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Taildragger8791

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Everything posted by Taildragger8791

  1. Taildragger8791
    And how was he going to contribute anywhere else as a Twin when Sano and Dozier are locked into their respective positions? If they weren't going to play him at SS then he's only going to start about 10 games a year, when Dozier needs a rest. Or he'll have to play out of position at 3B/OF and get maybe 40-50 games, which is pretty wasteful. At that point you may as well trade him for a bag of balls or something, at least then you're putting some value to work.
  2. Taildragger8791
    I think the argument, at least for me, is that his OBP won't translate to the MLB level because he's going to get challenged in the zone to prove he can hit effectively and do a little damage. That could quickly become a sub-.300 OBP because nobody is going to walk him when the absolute worst thing he can do is flip a single over/through the infield. EDIT: If he hits for .300+ with pitchers challenging him then maybe he gets a little respect and keeps his OBP up, but he hasn't shown the ability to hit like that (like Revere did).
  3. Taildragger8791
    I'm curious where you think Polanco will be if Escobar is holding down SS. Barring a trade the only other place for him is on the bench or AAA (can't remember if he was granted a 4th option?).
  4. Taildragger8791
    I think that's an oversimplified view of his hitting. It's not so much that he can't hit at all, it's that he hits with the power of Ben Revere but without the elite base-stretching speed or contact ability. Even that meager career slash line of .264/.327/.309 will be difficult to maintain as he moves up and better pitchers challenge him knowing that he can't possibly do any damage. You're basically staring down a Pedro Florimon rerun. Gordon has considerably more contact ability and way power (only 11 XBH for Vielma in all of 2016), and he's even showing some potential as a run producer. They're about the same on base-stealing, maybe a slight edge to Vielma as of today. I just don't see how the two even begin to compare with the stick.
  5. Taildragger8791
    I'm good with Nick Gordon at #4 due to his higher-than-usual floor. Not every position on the diamond has to be a player with an elite skill. Sometimes you just need a steady & reliable guy at a key spot. I think of him as ending up like a Denard Span at SS (good at everything but not elite or terrible at anything) and I think we'd be pretty darn happy about that.
  6. Taildragger8791
    Skills fade when you don't practice them, and you don't make a seamless transition from playing SS at AA two years ago to playing MLB SS today. It's supposed to be a steady progression of development so players get used to the speed and other differences, ingraining the routine plays into muscle memory. Polanco has been jerked around over the last few years and collectively he has barely a season's worth of games at SS above A+ ball since 2014. The vast majority of those starts coming in 2014 & early 2015 at AA. Since then he's been yanked around the diamond and between levels and never got to settle into a position or role. He went from playing SS at AA to benchwarmer in MLB to 2B at AAA, then yanked back and forth between the last two until late last year when he finally got some regular time at SS. There was no progression/development towards MLB SS. They basically cut him off after AA. Maybe they had the right idea and he can't play the position, but I don't think even they know that for sure and it seems silly that they abandoned his development before they really knew. Particularly when his bat has been MLB-ready for over a year and every other position is blocked.
  7. Taildragger8791
    ...implying that Gonsalves isn't a little bit of a roll of the dice as well. He's really promising but he's getting by despite pretty notable control issues and a mediocre breaking ball. Likely due to having an advanced changeup that minor leaguers typically struggle with. Improving those two things will be keys to watch for in his development this year, because he has all the other qualities he needs to be successful in the big leagues.
  8. Taildragger8791
    From everything I've read the DSL is below even GCL in competition level. I don't think you can draw any conclusions one way or the other from stats on 30 plate appearances there, that's such an insanely short sample size with no context for who he was doing it against. It suggests he was talented relative to the competition, which is good, but that's about it. We'll just have to wait for him to get into the GCL this year to see where his swing development is at.
  9. Taildragger8791
    I considered that. The way I saw it is that both Buxton and Kirilloff played 48 and 55 games in the rookie leagues, respectively, with Buxton advancing to the Appy league after a couple dozen games and Kirilloff starting there. Both showed well enough as 18 year olds in advanced rookie leagues to go straight to low A in their first full season. So those rankings had more to go on in both cases. It's probably true too that, fair or not, top 10-15 picks get a little more pedigree credit than international players due to how much more we know about them at the time of acquisition (older in age, more game tape, typically played against better competition, more scouting history, etc).
  10. Taildragger8791
    I agree he's exciting and he might be one of my new favorite young prospects to follow this year. I just don't know how you rank someone so high with nothing to go on except unrealized potential. He hasn't demonstrated anything remarkable in game action yet so it's pure projection based on above-average raw talent and limited DSL time. I understand getting enamored with the upside, but the floor/ceiling spread is enormous at this point and should be considered.
  11. Taildragger8791
    Mike (edit: and markos) covered it pretty well. Javier and Gordon are 3-4 years apart developmentally and who knows what the MLB roster will look like in 4-5 years. You can't project baseball rosters that far ahead. That's why getting prospects is all about best player available, and let the chips fall where they may. If it causes a logjam then you have some good trade bait to rebalance things later.
  12. Taildragger8791
    That might be a more popular opinion than you think. I sense there's a little more positivity around Mejia since he's basically found money, being acquired in the Nunez trade instead of coming up as a top prospect that we invested heavily in (resource-wise by the team, and emotionally by the fans). I personally wouldn't mind seeing him in the rotation out of spring training if he shows well. I think the guy could be a decent back-end starter and if we don't audition him soon he's going to get passed up for opportunities by the crew at AA. But with the long list of guys ahead of him I'm assuming he'll be in AAA for a while, barring injuries. At least that'll create some drama so we get to have an interesting debate later this year on who the next call-ups should be.
  13. Taildragger8791
    I don't know if I'd call the pipeline "poor" but it's certainly not above average either, yet. The fact that we have some names to talk about seriously is a big upgrade from where we were the last several years, but I think we also forgot that's how it's supposed to be. Teams are supposed to have a steady trickle of MLB-quality talent. Otherwise you end up with 90+ loss seasons on the regular. But to get even a top-10 rotation out of this system it'll take a couple of lottery hits, big trades, or top free agent signings (if there's even any available). I like that we at least have a couple of lotto tickets for a change, which provides some optimism. This pipeline could look a lot better at the end of the season if they start to pan out. I just hope the front office has contingency plans for the next couple of years if they don't.
  14. Taildragger8791
    It isn't "fine" just yet but there is a lot of talent in the lineup presenting a realistic potential for improvement. There are no guarantees, but there is a clear path to success there. That's miles ahead of the rotation which doesn't have anywhere near that level of upside in the system, nor is there even a clear path towards respectability.
  15. Taildragger8791
    Totally agree. The problem is he doesn't throw it over the plate. His last extended stint at AA (2015) he had 32 walks in 43.2 innings. There's no amount of strikeout ability in existence that can counterbalance walking a guy almost every outing.
  16. Taildragger8791
    Not to mention Burdi hasn't even dominated at AA yet. That would be quite a leap to go straight to the MLB roster.
  17. Taildragger8791
    I think Polanco will be fine. And it's not like you're going to bump Buxton. Kepler did well for a young rookie. There's a lot of potential for good performances there. Mauer isn't a black hole, even if he is underwhelming for a first basemen. He should be moved down the lineup though. LF, 1B, and DH are three suspect spots which I wish we'd done more to bolster. Thankfully, they are also the easiest to upgrade in any given offseason so I seriously hope for those to be addressed before 2018. Catcher is a black hole, but that's not a simple fix for any team. There's a good chance this team approaches top 10 in run production. I'm okay with that improvement for 2017. By 2018 they should be well within the top 10. Hopefully it isn't wasted by bottom 3 pitching again.
  18. Taildragger8791
    The lineup will be fine and potentially exciting. We all know this. But if the extent of our rotation's improvement is staked on May, Berrios, and Mejia then that solidifies why some of us don't see big improvement coming this season. We'd be extremely fortunate if more than one of those players held down a 4.50 ERA all year. It's more likely that group will struggle a lot this year with Berrios still figuring out his struggles, Mejia needing to see if he can make the jump, and May needing to re-acclimate to starting while staying healthy. These guys obviously need to pitch a lot and show us what we have in them. But I'm not going to delude myself into believing this pitching staff won't be a dreadfully annoying dead weight around our neck all year. Hopefully they get long auditions to work things out during another rebuilding/development year and we aren't still wondering what we have in 2018 with them. I wasn't super disappointed by the offseason since there weren't many options out there that made sense. I kind of hoped the front office had some creative ideas up their sleeve to surprise us, but I can't fault them for what wasn't there. It is what it is. Nick mostly summed up my thoughts on that a few posts ago.
  19. Taildragger8791
    I keep hearing this statement but I don't really buy it. It's not like we had a disproportionate amount of injuries. Other than Plouffe, Hughes, and Perkins we were overall pretty healthy, and neither Plouffe nor Perkins would have done anything to stem the bleeding last year. Every team loses a few players, but they don't go on to lose 100+ games because of it. And it's not like we got random bad years from a bunch of established good players either. The players that struggled were either super young (expected) or just flat out aren't that good to begin with (also should have been expected). The young ones can improve, but can they improve enough to carry all the dead weight of the has-beens and never-will-bes?
  20. Taildragger8791
    Or it means expectations were too high on some players and they should be adjusted down going forward. Personally, I think 7 players met or exceeded expectations: Dozier, Ervin Santana, Eduardo Nunez, Suzuki, Polanco, Kepler, and Rosario. Sano was a little disappointing but he wasn't that far off the mark offensively, and he was set up to fail defensively by mismanagement. You could probably even throw Kintzler and Pressley in that list. Yes, some of those players had lower expectations, but that's the roster we had and are bringing back (sans Nunez, and I consider Suzuki/Castro almost a wash). Suzuki and Rosario didn't underperform, they mostly played like they should have been expected to (and played a lot). Naturally, I'd anticipate most of the really young players to continue to grow and do better this year. But I also think it's fair to set low expectations on everyone 25 or older except Chargois, Dozier and E. Santana (and even he worries me with his every-other-year pattern). Unfortunately, most of those players are on the mound or occupying key spots in the lineup (1B/DH). So a bottom-3 finish shouldn't be a surprise without changes or drastic improvement from multiple unexpected players.
  21. Taildragger8791
    If Gibson surpasses 200 innings that means he figured out how to stop big innings and giving up base runners in bunches. That would suggest a big bounce back season for him and be a much-needed boost for the team. I really don't expect it though, unless he has some upcoming change to his repertoire or approach that he hasn't talked about. He just doesn't get strike outs or induce playable ground balls reliably enough. Maybe with a stud defense to back him up, but...
  22. Taildragger8791
    I think the fans would come back quickly if this core takes off and they get enough pitching to climb over .500. I only moved to the Cities last year but I'd love to get a 40 game season package if they were competitive. Until then I'll just buy $15 seats on StubHub and sneak down past sleeping ushers when I feel like going.
  23. Taildragger8791
    I keep hearing this line repeated but I don't see how it matters when the replacements are far from sure things to do any better. It's tantamount to swapping deck chairs on the Titanic. Santiago, Berrios, Duffey (obvious injury fill-in candidate), May, Hughes, Mejia, and Gonsalves could all easily get rotation time this year and replicate those 59 starts. God forbid if Ervin goes down or yo-yos back to Bad Santa(na), now you're really talking trouble. There are so many more paths to being terrible again than there are paths to notable improvement. And currently there are no paths to getting above average in the next couple of years, barring major trades or free agent acquisitions.
  24. Taildragger8791
    The scary thing is that this could be a 100-loss team even if we kept everyone healthy all year. Considering our lack of depth, it gets a lot more likely if we lose any key players (Dozier, Sano, Buxton, Polanco, Ervin, maybe Santiago, and whoever the hell we have in the bullpen) for a significant length of time this year. Most of those guys stayed pretty healthy all year.The drop off is going to be steep behind most of them. And Sano & Buxton already have a propensity to get dinged up.
  25. Taildragger8791
    Has there been any word this offseason on what Sano has been up to this offseason? Did he play in any winter leagues? I'd be curious to see how he looks when he shows up to spring training here, physically and focus-wise. I think it'll say a lot about the season he's going to have. Hopefully he learned he won't get by on talent alone at this level and was motivated to work a little harder at his craft. Another year of nagging injuries, looking sloppy, and appearing mentally unfocused is going to be disappointing. A focused and tenacious Sano should be scary good. I hope that's what we get starting in 2017.
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