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Major League Ready

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Everything posted by Major League Ready

  1. Major League Ready
    I don't care how they acquire the talent. They gave up nothing and got something substantial. Duran graduated in a big way. Jax looked like nothing and became something. Ober displayed a higher ceiling. Varland and SWR demonstrated they are likely to be part of the future. Moran looks like something. Therefore, something of significance happened. You are only interested in finding a way to complain, not what actually happened.
  2. Major League Ready
    IKF was not very good this year. I would rather take my chances with Martin at SS. At least that move has some upside potential and long-term benefit if it works out.
  3. Major League Ready
    Very little happened? I look at this in terms of what did they establish and how many do they have in the pipeline that moved forward in terms of establishing they are legit prospects. Put a different way, how many guys stock improved. Let’s start with what players established themselves as MLB pitchers. Starting Pitching – Ryan proved he was for real. Ober established himself but also demonstrated there is reason to believe he has a higher ceiling than we thought. He developed a new slider that sure looked like it’s going to change his trajectory. Relief Pitching - Duran is a great high leverage RP. Jax established himself as a solid BP piece and we should remember Alcala will be back next year. I would not describe establishing 4 new pitchers as very little but it’s not everything I hoped for either. The emergence of Varland / Winder and the development of SWR is also something. No, they have no established themselves at the ML level but they sure looked legit. It will be huge if they are ready to take over the spots vacated by Gray and Mahle next year so that’s actually lining up nicely. Henriquez / Megill and Moran also gave us reason to believe they could contribute. All of this does not equate to “very little” IMO.
  4. Major League Ready
    That's only 21 players. You don't have a SS and only 3 RPs.
  5. Major League Ready
    Won't be surprised if they resign Sanchez.
  6. Major League Ready
    I wonder how many of us would accept the premise they had managed horribly if we lost several major contributors to the team we manage. We were already fringe contenders, so I just don't see how anyone is surprised by the results given the cold hard facts you have outlined in the final paragraph above.
  7. Major League Ready
    I think you have completely missed the boat on this one. The problem area has been the failure to produce enough starting pitching through the draft or trading for prospects like Ryan. They simply do not have even close to the budget to build via top free agents. Ironically, if they were great at drafting and trading for prospects like Tampa, high end free agents or extending the players they develop becomes more viable. Sorry, Mark but I don't agree with you either. Share holders (the people who fund companies) don't dictate success unless they are not proving adequate funding. This team's payroll is in line with their revenue so that's not the case and Pohlad is not making baseball (personnel) decisions. Of course, it is up to Jim Pohlad to make changes if the leadership team does not perform. IMO, we still are not sure if this front office has proven they can or can not produce homegrown pitching which as stated above is the core issue. I want to see if Varland / SWR / Winder / Ryan / and Ober make a legit MLB rotation. I also want to see if Duran gets a shot at be an ace SP. If that happens, they will have a lot of budget room going forward to add more impact players through free agency. They get one more year for me because I would hate to dismiss the leadership that finally built a pitching staff in Minnesota.
  8. Major League Ready
    How could we possibly debate a good scouting department is essential to success in MLB. This would be true regardless of specific strategy as it influences every potential strategy for building a team? However, the debate tends to be we don't have Tampa's scouting / development so we should follow different practices. Unfortunately, the net of that logic is that we follow strategies that simply don't or at least have not produced great results for mid or small market teams. In other words, pursing inferior strategies is a really flawed. The answer is not to pursue strategies likely to fail even with good execution. The answer is to get better at executing the most viable strategies. This premise is at the heart of the question posed here about 2023 and more importantly sustaining success beyond 2023. In that regard 2023 does have or make or break component in that so many future pieces will be tested. Will Kirilloff and Lewis come back healthy. Will Larnach / Wallner / Celestino adapt and thrive at the MLB level. Is Martin "breaking out" and will he be a factor fairly soon. What do they do with the available budget? Will it be used in a long-term or short-term manner. Will they reshape the infield by moving one of Urshela / Polanco or Arraez. Will they gibe Duran a shot at starting? That's a lot of questions which supports the long-term importance of what happens in 2023. On the pitching side, Ober looked quite different when he came back. He just might have more ceiling than most believed. Then, we have Varland and SWR looking like they are ready so 2023 will tell us a lot about their future. So, he this context 2023 is going to be a huge test of their plan and execution across the entire organization. I guess that could be considered make or break in 2023.
  9. Major League Ready
    I heard on one of the MLB radio shows that Kirk Gibson had the same surgery early in his career. He did OK!
  10. Major League Ready
    Every year seems to get labeled as make or break. We should pay more attention to how winning teams are built in other small/mid-markets. How many high dollar free agents does Cleveland have on their roster? How many trades has Cleveland made for big name free agents. How many highly productive players were obtained by trading away well-established veterans? They had 7 position players with an fWar above 1.5. Four of them were acquired by trading away established players, 2 were international (not high dollar) and 1 was drafted. Clause and Quantrill were also acquired by trading away Kluber. Their other two top SPs (Bieber / McKenzie) were drafted. This obsession with big name free agents and trading for big names absolutely ignores how good teams are built in modest revenue markets with modest revenue. The Twins have slightly more revenue and therefore can augment a roster but good teams simply are not built in similar markets in the manner so many here insist they must be built. Disagree, great show examples of teams sustaining success in similar markets though trading for long-term assets and signing $200M free agents.
  11. Major League Ready
    The grade on that trade has been trending upward over the last month. Man, it sure would be nice to see him repeat what Lewis did last year. By this I mean in the AFL and then the major league level minus the getting injured part.
  12. Major League Ready
    Yep. This was also my takeaway from the last couple weeks. That's pretty significant. The other thing that caught my attention was that Ober's new slider looks like it could really elevate his upside. He can put batters away now. Ober looked considerably better than Winder at the end of the year IMO. I would also add that the last weeks gave me some hope they will come up with a long relief guy or two. Sands / Henriquez / Dobnak and Paddack could fill the multi-inning RP role. I really did not think Sands or Henriguez were Major League pitchers but they just might have a role.
  13. Major League Ready
    An extension makes little sense. Miranda is already the better overall player with a good chance of getting better. The money would be much better spent on 1B if Kirilloff does not return to health. That position is easier to fill through free agency or trade. If Kirilloff is healthy, by mid 23 you have Kirilloff / Polanco / Arraez / Miranda / Gordon / Lewis and Urshela for 3 positions and by 24 you probably add Martin and Lee.
  14. Major League Ready
    I was a big supporter of the trade for Urshela and loved having him on the team. However, this discussion sounds a lot like last year when the majority thought we should keep Donaldson. Some absolutely insisted the FO must be incompetent because we had obviously gotten worse at 3B and catcher. The trade worked out great for 22 and it's likely Donaldson will continue to decline making it an even better trade going forward. Going forward Urshela's relative importance to 2023 depends on Kirilloff's health. If Kirilloff is healthy we have Urshela / Arraez / Miranda, Polanco and Kirilloff for 3 positions with Gordon also able to play 2B. He is not part of the solution beyond 2023 so I would not be too disappointed if they could get something back and invest the $10M saved elsewhere. The team is at least at good with Miranda at 3B and they could go get a RH DH/1B with that 10M to complement Arraez and that player would be around longer than 1 year.
  15. Major League Ready
    It’s interesting to contrast this with the other teams in the division. Chicago put together a great team. Is it the fault of the FO that they performed so poorly? Cleveland signed nobody even though they were at $70M in salary and they did nothing at the deadline. How did Cleveland build their roster? How were the players acquired that produced significant WAR for them. Their approach is basically the opposite of what many here expect from the Twins. Their team was built by trading away established players for prospects and extending a player they drafted (Ramirez) I would NOT say the pitching pipeline has not arrived but it has not been as impactful as we would have hoped. How many pitchers should we expect? They have added Ober / Ryan / Winder / Jax and Duran. It looks like Varland is close and SWR is not far off either. There are a few others like Moran / Megill / Sands / Sisk that need a little refinement as well and a couple others like Canterino that need to get healthy.
  16. Major League Ready
    Great list. I might replace Lewis getting injured but that's just because I was so excited to see Lewis elevate his game in AAA and then play great when he got here when we really didn't know what to expect from him. At least I didn't know what to expect from him.
  17. Major League Ready
    I could say the same thing about spending for every person on this site. How would you react if I suggested your unwillingness to spend more than you make each year was just you being cheap? Baseball fans want to believe these teams are a hobby and profit does not matter. We want to think they should not care which is exceptionally naive. They are less profit focused than corporations but their valuation is highly correlated to profitability. They care!
  18. Major League Ready
    If they drew another 5,000 fans for every single game and those fans spent $50 each that would be $20M which would allow for less than an additional $18M spent after payroll taxes and benefits. There are teams that literally double the Twin's revenue and quite a few with $100-$200M revenue advantage. If spending X would produce X plus something, they would spend more. This has got to be the most misguided argument on this site and it keeps coming up year after year.
  19. Major League Ready
    They generate less than league average revenue. What do you expect them to spend? It just astounds me that so many people can't figure out the amount that can be spent is a product of the amount coming in.
  20. Major League Ready
    That has little to do with the length of their starts and more to do with the number of starts. In other words, it has nothing to do with length of starts and much more about durability in this particular season.
  21. Major League Ready
    TK said it so it must be true. Apparently, not a single one of those big companies spending millions on data analytics and the systems / infrastructure that drive them don't have a single person that understands this premise. All of those guys with ivy league MBAs and the analytics experts that work for them understand that data is useless for predicting outcomes or developing strategies. How the rest of the world operates can be telling.
  22. Major League Ready
    My bad. I misread your post which was a response to Mark G complaining. Sorry.
  23. Major League Ready
    They lost Maeda / Ober / Paddack / Winder and now Mahle. That's an entire rotation. So complaining is to say let's just ignore 5 starting pitchers going down and suggest it's poor management. Do you have a better solution at this point or are you suggesting they should have another 5 experienced (quality) veterans to make up for all the injuries. I am thinking this is somewhat inevitable when you have this many injuries. You might even go so far as to say we are fortunate to have a quality rookie like Varland to take on this challenge.
  24. Major League Ready
    Or Joe Ryan or Bailey Ober or Josh Winder or Griffin Jax or Jhoan Duran. I guess it just depends on if you only want to focus on the failures. There will always be failure at the MLB level so we can certainly find them quite easily if that's what we want to focus on. Instead, I am going to wish the local young man well and hope he becomes a fixture in the rotation.
  25. Major League Ready
    Fair enough. My point was not that they were equivalent. The point was they were not as far apart as the post I initially quote suggested. Miranda was horrible in his initial stint (66ABs). Since the 2nd call-up, Miranda has an OPS of 909. Hrbeks 82 season was 848. So, I don't buy that they were vastly different outside of Miranda being really / really bad for those first 66 ABs.
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