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Taildragger8791

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Everything posted by Taildragger8791

  1. Taildragger8791
    The difference there is Rosario always demonstrated an elite ability to get the bat to the ball. As he got better at pitch recognition and toned down the free-swinging he cut down the strikeouts and made more quality contact. I don't really see them as the same thing, but it does demonstrate the drastic improvement possible when a guy learns to lay off unhittable pitches. It took Rosario a while to get there because he had an elite skill to fall back on, so maybe Sano will follow a similar trajectory.
  2. Taildragger8791
    He's having as good of at bats as he can for his contact ability. The strikes/strikeouts have to come from somewhere though, which in this case means he's swinging and missing/fouling balls. Sort of agrees with the eye test. I don't think of Sano as an undisciplined free swinger, I think he just has difficulty recognizing and hitting low breaking balls. That leads to a steady diet of said breaking balls which runs up the count and leads to walks and swinging Ks. I doubt a player can significantly improve their contact skills at this point in their career, but if he learns to spit on breaking balls that fall beneath the zone it'll be a significant game changer for him and the Twins.
  3. Taildragger8791
    After an initial adjustment period (something we've seen from Rooker at every level), he's been putting up good numbers for almost 2 months now: .323/.447/.559 in 114 plate appearances. 15% walk rate, but still carrying a 35% strikeout rate over that stretch. The strikeout rate has been dropping as the season goes along though, so that's positive. His BABIP is off the charts at .532, so there's some regression coming in there. But otherwise his stat line looks like a Sano 2.0. I'm not sure the TD forums could handle a lineup with TWO Sanos in it...
  4. Taildragger8791
    Miguel Sano’s uniqueness aside, I don’t see how you can say strikeouts are the same as other outs. The Twins won tonight partially because Rosario advanced Polanco on a deep fly out, allowing him to score on a wild pitch. If you have a lineup of guys striking out over 1/3rd if the time you don’t get as many of those kinds of opportunities to stress the defense or induce productive things to happen. It somehow works for Sano because he sells out and hits the ball so dang hard when he eventually makes contact. I like the risk/reward profile in the 5-7 slots in the lineup, but there are 4-5 other hitters on this team I’d rather have up in a big spot to extend a rally.
  5. Taildragger8791
    The MiLB season is as weird as the MLB season, but for the opposite reason. Injuries and underperformance have stalled out progression for almost all the top prospects. On the bright side, some lesser-hyped guys and guys who were losing some shine are now starting to emerge.
  6. Taildragger8791
    And on the very next pitch Bremer once again fooled me with another one of his misleading calls on Sano's towering 130 foot pop out. That tricky Dick.
  7. Taildragger8791
    This. Is. Awesome. It would be criminally negligent not to find one more solid bullpen arm to spread the load around, but overall the top 4-5 guys have been pretty solid when they aren't overused. I think a lot of that is credit to the rotation for going 6-7 innings consistently. Adding another #3 or better starter would be a dream scenario. That pushes Pineda to the pen, and come playoff time you get to move a couple starters behind the outfield wall as well. Now things start looking pretty solid on the mound.
  8. Taildragger8791
    The 2nd and 3rd at bats were better last night but big fly outs are still just fly outs. When you predominantly try to hit balls in the air you're going to get a lot of those. Nothing wrong with that, but there's no "almost a homerun" credit just because he's strong and hits them hard and high. The actual homerun came against a guy that was feeding him 4-seamers for some inexplicable reason, and Sano did exactly what you'd expect and sent one to the moon. Classic Sano. I'm more than willing to be patient because I see the talent and he won't get better without opportunity. I just struggle to believe he'll sustain those rosy per-162 numbers over an actual full season or against playoff-caliber pitching unless he learns to survive against breaking balls. For his career he strikes out at a 45%-55% clip against anything that isn't a fastball/sinker/cutter. Sure, he'll continue to run into hangers, bad pitchers, or guys who stupidly challenge him on fastballs. That's not a process that leads to consistent success when competition gets tougher. But maybe he's the rare historic bird that makes it work. Also, I'm not sure where the .340-.350 OBP or 30% strikeout numbers came from. His career OBP is .334 and he's never had a strikeout rate below ~36%.
  9. Taildragger8791
    It looks like his timing is coming back on fastballs. Buttrey didn't trust his slider and was stuck feeding Sano his favorite pitch and got punished for it. Yay for us. Unfortunately he's still lost against good breaking pitches, which isn't unexpected. That first at bat today was one of the worst I've ever seen. Woof. For me the #1 thing I want to see out of him this year is just the ability to survive against decent breaking balls. He doesn't have to crush them, but he can't continue striking out at 45%-55% against sliders/curves/splitters/change ups.
  10. Taildragger8791
    How does Arraez have no options? This is his first time being called up. He's definitely a natural born contact hitter which the top of the lineup could use. And it's a nice change from all the swing-and-miss power hacking in today's game. They have the infield depth to DFA Adrianza but I'm not sure they'll pull the trigger this quickly. I suspect he'll get optioned, but is now the first choice to call up when an injury replacement is needed.
  11. Taildragger8791
    This is my assumption as well. Analytics may have derived an optimal lineup based on everyone's hitting profiles. And from a more qualitative perspective, there's something to be said for consistency and keeping every day the same regardless of how yesterday went. You don't have to think about how your lineup slot that day impacts your role, or how hitting behind/in front of someone different changes how you're pitched to. Maybe none of that really matters much, and I agree with Riverbrian that I expected to see matchups factored in a little more. But it's awfully tough to argue against a strategy that's resulting in one of the best offensive outputs in the league (and the best we've ever seen from a Twins team).
  12. Taildragger8791
    As painful as it could get, I don't think you do anything with Sano other than keep playing him all year. He needs the opportunity to make and demonstrate progress. If he doesn't perform then he lives near the bottom of the lineup and loses playing time to guys who can perform. Especially if playoffs come around. I think that sends a message that resonates better than a demotion would, and it's the beauty of having a deep lineup. Such an excellent motivator for him to stay focused and keep improving his game.
  13. Taildragger8791
    I didn't push for that either. I'm pretty clearly against making any decision on short sample sizes, and would rather look at a larger window of performance as well as the process that led to the results. The results will ebb and flow over short stretches because it's baseball, but as long as the process/approach are solid it should self-correct. He's in a comfortable spot and producing, so I'd let him continue to mature and establish himself for a while before yanking him up and down the order. I'd also want to see that OBP stay up before putting him at leadoff. Over the first several weeks he's shown that it's finally clicking and he's found an approach/process that works for him. I'd say the fact that he experienced a mini-slump and dug out of it without it snowballing on him shows that he's growing and maturing as a professional hitter.
  14. Taildragger8791
    You’ll have a hard time being happy with anyone’s consistency when your measuring stick is an arbitrary week and a half out of a 6 month season. And even that stretch of performance for Buxton wasn’t in the unplayable territory we’ve seen before.
  15. Taildragger8791
    Between injuries and poor performance, that Top 20 Prospect Summary is a pretty rough read most days. There's only a few names regularly lighting up the board, and it's rarely the ones we're really counting on. Hopefully the switch flips sometime this summer...
  16. Taildragger8791
    60 days is easily in play. High ankle sprains are notoriously slow to heal. He could maybe come back to DH sooner if he's careful on the bases, but catching duties will be a lot to ask. I saw the still image of the play and his foot was turned totally sideways. It's a miracle he didn't break/tear anything.
  17. Taildragger8791
    I think that would be a legitimate way to reinforce or anchor a rotation, seeing as how developing starting pitching is such a crapshoot and it's rarely available in free agency. You just need to be able to afford to keep/extend the more expensive older players you'd be getting in return. Almost nobody is trading 22 year old front-end starters under cost control for less than a mint. Hitting is more reliably developed and easier to acquire in free agency, so I'd be more hesitant to blow the prospect equity on a bat. You'll run out of prospects in a hurry going 3-for-1 in trades just to fill out your lineup.
  18. Taildragger8791
    This miss on Tyler Jay looks worse than your run-of-the-mill bust because the whole thought process that went into it was flawed. They went after college relievers trying to exploit some non-existent market inefficiency. It was such a bad idea it only took a year to see that it wasn't going to pay off. They'd have been better off throwing darts than executing that terrible plan.
  19. Taildragger8791
    This is my assumption as well. I just wonder if there's a threshold at which they do option him and make him earn the promotion, or does he get the veteran scholarship treatment despite how he ended last season?
  20. Taildragger8791
    I'll be curious to see what the Twins consider 'ready' for Sano. If a few weeks from now he's hitting 10/50 with 5 homers, 5 walks, and 25 strikeouts...is that promotion-worthy? Do they option him and tell him to work on the plate control?
  21. Taildragger8791
    Sure. I'm just curious how the Twins' spread of great, good, bad, and awful starts compares relative to the league. I realize these are arbitrarily-defined categories, but hopefully it would indicate the upside-ability of the rotation, as well as the likelihood of each performance you could expect. I'm just spit-balling ideas on how to see into the numbers a little deeper than a mean average.
  22. Taildragger8791
    I'd be curious to see a comparison more along the lines of median performances rather than mean averages. The Twins (going on gut feel here) seem like they've had some lights out performances and some absolute horror show performances, the latter of which have a bigger impact on the mean averages you listed. If those get cleaned up a little it could make a big difference in the rankings. Maybe a plot of Earned Runs by the starter from each game would be a good way to visualize the spread of performances? One could compare the bell curves for each team and see where they tend to live and how boom/bust they are vs. steady down the middle.
  23. Taildragger8791
    Yeah, it's usually not a good sign when a minor league pitcher who's already getting to go max-effort in a relief role still doesn't dominate. There's nowhere to go up from there unless something else improves. After the injuries and wear/tear, does he still throw as hard as he did 2-3 years ago? Is his strikeout rate artificially elevated because he lives out of the zone too much, or does he actually have consistent swing-and-miss stuff?
  24. Taildragger8791
    I feel bad for Dozier on a human level, but as far as being a professional baseball player I’m not surprised he's struggling. He had a charmed run but was always so dead focused on pull power that it was bound to bite him I’m the rear. As it often did between his hot streaks. As for Schoop, I don’t think he’d be prohibitively expensive and I don’t think you ever worry about blocking “prospects” that you don’t know when or if they’ll arrive. This team also doesn’t have the pitching to accept unnecessary wildcards in any given lineup slots next year. Sign the known quantity and trade him later if you must.
  25. Taildragger8791
    Defense has been solid, and I’d expect the bat to pick up for Marwin. But yeah, luckily for Sano he’s off to a slow start.
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