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Taildragger8791

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Everything posted by Taildragger8791

  1. Taildragger8791
    And since the start of May it's more like a 32% k-rate, 6.25% BB-rate, slashing .243/.291/.379 (.670 OPS). In other words, he had a little bit of a lukewarm streak for a few weeks and depending on where you draw the line it'll drastically change the numbers. He's making some contact finally, but he's still struggling to draw walks or collect XBHs the last month and a half. I'll take the progress, but he's still pretty far from competent with the stick.
  2. Taildragger8791
    And he's hitting .200 in the month of June with zero walks. Arbitrary sample sizes are fun.
  3. Taildragger8791
    I wasn't aware we had two AA arms that together could nab a top of the rotation starter. If that were the case then I hope they pull the trigger sooner than later before any more arms fall off down there.
  4. Taildragger8791
    I don't think people generally criticize picking Buxton, because he clearly has immense talent. I think people criticize how the Twins have developed him since he still so frequently looks like he's completely lost and searching for clues at the plate. He stands out as a prime counterexample to the idea that was repeated a lot yesterday that the Twins excel at developing young, athletic position players. We've had a lot of prospects who profile that way and several even had great MiLB success, but they often floundered for years trying to transition to MLB before finally clicking elsewhere or busting. So, naturally people are skeptical of another player of the same mold being chosen 1-1 and already being lauded as a surefire future All Star with comparisons to Jeter. Nobody even knows what position this kid can play yet, or if he'll develop any power, or even be able to hit with his "non-traditional plate approach". I'm giving the new front office the benefit of the doubt since the kid obviously has a lot of tools and physical attributes. Hopefully the rest of the draft will reveal their strategy and validate their approach to the first few picks. I'm willing to be patient before I blast the selections, but they definitely stuck their neck out in their first year. Hopefully it doesn't result in it getting lopped off in 3 years.
  5. Taildragger8791
    The hits weren't hard but there were a lot of liners and grounders right back up the middle. I assume that means they were seeing his pitches clearly and weren't being fooled on speed or anything. If they were bloopers or seeing-eye grounders then I'd chalk it up to being one of those days, but it looked more like the hitters had him figured out a little bit. Might be time to make an adjustment, which should be expected when breaking in a rookie. Hopefully he figures it out.
  6. Taildragger8791
    He's only had 4 appearances this year, each spaced 3 days apart, with his first and fourth outings being fairly rough. I don't think he'll be considered for MLB call-up until he at least pitches effectively on short rest. I could see him going to AAA soon though. He finished last season strong there.
  7. Taildragger8791
    I considered that, but it's awfully difficult to consistently isolate all your 'badness' into a concentrated set of games while reserving your 'goodness' for the other set of games. Unpredictability and unintended consequences will spill over at some point. Having 3 pitchers with an ERA under 4 is nice, but we still don't know that Mejia is for real and Santana is starting to throw clunkers with more frequency (3 of his last 6 starts). Berrios will likely have ups and downs as he gets established. Something has to give, either the record will start to erode or the pitching staff will have to get shored up quickly.
  8. Taildragger8791
    That's based purely on the fact that Turley is an unknown. It's very likely he'd be far worse than Santiago.
  9. Taildragger8791
    Pretty remarkable that a team can be in first place 1/3rd of the way into a season while having one of the worst run differentials in the AL and posting 4 pitching appearances from a position player. How long can this really be sustainable?
  10. Taildragger8791
    I'm not sure what you're talking about or what you think I said. The only point I made was to refute the idea that a college pitcher is somehow more of a sure thing to stay healthy than a high school pitcher just because he has more years of use on his arm without injury (yet). That's all I was ever saying. I understand why that idea makes sense logically but I'm not aware of any statistics which bear that out. And the recent experience of the Twins has actually been the reverse of that. The next reply to me said the Twins' experience was irrelevant because their pitchers were mostly drafted later in the first round, but I don't see why that matters if we're limiting it to a discussion of health. If someone wants to do the analysis I'd be more than interested to see it. But I certainly didn't say anything about not drafting pitchers in general.
  11. Taildragger8791
    I don't see what it matters if a guy is an early or late first round college draft pick with regards to expected health.
  12. Taildragger8791
    He's on pace for 147 games played this year, so it doesn't look like he's getting rested or platooned all that much. Maybe that'll change if Park forces a promotion, but that doesn't look to be happening anytime soon. Edit: For context, that would be a tie for the 2nd most games he's ever played in a season.
  13. Taildragger8791
    Just saying...Gibson, Wimmers, and Jay were all college draft picks and either underwent Tommy John or had other injury issues within the first couple of years. Jay was shut down early last year due to soreness and still isn't ready to pitch yet this year. Not much word on when he will return either. Meanwhile, Stewart was the high school pick and has overall been pretty healthy. So I don't think there's ever any guarantee of future health.
  14. Taildragger8791
    There is likely a lot of bias in that stat. What if you limit it to players picked in the first couple of rounds? College players have been much more sorted out for MLB potential by the time they're drafted, so there's some selection bias there. High school players are much more of an unknown and there are WAY more of them to draft than college players, with a much larger variance in talent. So yeah, it should be pretty expected that a random college player is more talented than a random high school player, and that talent is more of a known commodity due to more exposure to scouting evaluations.
  15. Taildragger8791
    No, I didn't say that. Twisting my words doesn't help the discussion. I said most of the arguments against the Twins handling of Berrios and prospects falls into one of those categories. I didn't say anything about you or your reasons specifically. Although if I wanted to slot your statements into a category it would apparently fall into the 'incompetent' slot for not knowing how to handle or evaluate one of their most promising players. There were many statements that the Twins are keeping him down because they want to punish him for playing in the WBC or want to limit his MLB service time or success to save money. To really believe that you have to believe the Twins' brass is vindictive and Scrooge-like towards their own players. That's basically the 'evil' category I was referring to. And I disagree that there was no risk. The risk was that he gets shelled and his confidence is destroyed, and he doesn't find his comfort zone with the unfamiliar MLB baseball because every time he throws it near an MLB hitter he nearly pulls a muscle in his neck watching it fly back over his head at 98 MPH. There is little to no room for error at this level. That is not a conducive environment to making major adjustments.
  16. Taildragger8791
    The words "insane, evil or incomptent" aren't used explicitly but the complaints and sentiment levied at the team is generally along one of those veins. As opposed to assuming they did it for actual defensible reasons like wanting to be convinced he had his head on straight and worked out his very serious problems he had demonstrated up until now. There are legitimate things to criticize the Twins on with prospects but I don't see this as being an example to build your case around. They saw Berrios absolutely, 100%, completely BOMB in almost every one of his 14 starts last year and did absolutely ZILCH in spring training to show that was behind him. Why would you automatically insert that guy into the MLB rotation and assume things are hunky dory? That would be irresponsible and risky and everyone would have torn apart the front office if he'd struggled all over again out of the gate. He openly stated himself that he wasn't comfortable with the MLB baseball and was too far inside his own head last year. Sending him down to get comfortable with the new baseball in his side sessions while he gets in a successful rhythm just makes so much sense that I'm flabbergasted people are lambasting the team like it was an obvious mistake.
  17. Taildragger8791
    We see this argument with every prospect. If a guy has success for any length of time the calls for promotions start up and escalate in a hurry, with assertions that the Twins are insane, evil, and/or incompetent for holding the player back. But at the same time if players were promoted on potential before demonstrating they were ready there would be an equally loud chorus of criticism for being too aggressive and demanding proof of performance before handing out promotions. Especially if that player bombed at the next level. You can't have it both ways. It was totally reasonable that Berrios started in the minors after completely failing in his debut season and doing nothing in spring training or WBC to show that he had made improvements. Why throw him back out there to fail again? Once you've decided to send him down to get comfortable you aren't going to pull him back in a week or two, he's there for a reason and adjustments don't happen instantaneously. Maybe they waited 2-3 weeks longer than absolutely necessary, but they wanted to be 100% sure his next promotion was successful and hopefully his last ever. Seems reasonable and responsible to me. If he goes on to have a 10+ year great career is anyone going to notice or care they he spent a couple extra weeks in AAA getting himself right? Do we still look back at Torii Hunter's career and have heartburn that he bounced up and down to start out? I sure hope not. In the end this was a tiny blip on the radar of what is supposed to be a rebuilding season.
  18. Taildragger8791
    He's far more likely to end up as "just" a good reliever or closer than he is a Hall of Famer. Obviously everyone would be thrilled with any draftee or signee who ends up the BEST EVER at their position, that's kind of a silly example because that's so extremely rare. So rare that it isn't even worth considering unless a guy has clearly demonstrated that potential at some point. We're not there yet with Jay. If he's an elite shutdown closer then the pick looks a lot more palatable, but it'll still always feel like the Twins left something on the table by using such a high draft pick on a guy who's likely role was a reliever. Teams rarely do that and it's because a single reliever has so much less impact on a game than a position player or starter. Not to mention that bullpens are easier to scrape together from free agents and trades than rotations and lineups are. That said, what's done is done and if the bullpen is the best role for him then I'm all on board and hope he can get/stay healthy so we can get this show on the road. A beefed up bullpen would be a big boost to this MLB squad right now.
  19. Taildragger8791
    On the hitting side there was Sano, Buxton, and Vargas. And Polanco sort of made that jump too, although that was mostly as an emergency backfill. (Edit: Kepler and Rosario barely spent any time at AAA before getting to the majors too) Can't think of recent examples on the pitching side, but then again we haven't had any quality pitching to promote in the last decade except Berrios, who we can now see wasn't ready to jump straight from AA. Chargois was being slow-played last year coming back from injury, otherwise he might have gone straight from AA. Burdi might be the first pitcher they've had that is good enough and also in the right position to do it. It seems Twins pitchers tend to go to AAA to refine command against before being promoted. Hopefully a live arm like Burdi is good enough to skip that step.
  20. Taildragger8791
    Or it just means he doesn't hit a lot of weak popups, which historically has been true for him. He typically is one of the top hitters in baseball in terms of avoiding pop-ups. That removes a lot of in-play balls with low exit velocity that bring the average down. On the other hand, stinging balls into the ground to 2nd base doesn't accomplish much despite looking good on exit velocity charts.
  21. Taildragger8791
    Don't forget Vargas was signed that year too. That's 4 out of 9 guys in our recent lineups signed by Bill Smith in one year.
  22. Taildragger8791
    They might have fit into the budget, but how do we know that Bill Smith wasn't providing some different direction/priorities at the time that led us to signing those players vs others? It sort of stands out when some of our best international signings the last 10 years came in the short span Smith was at the helm.
  23. Taildragger8791
    The average may come down but the power will remain. And when you hit the ball as hard as he does consistently, the BABIP will be elevated from the norm anyways. So it shouldn't fall off the table completely.
  24. Taildragger8791
    I think that's pretty much the consensus. Nobody is saying he's toast or to give up on him. Just that there are legitimate concerns because of the ongoing severity of his struggles and ineptitude to this point. I just don't think pointing to mini slumps that other players have had really says anything useful one way or the other about Buxton. Particularly when those slumps don't really compare all that well (different root cause, different types of players, different era, etc). It would be more helpful to find cases of talented players that had his level of strikeout and pitch recognition issues and actually overcame them.
  25. Taildragger8791
    All players have slumps that even out in the long run, we know this. That doesn't relate to what Buxton is going through because this isn't just a slump, he's been totally inept with the bat (until yesterday). Other than his September swoon he hasn't shown that he can handle major league pitching at even a basic level in what is now his 3rd year in the show. It would be one thing if he was repeatedly oscillating between stretches of competence and slumps as he makes adjustments back and forth with pitchers. But this isn't that, this has been a guy that's totally lost at the plate and just trying random things to find something that works.
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