Jump to content
Twins Daily
  • Create Account

Taildragger8791

Verified Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,138

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Profiles

News

Minnesota Twins Videos

2026 Minnesota Twins Top Prospects Ranking

2022 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

Minnesota Twins Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits

Guides & Resources

2023 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

The Minnesota Twins Players Project

2024 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

2025 Minnesota Twins Draft Pick Tracker

2026 Minnesota Twins Draft Pick Tracker

Forums

Blogs

Events

Store

Downloads

Gallery

Everything posted by Taildragger8791

  1. Taildragger8791
    Is there any concern around Gonsalves' walk rate? He's around 3.3/9 for his career but it's climbed to nearly 4.0/9 in High-A. He had a good start this season but it's been climbing again the last few games. I wonder if his promotion will be held off on the worries that it could get a lot worse at AA? Burdi/Reed and others have shown how tough that jump is for pitchers who aren't consistent strike-throwers.
  2. Taildragger8791
    This isn't how the internet works, fellas. I'm going to need you to pick up your standard-issue weapons of ad-hominem & strawman attacks and resume your fight to the death of your dignity.
  3. Taildragger8791
    I have led multiple teams to multiple championships in MLB 2K and The Show. Ryan just needs to figure out how to turn down the difficulty settings, but you know how older people are with technology.
  4. Taildragger8791
    I don't know much about the guy, but my initial guess is that 28.8% strikeout rate at AA right now has something to do with it. Would you trade ABW III or Vargas straight up for a backup big league catcher today? That's about what you're looking at from the other side of it.
  5. Taildragger8791
    I'm interested in Palka but I've held off on looking into him while waiting for the sample size to grow. Without knowing anything about the guy and just looking at numbers, he falls on the spectrum somewhere between ABW III and Kennys Vargas as far as recent comps, while being at an older age for each league. The general narrative is that Walker & Vargas have no major league future; so what is the projection for Palka? We've seen our share of poor K/BB ratio guys with power flame out at AAA or after a taste of the bigs, and I'm hesitant to get invested in another one. I hope for the best and want to root for the kid, but I feel like setting appropriate expectations is necessary for everyone right now.
  6. Taildragger8791
    When they brought him up initially they said he was to be a reliever due to the overtaxed bullpen and struggling starters. Molitor even reportedly said he wasn't going to use him in high leverage situations. In other words, he'd be relegated to mop up duty in a decidedly lost game. He wasn't initially supposed to start, so that was just more head-scratching decision making. If they needed a warm body to eat up innings they could have called up some other yokel hanging on the 40-man. If you can't find anyone else then that's just even more evidence of a terribly mismanaged roster. How do you not have any redundancy for a couple short-term injuries? Speaking of 40-man roster issues...what are the Twins going to do if they have to DL a catcher? Suzuki has been battling some nagging injuries already and had to gut out the game where Murphy got ejected. Centeno and Paulino aren't major leaguers, and the thought of pairing one of them with Murphy for 2+ weeks is depressing.
  7. Taildragger8791
    Even if you can find a defensible argument for Meyer's handling, the reason it's difficult to give the Twins the benefit of the doubt in these situations is because they lack proven results from their way of doing things. Unfortunately, the Twins over the last 10 years haven't shown they can develop solid MLB pitchers and as a result it is fair to call into question their decision-making and methods with young players. Scott Baker is the best, maybe the only, quality starting pitcher we've developed in this system in over 10 years. The jury is still out on Gibson due to his consistency issues, and Berrios has promise but is only 2 starts into his career. Berrios also appears to have an other-worldly confidence and drive to be great, so he is a bit of a unique case. Almost every other pitcher they've developed is out of the league or is holding on as a fringe journeyman. And no, I don't give their development system credit for players that came in nearly major league ready (Liriano, Johan, etc).
  8. Taildragger8791
    Well-written post jiminy, but it's a bit of a strawman argument. Hardly anyone is advocating calling him up to let him start indefinitely, results be damned. That would be a disservice to the team, as you mentioned. The point is that this guy is obviously a little fragile after a collapse last year, so when he finally starts seeing a little success and consistency the team should be doing what they can to let him keep building on that and get some confidence. Keep him on his regular pitching routine, and show him that you won't abandon him at the first sign of a struggle. He should either have stayed in AAA to keep building that consistency and confidence, or been called up to start on his regular 5-ish days routine. Calling him up, telling him he’s now a bullpen guy, but not trusted to pitch in any meaningful situation (undermining instead of building confidence), then telling him he’s going to start after all, but throwing him out there to pitch an inning of mop-up duty a few days before his start, then when he runs into the first tough inning you yank him and demote him instead of seeing if he can work out of it (which he was starting to do). How does that situation look like anything other than a total boondoggle? It’s like a recipe for destroying the recovery progress of a guy whose career is hanging in the balance. Not every pitcher is an infinitely-confident bulldog like Berrios or Johan. Treating every player like they’re the same personality is a piss-poor management style.
  9. Taildragger8791
    We have seen a number questionable incidents over the last few years with regards to management of the roster and prospects, as well as head-scratching player performances. When you isolate and analyze each situation, you can come up with defensible arguments for why the Twins made the choices they did, and why things happened as they did. But in aggregate, after enough of these occurrences have piled up, it starts to become a pattern and speaks to the overall performance of the management. At some point, over a large enough timeframe, I no longer care about the minutiae of these items and instead would rather take a page of out Mike Zimmer's playbook: "Don't tell me about the labor, show me the baby." We need to start seeing results out of this team. I'm willing to give a pass on every individual roster decision and player development outcome if you allow me to evaluate based on final results and expect accountability for them. Based on the dumpster fire this season became and projections for the next couple of years, I can only assess that the leadership of this club is vastly underperforming. If this team still looks like a disheveled mess by the end of this season and goes into next season with the same players and issues, it has to be pay-up time. Finishing with a bottom 5 record for the 5th time in 6 years with little sign of overall progress isn't acceptable status quo to good organizations. End rant.
  10. Taildragger8791
    I'm a little disappointed that we're giving up on May as a starter so easily, just because Ryan & Co mismanaged things to where we had sunk costs clogging up the starting staff and the bullpen was desperately in need of arms. Shoving a guy to RP before he's proven he can't be effective as a SP seems like an underutilization of talent to me. Hopefully there's more to it than that.
  11. Taildragger8791
    I think with Buxton we need to significantly devalue the AAA numbers results (except BBs & Ks) and focus more on the eye test. He's going to get hits, 2Bs, and 3Bs based on his speed against the lower quality defense & pitching. For him it's all about recognizing which pitches to swing at and working the count better. He hasn't had to do that yet because his speed bails him out.
  12. Taildragger8791
    You had me curious so I had to look it up. The most holds by an NFL offense last year was the Bears with 35, while the fewest holds by a pitching staff was 41 for the A's. It would take some effort, but with a little hard work and elbow grease I think it could be done.
  13. Taildragger8791
    I hope you're right, and he did seem to turn a corner there for a week, but he just struck out in 7 of 15 PAs this weekend with 1 walk and 3 hits. I wouldn't say he's settled in just yet.
  14. Taildragger8791
    He's also a better offensive option than Murphy, Buxton, and probably Suzuki. Can we DH for our catcher on days Milone is pitching?
  15. Taildragger8791
    If I remember right, didn't he smoke a few good heaters in spring training? I thought I remembered reading that he didn't appear to have any issues catching up to the mid-90s fastballs he was seeing in mid- to late-March.
  16. Taildragger8791
    Pay $20 for a free photo opportunity? Even Blyleven's California math senses something is off about that.
  17. Taildragger8791
    I know it was a tough offseason to find BP help, but I have to believe there were better options than this. We actually went into a season with a bullpen strategy of waiting for guys to play themselves out of a job, then replacing as we go with unproven prospects. We set up a minefield for the first chunk of the season, and if the rookies don't pan out then it is going to be a minefield all year. There's no sure anchor to this staff right now to hide those performances. I have high hopes for some of our minor league RPs, but my confidence has been shaken based on injuries and declining performances at AA. I wouldn't want to bank my season on having multiple rookies provide average or better performance when those same guys are barely holding their own at AA. Maybe somebody can help me out here. Who was the last rookie reliever the Twins called up that became a strong bullpen stalwart? I just looked back 4-5 years and no names really jumped out. And we're to assume we'll now get 2-3 in one year? It's such a big jump, and I hope it happens, but I'm not terribly comfortable with that strategy.
  18. Taildragger8791
    No problem. Last year's data seems to mostly agree with expectations as well, although there were a few curious results mixed in. This was the first time I'd used Fangraphs as well btw. I suggest you give it a try, it wasn't too tricky and there's a lot of cool information to sort through. http://i.imgur.com/64A2eKE.jpg Link: http://i.imgur.com/64A2eKE.jpg
  19. Taildragger8791
    Fangraphs' shutdown/meltdown statistic (based on win probability added) linked to by HitInAPinch seems to be a reasonable metric to track relievers. Even with the SSS that is the 2016 season, it so far seems to agree with the eyeball test as well as Seth's first draft at the "unnamed stat" in this article. I imagine there will be a lot of movement over the next few weeks. http://i.imgur.com/zVZICTa.jpg Link to image: http://i.imgur.com/zVZICTa.jpg
  20. Taildragger8791
    I remember sometime after his first couple weeks with the big club Sano was asked about hitting MLB pitchers vs. AA pitchers. He said he thought it was actually easier because the MLB pitchers have better control, which made it easier to anticipate where the pitch was going. Being as sharp on the mental side of the game as he is, if he can figure out what the pitcher is trying to do then he can react. Since AA pitchers don't have always have the command to execute like that, there's no telling where the pitch will end up. When you have the incredible talent he has to hit almost any pitch near the zone, it makes some sense. Pretty amazing stuff.
  21. Taildragger8791
    Have you tried looking at the swing rates against the pitchers of interest in minor leagus compared to the majors? Might help you evaluate your theory.
×
×
  • Create New...