Cris E

https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/2022-starter-pitching.shtml The MLB-wide IP/GS was 5.2 innings. The Astros led everyone at 5.9 and the Twins were below average at 4.7, but not as far below as some seem to imply. That half inning below average is two outs, so not a ton different from the rest of baseball. What was really different was that we had our 12th and 22nd and 33rd best pitchers out there more than just about every other team and anyone's 30th pitcher is almost always going to be terrible or unprepared. There were plenty of arms in the plans for 2022 that were largely missing: Maeda, Alcala, Stashak, and big acquisitions Mahle and Paddack only made a hand full of starts. They have the bones of a good bullpen: Duran, Lopez, Thielbar, Jax and Moran are good pitchers. Pick through some of the kids, only use Pagan before the seventh and maybe re-sign Fulmer and you could be a swingman or two away from adequacy without changing too much. Mostly things hinge on being able to limit your staff to the top 15-20 guys in the org rather than finding 38 arms to run out there.

I'm with the others: teams that are tanking have different agendas from teams trying to compete. There's no shame in it anymore, you just need a high tolerance for how little your fans care to see your face in public. If you want to want to force more teams to compete then you have to make it less lucrative to suck. That might take the form of reducing your rev sharing if your payroll stays low for too long or reducing other rewards like making the draft less secure. That stuff seems to be on the table already. I guess my question back is after decades of revenue sharing and consistent payroll patterns anyone expects anything to change unless changes to the fundamental rev sharing rules are considered. Dancing around the top draft pick is nonsense, as those guys just turn into trade bait in 4-6 years for the small-rev teams anyway. I think the salary floor idea is probably the best way out of this, but I'm unclear how to entice owners to spend more money. How do you get them to vote against the interests of one of their own? It's no more money in the pocket of the rich teams, and it costs the little/terrible/cheap ones more cash to finish last. Maybe the metric should be percentage of revenues returned to the field, and you can't be below some ratio (40% ??) for more than three years in a row, or two in five. They have the rev numbers used for sharing, so either use gross or shared revenue only, but make a certain chunk appear on the field or lose it next year. Say what you want to about the big playoff teams, but they are spending to win. There has to be a little temptation to just take home $200m+ instead of spending like the Dodgers.

Where did all this negativity about the FO's rigidity in bullpen design come from? They are trying a ton of things to get effective arms out there, and it still ended up a lost season. The list below from the article doesn't include Fulmer (trade for good performer) or Joe Smith (FA signing that worked until he suddenly stopped being effective (hurt?) and was cut) or the swarm of anonymous minor league soldiers that shuffled through the roster this summer. That said, I am disappointed that we haven't moved to a different pitching coach. I am usually one of the most forgiving people you'll meet when playing the injury card, but after a year where we were having such difficulty I hoped they'd make a move to shore up the coaching.

Ever since his first injury in 2016 he's had only one year where he's been healthy and taken the ball every start (2019 31 GS, 175 IP.) Other than that he hit 162 IP one time and then it seems you're only going to get about 130-135 IP in a couple dozens starts, much like this past season. They are pretty good starts, so that's great production if you price in the fact that he's going to miss 20% or more of a full season. The Falvine were able to get that type of contract with Buxton, and they should extend Sonny as well if he's willing to meet them out there in the middle, land of Games Started incentives.

All of this x 2. Jeffers isn't terrible, he's just bad against the running game and doesn't hit RH very well. But you don't dump a guy like that, you play him against lefties to rest your starting catcher. Oh, and you get a catcher to play against righties. But when shopping for catchers you have to balance a bunch of stuff in ways you don't for other positions. Catching beats the heck out of a body, meaning that these guys can't play their position 140 games a year, and that even when resting they are often diminished at the plate, and they get hurt at crazy rates. So while you can ty to build around a catcher, you really do need a couple of them to anticipate the inevitable DL trips and leave room for their offensive sag. With that in mind I'd try to grow my own Mauers whenever possible, but while working on that I'd pick up a lot of glove-first platoon guys since they're cheaper and more available. We just need a guy that can hold his own against RH pitching and catch a good game and hopefully stay on the field for 100-115 games a year.

I don't think it's going to suddenly be 1985 any time soon. Most teams are still going to demand a 75% success rate even if running conditions are improved. And most players today are not taking a real lead and drawing throws over to first, much less getting to second with only 2.5 inches to spare. You may see more action from the Base Stealers but I'm not sure it'll spread to many others.

The font change doesn't even register, but I'm not a fan of the gold. Not sure why, it just seems muddier or something.

It's hard enough to find a good defensive catcher that can stay healthy and isn't terrible with the bat. Trying to reach past that to get one of the very few that are excellent offensive players seems expensive. Taking on that expense at a position where guys are hurt or resting as much as catchers do seems risky. That makes it expensive and risky, which is not my first choice. Find a merely good catcher and spend big dollars for a big hitter that's likely to be on the field 140+ games.

All I want is a well-considered "we tried", not a "Correa at all costs" rager. They could afford a 8/320 deal for the next few years, but it would be dumb. The Falvine know that they can fit him in, but they have other obligations coming due soon and things are going to get tighter when all these awesome kids hit arbitration in the next 2-4 years. So you want to keep Duran and Ryan and Miranda and two or three others? If Duran stays good he's going to cost a fortune. It doesn't take a lot of $11m paystubs to get to $150m. Pick something we can live with (7*35=245? 8/280?) and let it fly. It only takes one team saying "This is the most important thing we will do this decade" to blow away all other offers, and given our depth in young SS I don't think we should be that team.

You seem to have access to the BP data. With the lockout and access to training staffs cut off last winter, were injuries up across the league in 2022? I'd think a good differentiator between training staffs might be how they prepare off-season programs for the guys and how well they work with their personal trainers, so removing that influence could reflect on how helpful training staffs were when they could influence behavior. Perhaps this collapse shows that Salazar was good at parts of his job? Who knows. Also, I might guess that team age could play into those health numbers. Both the As and Twins tend to run young and cheap (with a couple exceptions like Nelson Cruz) and that would make 2022 look particularly bad for MN. But I'm not sure how true my hypothesis is (maybe some "type" of guys get hurt more often? Maybe the super-intense tweaked out hardcore guys get more ab injuries than the lethargic fatsos? Maybe cigarettes/weed are good for you?) so it may be chasing coincidences. Last point: I believe Rocco's approach to resting everyone and trying to avoid injuries is rooted in his wreck of a career. A good player, he just couldn't stay on the field. He's going to err on the side of caution rather than just playing a guys into the ground like they used to. Arreaz only saw as much time as he did down the stretch because of the batting title race. I really think Baldelli would have benched him with his legs like that without the compelling reason to keep playing. I wonder if we have a problem not sitting guys when things are serious but sitting them too often for nothing. In other words, how good are our diagnosis skills in the face of his tendency to sit everyone?

Usage of batters is changing, and the number of batters qualifying for the batting title from all positions has been falling recently. Here are how many have had 502 PA over the past 25 years. 2022 131 2021 133 2015 143 2010 152 2005 150 2000 166 1996 148 (95 was a lockout year) The trend is downward, for whatever reason. More injuries? More young cheap players being cycled through rosters? More teams finding ways to rest players to avoid injuries? I think it may be the last two, as there's more and more matchup data available to know when to sit someone, and the universal DH is proving to be both a good way to manage playing time and save some money on expensive one-dimensional hitters.

Right now he's coming off injury, doesn't have a clear place in the depth chart and needs to gain some experience and prove his defensive worth. If his wrist is better then let him hit for a few months and build value. We'll know our SS situation by then as well so he'll know if he's training to become a SS, 3B or CF or whatever. He can still be shipped out at the deadline if it comes to that, but right now is the wrong time.

I voted for him back when I didn't necessarily agree with him, because I knew what he was going to say on almost every topic and I knew he would say it. Now the kowtowing to the party line leaves almost no room for personal principles, no issue is allowed to be more important than the Monday morning agenda from Party Central. Anyone remember fiscally conservative Democrats? Anti-abortion Republicans? Pro-life Dems? Gay Republicans? They used to have cool names like Blue Dog Democrats and Log Cabin Republicans and now they're just shushed and sent back to study their notes. The extremists in both parties have created a free fire zone across the middle that's wiped out moderates of all stripes, to the detriment of the country. That's where we need to see some lanterns these days.

That's a bit rich, but $35m+$21m is within reach. I'd sign Correa and Bassitt in a minute if we could get them for $55m a season. If that sounds horrifying recall how much money teams make from the main MLB wellhead before receiving any local cable, ticket or stadium revenue. It's a lot. Forbes estimates that in 2021 the Twins Revenues were about $268m with a payroll around $144m. That missing $120m is the cost of paying minor leaguers, coaches, and execs plus a little left over for profit. The Forbes numbers may not be perfect, but even if they are off by 50% there's room for Correa.

I'm convinced these numbers prove we'd have lost 170, maybe 180 games without him.

Roy Hobbs didn't quite die, but I still have reservations. He's got at least one kid now and I'm not certain he'd come back for just any team.

Rodon or Bassitt, but nothing crazy. Put out a fair offer for 3+1 at $20m to Bassitt or 4+1 at $25m to Rodon and see if they get accepted. Someone may offer more money and more years, but those are solid offers to established guys. I don't want to be the team paying $27m for an age 39 season spent in rehab.

Not sure what you're getting at here. Was signing those two a bad move or not? Mauer and Correa are both serious HoF candidates, so I think signing them would be a good move to fill seats. I'm honestly not clear on what you're saying. To the topic at hand I'd say that teams don't come together all at once, and so you fix different areas in different ways depending on how seriously you're trying to complete in any given year. In a perfect world you can draft and develop kids into aces, but in a world where you're near the playoffs (finished 1 or 2 all but once 2015-2020) you can't always wait for the kids to fill that #4 hole. You replace time with money and take a couple risks on guys that know what needs doing even if they aren't as good at it as they used to be. The bad baseball in 2021 and the rash of injuries in 2022 dumped a lot of development time in the laps of a lot of guys who missed huge stretches of games due to Covid, so we suddenly have a lot of young arms maturing at once. We can afford to be pickier about the back end of the rotation these days and I expect we will be.

Even with Correa the infield defense with Miranda and Arraez would not be good. Polanco may not be great at 2B, but he is better than Arraez. I would only trade Polanco for something specific and special (TOR catcher, FLA pitching) not just to avoid salary or a potential logjam at 2b. None of our prospects are so good that we need to get him out of their way, and we could have used his bat last year when everyone else went to pieces. He is valuable because he is good. Let's see where everyone else shakes out this spring before we start throwing good players over the side. Here's a thought: Gordon is coming into his own and plays a fair CF and 2B. What's his value right now? He may be worth almost as much given the thinness in the CF market.

If you can get Rodon for 5/125 then go ahead, but I don't think that'll be enough. Same with Correa at 7/245 or Judge at 10/350. There are a lot of teams with a lot of money chasing very few top names this winter, and most of the teams that hold these FAs are probably going to take a solid run at keeping them. But here's the thing: last year was unreal for pitching injuries in MN. We have a decent starting rotation coming back that was not playing at the end of the season (Maeda, Mahle, Paddock with Winder and Ober barely back to appear in October.) So there are a half dozen good arms for #3-#5, with Grey likely to be a good #2 for as long as he holds up and the only real job opening as a playoff #1. We can get along without that one until June if the rest of the team shows up and plays. So get the bullpen straight, find a catcher, fill SS, maybe find that ace. I'd offer Correa $35m for seven and see if he bites, I'd try 5/125 on Rodon (and maybe keep half an eye on Sean Manaea's market.) Catcher should come from TOR and maybe trade for the SP from Florida. And then I'd really look hard at who in our org needs to move from starter to the pen: who is under-performing, who needs a change of scenery, who can't stay healthy, who can't develop that next pitch to make them really effective. There's a world of opportunity here for a couple guys who want to take the chance of being the next Duran. (And there's a world of opportunity here for someone to write a piece on how to find those guys.)

In looking at the 2018 minor leaguers we're getting to a place where the missing 20 and 21 seasons are really going to affect these young guys a lot. Someone on the cusp or breaking out in 19 and then sitting for a couple years is not going to develop in a normal fashion, so collapses like those mentioned should be expected. The trick is finding the guys who could handle the gap years and still move up when the games resumed.

I'd be OK waiting til the trade deadline to find that ace IF they went about their business at other positions with some alacrity. Fix SS, find a catcher, get a training staff in and get them working with the team immediately. (I think a lot of last season's injury problems could have been linked to players not being allowed to talk to staff during the lockout and being left on their own to prepare for the season.) There really aren't any great FA starting pitching options out there, especially if you're considering Rodon in an org with our medical issues. So get a new bullpen arm or two, shift some dreck around, sell Maeda on the notion of becoming Duran so Duran can be the closer, and then start laying the groundwork for a pitching trade. They pulled off a couple last year that failed for injury reasons, but they have to stay after it. Sonny Grey throwing 170 IP should be the threshold. The kids are coming along, but so many players are missing those lost and shortened seasons right now that we have to expect some fits and starts in their development. 2023 could be pretty surprising in that regard.

Duran used to start in the minors and was not the pitcher you see today. Shortening up his innings to let him go max effort really changed what he does. Do not mess with it, just hand him the ball late.

Just a reminder that the American League batted .242 this season. Numbers are not what they used to be.

I think he's just another poor option on the long list of names that indicate how important it is to sign Correa. In 13 years in the bigs he's never played anywhere other than SS, so I guess I'd need to know what you plan on doing with him if Lewis takes the job in July (or if he's suddenly fat and slow.) There are already other meh secondary options around the infield, so how valuable is he once Royce returns?