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Dman

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Everything posted by Dman

  1. Dman
    I agree with you. I think our pitching development is much better. Probably better than it ever has been and this FO has identified and brought in good starting pitching. Pipeline can be defined anyway a person wants to define it and I get that, but I think if you are being honest draft and develop should be the largest part of it otherwise why keep this FO or group that looks for and develops talent if they aren't successful at it? I could be GM and fail to draft and develop just as easily as they can.
  2. Dman
    I don't know. Pipeline to me means you have connected pipes from the lower levels of your org to the MLB level where you are developing starting pitching. If you want to include Pablo and Gray and Ryan who essentially were already developed then I don't think pipeline is really the word to use. Just say the Twins have found ways to field a good rotation. When this concept first came out it was related to Falvey coming onboard to create better pitching development throughout the system and at the time it intimated that pipeline mainly meant draft and develop. Sure if they traded for some young arm at A ball or below that would count IMO as well but much beyond that and most of the development has already come from another org. Sure the Twins continue to develop arms at the MLB level. Pablo and Ryan and all the rotation arms are constantly looking for ways to improve. All teams do this with varying degree's of success. Also not sure how that development relates to pipeline as the pipeline is what feeds your MLB team. Players that are already there aren't in the pipeline anymore they have arrived. So they are out of the pipeline. To me pipeline is mainly building via draft and develop so that you don't have to trade for pitching as it is expensive to trade for good pitching. If you are mainly trading for your pitching "pipeline" isn't the right word IMO it should be trades are the way to get developed pitching outside the org that can't develop it on its own.
  3. Dman
    I am going to agree with others and say it premature to call SWR a success this early in. I mean he owns 6.08 ERA in AAA this year so he hasn't been dominant everywhere. Don't get me wrong I am super pumped by how well he is pitching at the MLB level and he has really helped the Twins get back in the race. I hope he can keep this up, but adjustments will be made and we'll have to wait and see how he does once they are made. The Twins might be on the way to a pitching pipeline but right now Ober is the only real success story who was home grown. We are still waiting on Varland and SWR to some degree. It is hard to include pen arms as every org has a decent level of success with those types of arms. Even Terry Ryan's group did well with developing those types of arms. Maybe Varland and SWR work out long term. Maybe Festa and Raya join them at some point. There is a lot of potential arms at High A right now that could be difference makers and If Canterino and Prielipp ever get healthy maybe they can be impact arms or maybe they will end up as just pen arms as well. At any rate it still doesn't seem like much of a pipeline to me at this point in time,
  4. Dman
    Thanks for the extra info on Eeles. I was wondering what the deal was when I saw him in lineup. The Muscles need a few more pesky bats so hopefully he can provide that. If they ever get Jenkins back they could have a formidable lineup. I don't know what more Keirsey can do to get the teams attention. He is batting .300. His walk rate is above 10% and K rate in the low 20% range. His slugging looks good and while his BABIP is a little high it isn't too far out of range. He's been good defensively robbing some home runs and covering a lot of ground. He has a well rounded toolset. I guess he just needs to keep it up and wait for an opportunity,
  5. Dman
    Keirsey is having a year. I guess give it another month but he sure looks ready to me. Too bad there is no room on the 40 man. Would love to have him in center at the MLB level. I watched McCusker last year and know he can hit HR's. It was the K rate that was killing him. You could tell he was working on it this spring sacrificing power for contact. Looks like he is picking his spots for when to go deep and was obviously feelin it last night. While the K rate is down from nearly 40% last year it is still at 30% this year. He is a dangerous hitter though and props to him on the 3 homer night and going 5 for 5. Extremely hard to do that and some players never hit 3 homers in the same game. He can be impressive at times. Greater consistency is the key and it looks like he is working on that. Cespedes continues to hit and hit for power. He is starting to look like he has come into his power and he has good plate discipline. If he keeps it up he likely gets promoted at the halfway point. I was watching the Ft Meyers game on the gameday app ands saw the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th. Was waiting for the typical groundout or fly out. I saw Winoker come up and thought he might blast one out and he walked. I saw Rodriguez come up and thought he could do it too but the odds just seemed so low that they would walk it off with just the number of runs they needed to win that game. Then sure enough he hits it out!! Was nice to see one of our teams come back from a deep deficit late and steal a win after our pens have given up so many games late this year.
  6. Dman
    I think the way this is setup is a complete game is 9 innings and technically the starter of record is expected to go 9 innings to complete the game. If he doesn't then he can use proxy's (other pitcher's) to get him through the 9 innings. The proxy's act as the starting pitcher they are essentially SWR although a different player. So whatever happens the rest of the game plays out as if the proxy pitcher is SWR. However, the names change along the way and the results follow whatever proxy pitcher is inserted. If the proxy pitchers hold and don't give up more runs than when SWR was the pitcher of record and he pitched more than half the game he gets the credit for the win even though he didn't make it to the end of the game. As others have mentioned this method makes win loss records for starter pretty meaningless. There are better metrics that are used and that will show up in SWR's stat line to prove what kind of pitcher he really is.
  7. Dman
    I don't know it seems like a pretty fair measure to me. If SWR really wants the win pitch all 9 innings. You could easily argue the other side of this argument that giving starting pitchers the win for just 5 innings of work doesn't make sense either. They barely pitch half the game then the team uses four other arms to shut down the other team for the win. I get the frustration. I really do. We all know SWR's one hit one walk performance through 6 innings was dominant. Jax came out couldn't get strikes when he needed them and gives up the run that would have allowed SWR to get the win and gets the win for himself as the team came back. He pitched one sort of crappy inning for the win which really doesn't make sense. I get that makes even less sense, but I think the pitcher of record who has the lead at the end of the game should get credit for the win. The team got ahead while they were on the mound and thus they won the game with that pitcher. The same would be true if the starter went all 9 innings but since they don't what they have in place seems the correct way to go about it despite many great pitching performances not ending up with wins.
  8. Dman
    Happy to see Zebby get the promotion. It's nice to see one arm just utterly dominant at one of the levels. With no walks and just K'ing guys straight up there wasn't much left to work on in high A IMO. It will be really interesting to see how well his stuff translates to AA. K's are going to be harder to come by from AA to AAA to MLB as the hitters are improved all the way up. Hoping he is another later round success story.
  9. Dman
    You said Wallner was going to heat up. Might be a bit early to call him fixed but it sure seems like he is warming with the weather. Hopefully he found his mojo for the rest of year.
  10. Dman
    Just an FYI those two walks for Bowen can at the end when he was around 80 pitches. His control was great with the 8K's to that point. He gave up just the one hit. Very dominant game for him. Hoping he stays consistent and moves up at some point this year. Cedar Rapids has a really good rotation.
  11. Dman
    Matthews is just relentlessly aggressive and still striking guys out. Even with the 9 K's through seven innings he threw only 84 pitches. Very efficient work! I don't know what more he can show at High A. AA could use arms so I think it is time to see what Matthews can do there. Really nice to see Louie so dominant. Just need to make sure he can keep it going and he can earn his way back up again,
  12. Dman
    This is an absolute must watch if you are into the draft. Excellent read on players and how wild this draft might be after the first dozen picks. I plan to watch it again. It was that good IMHO.
  13. Dman
    Agreed. 54 at bats is too small a sample size to glean much reliable info. Still it is nice to see him doing well. Hopefully he keeps it up. We need all the good hitters we can find.
  14. Dman
    Really hoping this a breakout year for Cespedes. Finding good hitters in hard. His BABIP is still high and it is hard to keep OPS in the 1.000 range. Still he keeps piling on extra base hits. His K m(22%) and walk rates (13%) are in a really nice range. Going to watching him close to see if he can keep this up.
  15. Dman
    Rough day to watch the affiliates. Neither the pitching or hitting was very good for the most part. Happy Cedar Rapids found a way to win. They are the one team hovering around .500 at least. The farm feels a bit depleted this year. Hopefully the warmer weather brings better things.
  16. Dman
    Yeah most of thought he wouldn't make it through waivers even with the rough peripheral numbers. He is off to a hot start and this is year two after TJ I believe so a decent chance he might pitch than last year. A solid flyer for a team to take that needs help in the pen.
  17. Dman
    I agree with Festa that fastball command can be huge when trying to stay ahead in the count. The only issue is when someone is sitting on a fastball it can end up in the seats. Gotta put those in tough spots for the hitter to get to and use that slider to strike them out. He is starting to look really good this year.
  18. Dman
    The difference with the thumbs up is that you know they already agreed with the post. Having them post essentially the same thing wouldn't make much sense. Thumbs down what didn't you like, why? would be different content.,
  19. Dman
    You are correct but his K rate was really good that year which can be an indicator of future success. We'll see how he does as this season goes on, but I don't believe that Bradenton team has a ton of good hitters and he only K'd two guys last night. Still the weak contact was impressive. He appeared very hard to barrel up last night. He is an enigma for me right now, but that weak contact with a little more refinement to get more K's and he could be really good. Pretty SSS so far, we'll see what the full year looks like, but he is off to an impressive start for being younger than most in his league.
  20. Dman
    I have been really tough\down on the bullpens in the minors so far this year, but want to give them a shout out as the pen's held the leads for all the affiliates last night. I can eat a little crow today. Sad to hear Tanner Morris retired. Obviously I don't know the reason(s), but it had to be hard dealing with a slow start and stuck in system with Lee, Prato and Helman with more guys on the way. Still while his numbers were down that happens to a lot hitters when starting in colder climates. At any rate I wish him the best of luck as he had a very successful minor league career to this point. Martin with a really nice night for the Saints. Good to see him keeping that bat going. He might be back up with MLB shortly. Klein continues to pitch well would just like see that K rate a bit higher, but he has been effective this year. Nice to Rodriguez is back and with an extra base hit, Pitching seems to be dominating recently.
  21. Dman
    Laras is going to be an interesting pitcher. He has been pretty successful everywhere he has been so far. He is not going to be a flamethrower, but from what I can see his pitches get a lot of side to side movement and spin. This seems to allow him to get lot's of pop ups and ground balls. All the numbers look good right now except K rate which is a little concerning. I watched his game on MiLB.tv and came away less impressed than I thought I would. He's a solid looking 6' pitcher with a live arm, but he didn't miss a ton of bats. The first hitter drilled a ball right at him at what had to be 100MPH which if he hadn't caught for an out would have been a hit. Several good defensive plays were made for him as well to either get quick outs or save hits. It was one of those games where everything goes right for the pitcher. I am not trying to take away from his 6 no hit inning's as that is an incredible accomplishment. Really hard to do in pro ball. Still in my mind I was hoping for a certain level of dominance that I did not see from him. He didn't appear to have great control. He didn't strike out many hitters. While he generated a ton of weak contact he also gave up some pretty hard contact that fortunately was right at his fielder's. His game felt more lucky than good, but hey that is what good pitchers do. Make it tough on hitters and get outs. I was just expecting different things from him I guess. Like I said it is an interesting mix. For 20 years old he is doing exceptionally well. I just have some nagging concerns that maybe will go away as the season moves on.
  22. Dman
    Maybe it is the Minnesota nice in me, but I don't love the thumbs down either. While I understand it gives a fellow poster the power to just disagree with a point made, too often it leaves me wondering what it is they disagreed with and especially why. IMO if someone took the time to post something and you completely disagree then lets hear why by posting your own opinion. Then we all get another viewpoint on the subject. I think the disagree button cheats us out of discourse and doesn't really provide much value that I can see.
  23. Dman
    SWR with a lot of pitches in very few innings. Reminds me of some of his AAA starts. He almost made it 4 innings despite all the trouble and he gave up one earned run so he didn't kill the teams chances at a win. Would be nice to see a few more K's in there to escape innings, but he'll have things to look at and improve on. Just happy Rocco took him out when he did. Funderburk gave Mendick a nice down the middle pitch and he didn't miss. I don't like it when pitchers walk guys as it means the batter didn't need to work their way on and it ups the pitch count, but sometimes when the hitter knows a strike is likely coming they are ready and Mendick was. Sometimes good pitches get hit. Sands pitch low and inside was going to take perfect swing to be a HR and Benintendi got all of it. Sands seemed to melt down after that. I still think Sands has setup man in him, but you take your lumps in baseball. Sometimes things just go sideways. Again it was good for Rocco to make a change. I thought once we were ahead our bullpen would shut the door, but it was one of those nights. It was nice to have Duran there to finish the 9th. To be honest I wasn't sure if he would be completely ready for a tight spot like that just coming back, but was glad he got the job done for a much needed win after this teams slow start.
  24. Dman
    WInder is rehabbing in low A so if\when they have to add him I assume they will use that spot when he comes off the IL. I was kind of surprised they added Henriquez back to 40 man so fast. They must believe he is ready, but they could have waited on that move IMO.
  25. Dman
    I come to this site most everyday and my first love is the Minor League reports and the farm. I also think this site is one of the best sites for the Twins Draft. Of course the main goal is the MLB club and I enjoy that too. I think I just like that you can get enough info to sort of be a mini GM at this site and that is something unique and fun about this site. The moderation on this site is superb and generally there is knowledgeable baseball conversations going on. While I agree with others that I tire of the cheap Pollad talk and the fire Rocco at every turn comments I get where people are coming from. We are all passionate fans and need a good place to vent when things don't go our favorite teams way. While many of us are all dug in on our philosophies and differences I wouldn't have it any other way. The divergent viewpoints are what make the comments a fascinating read. Hey, I have been burned by stats not matching my narrative before and it is good to get called out or forced to look at things another way. Honestly I wouldn't change too much about the site. I like and appreciate all the incremental changes that have been made over time. I like the Minor league top 20 guys in the upper right and weekly writeup on who is performing well. This site really has it all and yes things can always be improved, but for me this site is pretty close to perfect as it is.
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