Major League Ready

Limiting Gallo's ABs has helped as well. Wallner is getting a lot of those ABs and he has been great. Can't wait for Lewis to get back. Hopefully, his rehab goes well and we see him soon.

You act as if I said bringing up AAA players is a guarantee. That is so obviously foolish the possibility of failure does not need to be stated. What I said was that the highest performing members of this team are still in the infancy / developmental stages of their careers. Yet, you continue to write off the best and most sustainable source of improvement. Had we followed your strategy this team would be horrible. BTW .... These examples go far beyond the twins. The Astros / Dodgers / Rays continue to be good because they continue to add talent from their system. Baltimore is one of the best teams in the league building almost completely from within. The need to build from withing is something that is universally accepted across every team and the members of baseball media. Your position is in the extreme minority.

Julien, Wallner, and Lewis are all very inexperienced. Kirilloff because of injury is still in the proving stage and Jeffers was a young player many had written off. Actually, there are at least 8 veteran players getting a lot of playing time. Buxton, Gallo, and Vasquez count to. I thought we were talking about which players are performing over the past couple months. The top 5 performing players by wRC+ are Wallner / Julien / Jeffers / Lewis and Kirilloff. Vasquez is 17th, Correais 15th, MAT is 14th, Gallo 11th, Buxton 10th and Polanco 9th. Like I said, you are just ignoring whatever does not fit your narrative.

I like guys that are good defensively too but you put an enormous amount of weight on defense. What is the saying ... teams will find a position for guys that hit like Julien. You have been saying this since spring training or before, yet Julien has unseated Polanco at 2B. You said the same thing about Wallner. Yet, they are having an impact and taking over for veterans with inferior offensive skills. I think you are ignoring what is actually happening. The young guys have absolutely taken over this team. The production is not even close.

Polanco has essentially already been replaced by Julien. 3B will be taken by either Lee or Lewis or Miranda could even make a comeback. Severino / Prato and Schobel are also candidates. Hopefully, he pulls it together this last couple of months and has trade value this off-season. Kepler could be replaced by a combination of Wallner / Lewis and Larnach. It's also possible they opt out and pursue a RH free agent but the market looks lean next year. If they put Wallner in RF, Lewis / Larnach / Prato /Kiersey jr. or Martin could be used in LF.

True and moving Lewis primarily to the OF would really change the balance. I hope that's the way it goes. Martin and Prato need to prove they are candidates to be everyday players and Prato has very little experience in the OF. That experiment needs to be validated before we can call him an OF or super utility prospect. I was hoping they would give him more time in LF the last few weeks given our need at the ML level.

Bring in Williams for 2-3 weeks while giving Garlick / Prato and/or Severino reps at 1B in AAA. Give one of those guys a chance if Williams is not cutting it. Garlick's been good the past couple months and the versatility would add value to Severino/Prato. At least we don't have to watch Gallo whiff.

We have a lot more IF depth than OF depth which makes me think Polanco is more likely than Kepler to gone. IDK if I would make an even money bet Kepler is gone next year, especially if he plays anywhere near the way he has for the last couple months for the rest of the year. INFers that are close / have potential to compete for 2B/3B. (Lewis/Lee/Prato/Severino/Martin/Miranda and maybe Schobel) There are a lot of options that could force Polanco out. Assuming Walner becomes the one of the everyday OFers, only Larnach is really knocking at the door.

Their success speaks for itself. The relative impact of trading for prospects vs trading for established players is crystal clear if you examine the facts as I have. Trading long-term assets for short-term assets is not sustainable. The practices of Oakland / Cleveland and Tampa are proof. Go ahead and ignore the facts that don't support your opinion if it makes you feel better.

It's hard to imagine Williams could we worse than Gallo at this point. He has been brutal for a couple months now. I would say give Prato a few starts at 1B in AAA. He is 5'9 so not ideal but they need some of the dead weight off the roster. How about giving Severino a few starts at 1B in St. Paul?

It's been about 8 weeks. Since 6/20 his wRC+ is 152. He has been pretty consistent too. His wRC+ is also 152 for the last 4 weeks.

I think Gallo is still here because we have no depth a 1B. If we let him go, what do we do if Solano gets hurt? CJ Cron would have looked pretty good on this roster. What will they do if/when Kirilloff gets healthy? The roster management is going to be interesting the rest of the way.

The failure has been the offense. As a group, I think it would be fair to say in general we were confident in Correa / Buxton / Polanco Miranda and Vasquez. Some criticized the Arraez trade. It appears the FO felt they could get equal offense from some combination of Polanco and Julien. The team is definitely better with Julien and Lopez vs Arraez alone. There was a lot of Criticism of Jeffers and some wanted him moved. When they realized Buxton could not play the field they got MAT who has been pretty good. Remember the calls for Nick Gordon to get more time or start? How many people were betting Kirilloff was washed up? We wanted Kepler gone. He has been quite good. We were right about Gallo. That's the one they got wrong and we got right. Where do we stand now that we are two-thirds of the way through the season. How have position players performed over the past 2 months? The stats below are the last two months for position players. The problem is clearly Miranda / Buxton / Polanco / Vasquez and Correa, probably in that order. All players that in general were endorsed here. They believed they could build the rest of the team from existing options and that has gone very well. They did a very good job putting together a starting pitching staff we can quibble about the BP. It seems a bit hypocritical to distrust them because they believed in the same players we did? Edouard Julien 164 Ryan Jeffers 161 Royce Lewis 149 Matt Wallner 142 Max Kepler 135 Donovan Solano 130 Trevor Larnach 104 Michael A. Taylor 103 Alex Kirilloff 102 Willi Castro 89 Kyle Farmer 89 Carlos Correa 87 Byron Buxton 76 Joey Gallo 68 Christian Vazquez 57 Jorge Polanco 46 Jose Miranda -57

Do you suspect the management of other teams in similar positions like Cleveland and Seattle are incompetent or is it possible they weighed the short-term benefits against the long-term cost and came to a different conclusion than you have? When considering this question see 2022 Minnesota twins. IDK about you but I think adding CES's bat right now would be pretty ideal and Cano in our BP would look pretty good too not to mention the possibility one or two of the other prospects that were moved could turn out to be something. All of it was ill-advised because it would not have mattered if Mahle and Lopez would have produced as we hoped. Perhaps they learned something last year.

There is an alternative view. Perhaps they felt they could insert Julien and get the same level of offense. YTD Arraez has an OPS of .890 and a wRC+ of 145. Julien has the exact same wRC+ and an OPS of .881. One could argue they are getting the same level of offense and added a very good pitcher. No doubt it is not quite that simple but I don't think they looked at it as being willing to give up offense for pitching. They had a plethora of options at 2B/DH and you can never have enough front-line pitching.

Of course, it was not entirely based on trading for prospects. That's just ridiculous and I did not even remotely suggest that was the case. I am not suggesting other acquisitions not be used, just the relative historical influence. I gave you the relative impact of trading for prospects as compared to trading for established players which is the real issue here. Apparently, you just chose to ignore it.

I did answer. Apparently, you didn't understand the answer. WAR does not measure team wins. It measure the wins above replacement added by a given player. Why are you arguing if you don't understand something this fundamental. IDK how more I can be more clear. I measured the wins above replacement by acquisition method. BTW .... The reason I went through the trouble of gathering all this data because it's so common for people to just assume they understand the most effective way to build a winning a team without ever testing their theory. I wanted to test these theories with actual test cases.

Strawman my ass. I have collected the data from the last 20 years tracking all the 90 win teams in the bottom half of revenue and how any players with over 1.5 WAR were acquired. I know exactly what percentage was contributed to everyone of those teams so you are relatively unarmed in this debate. Trades for prospects have contributed literally 5X the WAR as trading prospects for established talent. In other words, I do know and the facts are easily established. I have even posted several examples here in the past.

We are basically on the same page. I see the Rosario / Sano / Polanco / Kepler core window closing and the Julien / Lewis / Kirilloff / Wallner / Lee core emerging. Only time will tell but I am pretty bullish on the long-term outlook of that group. The previous group did not have any hold over (extended players). This group has Buxton and Correa. Theoretically, that should be a big advantage over the previous group. Of course, this group has a far better core of pitchers with Lopez / Ryan / Ober / Duran and Jax. Stewart might just be a core player too. All of this is an optimistic view but that's a lot to build around. Like any team entering a new window, the relative advancement of these young guys will determine if they are pretenders or contenders. It would really help if a couple of prospects that are relatively surprising this year turn out to be real. Guys like Prato and Severino might be nothing but could be quite good. A happy surprise or two would be real nice. Perhaps I just prefer to see a window opening vs one closing but it's more fun to be an optimist.

Why is our window closing? The position players making the biggest difference right now are Julien / Kirilloff and Jeffers. Lewis looks to be a big contributor and Wallner has flashed signs of brilliance. That's 5 core position players that are just getting started with Lee waiting in the wings. Do we think Correa and Buxton are cooked. We have multiple years of control left with Lopez / Ryan / Ober / Paddack / Duran / Jax and Stewart. All that young talent will give us about 50M to spend on free agents. Why is our window closing. I say it might be ready to open.

I really like the Polanco / Wallner for Seattle's young pitching. Polanco at 3B is not a solution and I totally agree something could have been done to reshape the team. That said, there are only two positions that make sense to shake up. The first is 3B and Lewis will reshape that position. The other is the OF. DFAing Gallo and giving the young guys a shot accomplishes would help. IDK if they are willing to DFA Gallo or not. The Kirilloff injury justifies keeping him around for the moment. The available OF bats did not move the bar for me.

Investing any significant assets in a flawed team is desperate and detrimental long-term. It's hardly astonishing they stood pat. The team one game back of them in the division sold off their starting 1B and a good starting pitcher. Would you prefer the lack of activity have been resolved by selling?

I agree completely in concept but how would that look. I would have been good with Polanco being traded but was there a market for him right now? The rest of the IF Correa / Julien and Kirilloff are not going anywhere. Cron at 1B and Kirilloff to the OF seems like the most viable move they could have made. None of the OFers that were moved are difference makers IMO. The best thing they could do there is DFA Gallo but that's not ideal right now with Kirilloff out. They could have moved one of Gray or Maeda but that would have to be characterized as selling. What would selling without selling have looked like?

Do nothing last year would have been far better than giving up a bunch of assets for nothing. If they had blocked players they should have traded Steer and CES and/or a couple pitching prospects for catchers or RH outfield prospects that were near ready. I would like to have CES for 1B right now and going forward.

Could it be he has a job because Kirilloff is on the IL. Do we want Solano as our only guy on the roster with significant experience at 1B. AM I missing someone with 1B experience?