DJL44

Except Miranda was worse than Severino last season while playing for the same team. Miranda had a 686 OPS in AAA and Severino had an 832 OPS at the same level. They will be competing to see who gets called up first this year and I don't think Miranda's two months in 2022 will matter.

It isn't. An 800 OPS is not elite and his platoon split is horrendous.

Future projections weight the previous season the most, then 2 years ago, then 3. Anything outside of the last 3 seasons is mostly irrelevant for projecting the upcoming season. A guide to the projection systems - Beyond the Box Score If you want to talk about what Miranda put up during the pennant race you have to include his August and September where he posted an OPS of .705 and .715 (June/July were his best months). I wouldn't recommend cherry-picking just the best two months of anyone's career and using that as an expectation going forward but if you're going to do that you need to be fair and do that for Kirilloff and Santana as well.

If you have 5 guys with equally mediocre bats to choose from, pick the one who gives you the best defense that day and put him in the field. Most days that's Willi Castro.

Based on last season's results Miranda is behind Severino on the depth chart.

This is possible. That would still only be adequate offensive production at 1B. Combine with Santana's glove and it could be a plus.

The fastball was 3 MPH faster so he increased the difference in speed by 1MPH. Plus, a faster changeup probably has more movement.

They got Mahle for 2022 AND 2023. The 2023 team won a playoff series. Who knows if they beat Houston with a healthy Mahle available.

This is great news. He didn't need much of a velocity boost to get him to a point where he could really be effective. Woods-Richardson fulfilling his potential would make this rotation 7 deep.

Funny how we don't have 100 articles complaining about Camargo being blocked by Vazquez. Maybe people realize catcher depth is important.

Good article

I am ambivalent about Farmer vs. Steer. Both are competent backups. CES is a DH but could be a useful DH. The only reason that deal was bad was Tyler Mahle couldn't stay healthy. It could just as easily been a win for the Twins and Steer could have been the injured player. Mahle has talent or the Rangers wouldn't be paying him $20M to rehab. I like that the Twins use veteran players to sit on the bench and want to develop young players by playing them every day. I like that they're willing to trade from the minor league depth to improve the major league team. The trades for Gray and Farmer were both good moves.

Add that to the $20M+ they already have to invest elsewhere but aren't investing elsewhere.

If Margot's knee is healthy he's the RH version of 2022 Max Kepler. That's a good player to have around for $5M. He's 29 and a comeback season means a slim chance they pick up his 2025 option (or find a different team that wants it). Miller for Doncon is a push. Both of them have a projected future value near zero. Danny De Andrade has a clear path forward. Word is Kike Hernandez is headed back to the Dodgers and that's why they wanted to move Margot. The Twins will probably cut Weiss to open their roster spot.

Why does this have to be either/or? There should be a way to deliver games to people who have streaming AND people who have cable. There should even be some games available for people who only have an antenna. Stop negotiating "exclusive" rights that are certain to shrink the potential audience.

Another television talking head put on air just for his good looks.

Right, but if they can do another Nelson Cruz for Joe Ryan trade it would be really tempting.

I thought he just hibernated during the winter.

He absolutely is next offseason.

WAR is assigned defensively by the number of events at the position. Players get credit for making plays and debited if they miss them. RField is calibrated versus the average player at the position. Do you want to just make up events that didn't happen in the games to give SS and CF more credit? That would be credit for standing on the field watching someone else make the play. The second paragraph suggestion would fundamentally miscalculate WAR. Runs created and runs allowed have to balance. Your accounting would credit the offense for (example) creating 4 runs in a game but debit the defense for 8 runs allowed. Fielding and pitching HAVE to share defensive runs allowed. It's simple accounting; a credit in one place has to be a debit somewhere else.

If Lee moves to 2B and Julien to 1B (I approve), then do they move Kirilloff or Kepler at the deadline? It makes equal sense to trade Kepler before he walks away next offseason, then play Wallner in RF and Kirilloff in LF.

A lot of your 24 questions are also "hot stove" speculation. It's time to focus on scouting reports and spring training games. I will bite on a couple. Bailey Ober is already "locked up" for the next 4 seasons until he's 31 years old. Do you really want to guarantee his ages 32-34 seasons right now? Talking about players on other teams is fine. Baseball Think Factory died, and I don't have anywhere else I discuss players on other teams. I'd still rather talk Twins payroll than hear one word about the Minnesota Vikings.

I think a lot of times we see the hot stove discussion too much during the season here (what will the roster look like in 2028?). Hot stove talk is a good way to pass time during the winter but during the season I like to see a lot more discussion of what is happening during the games, especially since I don't get to watch very many of them. For the game articles, tell me something I can't read in the box score.

Dave St. Peter's Road From Intern To President And CEO Of The Minnesota Twins | Fargo INC! Not a feather in the cap for the University of North Dakota's major in public relations.

It's pretty easy to look up how it is calculated. There is a set amount of WAR for the whole league. Pretty much all of the calculators agree on the run value of offensive events. (a single, walk, stolen base, etc). The amount of WAR allocated to run creation is the same amount allocated to run prevention (pitching and defense). If the amount allocated to defense is too low then the amount allocated to pitching has to be too high. There are only two ways WAR could undercount Molina's defense: 1) The best catchers are better than they appear and the worst catchers are worse than they appear. In other words, RField has the right average but the standard deviation is wrong. Catcher defense would be regressed too much to the mean. This gets problematic because it would suggest the worst 1/3 of catchers shouldn't be catching at all. A team starting Matt LeCroy or Ryan Doumit would put the team in a 1 run hole every game they caught. 2) The division of run prevention is incorrect between pitchers and catchers. Catchers should be getting more credit for strikeouts (and debit for walks) than they currently do. This gets into how much pitch framing and game calling are worth. There is a separate argument that catcher replacement value is wrong because it's based on position switching but that's secondary to the other points above and would affect all catchers equally based on games caught.