Richie the Rally Goat

Carlos Rodon the moment the lockout ends

Great first post! keep it up!

Under

That was the point of the innings pitched post earlier. As much talent and upside all these youngsters have, Ober and Ryan combined for a total of 200 innings last year, and they are #2 and 3 for innings pitched on the roster. Sure they’ll pitch more, but a far cry from 150 to 200 innings each the Twins need to avoid seeing Andrew Albers again. 2023 has a ton of potential. ‘22 they’ll run out of horses in July/August

I don’t think I am, I think you’re overestimating how good the pitching will be. https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2016.shtml 2016 team OPS+ 108 2021 team OPS+ 104 they lost Nelson Cruz and have added no one. The 2021 of 104 could improve with health, but how much considering the loss of Cruz.

Ha haha! I can’t wait for the next installment!

Even in the best scenario, the pitching roster as it’s constructed now, can feasibly produce 1000 innings. 450-500 innings has to come from outside the organization. At most 300 of those might come from a Michael Pineda or better and 150 or more comes from quad A roster filler. 1000 innings at .500 ball is 56 wins which seems a stretch looking at the roster. Maybe .450? Or 50 wins. Now, how do the last 450 innings come in? If it’s all quad A filler they lose almost all of them and end up less than 60 wins. If they end up with just Pineda, 55% of 150 is 9 more and they end up at 59 to 65 wins. Do they trade for a good number 2 starter or sign Rodon and get lucky? Maybe 10 to 15 more. how confident are you the FO pulls the trigger on a second starter and that second starter is healthy and good? track record leans away from such a move… I hope I’m wrong

Rooker and Larnach should take steps forward too. Many good hitters score more runs than 1 great hitter and a bunch of bad ones. I'm not worried about hitting and even if they trot out Gordon, Martin or Lewis at SS, it can't be any worse... They don't have the math to reach 1500 innings without churning through a whole lot of pitchers who have no business being there. 21 pitchers on the 40 man roster last year didn't combine to pitch the 1460ish innings needed for a season and there are several guys on the 40 that won't get promoted to the bigs. Even if they can sign Pineda and trade for a veteran that'll add 300 innings to this list and several pitchers see a 20%+ innings growth, they'll still trot out several Andrew Albers' just to get to 1460 innings, not even looking at the quality of innings pitched... Griffin Jax is your workhorse... let that sink in 2021 IP Alcala 59.2 Duffey 64 Rogers 40.1 Dobnak 50.2 Garza 19.1 Thorpe 37 Moran 75.1 Ober 108.1 Ryan 97.2 Winder 71.3 Balazovic 97 Duran 16 Cotton 30.2 Jax 122.2 Bundy 90.2 Strotman 112.1 Sands 80.1 Stashak 18 Vallimont 94 Thielbar 64 Enlow 14.2 Total 1360

I guess I'm the negative Nelson here. They won 73 games last year and had half a season on Maeda and Berrios. 2022 will have neither of those two at any point, and as it stands will be mostly bullpen games. It appears they'll trust the youth and the AAAA journeymen. Sure they'll score runs, but you can't expect 2 touch downs every game

Bert was absolutely dominant as a pitcher and one of my favorites along with Ryan. The surly attitude helped his cause as one of the greats. He was not my favorite announcer and I really disliked the teleprompter schtick.

The only way Baldelli gets fired is if the loses the locker room. As he did a very good job in ‘21 holding it together and finishing fairly strong down the stretch in a lost season, I highly doubt he loses the locker room in ‘22

I do supply chain analytics for a large manufacturing firm. I believe in my work and know that I play an integral part in my organization's capability to deliver our products to our customers. As you say, this is how we do things. However I think we need to add some nuance here. We've been measuring stuff and doing calculations with it since the first Roman democracy. We've just gotten better at it with the advancement of computers. As it was in 509 BC it is still today, the statistics don't make the decisions. We do. At the beginning, Ryan embraced modern technology and tools to improve his teams decision making and his teams excelled beyond their competitors. Towards the end Ryan's competitors adopted new and better tools to make better decisions with. You can give a rocket scientist an abacus and she can still take you to the moon. You give a computer to a rocket scientist and she'll get you there faster, cheaper, and safer.

I think you nailed it here. "Hope" is not a plan, but hope is what we're being fed. I think what's not being said is that the team plans to drop payroll for 2022 and beyond. They don't want to call it a rebuild, but a rose by any other name smells just as sweet.

Terry, why is this computer UNDER your desk? You need to put things AWAY after you are done using them.

I would not bring Miranda up to be a bench player. He’s too good to ride the pine. He needs to play every day. Assuming health of JD I’d start him in STP. I’d look to trade Donaldson at the deadline, and plug Miranda in as starting 3B there foreword. Donaldson and his contract have more value to the Twins than other teams. In 2021, JD had his healthiest season in a long time. Assuming he stays healthy doesn’t seem like a good bet for other GMs. In the off-season, no rational GM is taking on that contract. It would cost the Twins half his salary or more to offload him before the season. Thad Levine reportedly bristled at the idea of rebuilding… off-loading JD at a cost to the Twins would be waiving the white flag. With a couple teams looking to make a playoff push, Donaldson could be one of the best hitters available at the deadline. Necessity might not only unload that contract in full, but throw in a low value prospect too.

Terry Ryan was one of the best GMs in baseball in the late 90s that oversaw the rebuild post World Series into the early aughts rejuvenation that was a component to saving the team from contraction. He was a great GM the first go. He was a major part of Andy MacPhail’s modernization of the scouting and analysis in the early 80s. There’s stories of the Griffith years back when the entire 6 teams of roster files were housed in a couple recipe boxes on index cards, and MacPhail and Ryan expanding that to modern (at the time) file folders with extensive type-written written reports. Scouts complaining “do you want me to scout? Or do you want a secretary?” Saying the Ryan regime was bad the second go around isn’t a knock on Ryan as a person, or saying that he was bad the whole time. When he came back in 2011, his organization never adapted their approach, they were just starting to computerize files in word in 2015, the analytics department was one guy with Excel who got an intern in the summer. The game changed, the Twins did not and desperately needed to. Falvey modernized the front office, which was a massive feat! Let’s see if he and Levine can bring in the players to win as well.

THIS! This is what baseball is all about!

Great first post! Keep posting!

The last part of the Ryan era was awful, they brought in some pieces and acquired much of the current core, but they had no plan to actually acquire and develop pitching. The current FO has adopted new principles, improved in analytics. They're advanced over the last FO in many ways, but the results have largely been the same. If the results don't change can you really say this FO is good? These aren't mutually exclusive events. "Both And" is perfectly reasonable. I don't think we've given the Falvine era enough time, but tick, tick, tick...

Ober pitched 108 innings last year, do you really think he could increase his innings 150% of last year? 120 to 130 tops Same for Ryan.. As for Bundy, trot him out till his arm falls off Nick referenced a non-traditional rotation article from November that seems prophetic... I bet we see a 6 man rotation or even 8-10 man rotation with extensive use of piggybacking pitchers scheduled to both pitch 4 innings in the same game.

Agreed - I really like Nick's analysis and always appreciate that @Nick Nelson frequently engages in the forum. I really doubt we see a trade for starting pitching. It would likely cost the prospects that the FO has been working so hard to collect and is banking on to be in the MLB pitching staff. I would guess they'll sign Pineda (or another 1 year $10m-ish starting pitcher)

2020 is not an excuse. 2020 happened two years ago, I know, I've been working from home for two years and not working in my factory. Thad Levine knew 2020 happened two years ago when he watched all of the good free agent pitchers go the last week of November and he knew at the time that he had a plethora of pitching prospects that were injured or still building stamina in September 2021... that wasn't going to change in April 2022. There's no plan B, the guys that should be plan B, getting their taste of the majors when injuries strike in 2022 are getting thrust into opening day, while still recovering from lost time. To that end, I agree with your assessment Nick, I think you are right, it's just terrible execution of a good strategy

Last year was an absolute disaster. If the OP was the plan all along, why didn’t more of these guys get a taste of the bigs? At least some long relief… instead we watched Albers et al get hammered

Great first post! Welcome to TD!