Cris E

Buxton should go to the IL when Polanco comes up. Polanco's defense has looked terrible all year so you can flip a coin to see which of him or Julien gets to DH. I think Kepler would be a great fit for the Yankees. He's a pro that can handle the big city, he can play CF while Bader is out and RF while Judge recovers, the short RF fence will help him and it's the end of his deal so they aren't on the hook for much. I think Canha would help our LF mix quite a bit but I don't want to pay much for him. See what NYM are looking for. I'd trade Miranda for a 3B where someone wants to go younger and cheaper. For example if Boston decides to bail on 2023 he could be part of a Turner deal (but I expect them to hang in way past the point of common sense and not trade anyone.) WAS could be moving rental Jeimer Candelario as well. I'd trade Maeda for someone who can hit, and maybe throw in a Pagan if someone values him highly. He's only had a couple bad games so you know he has some value to an org that believes in the magic of their pitching coach. I don't think Gordon will play for the Twins again; there's just too much competition. Paddack won't be an issue until September.

Totally agree with the family angle, especially right after getting to spend a few days with his boys at the All-Star game. He's got some money, the long hot summer grind is about to start again and he's been fielding questions about qualifying offers and how disappointing the team has been so it would be natural to toy with the idea of going home. But he's a very competitive guy, he's putting together another injury-free season (knock on wood) and he's getting to pitch as deep as his efforts merit on any given day, so there's not a ton to complain about. And when folks come around with 3/60 or 4/75 there's almost no way he doesn't answer the call.

The FO made a couple assumptions that didn't work out (again) and so far have not made changes to cover the gaps. 1. Guys that were expected to recover and contribute are still broken. We're not getting good info on Correa and Buxton so it's not clear how healthy they are, but Polanco and Lewis have put themselves in a troubling Unreliable category and are going to have to reestablish themselves as viable MLB players. History is littered with stories of guys who never had the careers everyone expected because of injury, and these four represent a big chunk of our present. (Pitchers should be expected to lose a season every 3-4 years, and you address that with VOLUME, adding guys like Stewart and DeLeon and cycling through the AAA staff. Pollack is coming back soon so Balozavic is moving to short relief. The pitching is not going badly.) 2. Some guys they counted on are not playing well. Kepler is turning out to be Kepler, Vasquez is not who he was supposed to be, and Miranda couldn't hold the gains he'd made over the past couple years. What work has been done to diagnose and fix these guys? During 2022 we were told Max was suffering from a broken toe but this year was going to be better, especially with the shift going away. I'll admit I was cautiously optimistic, but we're well past Give It Another Week and should be deep into an extended benching to break the bad patterns or perhaps some outside swing doctor. Teams often resist major swing overhauls during the season because they're disruptive, but at this point that might be a good thing. 3. Gallo was an insurance policy against having to play much worse guys. Taylor was picked up to caddy for Buxton. Both are working fine (no Celestino or Cave sightings yet) except for the part where you swap the guy out to try better options if they're available. Gallo is swinging hard and taking walks and playing OK defense, and Taylor is playing good D and has hit some long balls, but neither is playing well enough to justify a full time MLB role. Around the rest of the diamond they have moved on to Solano, Castro and Julien and it's well past time to try something out there with the insurance policy guys. In recent years they have made significant mid-year moves, so I still expect them to do something. They have a lot of similar guys piling up in a few spots so I'd expect several of the young corner or 2b guys to be moved (and to probably turn out to be good players where ever they go.) The trick for the office is to choose where to shore up the team. I'd start at 3B since Lewis isn't holding it down, and if he does wants to win a job he can do it at 2B where Polanco is not doing much. The offensive problems are systemic, so maybe I'd play with the coaching staff.

1. If Buxton can't play CF then send him out and get him fixed. Look past the 15 HR and watch his at bats: you'll see he's up there guessing now and looks terrible at the plate. Is it his eyes? his knee? ankle? Don't care, they need to change something to get him back to a confident attacking approach at the plate. Avoiding this is killing two spots in the order. 2. By this point it's clear that Kepler and Gallo are not hitting this way because they're hurt, that they have not discovered anything over last winter, that adjustments were not made. Further there are alternatives like Castro that can pick up the innings plus kids that might not be a lot worse. So it's time to find what you can get for either of them and send one out. I think we need to keep one around because we don't have a lot of depth out there, but change should come soon. 3. I'm coming to a point where I don't want to pencil in the chronically injured for a serious role. Lewis can play whenever he's here. Buxton can play as long as it lasts, we'll always need a SS in case Correa tips over, blah blah blah. But until these guys can be BYRON BUXTON again then take the hit get them fixed. Harper limped through last year but he was effective in his limited role. but then they sat him down and fixed him. 4. We could use a real leadoff guy regardless of position.

Well maybe the offense will feel some compulsion to get up and score some runs. It doesn't have to be the pitchers who carry the load every game, and a three run cushion makes any bullpen look better.

I think a pipeline produces a bunch of guys, someone every year, so that you don't have to go out of the org to replace someone who gets hurt or old. But that doesn't mean you keep pulling Fried and Strider and Wright out of your hat, that's wildly above the average. A pipeline is about regularity where Louie Varland and Bailey Ober are the type of guys you crank out while waiting for the Johan Santana or Jose Berrios studs to arrive. The pipeline is cranking up in MN so that when Maeda leaves and we need a #4 or #5 to slide in the back end we can move guys up. There are guys back there like SWR who can pitch OK until the guys who can Pitch like Prielipp land and grab the top jobs. If Sands or Balazovic take an extra year to arrive or get hurt or get traded then we1l try out some others. But Duran and Ober are up and playing well so things are starting to work.

Ha ha ha ha ha. No. We played those guys last year and it was awful. Pagan throws a clinker once a month instead of every other game. He can be frustrating, but he's not the problem.

If you want to reach back into 2022 trades that affected 2023 then you can't take away the Donaldson contract drop. That was some excellent work that completely restructured our payroll and made Correa possible. Steer and CES were never great prospects in MN. Neither was ever listed anywhere on MLB's Pipeline Top 30 for the Twins for any year back to their drafts, yet they showed up on the Reds' list in 2022 at #7 and #14. (Pipeline might only allow a guy one team per season, so this might not be fair.) But CES was ranked #16 by this web site in 2022, so as "beastly" as he might be there were a lot of guys ahead of him in this system and converting him to a SP was probably not a bad move, especially given his cement glove. As far as the future moves go, you are all-in on trading away the present for an uncertain future with no regard for medical histories just to give a short term thrill to impatient fans? You realize that was the plan with Buxton last year and he played both worse and less often. Same with grinding down Arraez to a worn .316 nub by the end of the season. And how do you square winning now with trading away your front starter "to get value"? Wouldn;t the high draft pick from a rejected QO count as value? And have you seen the standings lately? Have you seen the innings per game by starters lately? When Grey is good he gets to go deeper, same as any other team, so he can;t really complain about that any more. And when you trade or cut Gallo and Kepler who will play OF, and where does your power come from? That's 23 of the 104 HR this team has hit in 2023. Walner may or may not be ready, but Larnach's .699 OPS isn't much different from Kepler's .691 or Castro's .696 or Garlick's .662 (but Gordon's .503 OPS in 93 PA does stand apart.) Gallo is at least at or near the team lead in BB and HR so he's clearly above average at .768. There are a lot of potentially talented guys having bad years right now, so some move needs to happen, but you have to take care not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Strand and Steer were not huge prospects last year. In fact neither was ever listed anywhere on the Twins' top 30 prospects list on MLB.com going back to their draft years. This was a little luck on the Reds' part combined with a traffic jam in the Twins' system. Don't over-react to a pitcher getting injured (they all do at some point) and Paddack had nothing to do with this. Take a deep breath, look at where you're deep and where you have gaps and consider what trades make sense, then go ahead and propose something better. You'll be shocked at how hard it is once you get past the idea that fair valuations make many trades painful for both sides.

If you only focus on the offense today you miss the point of his signing. They had several gaping holes and few certain options to fill them and Gallo was a good move at the time as a solid floor on defense and maybe a lotto ticket on offense. Viewed primarily as a block against ever seeing Cave and Contreras ever play together (and maybe hitting some dingers) he has been fine. The later signing of Taylor neatly covered the unexpected demise of Buxton as a CF, and Solano and Kirilloff have filled the gap at 1B, but there are still grave concerns at the corner outfield spots. Miranda, Gordon and Larnach are all hurt or demoted, Kepler has 2 more singles than Gallo and is playing worse in most other respects, so Willi Castro's May was about the best anyone has done to claim a spot. That means that we still have openings without players, so Gallo should remain on the roster until those spots are filled. Look at any column other than batting average and he's above average on this roster. His glove plays out there if everything else fails, he's at or near the team lead in BB and HR, and he might return to his April performance levels. On the other hand he doesn't need to play every day. He's been slumping as bad as anyone of late and if others need to sit down to work on things then he does too. Wallner and Andrew Stevenson should get a look from St Paul, and if they suck then let Chris Williams take a shot at 1B and let Kirilloff try LF. And at this point I wouldn't feel bad about getting a new hitting coach because just about no one is doing better than expected so I'm not clear on who he's helping. Maybe he's connected with a bunch of guys and I can't see it from here, but the number show that the Twins are a 96 OPS+ team and no one is having a great year.

I have already written about how the offseason last year was all about depth and never getting to the fifth CF or 14th starting pitcher on your depth chart. Gallo was a big part of that mindset and has proven to be useful: he's played a bunch of positions at least adequately, he is on the field when asked, and he was a large part of the early success of the offense. They did not have a proven 1B or LF, they had serious concerns about CF, in RF Kepler was several years removed from his one decent hitting season and there was no clear heir to the position, and they had almost no one signed who had ever hit 25 HR in their career. Further, the kids were not all that young and had still not seized the opportunities offered by the 2022 injury storm. Big strong Miranda was outslugged by Nick Gordon, and it wasn't because Gordon was awesome. Gallo has always been healthy, had put together several excellent seasons (both defensive and offense) in the recent past and was a TTO SABR darling. That may offend some folks' aesthetic sensibilities, but it's how baseball teams are built these days and should surprise no one. He made $11m because that's what all-star, gold glove, 30+ HR guys make. It was all about preventing another 2023 collapse and that hasn't happened.

The Arraez-Lopez trade was not about money, it was about trying to build up a weak rotation from a position of strength. When the deal was made they didn't have a veteran pitcher signed past 2023, and of the kids they controlled only Ryan was looking like a solid bet to be more than average. The Marlins had a pile of good starting pitching and they wanted Arraez specifically, to the point where they added very good prospects to get him. Both of those guys had a couple year of arb left and were going to cost a bunch to keep in the long term. Not a money move. But let's play along with the money fantasy: who do you sign? Billions of dollars went to free agent contracts last winter and I gotta tell you that Lopez has been as good as most. Degrom, 5 years $185m, Tommy John. Verlander, 2 years $86m, injured over the winter, only 9 starts, 4.50 ERA. Rodon, 6 years $162m, injured. Kershaw was only going to sign with the Dodgers, so the money isn't the point with him but he has been pretty good (15 starts, 3.61 ERA). Bassitt 3 years $63m, 15 starts 4.32 ERA. Syndergaard 1 year, $13m, 12 starts 55 innings, 7.16 ERA, terrible. Wainwright was only going to re-sign with the Cards and has already announced this is his last year, but he's been terrible too (6.56 ERA.) That's not any cherry picking, that's all the starting pitchers in the first list of top 2022 free agents I came across. After almost half a season one guy has taken the ball every time out and produced an ERA under 4.00. One. Lopez hasn't missed a start, is third in the Al in strikeouts and is sporting a 4.41 ERA, so he's not perfect, but he's here. And at 27 he's a better bet to improve than 34 year old Bassitt over the next four years, which is how long we extended him. Even more money talk: if that insurmountable mountain of wasted capital didn't stop them from signing Correa then it didn't "force" them to trade Luis. They had cash on hand and didn't like the free agent options. Hindsight has proven them largely correct.

We've got over three months to go in this season and years of control remaining. It's still very early for words like "embarrassing".

This is not a good post. Wait until one guy gets off to a hot start and then quick slap something up before he gets hurt! Arraez is glass, and while he always took the field in 2022, by late summer he was a shell of the first half player. He had a .715 OPS in the second half while gimping around on bad legs and filling the tattered lineup card. This was a trade of starters in their prime and shouldn't be evaluated for a looong time.

20-20 hindsight isn't useful. McCutchen is certainly playing better this year than he has in quite some time, but how much of that is due to returning home? How much is due to playing off the excellent year the rest of the Pirates are having? Would it look the same if he just another geezer mercenary bat wedged between Kepler's .209 and Buxton's .210? He sounds like a perfect delight to have around, but I think the homecoming is a part of the story here. Return to this story in September and see how things play out. Meanwhile use your magical talents to manipulate the stock market and make us all rich.

In 2022 we only ended up with Gordon and Celestino as regulars because of injuries. In April no one expected either to be a regular anywhere on the field, and that list of 2023 regulars has some of the same smell right now. In October I expect at least two more of the 2023 spots to be the pre-season favorites (Kirriloff, Gallo) and I'd be shocked if Lewis doesn't replace Miranda as the new face that seizes a spot. But Buxton and Polanco are bumming me out, because I was hoping they'd be well this year. Ah well, it's an article about defense and we didn't get worse so I should be pleased that we didn't go total slow-pitch softball out there.

I think Rocco is already addressing this when he started talking last week about how valuable Willi is as a late inning pinch runner. Stick him in to run in the 8th and there's little chance he actually comes to bat, plus he can take the field in place of almost anyone else who isn't as good a fielder (Julien, Larnach, Solano, etc.)

He's a far better hitter than Gordon. The question is if he can gather the pieces together and get to the majors before even more youngsters start coming up to crowd him out entirely (eg Emmanuel Rodriguez.)

They need a reliable lefty in the pen until Thielbar returns for good. That's about it for Needs. As far as Wants are concerned they should consider a couple things to shake up the clubhouse.Counselor Correa is a great influence for growth and all, but I don't get the feeling there's a red-ass in there to chase around the complacent players. Maybe sending out a couple of the underperforming vets to make room for kids will break things loose. Like everyone else I offer Pagan and Kepler with little expectation they get much in return. There are teams like the Yankees that should be interested in Kepler. He's an established professional that can do a lot of things for them as they navigate their outfield injuries. Pagan can go to any team with a ton of bullpen injuries that needs arms and innings. He's been healthy and willing, and someone like the White Sox or Rockies could use a guy to take the ball and not completely suck. Say what you will, but Emilio does have long stretches where he's quite good (before he lobs a ruler-straight FB right down the middle...) So in conclusion I'd start putting Buxton back in CF once a week, go find home for those two, pick up someone to back up Moran and start auditioning youngsters at 2B. Oh, I should have mentioned that: I love Polanco but he's looking pretty washed up. His defense is worse than ever, he's not hitting, he's on the DL again and we have a lot of youngsters piling up behind him. Find a partner for the 29 year old because I think he's got good potential and deserves a chance to play. However we have too many perpetually injured guys that will be great the day they are healthy again. That day rarely comes for some players and we need to identify them and send them on. As an aside, a weakness of this front office is to continually be dumpster-diving like Calvin Griffith still runs the team. We can enjoy a roll of the dice or two every year, but an important trait for top players is taking the field on a regular basis. Too many of our core players are Great Values because of the injury risks. We got Buxton and Correa on cheap deals to cover the potential missed time, but lesser talents like Donaldson, Garver, Sano, Polanco, Maeda, Alcala and so on are worth more as teases to other teams than as actual baseball players in MN. Keep trading them until we have a more reliable mix on the roster.

I somewhat agree with your point that standing pat is defensible sometimes, but 2022 Baltimore is a poor comparison to 2022 Minnesota. No one expected BAL to be anywhere near first place and they had no depth to advance in the playoffs, but MIN had a core of quality vets on hand that the kids were supporting well. There was no certainty that all the injured guys would be gone through the end of the year, or that Grey, Ryan, Ober and a healthy Mahle that pitched to his road record wouldn't have been enough to get into the playoffs. As mentioned above, there's a lot of guesswork in these projections and trades, particularly when injuries are involved. (You need to live with some acceptance of injury risk with all pitchers. Example: Sonny Grey has a very long injury history yet he's been pretty good here when kept on a short innings leash.) Anyway, over-simplifying cases does no one any favors. The future is hard, so embrace the ambiguity, question anyone who is too certain, forgive mis-reads, enjoy the game.

Correa will go on the IL to make room for him. Longer term it'll depend on which order the injured guys return, but unless Julien starts hitting the cover off the ball he'll be the one on the train back to St Paul. He's youngest, he needs to keep playing somewhere every day, and he's not forcing them to keep him right now.

You don't get to just rewrite Maeda's contract though. He has to want to relieve, and he didn't when he was with LA and they put that contract together. Part of the reason LA was willing to trade him was that they didn't want him to start but we were willing to give him the chance. And when he pitched well it proved the Twins right, and when he broke down it proved the Dodgers right. I haven't heard from him lately, but I assume he still thinks he can be that guy from 2020 so he's probably not ready to go to the pen, meaning you'd have to give him some more incentive to change that contract which means you're extending a 35 year old coming off a serious injury before he proves his health? Color me skeptical. Pitch him as a starter until he thrives (yea!) or loses the job, then let him live with that contract in another role knowing he had a chance to earn the incentives and failed, and then take up any extension talks after you know how this year went.

Grey went on the DL in April (hamstring) and June (pectoral strain) and then a season-ender in September. Each time he was brought back on a short leash to let him build some stamina and avoid further hurt: after the May injury his first two starts back were 4.0 and 4.1 innings, in June were 5.0 and 4.0 innings, and he never returned after September. He also had some short starts in July, but that's mostly because he wasn't pitching well: 5.0 IP and 3ER, 4.2 IP and 5 ER, 3.2 IP and 6 ER. But after about July 24 he was both effective and on a short leash. He made ten starts (plus the one bad injury game in Sept) and threw 90+ pitches 4 times and only one game with fewer than 20 batters faced but only two games with more than 22 batters faced. So I can see where the formula was both frustrating and effective: he couldn't stay on the field more than a month at a time before the all-star break, but he took the ball every time afterwards. But here's what you need to know about Sonny: in his huge 2019 season he made it to 25 BF eight times in 31 starts, and last year he made it 4 times in 23. He had games of 24, 26 and then 20 BF in May and then he went on the DL. When he went to 25 in July his next game 5ER in 4.2IP and 0 K. He had back-to-back 25 BF games in Sept and the next start he was lost for the year. Even when he was healthy in 2019 only threw 5.6 IP/GS and that wasn't on Rocco, that's managers watching him throw a lot of pitches per inning and often get hurt. But here's the difference between Joe Ryan and Sonny Grey: Ryan only had 6 starts where he threw fewer than 80 pitches: three where he gave up only 1 run, two where he gave up 3 or more, and opening day where he gave up 2 runs. Joe threw a lot of pitches, often inefficiently, and wasn't really handled with kid gloves. And he only went on the DL once, and it was for Covid. The other starters were on short leashes because they were either raw rookies or fragile Bundy/Archer reclamation pieces and Rocco was just trying to not push them too hard. If Sonny want to complain about pitcher usage in this context he can talk to Joe Ryan about those 90-100 pitches in five innings outings and then take a hard look in the mirror about how well he can handle more than two dozen batters.

We're already looking at a traffic jam of good bat, weak glove infielders that could learn 1B with three weeks of practice and are almost certainly more likely to produce an OPS+ over 100 than Mr White. Have a great year, take a lot of pictures, enjoy St Paul, but please don't block the exits when my prospects need to head over to Mpls.

Lewis is the only one who has enough experience to come up and sit on the bench at all. He'll arrive as soon as he's ready and fill a utility role, playing where ever he can get an AB. The rest are young and need to play every day, so they are only coming up for a long term injury or trade situation. And Raya is waaay too young to even be discussing AAA.