ShouldaCouldaWoulda

Saw a "bold predictions" at the other MN site, but thought it would be interesting what the smarter fans would have to say here. I am copy, cut, and posting mine from the other site here. Feel free to attack my terrible guesses. Stat lines are great, but story lines are encouraged and more entertaining. Buxton struggles with production and multiple minor injuries that keep him from being called up until September, if at all. Questions arise about his skills and falls out of top ten in prospect rankings next year. Sano has streaky beginning to the season in the minors, with a low average and striking out more. His walk rate declines. He will make an appearance due to injury of Plouffe or Mauer, hits 2 bombs in first 3 games, but strikes out too much and does not hit well. Gets sent back down. Gets hot in second half after finding rhythm and confidence, and lights the league on fire in the second half. Hicks, quietly has a good season in the field and plate. Does not get appreciated for getting on base, but rubes will be happy that he hits more singles this year and have a higher average. Doesn't hit for power or steal basses that people think he should, but is an above average player in aggregate when all said and done. Will still piss people off due to him seeming flaky. Suzuki ends up being one of the worst starting catchers in the league offensively and defensively, but keeps his job for most of the season, until the Twins finally realize that last year was the outlier and not the trend. Pinto doesn't get any better defensively, but is consistent with the bat, and the Twins decide the bat is worth it and give him the nod the final month or two. Mauer gets 600 at bats and stays relatively healthy. Finishes top 5 in batting title and OBP, but hits between 12-16 homers, with most coming on the road. His defense improves, and quietly is applauded as underrated by the national analysts and league, but continues to get destroyed by local fans and media for what is not. Vargas struggles with MLB pitching and starts losing at bats to Pinto more often. Doesn't struggle bad enough to get sent down, and shows streaks of last years surprise. Doesn't meet expectations or projections, but improves his approach the final month or two. Dozier starts hot, but not as hot as last year. The power and SB's are legit, but continues to have a bad average and his OBP drops. Still ends up being a good player though. Defensively declines though. All of his stats are just slightly less than last year. Plouffe surprises with a 20 HR season and .265 avg. Defensive is a plus. Rumors of of Twins flipping him at his highest value is rampant, but Twins hang on to him, only to see it be a one year improvement and lose their chance to get value for him. Santana plays SS (terribly.) Hits for a .285 avg, but does not walk at all. Hits 5-8 HR's and steals a bunch of bases when he does get on base. Arcia ends up being the worst OF in the league defensively, but hits 30 HR's. Strikes out a ton, but his AVG and OBP are respectable enough to keep his power in the lineup. Gets consideration for All Star team, but doesn't make it. Is the Twins biggest bright spot of the season. Schafer does nothing, but gets most of the playing time over Hicks the first month, due to a hot first week. Hunter has one of his best offensive first half seasons, but has less than 300 at bats due to old person injury. The defense is bad, but no one will notice since he will make the plays hit to him look good, but his range will be horrid and many balls will drop that people won't realize he should have gotten to and been routine. Hughes ERA is over 4.00, but still has respectable season for Twins standards. Keeps his walk rate low, but K rate declines, and give up more HR's. Gets 15 wins, and improves again after the one down season. Santana has an almost identical season to Hughes, but is dominant in the first half of the season, and deplorable in the second half. Nolasco finishes with a 4.50 era, but mostly due a handful of really bad outings, but is otherwise a decent pitcher on par with Hughes and Santana. Gibson leads the team in ERA at 3.75, but doesn't strike anyone out or go deep into games. Has a yo yo season of being great and not so great. Shows improvement though. May gets shifted to the bullpen and is dominant in that role. Takes over the closer role in the second half. He fails in his few opportunities as a starter at the start of the season. Meyer lights it up...in the minors. Right when everyone is screaming for the Twins to bring him up...he needs season ending shoulder or elbow surgery. Never spends a day in the majors. Perkins struggles all year, and losses his job.Twins shut him down with some minor injury. Our prospects all have better than expected seasons, and the "future" talk continues with different names and dates being used. But not many get brought up at all. Stewart and the Aussie kid have crazy good years in the minors and shoot to top ten prospects in all lists the next year. *That I am wrong on almost every one of these predictions, except one that seems so spot on that makes me look not as dumb as I actually am. That a topic like this already exists and someone overreacts to me creating this one. Someone freaks out at my guesses and takes offense for the negative in them. My post gets one like. That I will go to only two games this year. One early on that will be really cold. One when it is scorching hot. I will get drunk at both and lose my phone, like the last game I went to. That someone will predict the Twins to make the playoffs.

I kinda feel like May and Meyer do not have a chance, regardless of how they pitching spring training. They will find a narrative to keep them in the minors, and somehow bring them up May/June. I think the approach of keeping hitters in the minors to save money might make some sense, but I do not agree with it for pitchers. I would rather draft power arms, move them up quickly before they lose velocity and become damaged goods, use them up while they are young, and then sell high while they are still young, but haven't broken down yet. Seems to what the A's have done often.

I have never heard of this before and am loving this information.

Amen, I ranted about this a while back. MLB club wins in the future also factor in young talent already in the majors and also the amount of $ a team is willing to spend to fill holes in FA now and in the future. A good farm system helps, but it really is not a predictor of future MLB success by any means. I just saw ESPN came out with their "future rankings," which factors in a multitude of variables, and I believe the Twins were ranked in the second half. Also, the Twins are about mid pack in 25 and under rankings, which also factor in an organizations MLB roster, and not just their minor league systems. I never understood the importance of ranking minor league systems, while ignoring the best young players in the league, who make it to the majors and gain experience early. Those guys have more influence on future success anyway.

...Meaning, he might be a useful player on our team, but it is downright sad if we are trying to contemplate whether this guy is going to be a good player, let alone a serviceable starter.

He is probably useful on the 25 man roster...for this team. But, lets be completely honest that this guy is nothing special and never will be for any great length of time. He might get and stay hot for longer than he ever should, but that happens with several other nobody's. I never believed in the nobody's who played decent for short periods of time like Tyner, Lew Ford, and several of the other past one hit wonder Twins OF's through the years, who I do not feel like looking up.

I agree that finding the "Hughes" is rare. The more fitting headline would be, "who's the next Palfrey/Nolasco?"

A simple "yes" would have been suffice Chief. I will have my GF review future posts to lessen the likeliness of idiocy.

I see what you are saying, and I do not think looking at ANY age groups gives you a clear idea of the future. Looking at a teams minor league system alone though is even less useful than looking at a teams 25 and under players. I posted the article as reference and I just thought others would enjoy looking at it. I by no means feel that is the way to judge our future, like I mentioned earlier some teams will spend and hit on FA's and trades, be more or less healthy, and some teams will have better luck with their prospects panning out. I love what we have coming up and think we are in pretty good shape for the future, I just think that looking at prospects alone is ridiculous when there are already young studs producing in the majors for other teams that will have youth AND experience on their side in the future, while still being fairly cheap, or having trade value. I was just trying to bring in a more complete perspective of the future. That is all I was doing. I am an all out Twins homer too. I just like to look at things from several angles, and that was just not one I have seen others bringing into the mix, so I thought it would be fun to discuss.

Congrat Mike! Yeah, from what I have read it seems like everyone is pretty cool here with each others opinions. For the most part no one is saying anything all that ridiculous, so it is pretty easy to be cool with small differences in opinion. Do I win the worst posts of the discussion?!

That was completely my point from my earlier posts. Like I stated the Twins were ranked 13th for 25 and under talent. But, the part that scares me is that even some of those teams ranked worse than us might outspend or trade to better their future situations. I am excited about the young talent we have. I obsess about them too much myself, but I recently realized that looking at minor league prospects by itself is not smart when predicting future success. Our minor league system might be better than the Marlins system, but their entire starting rotation is 25 and under and they're succeeding at the majors. They also have Stanton, Yelich, and Ozuna all under 25 who are starting and succeeding in their OF in the majors. Now add their guys from the minors to the picture and you get really excited. However, their ownership makes ours look awesome. I am just stating that we need to look at our future talent in terms of our entire organization, not just our minors, and then compare that to that of other teams. St Louis is another team with a bunch of young guys already performing well in the majors. Being ranked as the #1 minor league system probably doesn't really mean as much as I had hoped it did. Sigh.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=22944 Here is the rankings. I like a lot of those other teams top 10 guys 25 and under better than ours, especially some of the other teams guys have proven themselves at the majors and are younger than some of our prospects in the minors. Interesting to see where land in next years rankings. I think we might fall further down the list even. '

For example, I went to Fangraphs and looked at SP's ages 20-25 for this past year (Meyer is 24 and May is 25.) I chose 50 IP at the MLB level for a random reference point to start looking at them. There were 45 SP's ages 25 or under with at least 50 IP that had a FIP under 4.00. May missed this cut by by about 4 innings, but had a 4.73 FIP, and Meyer hasn't pitched a single inning in the majors. That is 45 STARTING pitchers 25 or younger (with small sample sizes) that have already reached the majors and also pitched with success this year. Some other talented names have been called up to their teams bullpens or have underperformed like May.

I realize that everyone is all jacked up about the Twins minor league prospects, and that we have been ranked top 3 in that area the past few years, but that is deceiving if you are trying to gauge of teams future. Prospect rankings list may not be the best way to look at a teams future, as it does not account for the major league lineups. Several teams best young players advance to the majors quickly, and some teams are more aggressive about this than others. I always kind of wondered why I never hear organizations being discussed in this fashion. I came across some under 26 and under 25 rankings after doing some research. These seem like a much better way of assessing a teams true future talent. Just because a really young stud has reached the majors does not mean he should not be accounted for in that teams future. Those players should be considered along with the minor league system. Baseball Prospectus had the Twins as the best minor league system this year. However, the Twins 25 and under ranking was 13th in the league. Guys that have made the majors should actually be weighted more heavily when forecasting a teams future. We are just average in the under 25 departments because all of our players are prospects, which mean less reliable talent. Something to consider here that is rarely discussed when talking about the Twins bright future. I wonder how many of those 12 teams ranked above the Twins are to be more likely to supplement those future teams with spending on FA's and resigning FA eligible in-house talent? I know this is a more pessimistic way to look at our future, but I am just trying to be realistic in our constant hanging on to the hope of being save by the young prospects.

Yeah, it is hard to know how much they shade defensively. I am sure they are doing their research on this stuff, my point is just that we need to be at the forefront and exploit these areas to make up for payroll.

That is true. It is not all about shifting more or doing it for the hell of it. It is about shifting when it is appropriate and may give you an advantage to do so, and also doing it properly and efficiently. Failure to employ it properly does not mean a team should not shift, but that they need to be smarter at it. Also, the article I posted shows the Twins benefited by it overall.

I couldn't find the stats for this year, but The Astros, like the majority of teams, had lower a lower opponent BAIP with the shift on than with the shift off. Many of the teams that did not benefit statistically from the shift were the teams that used it very little, so their sample sizes also can't be counted on as much. I am not calling for shifting at a ridiculous rate, but it should be employed against almost all known LH pull hitters. Also, it is really easy to point out and remember the times the shift failed than it is to remember the times it saved you. EDIT: I found this helpful recent article. Astros benefited the most by the way. It was pretty informative. Or course it is not going to work all the time or for every team though. http://online.wsj.com/articles/baseballs-shift-does-it-work-1410304648

Dumb Stubborn. Sorry, I was by no means trying to be a bully or hurt anyones feelings about Gardy. Both Gardy and Ryan probably have higher intelligence levels than I do, and I genuinely have always thought Gardy is a great guy and would love to have a beer with him, but he seems more suited for 3B coach role or something along that lines. I do not have a clue how much they use advanced statistics, but there definitely isn't any articles our there claiming the Twins are doing a great job in this area. When using the word dumb, I only meant it in terms of using shifts/shades, platoons, etc, which IS clear he did not use nearly enough.

"Guys were played out of position, he refused to platoon players, the Twins are among the least likely teams to shift defensively, he used his closer in a very limited, sometimes nonsensical role" This. We need to do something about this. I just posted on the forum about this, right before I read this. The Twins need to be near the top of the league at advanced statistics research for both team makeup through free agency, trade, and drafts, but also for in game decisions. We also need a staff not only willing to use these stats, but realizes that it is beneficial to. I don't trust Ryan to use advanced stats, and clearly Gardy didn't care about them.

Crap, that is kinda what I had assumed about the Twins. Its a shame. Knowledge is power. The best companies use them and its been pointed out many times how they help in baseball. You don't need to understand them to use them.

I was curious to if there was any knowledge or articles of where the Twins front office and past coaching staff used advanced statistics. Does anyone know? It seems to me like they are probably behind most other teams out there. I know I read an article on the defensive shift that showed how many times each team used it and their BAIP with it on opposed to with it off. The Twins were near the bottom. Only a handful of teams had worse BAIP with it off, and overall it there was a huge difference in it helping. I believe that everyone seems to be for using them or against. The old school people are against it seems. But, they don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can be smart and old school at the same time. I really wish the Twins would invest heavily in their front office with advanced statistics and have a coaching staff that at least would be open to using them and admit they are helpful. The staff doesn't need to be the ones doing the work on it. The way I would like to see them used is to have a team of researchers compiling all the data and then have them come up with useful ways to use those stats. Then have the researchers present the stats and ideas of how to use them to the staff before every game, giving the manager options on weather or not to use them and how, with multiple options. That way the manager isn't overwhelmed and has a choice in the matter. I would like to see the Twins be near the top of the league in using advanced statistics though. Teams like the Twins need to capitalize on every area like this in order to compete with higher player payroll teams. Just my uninformed thoughts.

Odds of a near future Thorpe surgery?

I just don't see a lot of meaningful changes happening before next season. Changes? Yes, but just not meaningful ones. Another thing we need to start doing is selling high on current and minor league players, especially if we aren't buying into the results. I feel like we buy low every now and then and take chances, but rarely do we do a good sell high, even when its an obvious thing to do. I am thinking 'Will from two years ago as an obvious one. I am not buying Santana's rookie results, think Dozier will drop off next year greatly, KS is not replicating his offensive numbers and is terrible framer too. Package some of these guys with a decent to good prospect for some big moves. Maybe Stewart? I don't think he ever lives up to the original hype, whatever anyone says about the reasons for his low k/9 numbers are.

I have heard the talk of him handling the staff well, but is that quantifiable? Not sure they are all that accurate, but all of the advanced statistics for catcher defense show him to be one of the worst catchers in the league. Terrible framing, range, and throwing runners out. Looks like he just doesn't miss the easy balls to block is all. If a guy is likable and outgoing, would that ever possible lead others to say good things about him? Maybe he really does call a good game, but are there many catchers that call really bad games? He just doesn't seem to pass the eye test as a good catcher while watching him either. Maybe I am missing something, I am not buying his bat though either. Can't remember where I read it recently, but there was an article that showed that pitchers have started to simply challenge him straight down the plate and its working. Means they don't fear his bat. All that said, its not like we have a better option..im just not buying into him being all that good defensively or offensively. He does seem likable and i hope i am wat wrong on him.

Would it make more sense for the Twins to bring up both May and Meyer and put them in the bullpen for the rest of this season? That way they can pith the whole season and not worry about being shut down early. Seems like they would be more valuable that way. Then, the Twins could possibly even start them in AAA next year to stretch them out if they needed to buy more time on their clocks. They also would not have to cut bait on any of our starters right now that we overpaid for, but instead get rid of our worst two bullpen arms.