 qualified players. Further, most of his value was produced in June, when he was just back from AAA, while his wRC+ was below replacement level in July and August, even with his incredible first half of August. A median hitter is not a bad player, but it's also not a tremendously valuable one either, especially for a first baseman. And this comparison of Royce's stats since his return against everyone else's full year stats completely ignores his horrible first two months of 2026. This article concerns what went wrong for the Twins in 2026. One key answer is that they refused to accept the reality of who they are, but instead convinced themselves they were better than they actually were based on short samples. We need to accept the reality that the totality of Royce's performance is mediocre. He is not comparable to Buxton, who, although injured frequently, is one of the best players in the game when he is healthy.
  8. MeleMouth
    This continues a multi-year trend of trying to have multiple simultaneous plans and pivoting from them based on the last two or three weeks of data. "Competitive rebuild" is definitionally having two plans in conflict with each other. Deciding to make most of your players utility players, so they can play multiple positions but not be very good at any of them, is having two plans in conflict with each other. Trying to develop prospects but then bringing them up when they've had a few weeks of good games and the team has a long-shot chance of the playoffs is having two plans in conflict with each other. Having a superstar who clearly needs medical help muddle through months of poor performance before deciding to get medical help is having two plans in conflict with each other. Hiring baseball experts while also having a new owner with extreme self-confidence whose main baseball experience and business accomplishment was inheriting billions of dollars, but who who wants to be involved in running the team, is having multiple plans in conflict with each other.
  9. MeleMouth
    Lots of the discussion about Jeffers seems to be assuming he will accept the qualifying offer. That may be an iffy assumption. He is aging, this has been his best year, and the catcher market is pretty weak. This could be his best chance ever to get a big contract and it's foreseeable that several teams with large budgets could be looking for a catcher this winter. If he thinks he can get 3 or 4 years at $20 million, he'll probably leave.
  10. MeleMouth
    Signing free agents has often been a regretful experience for the Twins, but if Josh Bell is the second best available bat, they should look hard at Jake Bauers if he will take less money than Bell.
  11. MeleMouth
    The Twins have almost always regretted big buck and even medium buck free agents, and in fact many Twins fans almost come to hate some of the players signed to the biggest contracts, so I would hope they step only lightly into free agency, but there actually will be some very good players available.
  12. MeleMouth
    Hey! Arraez could play 2B and Vazquez could be the back-up C! At 1B, Jake Bauers is going to get paid.
  13. MeleMouth
    You need to look at the earlier part of this exchange, where I was criticized for not looking at Zebby's season in the aggregate and for not paying attention to Royce's warm streaks. The criticism also included a "Royce is better than Clemens" theme. Now, you are criticizing me for responding to those criticisms. You should especially look at the earlier exchanges before calling a comment "weird," which, for the sake of site quality, is a type of personal comment I would encourage commenters never to do in any situation. As far as trading Royce, I'm guessing the Rays are hoping for exactly that, so they can turn him into a version of Caminero, who will probably be less successful than Caminero but more successful than 2026 Royce. Nobody thinks Clemens is the centerpiece of a championship club, but he's been a surprising useful 2 WAR player this year, while actually having relatively bad luck. Sabato? No, no way. I think Lewis is OK, but not great like others do, but in any event Lewis is a much much much better hitter than Sabato and probably a much better fielder, also. It would be a huge mistake to save maybe $4 million to replace Lewis with Sabato. Similarly, neither Gabby nor Mendez have shown anything in AAA this year that suggests they would anywhere as good as Royce, with Mendez having the additional problem of continuing the roster's left-handed tilt.
  14. MeleMouth
    I would note that the ChiSox learned that, if they remove expensive contracts from an underperforming roster, they have the budget room to add a difference-maker like Munetaka and make a deadline trade to get an expensive pitcher like Castillo.
  15. MeleMouth
    This lineup is reasonable based on who's on the team now. However, if Buxton needs hip surgery, as I believe he does, he will need at least six months of rehab to play baseball. Depending on when he has surgery and how long any work stoppage takes, that could affect his availability at the beginning of the season. They should also add in time for him to get up to speed, because his swing, which always requires practice to get the timing right, will take even longer to adjust if he gets hip surgery.
  16. MeleMouth
    OK, look at Zebby's results for the season. The Twins have the 23rd ranked pitching staff in the league. Of 17 pitchers on the Twins with at least 20 IPs, Zebby's FIP is 15th on the Twins, with only Paredes and SWR below him. League-wide, of 108 pitchers with more than 100 IP, he's 95th in FIP. Again, I like Zebby, but this hasn't been a stellar year for him. Boy, you really defend Royce, despite the fact that his wRC+ just since his return would tie him for 18th among qualifying 1B on a full-year basis. To compare him to Clemens, between Aug 13-29, Royce's OPS is .392, while Clemens, whom you said is "ice cold," has an .853 OPS. It seems reasonable that this .450+ OPS advantage for Clemens over the last two weeks could be a factor in batting order today. Yes, since Royce came back, his OPS is a decent .763, versus a slightly lower .743 for Clemens, but much of the "S" in Royce's OPS came in June. You say that since Royce came back he's been "one of our top hitters," but his OPS is 5th out of 11 players with more than 100 PAs, which is decent, but being in the middle is not really being "one of our top hitters." Also, we shouldn't act as if Royce's awful start to the season didn't occur and shouldn't be taken into account when deciding batting order, particularly when his hitting is awful once again and he has a history of struggling to turn around slumps. Not to defend Clemens too much, but Royce's stats are mostly comparable to the "ice cold" Clemens and Clemens actually exceeds Lewis in several areas. Finally and most importantly, the target for Royce's offense is supposed to be much higher than Kody Clemens, whom, we must also recognize, contributes much more on defense.
  17. MeleMouth
    I like Zebby and he got great results today, but we should go a little slower on projecting anything for him from this game, because the Sox hit him pretty hard. Royce was en fuego the first half of August, then his great luck on batted balls flipped to bad in the second half of the month and the league started pitching him a little differently. His results for the last two weeks are probably somewhat bad luck, but his actual OPS for August 13-29 (not including today's 0-3) is .392 and even if he had normal luck it would be below .550. Historically, he has struggled to make adjustments. It's going to be an interesting September for him. I'd also go slow on writing off Culpepper at SS. He's a great athlete and a smart guy; what we're seeing now might just be growing pains. He's also by far the most likely of all known candidates to start at SS when the 2027 season begins, so he's going to get more learning opportunities.
  18. MeleMouth
    This is correct. The Walker Jenkins of today would have been helpful a month ago. But the Walker Jenkins of a month ago wouldn't. A new gear was opened at the Futures Game and he spent the next few weeks solidifying.
  19. MeleMouth
    Calling up Jenkins in 2026 one second before he was clearly ready for the majors at the possible expense of his long-term development would have compounded the category error the Twins made by trying to treat 2026 as a competitive year. It would be one more "let's pivot from our long-term plan to meet some short-term need." If they can't stick with a long-term plan even for their best prospect in 10-20 years, then they'll never win anything.
  20. MeleMouth
    This, except I think Sprock (132 wRC+ as a catcher at age 21 in Hi A) could also become a legit prospect who was traded for someone who will be superfluous to future teams and is almost superfluous now.
  21. MeleMouth
    The Twins went with this "play competitive baseball in September" story as a way to maintain fan interest, but right now they are 26th in MLB attendance, the lowest they have been in the 21st Century, ahead of only Athletics, Miami, Tampa, and Kansas City.
  22. MeleMouth
    Is this a bit or are you just trying to go on record with long-shot predictions in case they happen, so you can say you were the first? Can't he just be a good, developing pitcher, which he is, and let the future take care of itself?
  23. MeleMouth
    This would be the best strategy for the rest of 2026.
  24. MeleMouth
    I've been down on Young, but today I saw this note about his being drafted by the Twins from FanGraphs: "To have the opportunity to snag a prospect with the power/hit upside of Young in the 50s is a fine gamble even if he has maybe as much hit tool risk as anyone in the class."
  25. MeleMouth
    Oh, hey, you persuaded me with your logic of calling it "moronic." Data isn't needed in the face of the far superior logic of making insults and repeating slogans. And I guess the long-standing concept of working on pitches in the minors is irrelevant. I'd have to say that you mischaracterize my argument. I'm not saying that he shouldn't be in the majors; I'm just saying that expecting him to have command of all of his pitches and to pitch a full slate of innings is unrealistic, and that giving him the mixed message of (1) develop yourself in the majors and (2) pitch like a key starter for a team trying to make the playoffs in the majors is contradictory.
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