Doomtints

Right. If someone already has Santana, they're not going to trade for Santana. If pitching is the need, trading away pitching won't help unless one wants to concede another couple of years....

This type of performance and management is becoming too predictable. Someone is in over his head.

Yep. If Santana and Berrios keep it up, all they will need are a couple of "acceptable" starters. Mejia might be one of them. The bullpen is another story, and luckily a little easier to fix, assuming Molitor knows how to manage a bullpen. it's a shame this was not addressed a little bit over the winter.

Statcast isn't really "analytical" -- it's data. Until all of the data becomes publicly available we will only be scratching the surface of what the data is saying. Teams are no doubt able to look at this stuff more than we can. It's in baseball's best interest to release all of the data, unless they don't trust it. It will start a new age of baseball analysis and increase fan excitement.

I didn't say he was bad at defense. I'm saying his defensive numbers are way above his career norms.

Castro's OPS is an enigma. Don't expect it to last. Same goes for his defense.

Why would I do that? I think the Twins will finish under .500, and yet I'm also not advocating trading off assets. Until the Twins fall there it is an error to make big moves. We have to let things play out before we make decisions. If they surprise me and keep winning, that's great. If they fall off, sure start planning for next year. A couple of years ago the first-place Athletics made some panic moves like this to try to "improve" the team and ended up not even making the playoffs. The same thing happened to the Twins in 01. You're acting like the Twins have a chance to make the playoffs this year. I contend that they don't have a chance, so making changes is pointless. However, we have to wait for them to prove they're not good enough by failing before we start dismantling ... and even then they have to be careful about what they do. It's not an automatic that Santana should go.

Exactly. They can even dangle him a bit to see if there are any takers. But if not, they can keep him and have a dependable arm for another year. Nothing wrong with that for a team that still needs a pitching rebuild -- having at least one dependable veteran as they turn-over nearly everyone else can't be an error.

The Twins went 3-7 early in the year. The 2016 Cubs went 1-9 at one point, and 2-6 in another. The 1992 Twins had stretches of 2-7 (twice), 3-7, 3-6.... I'm hoping you follow baseball enough to know that you can't make panic moves due to a small stretch of games.

"Underthinking" would be asking questions like "Is he a #1? Is he a #2?" GMs know they have five starting pitching slots they can upgrade, not 2. If a team feels like they are one "plus" starter away from a championship they will be open to this trade, and Santana might be one of the few "plus" guys available. Of course we are assuming that the Twins would trade him. If they trade him off, the gains they made by getting Berrios ready will be for naught -- they will be back down to 1 competent starting pitcher. They can still keep Santana for another year to give them time to add more arms.

Any team who would trade for him would be competing this year. Barring injury, competitors will already have a 1 and a 2. This doesn't mean a competitor would not target Santana as an arm who could help them, it means that teams won't be thinking of it the way you are. Instead of overthinking it this way, look at recent history. Have pitchers with a history like Santana's been traded at the deadline? Yes. Did the other team get some juicy prospects in return for these trades? Yes. Does this mean any of this can or should happen? No.

If the Twins keep playing well through June, why sell anybody? This would be a TR move.

A few things: - Before last year, the sample sizes on him were very small. Can't use any numbers before last year to determine his worth. - He was also terrible until June of last year. - Regarding point #1, it may just be that he is only good for 10 innings a month, at most, before things go south. I admit I know nothing about Pressly's pitching arsenal or tendencies, but I will add that if the Twins used him sparingly for 2 years, there was probably a reason. If anything 'happened' it is either that he is a slow starter, is overworked, or has been exposed. We are probably overthinking a guy who was just medial reliever.

Nah. Grossman has been starting many games with Rosario being a late innings defensive replacement. Rosario is essentially the 4th OF right now. There is no need, or room, to call up anyone. And to address who you are responding to, people aren't talking much about Rosario because of the above....

"Berrios was the youngest Twins pitcher with 11 strikeouts in a game since a 22-year-old Francisco Liriano did so in 2006, and he was the first Twins pitcher to reach that mark within his first 16 career games since Bert Blyleven on Aug. 4, 1970 at age 19." -- Sarah Langs, ESPN Stats & Information Some of the fears around Berrios forgot his age and the normal development cycle of any good pitcher.

The Twins are not coming from a position of strength when it comes to trading away prospects. This is purely an academic conversation because if they did this they would be gutting themselves. As much as it sucks, TR left the Twins pretty thin and the organization needs to be acquiring prospects and not trading them, and they must explore free agency at the same time. Sure we heard this for a long time. The difference is under TR it was a BS excuse for not wanting to put in the effort to explore free agency or the trade market. Right now stocking the minors is a need, and the Twins can do both as any successful team does. The "we can only do one of these things successfully" was a dumb narrative that none of us should have ever accepted.

So it's an interesting conversation, then. Cool. We can always use more of that.

Ace comment.

Someone is bound to fight this one and show the exceptions, but the numbers don't lie. Most of his homers are with no one on base or with the Twins win already assured. He could do some damage on the right team where people ahead of him are always on base, probably, but on the Twins he is useless. He is probably the least feared 40 home run hitter in history.

Target Field was the first stadium set up with Statcast. I don't buy it for a second that Falvey walked into a front office full of people who had never looked at it, who didn't have it integrated, etc. Target Field was the statcast pilot, for chrissakes. The MLB would not foot the bill to set this up in an organization incapable of looking at the data!

Nevertheless, it were for the Twins! I was talking about apples, your response is about oranges. The next obvious part of your argument is, then, if the Sox and Royals had not yet played the Twins, then the Twins would also not have yet played the Royals and Sox. The Twins record would likely be around 14-21 instead of 19-16 based on their winning percentage against everyone else. Personally, I prefer the premise that they can beat up on crappy teams. Without that, the Twins are on pace for only 70-71 wins with the assumption that the Sox and Royals records are flukes.

For the sake of argument, let's assume these will be the consistently "crappy teams" this year: Jays Royals White Sox Athletics Mariners The Twins have 41 games left against these opponents. Assuming they play well against these teams (.600 win %), they can count on 24 wins. Against the rest of baseball the Twins have a .409 winning percentage. They have 86 games against everyone else. Assuming they stay at a .409 W% v. everyone else, they can count on 35 wins. Using the above premises, the Twins are due for 59 more wins the rest of the year, which will give them 78 wins. This will be a great year for the young team, out-performing the most sensible predictions by 4-6 wins. Of course, we still have a small sample size. The Twins have yet to play many teams. They could end up better or worse than this. We will know more when we have more information.

It's pretty easy to see what's going on without even talking about lofty things like "regression." The Twins have feasted upon a couple of bad teams. Luckily for the Twins, these teams are in the division and we are in an the unbalanced schedule era. The Twins have 19 wins total, and 10 of them are against the White Sox and the Royals. 10-3 v. two teams. 9-13 v. everyone else. Will they "regress"? That's not even the point. How many wins can they get from crappy teams going forward? We know they'll be .500 or worse against good teams and probably mediocre teams as well.

Not exactly, but close.

Someone named Bill James defined #1 and #2 pitchers over a generation ago, when discussing the 1987 Twins championship season in fact. His data lead to the following conclusions: Essentially, #4 and #5 pitchers have abysmal W-L records, almost never anywhere near .500. #1 and #2 pitchers tend to have W-L records well over .500 and are where the bulk of team wins credited to the SP come from. #3 pitchers are around .500. (Bill James went on to say that the Twins pitching staff was typical in 1987 -- the only thing missing was a #3 pitcher. The other pitching roles were normal for WS champion teams). Of course, in this era we are told by some very loud people that W-L for pitchers is irrelevant. Bear in mind that I am just putting this definition out there for everyone to digest and not defending it. Nevertheless, using this definition, yes, Ervin Santana is a #1 or #2 pitcher. Probably a #2 but this year, so far, a #1. I prefer using my own stat to determine the worthiness of a starting pitcher -- the "meltdown ratio" which is the opposite of a quality start -- lasting less than 6 innings or allowing 3+ runs. Most of you will be surprised to learn that the best pitchers in the game still have "meltdowns" 40% of the time, with the worst having them 60% of the time. When the Twins picked up Santana, I ran this for him and he was at the top -- right around 40%. Take this as you will.