King

Go Twins Baby!!

Paul is wearing last years Twins hoodie. Someone needs to get him the new style.

Happy Birthday, Mike.

Great play by Dozier

Nice changeup from Big Erv to Moss

Happy Opening Day everyone.. Go Twins!

I was just talking about how he did in his 1st four MLB starts (not very good). Those starts happened, so they do matter. I like De Leon as a prospect and would be happy with him as part of the return for Dozier. For the most part - your points are talking about different things than I stated, so I'm just going to leave it at that. You're right he threw an absurd amount of fastballs. His 66.1 FB% would have been top 10 in the MLB over the course of a full season. In his 2 non Padres starts, he struggled to get swinging strikes (3.1% vs NYY and 7.2% against ARI).

This team would absolutely suck.

If De Leon, Alvarez, Stewart were all on the table the deal would be complete by now.

I read a while ago about minor league pitchers with good stuff who can put up low walk numbers in part due to pounding the strike zone and overmatching minor league hitters, but they struggle once they get to the MLB in part due to lack of command that just wasn't necessary in the minor leagues. I think Berrios and De Leon both fall into this category.

I liked De Leon as a prospect in the minors but there are definite concerns here. I didn't like how he looked in his 4 MLB starts. His fastball looked fringy sitting 89-92 and he had poor command of it missing his spots. Hitters laid off of his changeup after his first start vs SD and sat fastball which was rather hittable. And then the shoulder issues are a problem as well (a rather large one)> Hopefully it was just a combination of end of season fatigue and rookie nerves, because it wasn't pretty. On the contrary his 1st start against the Padres was very good and hopefully an indicator of what his potential is. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jose-de-leon-looked-exactly-as-advertised/

I'm 100% on board with trading Dozier. Great player, Twins draft pick in 2009, but coming off what likely is a career year and on a cheap contract for the next few seasons, and going to be on the wrong side of 30 next season. His value will likely never be higher. I hope we get a good return!

I would love to see this! Here are Mike Trouts career stats through each count. 238/280/423 when 0-2, and 408/823/732 when 3-0. That is one of the best hitters in the game who is significantly worse when down in the count when he is ahead. http://i.imgur.com/WL2FYKH.png And here is Jeff Mathis.. one of the worst hitters in baseball. http://i.imgur.com/coSq7L8.png On the contrary, Alfredo Simon (by all accounts, terrible pitcher) held hitters to 273/273/442 when he got ahead 0-2 in the count this past year. If you're facing an elite pitcher like Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller, Clayton Kershaw, etc. and fall behind in the count. It's pretty much game over. Here is how hitters have hit against Chapman through each count over his career. http://i.imgur.com/ohd177M.png The difference is truly remarkable.

There is game calling data in front offices, it's just not publicized. I assume it was considered by Falvey and Levine when they made the decision to sign Castro.

Yes. His bat isn't bad for a catcher and 8 mil. isn't all that much money these days. When the other options are in house (murphy, garver, centeno - not good), signing Wilson Ramos (ACL popped and looking for a short term deal to rebuild value, will need regular rest days at DH), re-signing Suzuki (no thank you) or trading assets for a catcher from another team, I would say that it is a good deal. By no means is Castro a star, this is not an earth breaking signing. But his addition to the team is an upgrade, and he will help significantly.

Here is a snippet of a 2014 article from Grantland on the value of pitch framing. I would recommend reading the entire thing and the hyperlinks to other articles inside. Sorry if this is a long post, but I think it is relevant to the discussion. http://grantland.com/features/studying-art-pitch-framing-catchers-such-francisco-cervelli-chris-stewart-jose-molina-others/ Fast found that Molina, the best receiver, was worth 35 runs above average per 120 games, and Doumit, the worst, was worth 26 runs below average. After Houston hired Fast, another analyst named Max Marchi succeeded him at Baseball Prospectus2 and brought with him a sophisticated model for framing that accounted for most of the potentially confounding factors: the umpire, the ballpark, the batter, the ball-strike count, and the pitch location and type. According to Marchi, who has consulted for a major league club and whose work has been mentioned by Rays manager Joe Maddon, Molina has saved his teams 111 runs — or, using the standard 10-runs-to-a-win conversion, about 11 wins — because of framing from 2008 to 2013. (The only other catcher with a higher run total over that same time period, Brian McCann at 122, has caught more than twice as many pitches.) Doumit, on the other end of the receiving spectrum, cost his teams 155 runs. That comes out to 0.50 runs added by Molina and 0.55 runs subtracted by Doumit per 100 pitches, an enormous difference.3 For comparative purposes, Barry Bonds’s bat during the 2001-2004 seasons, when he basically broke baseball, was worth about 0.78 runs above average per game. Granted, those run totals aren’t typical. Molina and Doumit are outliers; no one else comes close to costing his team as much per pitch as Doumit, and only Brewers catcher Jonathan Lucroy has approached Molina levels of framing effectiveness. (Lucroy has some advantages over Molina. He’s 11 years younger and has a better bat, which allows him to stay in the lineup. Since his debut in 2010, he’s saved almost twice as many runs due to framing as any other catcher, aside from Molina.) Still, consider the implications. Giancarlo Stanton, one of the most coveted young players in the game, was worth as much4 (in terms of Wins Above Replacement) over the past two seasons as Molina’s framing alone was worth in a part-time role over the past five-plus, yet Molina’s value, unlike Stanton’s, is largely overlooked. And that’s without factoring in any value Molina added by calling games, handling his pitching staff, and controlling the running game. Best of all, Molina’s done it all for an average of $1.5 million per season, in an era when a single win on the free-agent market usually runs teams around $5 million. It’s no surprise that Molina plays for the Rays, low-payroll competitors who’ve found ways to make a dollar go further than any other organization. Nor is it a coincidence that Molina, a career backup catcher whom standard sabermetric stats peg as a replacement-level player, became a first-time starter and appeared in a career-high 102 games in his age-37 season, barely six months after Fast’s study appeared on Baseball Prospectus. Eleven wins sounds like too much for a single part-time pitch receiver to add in just over five seasons, but think about how many opportunities to gain and lose strikes there are over a 162-game schedule. A durable catcher can catch around 10,000 called pitches in a single season. Many of those pitches are clear-cut calls. But that still leaves hundreds, maybe thousands, of pitches in the shadowy border region between ball and strike, where a good receiver can perform the catching equivalent of turning water into wine. Even if an extra strike doesn’t send the batter back to the dugout, it puts him in a less-favorable count and makes him less likely to do damage later in the at-bat. Dan Turkenkopf, another former Baseball Prospectus staffer who was recently hired by the Rays, put the average value of turning a single ball into a strike at 0.13 runs. If you do that a few times per game, as Molina does, the run total climbs quickly.

Pitch Framing is definitely a skill (otherwise called receiving). That has been 100% established. Umpires play a factor as well as a few other things but for the most part those are accounted for in the numbers. Throwing out baserunners relies a lot on the pitcher, and there are some smart organizations like the Rays who very well ignore it by employing a catcher like Hank Conger, who can't throw out a runner to save his life (http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/hank-congers-jon-lester-season-behind-the-plate/) I don't think Castros offense is declining more than he has settled into what his true talent level is, ~85 wRC+ bat who hits for a low average with a good walk rate and has a decent amount of pop. The only thing I see to be concerned about is the rising strikeout rate, but his swinging strike% has been fairly steady aside from a spike in 2015 so it might just be nothing.

Over Murphy/Garver/Centeno, a big one! He's the better player. But it's really hard to say. MLBTR Free Agent Predictions had Ramos getting 4yr/50mil. He hit well in 2016 supported by a high BABIP, and was utterly terrible at the plate in 2015. Likely he is somewhere in the middle of those two peaks. On top of this his ACL popped at the end of the season. And we don't know other factors, like if he didn't want to sign here.

Pitch framing is a skill. Castro has the ability to turn close pitches that are balls into strikes. Suzuki did not have this ability (in fact, he was so bad that he turned close strikes into balls). I'm certain it will have a positive effect on the Twins pitching staff. It won't turn them into Houstons pitching staff magically (obviously), but it will have a positive effect.

The way you word this makes it seem like the Twins pitchers don't throw close pitches.. ever. A pitch on the outside corner, is a pitch on the outside corner. You keep stating his WAR without factoring in his pitch framing is factually incorrect, yes.

And again.

You're ignoring pitch framing in your WAR calculations, for whatever reason.

I don't think his bat is as bad as people are making it out to be. Yeah, he hits for a low average, but comes with a decent amount of pop and he walks at a good rate. He can't hit lefties but is an above average hitter vs RHP on his career (247/328/424, 108 wRC+). Not something I am worrying about at this point. His defense and contributions with our young pitching staff, and the upgrade he represents over Murphy/Garver/Centeno etc. are more than enough to make up for any warts he has with his bat. For added reference. Catchers as a whole hit 242/310/391, 87 wRC+ in the MLB last year. 230/297/387 in the AL. He'll be fine.

I'd be very happy with Castro. I don't think he's going to get a lot of money, but is a decent contributor across the board, and is only 29 years old.