The Twins are a below average 19th in OPS and lead the American League in strikeouts but they're 7th in HR. Cleveland is 30th in OPS and HR. That's the difference in offense between the teams - the Twins can hit one over the fence and Cleveland rarely homers.
Quintana pitched the best few months of his entire career because the Cardinals can make lemonade out of any lemon. Odorizzi was bad. Syndergaard was mediocre. They all cost less than Mahle but they were also impending free agents. The lesson is to buy cheap vets at the deadline because needing to improve the top end of your rotation means you probably aren't a contender.
Will Kirilloff play 5 days a week for the Twins? They have plenty of other options at the positions Alex plays. He could easily play 3-4 days a week without figuring in the injury.
Mark Contreras is a good benchmark for how well a prospect needs to hit to get promoted. Nobody think Contreras will hit well enough at the MLB level to contribute so Kirilloff and Julien probably need to perform better than Contreras if they want to force a promotion.
I agree with that, but Ober has been better. They are a better team with Ober in the rotation and Maeda in the bullpen than with Maeda in the rotation and Ober in AAA.
Pitching like this he's likely 4 year $100M+ in the offseason. Enjoy this year, give him the QO and get the draft pick.
He's been fantastic so far, a clear All-Star candidate.
I don't. I think Lewis is a better baseball player and the Twins are a better team with Lewis at 3B long term instead of Miranda. Do I want Michael Taylor to fail if I think the Twins are better off with Buxton in CF?
Miranda's biggest problem at the moment is his lack of power. Just 2 extra base hits in 96 plate appearances. He's better than that. The batting average and walks are not a big surprise, just slightly below expectations. He's only 2 hits below last season's rate for AVG/OBP.
In two weeks he will have played one season's worth of games in the big leagues. Then you can start to project based on that larger sample of work.