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Dman

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  1. Dman
    For all my hand wringing about his bat I think he has the best OPS out of the 1st round picks except for Holliday who looks like he might be a monster. Granted it is a small sample size and pitchers don't pitch and a lot of the high school hitters haven't played. Still it's a good start for Houston. I hope he just keeps rolling and stays on the heals of Culpepper. I wouldn't mind seeing Culpepper at third as he looks really good there as well. I'm still not expecting a ton of power from Houston, but I do like the swing.
  2. Dman
    I think he is saying the "-" means he was referring to the kitchen not the coaching staff and nutritionists. In the Yahoo sprots article they add the following which seems to indicate what @chpettit19 was saying. "But, while Paddack expressed how this change of scenery is something he's still trying to manage, he also took a jab at the Twins. He essentially called out the Twins for their facilities by praising the Tigers' versions, and showing amazement at the difference."
  3. Dman
    Correa said he would only wave his no trade clause to go to Houston if things were so bad wouldn't he say I'll go anywhere just get me the heck out. He wanted to stay in Minnesota if things didn't work in Houston. That doesn't seem to point to bad culture, chemistry accountability issues IMO. Duran didn't think he would be traded and there was an article where it intimated he\his family were sad about leaving Minnesota. Yeah I think he would come back in a heartbeat. Most of his teammates and friends are here. Jax said he didn't want to leave until that odd sequence of events and after they traded Correa. Ryan's on the record as saying he would prefer to stay in Minnesota. Varland didn't want to leave. Guys know it is a business and all, but beyond Jax are you aware of anyone that desperately wanted to leave? and specifically leave because chemistry\culture issues? They looked like a band of brothers until the trade deadline, but even with all that great chemistry they still lost a ton of games.
  4. Dman
    But how bad is the culture on this team when the guys they traded didn't even want to leave? Who are these bad apples affecting team chemistry? I haven't seen or heard about any. Keaschall just said the young players are energized to play well. To prove that they belong. I've seen teams with great chemistry, but they didn't have much talent and didn't win much. Fun teams to be on, but not winning teams. It would be one thing if there was just some huge divisive person or issue dividing the team, but I'm not aware of any. In the grand scheme chemistry just doesn't impact much. I would say the teams that I was on that were most successful were full of competitive guys that wanted to one up the other guy. They wanted bragging rights. I guess that's a form of chemistry if done right. Competition or the iron sharpening iron approach is far more valuable than chemistry or accountability. Maybe there could be some accountability issue's but if you're a pro player and having those kinds of issues how long will you be in the league? Likely not long. These articles only come up when the team is losing I think that is the correlation for poor accountability and chemistry issues. In general they seem to be some sort of scape goat for players poor performance. If you don't think these guys aren't trying as hard as they possibly can to be successful I don't know what to tell you. Some have the talent to make it some don't no matter how hard they try and team chemistry and accountability have little to do with it.
  5. Dman
    It's a toss up between Culpepper and Tait for me. Keaschall doesn't play an up the middle position so I feel there is less value there. Rodriguez is just so tough evaluate being hurt all the time and its an odd high K\walk rate. Just too much uncertainty there. If pressed to make a decision I think it would be Culpepper. Tait might have more potential to be elite if he stays at catcher so I could certainly see putting him at number 2 as well. I just have a hard time seeing him reach all that potential so I like Culpepper better.
  6. Dman
    It seems like we have this discussion every year. When the team is doing great the culture is great. When they aren't the culture is toxic. Before the deadline I remember Bader hitting a home run and getting hugs from teammates and high fives etc.is that a show of an uninspired team? They pan the camera to the dugout and guys are chatting with each other smiling etc.is that display of bad culture?Just a week ago Keaschall was saying how much energy all the young guys were bringing and that is was a fun atmosphere. Talent wins baseball games period., Culture is a nice talking point, but in the end means very little. These are pro ball players fighting to stay relevant in the game the have trained their entire lives for. Culture's not the problem.
  7. Dman
    I agree with you. If the Twins are top 5 I think they will go with a position player. Depending on what they do in the offseason I also think they might target HS players with their first three picks. My reasoning is that currently the farm is pretty stacked at the upper levels. Then if they get rid off one, two or all three of Pablo, Ryan and Ober the farm and the MLB team will be stacked with lot's of young talent. So I think they will want or have the luxury of taking risks on high upside high school players to help with the next wave of talent. I think they'll go more future based early and then do their college arms, bats etc. later on in the draft. If they don't sell in the offseason then likely a different strategy for next years draft. It is going to be an interesting year next year regardless.
  8. Dman
    I don't think the Twins chances of tanking worse than other teams is that great. When Pablo comes back they are going to have good starting pitching and the Twins schedule isn't as hard as some of the teams they are currently ahead of in the reverse standings. Even with those two teams out it might be hard to stay at number 8 IMO. Maybe if the pen continues to stay really bad and the bats don't do much they could do worse, but as things stand they look like the least likely of the ten bottom teams to be able to tank effectively enough to get to a top 5 pick. We'll see what happens, but getting to a top 5 pick slot a lot would have to go right\wrong IMO as they just seem to be setup better to win more games.
  9. Dman
    Yeah but in the end they lost to higher revenue teams. So I'm not sure what that really means other than they were closer than other revenue sharing teams, but still couldn't overcome the odds of losing to a higher revenue team. I'm not looking to pick a fight or anything. You have great posts. I think we just disagree on this one. All things being equal I'd rather the Twins had the Dodgers payroll so I could Watch Otani and win my division every year for the last ten years in a row. I'd like my team to go shopping for the best players in free agency. I just don't see parity there or any way the Twins can do those things without the revenue. You can say hey, but the Brewers and while they are having a great season they have never won a world series ever and they have had to endure really bad teams at times in their history for a really long time. Sure every now and then a Royals type team rises up, but mainly teams that spend more win the big one more. I believe that is the reason they spend more else why not do what lower revenue teams do and spend less?
  10. Dman
    For all that parity you would think that more than two revenue sharing teams would have won the world series in the last 20 years. The Royals were the last one before the Marlins in 2003. Maybe the Brewers can make it 3, but they'll have to get through the big teams to do it.
  11. Dman
    I think you have this backwards. The game is for the fans. Not the owners, Not the players. Without the fans there is no money for either side. The less interest in the game the less revenue to go around. With a cap there is still room for both sides to make plenty of money. Other sports have done just fine with a cap. In Football the cap is so bad that QB's are making 40M per year. What game can you think of where one player starts with an advantage while the others start with a disadvantage? I can't think of one. Card games, most any game you all start with an equal chance to win. If you and I sat down for a game of poker and I get to start with three aces every hand how much fun is that gonna be for you? It would get to a point where it is pointless to play and I think that is where baseball is headed. The game is for the fans and when your favorite team can only be competitive once every ten years because you have to start over with young players it starts to feel pointless. If the players association doesn't want "fair" competition then yeah as a fan I am going to blame them for the fact that my team has little to no chance year in and year out to win a world series and or be competitive year in an year out. I like the sports that have caps that create a level playing field. I If the major money makers don't want to revenue share then maybe have them buy out the smaller market teams and have them create a 12 team league. Or maybe take the the top 10 to 15 teams and create an uncapped league with the bottom 15 being a capped league. Then at least teams could be closer competitively than they are now. I think both sides are being short sighted and eventually it seems to me they will make it miserable enough that too many fans lose interest and neither side will make any money. They need to solve this issue.
  12. Dman
    I like the depth in the system right now, but there was a reason fans were clamoring for them to take a catcher early in the draft. The Twins just haven't developed any meaningful catchers in the system since we all complained about them reaching for Jeffers. Before the deadline there really only seemed to be one legit guy for backup catcher and I would say that was Cardenes. It's a weaker bat but he had decent defensive numbers. I'm not sure if you can even call Baez, Cossetti and Oliver "true" catchers. Maybe light fill in's, but certainly nothing to hang your hat on. It seems they lucked into getting Pereda who has had a very good bat at AAA, but offensive and defensive numbers dipped considerably at the MLB level. Still he looks like the next man up and he has two option years left so seems like a really good fit for backup catcher, with Gasper the only thing standing in his way. In the end they might be identical as both have killed it at AAA, but have yet to translate to MLB. Still it was a good get by Minnesota and increased their catcher depth at the upper levels. The Twins finally spent a top 100 pick on Diaw in the 2024 draft and he looks extremely mobile back there and appears to have a legit bat. I don't know if he is built to take a beating back there though. We'll have to wait and see, but until the deadline he was the most promising catcher prospect we'd seen in quite some time. Until recently it seemed like Diaw was the only catcher with "real" upside in the entire system. The trade deadline changed things. Tait while still young with a long way to go brings a power bat and arm to the position giving him All Star potential . If he hit's it would be a dream catcher scenario. He could have everything you want from the position. He still has to make enough contact for it to all work, but his potential is sky high and something we haven't since Mauer (Based on potential not batting styles). I really, really like the Jimenez trade. His strong suit appears to be defense and the Twins seem to have him selling out for power early in at bats and the home runs have exploded his OPS. If he continues to hit like that they would could have another high end catcher on their hands. So yes with the recent acquisition's things have changed and catcher depth would be a strength in the system and no longer a weakness. Glad the FO was listening to the board and decided to make catchers a priority, lol.
  13. Dman
    Yeah I noticed that too. It's quite a jump from DIII to pro ball though. Also they bumped him to AA recently as well. He's gonna have to figure out the breaking stuff. Will be interesting to see how he does next year. Ben Ross was DIII too I think and he's had trouble getting his bat going so he might not translate. Still a good gamble IMO.
  14. Dman
    Lot's to like about last night in the system. I think my favorite was Tait and Winokur going back to back. Nice to see the young guys getting it done. Jimenez another day another Home run this time a grand slam. He leads his team in OPS at least for the moment. Like @DocBauer gotta believe Houston and Smith are Cedar Rapids bound, but we'll see. They both have hit well and it seems like a good idea to get them acclimated for the Playoffs.
  15. Dman
    I said the same thing, lol. Here is a link I found online. It looks like he is this year Eeles like Gamble.
  16. Dman
    In general not a huge fan of this type of player. I do love the athleticism. Hoping that somehow, someway he can figure things out fairly quickly as the Twins could use his skillset if he can hit the baseball.
  17. Dman
    Yeah it's because the competition is so variable in the Minors. Anyone who does well there moves up a level and then weakens that team. At AAA anyone playing well gets moved to MLB and often times arms get picked over at that level because of injuries at the MLB level. So if a team loses a lot of talent then when other teams face them they do well and can pad their stats. At the MLB level you are playing against the best of the best every day. there is precious little padding of stats at that level. So of course the numbers come down and of course like any other level some hitters won't be able to adjust or take a really long time to adjust to that level. Still while stats aren't completely predictive in and of themselves they are the closest thing we have to determine when a player is ready. I'd still rather give a .900 to 1.000 OPS player a shot at MLB time versus someone at AAA with a .700 to .800 OPS. We don't know which players will make it as their weaknesses get exploited at the MLB level, but you still have throw guys out there and see what they can do.
  18. Dman
    I'm just comparing the bat, not the defense with Rosario and Fedko. If guys can hit they usually find spots for them. They both seem to have good power and decent Onbase Skills even their number of steals is close. So offensively they don't seem too far apart to me. Gonzalez is a slightly different bucket. Only 21 and he hasn't shown the power those two have yet. Doesn't mean it's not there. He also hasn't stolen many bases like Fedko and Rosario have. He's more of a pure hitter though. All three have a chance, but Fedko is the oldest so the least likely to get a shot. I agree Gonzalez will be added for sure so he is the most likely to debut and you are right they have too many outfielder's on the 40 man right now. not really any room to add more. It is very possible both Fedko and Rosario are not added. Still I can't shake that Fedko is almost exactly what they are looking for in a 4th outfielder. A right handed bat with some power that can play center, left and right. I mean they have the left handed version of that in Outman so maybe it doesn't matter, but Fedko looks like he might be able to handle the Bader role if he can hit MLB pitching which is no easy task. I keep coming back to do I like Fedko better than Martin? Who has really good plate discipline ,but not much power and is not that great defensively. Do I like him better than McCusker? Who has a ton of power but likely loses value defensively? It's a tough call and hard to base on such a small sample size, but the better he does at AAA the more he makes me wonder if he could be a right handed 4th outfielder solution. Maybe with Gonzalez there just is no room for Fedko. Maybe this is the best year Fedko will ever have as a pro. Hard to say. If this is who he is though he really does fit a need IMO.
  19. Dman
    Gallagher is impressive. Handling AA in his first full pro year is a good sign. He seems a fair bit like Morris. It would be nice for him to hunt a few more K's other than that what's not to like? Speaking of Morris nice to him back and pitching well. Will be interesting to see how he does the rest of the way. SWR looked really good too. I know he is not a top prospect, but Smith went 3 for 5. So far he has been making good contact. It will be interesting to see how he does as he moves up levels since contact is supposedly not his forte and the Breaking stuff gets much better High A and AA. Still nice to see him doing well and always nice to see pick 17 making some noise early. While I had written Ross off for next year I might have to change my tune. It's been the same low batting average and low slugging for Ross for pretty much a full two years at AA. While the K and Walk rates are good it hasn't been enough for him to make solid contact with the ball. Until of course the last month of the season where he carries a .994 OPS heading into today. August isn't over and he could still slump to the end, but he also might find enough momentum to see if one more year will help him get over the hump. He had a brutal July and hasn't had an OPS over .700 in any month this year until of course August. Hopefully he has figured something out, but he is on the precipice of being out of pro ball. Outman with another home run and two more K's. With his OPS rebounding in St. Paul it won't be much longer before we see him at the MLB level. I start talking about Fedko and he goes and has an 0 for 6 night with 2 K's. Hopefully he gets back on track soon. And it better be soon as Rosario is right there with him having hit 19 HR's with 25 stolen bases. Those numbers would likely be much better if he hadn't gotten off to such terrible start to the season. Fedko has the edge with the walk to K ratio and ability to play all three outfield spots, but Rosario has done well this year. He could stand to cut the K rate even more, but he is on track to be an option next year with a bit more polish. My man Jimenez with another Home Run. Seems the Twins have him trying to hit the ball harder? 2 K's and no walks though which is uncharacteristic for him. Love that .900 OPS though.
  20. Dman
    Personally I have been impressed with what he has done his entire pro career. He has been a good arm from the time he turned pro and kind of slow played given his result's IMO, It seems most any team he is on they use him as a stopper and when they run out of arms they use him as a long man too. I agree the K rate is somewhat concerning and I keep expecting him to fail as he moves up, but he hasn't had much trouble at AA this year. Morris didn't really get exposed that way until AAA so maybe that is where Paredes levels off? Hard to say. All I know is lower velocity fastballs and pitch to contact generally doesn't work very well at the MLB level. He will need to find an out pitch at some point. Personally I have been impressed with what he has done his entire pro career. He has been a good arm from the time he turned pro and kind of slow played given his result's IMO, I hope he finds his way to MLB as he has worked hard and gotten good results to this point.
  21. Dman
    I have so many thoughts and scenario's in my mind about this I could write a small book. The true blind fan in me would like see the Twins just hang onto the starting pitching they have and find a way to extend Jeffers. Add some decent bullpen arms and try to find at least one more hitter to lengthen the lineup. I think that could be a decent playoff caliber type team if most everyone stays healthy. They'd have great starting pitching and a ton of young options ready to come up and fill spots. The weakness would still be the lineup unless Gonzalez or the perpetually injured Rodriguez were good out of the gates which seems unlikely. The questions I have before blindly keeping this team pretty much in tact for 2026. Is there any possibility they can extend Ryan with 2 extra years and maybe an option with buyout for a third? Given what hitters say about his unique rising fastball being really hard to square up it would be nice to have him four more years.. He is a unicorn arm and likely all star pitcher every team needs in the playoffs. Anything can happen to an arm but just given his unique arm slot I think he will be one of those arms that ages better than most, but who knows. He has had trouble staying healthy for full seasons. If you can't extend Ryan and don't see the team "truly" competing next year then you better get All Star caliber talent back. Don't go pennies on the dollar as we can keep him and still get a comp pick in the end.. The deal they make better be really, really good. We traded a MLB player and batting champ for Pablo. They better get something good for Ryan if they decide to trade him. If they really want to save money to spend on another quality bat then trading Pablo makes sense as it clears 20M from Payroll which they could reallocate to the offense which needs another big bat in the lineup. It wouldn't hurt if said player could actually play plus defense either. I mean they have pretty much pitched without Lopez all year and while the results haven't always been great I think with all the young arms they have coming up they can fill that spot better than they can fill their offensive holes. I would prefer they hang onto him as he is a playoff caliber starter and when he is on a really, really good arm. Again if they do decide to trade him it needs to be an overpay. He too can get them a comp pick just by hanging onto him. He is cost controlled and 20M for a pitcher of his caliber is a deal that is hard to come by these days on the open market. I guess bottom line for me is I would keep the starting pithing for next year. If the team sucks yet again there still would be the deadline to hash this out again. If they can't extend Ryan I understand looking at overpay deals. but it must be an overpay to move him IMO. Extend Jeffers. Even though he isn't a great defensive catcher he is one of the better offensive catchers out there. We can't afford to take even just competent bats from the lineup. I could on go and on but will stop here.
  22. Dman
    I just don't see re-location as a serious thing. Granted the Twins are on the bottom end of payroll, but certainly no different than 8 to 10 other teams and they have been at the top end of those teams in spending recently. I think the Twins just made a solid business decision. they got more money per share from the minority owners so why not do that deal? The team is only going to increase in value not decrease. Once the new CBA is settled it will be a better time to sell the team. I think this is more about waiting for a better windfall than anything else. Like most Twins moves the Pohlad;s want an overpay to move on the from team. They didn't feel they were getting that so here we are. I don't think that means any nefarious plans to move the team are in play. Could it happen? Sure anything can happen. The odds seem pretty low to me though.
  23. Dman
    Great game by Langenburg. He'd been pitching better the last month or so. Looks like he might have found the stuff to move up a level next year. Hope he keeps this up. I guess I have to get off my Outman sucks campaign. He's been relatively who he has been at AAA, anyway, after a brutal start. With Stewart now on the injured list I guess the Twins knew better about moving on from him. Hopefully Outman keeps the contact coming and eventually can translate it to MLB. MaCleod with the much better line than Rojas tonight. I know Rojas has some nasty stuff but it seems Like MaCleod understands how to pitch better. We could have us some lefty competition with MaCleod, Rojas and Prielipp. Hill is further away, but another exciting lefty arm.. Always nice to see lefty arms doing well. I know small sample sizes give erroneous long term info but has anyone else noticed Jimenez has more walks (12) and strikeout's (9) and a .500 OBP? It's a few less plate attempts but his OPS is higher than Houston's as well and the kid is only 19 and this is first taste of A ball. Nice to have some young catchers to get excited about. Lot's of bats slumping. Hopefully they get back on track soon.
  24. Dman
    Totally agree! I would add that they are on the 40 man taking up valuable spots so finding out if they will work out in the pen ideally happens quickly. I don't have a ton of faith in either arm and 40 man spots are valuable. They both have interesting stuff though and have been pretty good starters all the way to AAA. I hope they can make it as pen arms it's tough to make it at the MLB level though.
  25. Dman
    True position players are rarely taken in Rule V and generally if taken would be younger. I'm just thinking that the Twins did protect Severino when he led his league in HR's that year and he didn't even have much defensive value, but he was younger. Fedko does have good 4th outfielder tools. It would be a toss up, but to your point rare that older position players get taken. Yeah I like GG for one of the corners as well.
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