Cris E

Rooker 6 minor league seasons 402 games 102 HR Fedko 6 minor league seasons 457 games 57 HR

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If he can regain his eye and his confidence they can send down Luke K, put Clenmns at 2b, play Bell at 1B and let Wallner DH against the right pitchers. But he needs his mojo back first. It took from April to July back in 2024, so it might not be a quick change. But they really can't discard him without putting in the work. He's a genuine MLB power hitter when he's on, and those are valuable. But right now he's a mess and those have no value at all.

Fedko is not better than Outman yet. Outman does play good CF defense. And while he hasn't done it lately, at one time he did produce at the MLB level (23 HR rookie season.) Fedko has just not had the chance to prove himself to be a McCusker or a Wallner yet, and that's something the team should push to discover soon. The next time they have to send someone out from the 25 man roster I'd see about getting Fedko a look. They're going to have to solve the 40 man problem soon anyway (maybe put ERod on the 60 day?) Once there's a spot they can make a call on Fedko and then keep him or move on to the next new face. This season has to result in some guys moving up and some others moving on. It's happening in the bullpen and now it needs to happen in the outfield as well.

Pitching has stepped up in the past ten years and hitting is not keeping up. Everyone throws harder than ever, and on every pitch. As hard as hitting has always been, it's even worse when the fastball you have to stay ready for is 97+. They can say guys used to throw that hard, but there's a reason only Nolan Ryan was striking guys out at the rate he did. It was pretty rare.

This. He's not great, but everyone else sort of sucks too so why not him? At least he can field. A larger issue is that hitting across baseball has fallen a lot further than many people realize. The current team OPS is .708 which sounds pretty bad, but it comes out to a 98 OPS+. The 30 team league OPS is only .709 and we're 13 of 30 which is better than I would have guessed. For real fun go check out the league list and you can see that 11 teams are under .700, and 5 of the bottom 9 are in the top ten payrolls.

During the post-game they had a great montage of Ryan reactions from the game. The guy is a piece of work, lots of fun to watch out there. I'd pay him and Jeffers and see what they can do in 2027. There are a bunch of good parts here, a likeable bunch that are only a few pieces away. Hope they step up over the winter.

Expecting both Culpepper and Houston to make the big jump to MLB without issues less than a year from now (especially in the context of this week's moves) seems awfully optimistic. Both have significant work to do at their current levels, and then Houston should see AAA and we still have to get Luke's head back on his shoulders and hope that Wallner and Lewis can regain their lost luster. 1B allows a hitter with just about any glove to get a spot in the order. Lee needs to keep improving his batting a lot to earn a 1B spot, especially if they find some other good hitter who can handle the big mitt. And I really expect that one of the AAA guys is going to be forced to 1B during 2026. The big league team has been piecing it together over there for a long time, and while the France and Clemens types are a lot cheaper than real 1B, they just don't perform like a prime Wallner minus the terrible RF defense (to name just one example.)

Morris gets a save! Who's next?

Caratini was a fine pickup, certainly one of the top couple catchers out there that weren't due starter money. His ops has been over ,700 for the past three years and this season he's been quite unlucky with a BABIP around .220. Jackson is a defensive catcher who managed a very uncharacteristic 112 OPS+ last year, squarely topping his previous best of 85 OPS+ in 7 AB when he was 24. No one expected that to be repeated, and they were right, he's back to being a non-hitter.

I don't care what glove he carries around until he can hit .200 again. 1B is where to hide a guy who can only hit, or at least can hit enough and field really well. Royce is neither of those guys right now (and we don't have nearly the alternatives at 3B that we do at 1B: there's no Hendry Mendez or Gabby Gonzalez that can be shifted easily. )

And immediately you'll have a World Series Champion in five years.

The thing about 1981 is that the Twins you are probably thinking of didn't play much at all. The only WS guys were Hrbek, Launder and Gaetti and they only played 24, 14 and 9 games that year. There were a bunch of other pieces that looked OK (Roy Smalley, Gary Ward, John Castino) but nothing to work with. You're probably thinking of 1982 where Laudner and Hrbek and Brunansky and Gaetti and Viola were all full time players. I think half the reason some of these guys weren't called up in 1981 was to put on a little bit better show in the new park for the first season. But it was a dumb reason since so few people went to games at the Metrodome. (Fun fact: first game in the new park was 4-9-81 and the attendance was 42658. The second game was 4-10-81 and the attendance was 4552. I tried counting games over 20k but had to lower my sights a bit: they had 12 games over 10k. including opening night, fan appreciation, and the Yankees and Brewers) Sorry, that was wrong: 1982 was first Metrodome year, still 52k on opening night and 5213 for game 2. They did sell a lot more seats to see plastic baseball.

Most teams have trouble moving kids from AA/AAA to long-term success in the majors. The individual players that do it are exceptions and lauded because it happens so inconsistently. In fact fans of other teams are almost certainly wondering why their team can't crank out rookies like the Twins keep producing: Keaschall, Lewis, Julien and Miranda were all the envy of baseball for a year or three. The Orioles have had the best minor league lineup for years but have had huge difficulty getting those guys to produce regularly at the major league level. Gunnar Henderson is a ROY hitting .211 and looking lost this year. Colby Mayo was a very highly rated prospect who has not hit in MLB. ROY runner-up Colton Cowser has only had one good year in four and his OPS+ is down to 46 right now. Jackson Holliday looked good through two years but broke his hamate in spring training and only returned to the majors this week. The Twins have managed to get good first seasons out of some guys where other teams have difficulty launching new hitters, but sophomore slumps are a very real problem everywhere. We have Julien, Lewis, Keaschall, and Roman Anthony in BOS has seen a 47 point drop in OPS+ this year, and BAL sophomore Jeremiah Jackson's OPS+ is down 25 points from last year. The Padres CF Jackson Merrill was a ROY runner up in 2024, but since his big debut his OPS+ have gone 127, 113 and 68 this year. James Outman has never matched his rookie year with the Dodgers. Finally, recall that Wallner was sent down to regain his hitting stroke at the start of 2024 as well and he came back to have a fine season. Meanwhile Austin Martin took years in both AAA and MLB to emerge as the player people seem to trust today. Rooker played in MIN, San Diego and Kansas City before blooming in Oakland at age 28. There's no single path.

Grey and Kreidler are a utility platoon, which is not a thing. Pick one as your Bondo guy to fill in the ugly holes and use the other spot to make longer-term improvements like letting Gonzalez be Clemens' platoon partner for a while and see what he's got. Heck, at this point I'd keep them both at 3B and send down Lewis. Either way, if Gabby sucks you can make another move in a month, like when Royce rediscovers himself and demands the MLB per diem again.