IndianaTwin

Then there's my favorite grammar joke... A visitor walking through the Harvard campus stops to ask one of the locals, "Excuse me. Could you please tell me where the library is at?" Local, pompously: "I'm sorry, but at Harvard University, we don't end sentences with a preposition." Visitor, after pausing a moment: "Okay. Can you please tell me where the library is at, ... jerk?"

With the relative paucity of full-time DHs around the majors, it seems that predicting success is about as difficult at DH as any position. At least in bWAR, if you take out three outliers, the range from top to bottom is only from 2.2 to -1.8. Only 12 teams even have a positive bWAR, with just six above 1.0. Take out that Ohtani had all but 14 PAs at the position for LA, that the Yankees had Judge and the Phillies Schwarber and no team was above 1.6 at the position. It seems that if you have a stud it's helpful; otherwise it doesn't make a huge difference who gets your DH at bats.

While we're at it, near the top of my grammatical pet peeves is people saying, "An historic." It's not a silent "h" sound, like "honor." It's "A historic..." I usually hear that snafu from people trying to sound sophisticated. They don't. (To the point, I do like what Abel and Bradley have been showing in the rotation.)

Awesome plan. In the road trip food department, I can offer the following… Chicago to Cincy: I’m from Iowa. In my mind, the best breaded pork tenderloins are in the Hawkeye State. However, Indiana claims to have invented them and tries to proclaim itself as having the best. Again, it doesn’t. However, there are two worthy options that would require only a slight detour from Interstate 65 between Chicago and Indianapolis. One-Eyed Jack’s in Winamac is excellent. Technically it’s battered rather than breaded, so some prefer Jonesy’s Junction in Akron, which would be a slightly longer detour. In reality, neither will add a huge distance, since all roads in Indiana lead to Indy. You just might take more 4 lane than interstate. Cleveland to Milwaukee: You’ll be going across northern Indiana on the Indiana Toll Road (80/90). Midway through the state, you can hop off the road about 10 miles for the Amish buffet at the Essenhaus in Middlebury. Save room for pie. Alternatively, order off the menu so you have time to stop a few miles away at the most amazing Amish donut place you can imagine, Rise ‘N Roll, also near Middlebury. Better yet, get the buffet AND go to the donut place to get several for later. Closer to the interstate, at the Elkhart exit, is the Flippin’ Cow, home to the Stella Moo, a burger topped with brisket, bacon, onion straws and bbq sauce. Legitimately one of the best burgers I’ve ever had, but not as unique as the Amish experience near Middlebury. For any of these, let me know when you are going through. If it works for my schedule, lunch is on me.

You probably don’t like needless redundancies then, do you? 😀

Oh, boy. Let the Wallner bashing begin... /s

Ryan is actually 15 months older than Luzardo, not three as in the OP. Luzardo was one year from reaching free agency at 30. Ryan is two years from reaching free agency at 31. That's two strikes against an extension for Ryan in comparison to Luzardo.

The Mauer comparison is interesting in terms of where they spent the year. Mauer spent his 17 YO season as a junior at Cretin-Durham. Tait spent his in the Complex league and Low A. Mauer spent his 18 YO season at Cretin-Durham and Rookie League. Tait spent his at Low and High A. Mauer spent his 19 YO season in the Quad Cities at what was then Low A, Tait seems likely to start his at High A and conceivably get to AA if he performs. NOT saying Tait's a Hall of Famer, but he's at an interesting point in his development.

I can also see a path forward. I haven't actually seen any of the spring training games, so I'll take your word on where some of these guys are. I haven't been as concerned about the four LHP issue as some others have. Last year they used 26 relievers (not counting position players). Eight started on the roster, so 18 were added at some point. That doesn't consider that there was a flurry of moves at the deadline, but it also doesn't consider that some guys came up more than once. Point being, that works out to something like a bullpen transaction every 10 days or less. With four of eight lefties, that means there's a 50/50 chance of a transaction being for a lefty, so we can probably expect there being a transaction involving a lefty within about 20 days or so. Make that transaction a righty for a lefty, and we're at five RHP and three LHP. That also doesn't take into account Funderburk being optionable if there are five righties ready to take the ball on Opening Day. And if all four LHPs are healthy and effective beyond the 20 days, that's a good problem to have. Additionally, all the top starting candidates are RHP, so it does mean they will typically be facing lineups that are tilted to lefty hitters. If a LHP is the first guy out of the pen, they are often going to have a platoon advantage OR it will force an opposing manager to use pinch hitters early. So..., less than ideal to have four LHPs, but I think it's workable.

Aside from other factors (presence of optionless Outman/relatively modest number of games in AAA/service time considerations), it seems like a reason to send Rodriguez down is the opportunity to play LF or RF in St. Paul. In his minor league career, he has 2076 innings in CF, but only 107 (less than 12 games) in RF and 32 (less than 4 games) in LF. I think it will be an interesting tell to see how he is used in St. Paul. Hopefully it includes a reasonable amount of time in one of the corners. And the same for Jenkins, for that matter. He's got 859.2 innings in CF, along with 61.1 in RF and 17 in LF.

It seems like plenty on TD claim to be smarter than the Twins in their analysis of Outman. I'm not ready to make that claim about myself. He may or may not provide anything, but I have wondered whether he will even be allowed to succeed in the minds of those here. To those who have already decided that he's a flop, what level of success does he need to demonstrate to justify his worth?

My favorite stat from last year is the 549 plate appearances.

I've been saying the same. The focus on TD has often been on the bullpen, but the ceiling vs. floor variance on the hitting side is pretty large. Keaschall continuing to be a stud, Lee improving to the area of average, Martin showing that the last couple months was legit and Larnach bouncing back a bit would all be huge, but I think the key is Lewis and Wallner. Buxton, Keaschall, Wallner, Lewis, Jeffers, Larnach, Bell, Martin, Lee at their best is a pretty good lineup. All else being the same, the fall to Buxton, so-so Martin, Jeffers, Bell, Larnach, Clemens at 3B, Caratini at DH, struggling Keaschall, no-improvement Lee is not. Tweak those orders as you wish, but the point is the same. Having 2023/24 Wallner and Studley Lewis lengthens the lineup a lot. Said another way -- Bell batting seventh can be a competitive lineup. Bell batting fourth cannot.

Thing is, with Caratini and Jackson, there’s not room for Kreidler, Clemens and Martin, UNLESS they try to get by with 12 pitchers. The schedule isn’t conducive to 12 pitchers. They have the first Friday and Tuesday off, but then launch into a stint with 15 games in 15 days, so there are fewer April days off than is often the case.

I prefer bWAR for the highly scientific reason of “I’m more familiar with navigating the baseball-reference.com Web site than I am Fangraphs.” Based on bWAR, Buxton is already top 10 among Twins hitters: Carew 63.8 Killebrew 60.6* Mauer 55.6 Puckett 51.1 Oliva 43.1 Hrbek 38.6 Knoblauch 38.0 Allison 34.1* Buxton 29.8 Gaetti 27.1 Hunter 26.4 Above or near him on the pitcher side are: Blyleven 49.1 Radke 45.6 Santana 35.8 Pascual 33.2* Kaat 30.6* Viola 27.0 Those are franchise totals. I’ve asterisked the four who also played in Washington. If you want to include their stats in Washington, an argument can be included for considering Walter Johnson, but they haven't. But in most cases, people have included the Washington stats for these four, since the vast majority of their franchise time was spent in Minnesota. In Killebrew (6.7 in Washington) and Allison’s case (3.5), a bit more than 10 percent of their bWAR came in Washington, so that's defensible to include those. Kaat would actually have his total go up by 1.2 if he didn’t have to include his youngster years in Washington. The tricky one is Pascual, who had 15.1 bWAR in Washington and 18.1 in Minnesota. In looking at Puckett’s legacy in the past, I’ve framed it around a “likelihood of number being retired” discussion. Buxton only needs 8.8 to catch No. 14 and 13.3 to catch No. 6, both very doable with three more years on his contract. Don’t forget that he only played 126 games last year in getting his 4.9 bWAR. He had two short IL stints, but when not on the list, he was playing virtually every day. The two short IL stints probably cost him another 0.5 to get to 5.4. I suspect the goal for this year is at least 140 games, and years of 5.0, 4.5 and 4.0 gets him past Oliva. AND, if he actually has three more healthy years and is in the low to mid 40s after his age 34 season, there will be emotional push to extend his contract a year a few times and let him retire as a Twin. Catching Puckett frankly isn’t an impossibility. Continued decline to 3.5, 3.0 and 2.5 would do it over six years. What may hurt Buxton is if Jenkins or someone else pushes him off center field to left or even DH. The Twins obviously use more than bWAR to determine retired numbers. Kaat’s bWAR as a Twin is significantly lower than the other retired number guys, but his was retired in conjunction with his Hall of Fame induction. Hrbek clearly got a hometown popularity/two World Series bonus – his total is only 0.6 more than Knoblauch, and I don’t think Knobby has really been considered. And on the other side, if bWAR is the key factor, why have Carlos Gomez, Matt Carson, Danny Valencia, Wilkin Ramirez, Tim Stauffer, Miguel Sano, Griffin Jax and now Brooks Lee been allowed to wear No. 22? Radke’s bWAR is actually above Oliva and Hrbek. But all in all, I think there’s a better than 50/50 chance nobody else wears No. 25 in the future.

From the OP: "Here is the list of starting pitchers not on the 40-man roster the Twins have in their farm system." And "With the list of pitchers being quite long, we decided to break this up into two parts. We’ll take a look at the pitchers who were in the lower minors this past season in the next article." The pipeline doesn't start off with 4 non-prospects -- the article does. The prospects in the higher levels are on the 40-man. The prospects at the lower level are not on the 40-man and will be covered in the next list. This article is the subset with the fewest prospects.

Though I said the previous and lean to a larger Hall, I'm still not convinced on Santana. We like to point at his outstanding peak, but when JAWS uses a player's seven best years to define his peak, Curt Schilling, Zack Greinke, Kevin Brown and Wilbur Wood all exceed him and Dave Stieb, Luis Tiant, Rick Reuschel and David Cone are very close to him. But out of those eight, he only barely surpasses Wood in total bWAR and is 4.7 behind Stieb. The other six all exceed his career total by at least 10 and four of them by more than 15.

I agree on the museum comment. And because of that, I think non-playing factors should be considered. I'm not talking about the steroid or similar issues, but "contribution to the game." I don't know if having such a long career in the broadcasting world made a difference in Kaat getting selected, but I think it should have. Similarly, Tommy John is one of the best examples of the "accumulator." His 288 wins is the only post-1900 total more than 270 (and not named Roger Clemens) who is not in the Hall. At best, he was once considered a borderline case, and I haven't heard him mentioned recently as a viable candidate. But to me, having a surgery named after him should be the piece that gets him over the top.

Last year had 1426, but I see what you did there -- playoffs, baby! 🤣

I've actually reached the point of being cautiously optimistic about the bullpen. I don't know that it will be top level, but I could see it being middle of the pack by the middle of the year as things get sorted out. Rogers, Hendricks, Sands, Topa, Banda, Chafin, Orze as a starting point. Altavilla, Bowman, Brito, Hartwig, Laweryson, Merryweather as non-roster invites who have at least gotten a cup of coffee. Several of them have pretty solid K/IP numbers. Raya, Adams, perhaps Prielipp and others as converted starters. Rolling the dice on guys like Baker, Bash, Brito and MacLeod. Again with solid strikeout numbers. A couple years ago, they tried the approach of throwing lots of stuff against the wall to see what sticks. That's the approach again this year, but I think there is more and better stuff to throw at the bricks.

I like Pablo. A lot. And it does seem that a 1.5 game loss underestimates his effect. That said, in the five post-COVID years, he has averaged 3.5 bWAR per 162 games. So if you work from there, that does change the math on what would be expected from his replacement.

Unfortunately, they now have an opening with Lopez almost certainly being on the 60-day IL.

People keep saying that it’s the same team that ended the season 19-35. Let’s look at that: That team got three starts from López. This year would expect 10 in that span. That team got 10 starts from a struggling Ober. This team has Ober starting anew. That team had six starts from SWR. This team would expect 10. That team had eight combined starts from Urena, Adams, Ohl, Hatch. None of those are currently in their top eight starters. That team got 17 combined starts from Bradley, Abel and Matthews. One of them will probably be in the rotation to start the year, but they likely won’t combine for nearly a third of the team’s starts. And even if they do, they will be further along in development and expected to pitch better. That team got 26 starts from Jeffers at catcher. This team would get 36 if they go with the 2:1 ratio that gets him to 108 games for the year. That team had 28 starts from Vazquez, Gasper and Pereda at catcher. This team replaces those with Jeffers and Caratini. That team had Clemens for 32 starts at 1B, along with 21 for Julien and one for Gasper. This year’s looks to get theirs from Bell, Caratini and Clemens (if he’s playing well). That team had Keaschall and Lee up the middle. This team has the same, but with more experience. Both teams have Lewis and Buxton. In right, that one had Wallner performing well below his career numbers. In left, it was a hodgepodge of Roden, Larnach, Clemens, Martin and Outman until Martin got most of the starts over the last 30. This year will have some combination of the best-performing two of that group (with potential assistance from Jenkins and Gonzalez). It will be a better mix. At DH, last year had mostly Larnach with a few Juliens and McCuskers scattered among other regulars getting a day or so there. This year’s has Larnach plus Bell, Caratini and other regulars getting days there. Last year’s bullpen had so many forgettables I’ve tried to forget them. I don’t know what the mix will be this year, but a combination of Rogers, Hendricks, Topa, Sands, Banda, Orze, Chafin, Funderburk,, Adams, Laweryson, Klein, Altavilla, Bash, Bowman, Canterino, Hartwig, Merryweather, Raya, Prielipp and Morris will be better. It has to be better. You can’t have this combination of 20, nearly half with legit major league experience, even all-star-level experience, pitch as bad as the pen did the last third of the year. There are just too man to choose from. I get it. They will have injuries and not all of my “this years” will come true. But the mix starting spring training is way better than what ended the year.

And Kowar did get traded.

Have they officially moved Festa to the pen? Or is that a projection on your part? With the number of options they have to sort through in the pen, I’d leave him in the Starters to the Pen Options list. One of that six (counting Festa) will start in the rotation.