Dman

Was not initially a believer in Poppen but he is starting to change my mind. He has a nice K rate and has continued to produce as he has advanced. I thought he was known as a pitcher with good control but the only issue I have with him right now is his WHIP which seems to mainly be influenced by the walks he has given up. 14 of them in 19 innings. So is he effectively wild or does he really have swing and miss stuff? I guess time will tell but he won't make it to MLB with a WHIP that high so at some point he is going to have to gain better control. At any rate he seems like a player to watch right now.

Perez sure throws his fair share of balls out of the zone but I guess I can't complain with the results he is getting. He is making me a believer and really strengthening the starting core of Odo and Berrios. If Gibson and Pineda come around this team is dangerous. Still would be nice to solidify the pen but I am fine giving the guys they have a chance until June to prove themselves. The hitters have been outstanding. This is a very tough lineup to keep quiet. Any player can take a mistake pitch out of the park. I have been waiting a long time for a team like this. If we stay healthy it is gonna be a fun year.

I liked Jax as a draft pick but have struggled to embrace him as a potential MLB pitcher. I love how aggressively he pitches and his WHIP has always been pretty good. His K rate though has always been sub optimal and that is what gives me pause. There don't seem to be very many good pitchers in MLB that don't have swing and miss stuff. So maybe he could make it as a 5th starter type but it seems to me that until he finds a K pitch he will have trouble stepping up to the Big leagues. I will say I am impressed with what he has done so far this season. I am still hopeful for just a little more growth to put him over the top, but I also have my doubts. Congrats to all the starters last night as I don't remember three guys pitching that well all at the same time. Nice to see more solid pitching prospects in the system.

I never loved the signing but I was willing to give the FO the benefit of the doubt. His spring training was not great and he was all over the place out of the pen to start the season. At that point I figured he would be another bust that the Twins stuck with for too long. The best I thought he could ever achieve is to survive as a fringe 5th starter. I never would have guessed he could have a game where he held the Houston lineup to zero runs through 8 innings. I never thought he had that kind of potential at all. Perez really impressed me with that outing. I can see now that he can be so much more. He can be part of the top of the rotation. It would be awesome if he was part of the solution to making the starting pitching stronger. Strong enough to compete with some of the better clubs.

I don't know what to say. I predicted a homer prone loss and Perez pitched a shutout for eight innings. I have so much crow to eat my stomach hurts. I was very surprised he was able to hold that lineup to zero runs. Just like Odo I kept waiting for him to implode and he never did. Very, very pleased with the win. I wish I was believer from the beginning but will have to settle for a band wagon jumper instead.

Given the swing and miss swing of Cabbage I would never have picked him to win a hitter of the month award ever. With Kiriloff and Lewis likely standing in his way among others he seemed like the longest of long shots to me. I am happy to see that he is getting more contact and having much better results. It seems like his eye at the plate has been better and he has been getting better pitches to hit. Congrats to Trey on hitting better than anyone else in the system for a month especially in cold northern tundra of Cedar Rapids!

I didn't watch the whole game but the inning I did watch Cole struck out the side. He looked really good as he was up, down left right and just outside with most of the pitches I saw. I think patience would have been more prudent than aggressive at bats. His fast ball has some nice tail at the end and he kept our guys swinging at balls. In the three at bats I saw there were only two decent pitches to try and hit. I turned it off after that inning as I knew this was a loss. I will say this Twins team does not seem to be a good cold weather team. Both blow outs were in cold bad weather. I know the other team has to play in those conditions as well they just seem to handle it better than the Twins. We need to get another win against Houston and I don't like our chances with Perez on the mound. I see a lot of long balls against us today but will have to wait and see. Hopefully we can generate some offense but Houston has been good at keeping our bats at bay.

Well at least I didn't mark it in permanent marker. Using a Pencil I can still erase it and put the proper team in the win column.

I had this game penciled in as a loss before it even began. I kept waiting for Odo to have one of his Odo innings in the 5th then the 6th then the 7th and it never happened. Then I waited for the bullpen to mess his great pitching performance up and it never happened. When the game was over I sat in quiet disbelief wondering if what happened really just happened. Baseball is a crazy game.

Yep good point. Please ignore me. I wasn't thinking when I wrote that.

Littell would be a tough choice. He has 1.6 WHIP and 5.3 ERA in AAA. I hate to see what those numbers would look like against that Houston lineup. I think that would be a give away game at this point. I thought that AAA would be deep with pitching talent but that hasn't shown up yet this year that I can see. I wonder if they would call Poppen up? Decent K rate and WHIP. I don't know if he has any plus pitches but good results in AA so far. Maybe too early to tell what those numbers mean anyway. Still he has a hot hand\arm right now.

Even though we had the early lead I kind of figured that Houston would reel the Twins in by taking advantage of our bullpen. After Harper gave up the home run I said to myself here we go, even after scoring a bunch of runs Houston will still win this game. My negativity must have been negated though as we hung on to win. Would be awesome to steal another game but I am very happy to get at least one win in Houston where they are very tough to beat.

Not sure what to think about Dobnak. He always seems to have good results and a decent ERA but he doesn't strike a lot of guys out so I guess he is your pitch to contact type of pitcher. It is hard to make the jump to MLB with that kind of pitching style but maybe he is someone who can do it. It has been a pleasure to watch him pitch aggressively as he doesn't give up many walks. He goes right after the batters. He has the WHIP to be successful but the next jump will tell the tale. AA is the tough jump for pitchers especially those with low K numbers and AAA can be even harder. Here's hoping he can refine one of his pitches to get those K number up.

I keep underestimating this AA lineup. You look at it and the only star power in that lineup is Arraez. The rest are Grinder\Over Acheivers and yet that is the group that seems to be getting the job doen so far this season. Granted they have a really good pitching staff but the lineup have scored a fair amount of runs as well. If Kirilof ever joins them then they should be an even more formible group. It has been fun watching that team play this year hope they keep it up.

I have not been a big Jax fan because his K rate isn't that great but he sure seems to find a way to get the job done. So happy to Helman have some success. It has been a tough start but here is hoping he is getting back to the hitter he was last year. Cabbage I don't know what to say. He has been great so far. If he keep this up they have to send to high Ober is on fire. a but rough tonight but this guy can deal. Just stay healthy and this guy can pitch. Great things again tonight. Keep it up boys/

I was not a Cabbage believer this year. I figured he would go down in flames yet again. Very happy to see him having some success. Keep proving me wrong Trey and I hope you make your dreams come true.

I understand your position as well and agree with you in many ways. Most superstar\really good players typically are young usually 21 or 22 by AA\AAA. College draft picks are already 20 when they come out so need to be promoted fast to hit that mark. I also agree with you that leagues have what I would call filler players who are quite old for the level they are playing at skewing the age numbers for the leagues. Still in my mind kids that are 20 and in High A are fast movers as there are not a lot of players that age at that level. You do have to keep in mind that some late bloomers can be really good players as well. I am thinking Merrifield as a good example. Contributors come from every age group. It is the younger players that we get excited about though as they tend be difference makers and have the potential to help a team long term. We haven't seen enough of those types of players in the past but it seems like we have several in the system right now.

We probably see promotion differently. For Me aggressive promotion sometimes has more to with age than how long a player is at a level. Badoo is young for his current level and has been young for pretty much all levels so far. When most HS players are drafted they don't play much that first year so they typically have to repeat the level to show that they have some skill to move up. In the Appy league he showed a good eye at the plate and showed some power. He looked ready for A ball. In A ball he showed an OK eye at the plate but seemed to have contact issue as his K rate climbed. If his contact rate was better the first half of A ball I am sure the Twins would have moved him up just like they did with Miranda, but if you don't conquer the level why should you move up? He had a better second half but still has some contact issue's IMO. They moved him to A+ this year anyway to keep him moving. He is young for the level and struggling right now as a 20 year old. If he figures things out he will get moved to AA if not they will leave him where he is. I still think it is an aggressive promotion because he never really dominated A ball IMO. The Twins apparently believe the skills are there and want to challenge him with the next level. I'm not sure what you want when it comes to promotion. While you can push players why push them if they are not ready? If they haven't dominated the level they are at why promote to them to a higher level where they are even more likely to fail? They have to dominate or at the very least be good at a level before promoting them. Do the Twins slow play some players, absolutely yes. I don't understand the way they treat relievers at all. I think Gonasalves got mentioned and although he has dominated in both AA and AAA he did not handle MLB well at all. IMO if he throws strikes when he was brought up they would have let him keep pitching but a starting pitcher with his walk rate does not belong on a MLB team. He had more to work on so I think he proved the Twins correct for slow playing him. He needs to have better control to be succesful in MLB. Once he has the tools he will get his shot. AA and AAA get treated fairly similar so I don't think it matters too much where you play once you get there as the Twins have promoted from AA before. In summary I think you can only aggressively promote players that are ready. They have to prove they are ready by consistently mastering the competition or the very least be better than average. If players don't do that how can you aggressively promote? While I like your examples and think you have a decent case we don't get to see these players, only the box scores so it is hard to know what warts they have despite having some success against their peers. Maybe the Twins are not the most aggressive team when it comes to promotion but I don't think they are the worst either.

I'll admit I have La Tortuga fever and I dismissed Garver a little bit because he had such a down spring. I know spring doesn't mean much but it had me wondering if he was regressing. Happy to see my assumptions were wrong.

While I a do agree they seem to slow play some players, recently that doesn't seem to be the trend I am seeing. They aggressively promoted Rooker, Badoo, Miranda, Lewis, Graterol, Helman and probably others. If you truly prove you belong at the next level I believe the player will get there sooner rather than later in the Twins system. I think part of the reason some of our players are struggling to start the MiLB season is that the Twins have aggressively promoted so many of them. Most of the players doing well to start the season are those that were at that level last year (i.e. Cabbage, Diaz, Blankehorn). So there is a fine line when it comes to promotion as once confidence is ruined it can take a long time to get it back thus the caution to make sure a player is ready for the next jump. I do agree with you that Aggressive promotion is the way to go for most players. The only way to get better is to face better competition the only way to face better competition is to move up. Why delay helping a player get better? If they can't step up to the next level were they ever going to no matter how long you waited? It is a fine line but I think being as aggressive as possible is best for the player and the organization.

I have been waiting for that All-Star lineup at High A to break out and they finally did. Once those bats get rolling it is going to tough that group. All the guys I gave up on last year seem to be off to hot starts (i.e. Cabbage, Blankenhorn, Diaz, even English and Whiutefield seem to be surging). Here's hoping they keep it up and make this prospect group even better.

I think a lot of us were hoping they would hang onto Austin longer but I am not sure I ever felt he would be a long term fit for this team. I agree there was a decent chance for his value to increase if we kept him longer and I think the Giants got themselves a deal. If he does make progress they might be able to flip him for something decent or hang onto him and have a nice power hitter on the cheap for a while. IMO I think he makes it but I question how good he will be based on K rate. I mean he just needs to hit around 250 or 260 with his slugging that will be a good deal for the team he is on. He is close to that right now but pitchers will adjust and can he adjust back I just don't have the confidence he will. If 30% to 35% of your outs are automatic (i.e. K's) and the BABIP average is 300 you are losing 30 to 40 points of batting average to the average hitter and the average hitter has trouble hitting 300 because they likely have a 10 to 15% K rate or higher. So if Austin does manage to hit the BABIP average of 300 the best his batting average can be is something like .240 and it will most likely be less than that if continues to strike out at those rates. He has to bring that down to put more balls in play so that he can bring up his average and OPS and create more value. I hope he does and like you said we only have a small sample size. He hasn't been given much time to adjust but looking back at his MiLB numbers he looks kind of like the same strike out prone player to me. Palka made it why not Austin? I just question how good either of them will be in the end.

Yeah we pretty much agree then. I want to maximize value as much as possible as well but will sacrifice where it makes sense. I hope Austin decreases his K rate and does well. Maybe he will prove me wrong but at the same time I think we will be just fine without him.

When you have a surplus of talent at one position and a weakness at another I agree pretty much every GM is going to trade that surplus talent for talent that can potentially make the team better as a whole right now. So I agree with you on that. While I think most GM's would agree with your thoughts on position player value ( i.e. right fielder more valuable than 1st base) it seems short sighted to me in some ways. Let's say for the sake of argument we believe that our weakness is 1st base and we have a player who plays in the outfield but his bat and defense will play at 1st base. Why wouldn't we use them there if he makes the team stronger as a whole? Even though that player has more value in right or left field they still provide more value at your current weak 1st base position. I just think there are more ways to think about a players positional value when they have the flexibility to play multiple roles. They can still make your team stronger even if they aren't maximizing their skill set at their strongest position. While I understand your position and it makes sense to me I just think that being more flexible about defining player value can be valuable as well.

I agree both Raley and Kiriloff can play in the outfield but on this team who would they replace? Maybe if Kepler continues to struggle or Rosario gets injured they could replace them but their bats and defense would still play at 1st base. They could be rotated into the outfield as they have that ability but the guys that are there right now I think are pretty set as they are good offensively and defensively. You could argue that both Raley and Kiriloff can easily play the corners and they could trade one or two of the four corner outfielders for pitching if they wanted to, but I think if they can find another place where their bat would play why not use them there. As to your statement about which of those they would call up today probably none of them are ready right now. Raley might be but that is more of a guess than a statement. Rookers K rate and just plain swing and miss rate make him not ready and Kiriloff though talented could use more challenges\seasoning before making that kind of commitment to him. With Austudillo improving at catcher, Garver could play 1st right now as it looks like his bat would play at that position as well as catcher. Sano could also play first with Marwin or Austudillo playing third. So even with the lose of Austin I think we still have in house options. If all those fail there is always some grizzled vet out there that could be plugged in. We agree on a lot of things, even Cron to some degree. I just can't see Austin as that valuable with the K rate he has and you see him likely getting over the hump with more at bats. We will have to see how his season goes and then can find out which of us was more right or wrong. Fun discussion. Thanks!