Trov

I do not remember taking a survey when I signed up for it years ago, when I lived out of MN to watch Twins. My wife signs up for it to watch her home town team, but she has not done a survey, but she signs up through cable provider. In terms of the survey wonder why they asked about the team player development. I would agree it has been good overall developing players from later rounds. To me, having a high pick pan out is not about development, it is more expected to happen. I mean look at Pirates, they did nothing to develop their top pick from last year, he just was ready. But, Twins have had several picks from 4th round or later make impacts at MLB level lately. In regards to improving fan experience, I want robo umps, and have the broadcasts show the same system. I get sick of seeing close pitches, or in some cases not even close be totally wrong. I would not like to see ground rule triple, but I do think there should be a common sense on where the runners should be. I mean they do that in the overturn of calls on catches after replay or other situations. The umps get together and say these are where we think the runners would have been. Like sometimes a guy is rounding third when the ball bounces into the stands, or gets "stuck" under the fence, like the player really tried to get it out, and the runner has to return to 3rd. Everyone in that park knows the runner would have scored. Sure we will never know exactly where the runners would have made it had ball not went into stands, but some common sense could be had based on where runner was when ball went into stands. Even more annoying when the ball is stuck because half the time the player does not even try to pull it out before throwing hands up.

There is no way the Twins will go into next year expecting anything from him. I fully expect him to be non-tendered. He has been injured and most not effective most of his short career. He is not a good defender anywhere, and other than a few short spurts his offense has been not good either. I had high hopes for him and thought he would be a middle of line up bat for years, but injuries just cut that short. I would not be surprised after we non-tender him he signs with someone and if can stay healthy will be one of those darn if only he could have done that for us, but his health has been terrible. What is also annoying is he would do terrible and then we would learn he was hurt/injured for much of that time.

They would if it manages to save them millions of dollars in tax payments. If they can get below the tax line they not only save the money on the guys they cut, but also the percent on each contract for each player for being a tax payer. Not only would they save some money, knowing they will not make playoffs, but they were tax payer last year, and would again be this year. If you continue to be tax payer, the penalties grow, but if they dip 1 time it resets. If they do not dip down, they will not want to be a tax payer next year else they would have 50% bill, but if they dip this year, not only do they not have a 30% this year, but they can go out spend a bunch of money on FA next year and only have 20% bill. They will have a lot of incentive to get below the tax payer this year if they can.

They will not until the last few days of the month. The reason why is they need to have someone claim the player, to get the contract off their books. If they did it now, if a team does not claim them, then they pass through and get to be a FA and any team can sign them but Rangers are on hook for the contract, and the other team signs for min. If you wait until last few days of month, the only way the player can play on playoff roster is if they are claimed due to having to be on roster by 9/1. Waivers takes a couple of days, and just like last year teams will place players on them right at last min to allow teams to claim and have on post season roster, but not let them pass and sign to have on post season roster.

I think the question would be if we would have had someone better to fill Margot spot, not just has Margot been worth it. Clearly we did not see anyone in FA that we felt was worth the cost or could afford it at least. MAT was pretty bad for Pirates overall, much worse than what he did last year, as far as offense goes, but defense he was still good. Margot was bad all around for most part. Even worse is he has never got a pinch hit despite getting plenty chances against lefties. However, did we have anyone in the minors that would have filled in better? Martin maybe, but his defense has been not great and offense similar to Margot. Who else would we have to be right hand hitting OF? Really not too many in minors either. Was he worth it, time will tell if Miller becomes anything, but as to who else we most likely would have ran out there, MAT would have been better on defense, but offense the same. Really, it would have been a wash from what I could see.

How does a no trade clause work if the person is put on outright waivers? There is no longer trade waivers, so if Scherzer gets put on waivers, I am not sure if he can block someone taking him, because outright waivers is non revocable and is releasing the player. Texas would do this expecting teams to take the players because they could help for playoffs but they get nothing in return only the money off the books. If the player goes unclaimed, then they are a FA, making the money from Texas and can sign with whoever, but normally the team does the waivers so that it covers the time that if you pass they could not be used on post season roster. Personally, I think there are several players the Twins would be willing to take. Max is currently on 15 day IL, and has not been his HOF self, father time may have caught up to him, but he still may be worth to try to use for a playoff run one last time. Eovaldi would be upgrade too. We could use plenty of pen help. I could see several claims if all are put on waivers.

I doubt they move him off 3rd next year, unless he becomes a complete liability there. If they do I could see more of a move to 1st, to help keep him healthy than LF.

I know some fans feel the pitching development has failed to produce a clear "ace" but they do not grow on trees. Sure, if we had won draft lottery last year we could have had Skenes, but the fact that the team has produced several middle of rotation if not solid number 2 guys from late round picks. The "pipeline" is about having guys every year that could come in, or in some years multiple guys to fill in after injuries or loss of FA, and/or trades. Now that there appears to be a sustained pipeline, there will be times we trade guys away to reload as well when we have the depth. Next we need to develop more pen guys that we can rely on heavy.

Not sure which pitching prospects you are referring to that were traded away. I am guessing Cade Povich and Chase Petty are maybe 2 of them. We have traded several others or lost in rule 5 draft. Povich is a top prospect still, but in 8 starts this year was not good, and much worse than much of what we have put out there. Povich AAA has been decent, but so far has failed at majors. Petty has hit a wall in AA so far for Reds. He has dropped down their prospect list, and if he put up similar numbers with us would be like our 5th ranked pitching prospect at this point I would guess. Maybe higher just because of his draft status.

If they think he is the best of what we could send out there sure, but I think leaning on the kids would be better move.

I would push back against highest payroll correlates to best players. Generally, the better the player the more they get paid, after they reach arb years or FA, however, many vets sign long term deals that equal very overpaid player. For teams that are not big market teams they cannot have too many of them on their team. I could go on many examples of players that are on contracts but no where near earning their money. Heck, on Twins CC could be argued to be one of them. Last year the top 3 paid teams failed to make the playoffs.

Yes, I said up until recently, was had 8 team playoffs, 3 division winners and the wild card team per league. Then we added a second wild card team in 1 game playoff which started in 2012, which expanded to 10, but only a single game for 2 teams and not a series. Then in 2022 it was expanded to the current format of 3 wild card teams and 3 division winners per league for a total of 12 teams. That is what I was referring to that we recently had 8 team playoffs.

Comparing Matthews to Berrios on path to MLB is a little flawed. First two different FO and systems. Beyond that, Berrios was a high school pick and had several years in organization and was a supplemental first round pick. Matthews was an 8th round college pitcher that is in his second full season in organization. Berrios also had pitched 17 games in AAA the year he was called up and did well. Matthews has moved up 3 levels this year and has yet to settle into AAA. Additionally, Berrios came up to a last place team and pitched terrible at MLB level, 14 games and FIP of 6.20, clearly he was not ready. Matthews will be coming into a team fighting for first place. I am not saying Matthews will not come in and do just fine, he may very well and I hope he does, but to compare him to Berrios and say Matthews is ready because he did better overall than Berrios means we should not be worried is flawed because Berrios was not ready either and had much more time in AAA and AA for that matter. Matthews was not a highly touted prospect with high draft capitol. He is a guy that has improved greatly this year, last hear his stats were ehh where the majority of his starts were at High A and he only had 8 K's per 9 and an ERA of 4.59. This year his K's are up, walks are down, not that they were high last year, but rarely does a guy make the jumps he is doing in terms of levels. I think fans are right to be concerned that he gets blown up at this level. I personally have never seen him pitch but with the low walk numbers suggests to me he stays in zone and has been over powering guys, or his stuff is very deceptive and gets a ton of chase. I do not believe AA has the robo umps now, and only AAA so he has only pitched with that for 4 games. I do agree AAA is a hitter league the Saints are in.

Since 1995, the wild card era, 5 times has the top payroll team, entering the season won the world series, 4 of those times were the Yankees, 96, 99, 00, 09. The other was the Red Sox, 18. 3 times the 2nd highest payroll was the winner, Yankees 98, Red Sox 04 and 07. The 3rd highest has never done it. The 4th 3 times Braves 95, Red Sox 14, Nats 19. 5th did it 1 time Marlins 97. 6th did it 2 times Giants 12 and Cubs 16. Overall, a team does have a at least a top half payroll, but that is not surprising. It is not always because of signing big time FA, but rarely does an all rookie or guys within first few years make playoffs. So if they have value when they hit arb years they will start making good money. Throw in a few resigning your own players or a supplemental FA and your payroll will rise. There are few times the highest paid player ends up taking a team to the WS, but having more high floor guys, or taking on a guy in a trade that is making bigger money normally helps too.

Up until recently only 8 teams made the playoffs, so to be in top 4 or 5 means the top half or more than top half the teams. That is a pretty big ratio.

The numbers stated in article is not surprising. Guys that are known to not be good hitters will get mostly fastballs when no one is on base. Even more so when they are slow. Pitchers do not want to waste pitches trying to get out a bad hitter so they just challenge them. When you have guys on base that is when they will see less fastballs in the zone but more breaking pitches on the edges and fastballs on the edges. Trevor Plouffe did this over his career. He hit 24 HR one year with only 55 RBI. He would hit solo HR when games were out of hand, normally we were losing, and no one was on base. But he would get up with runners on and would strike out or hit weak fly ball.

Since July hit, he has an OPS over .1000 and OPS+ in high 100s. He has been one of the better hitting catchers over that time. Yes, it is only 19 games, but he clearly has been making the most out of those chances. Jeffers on other hand has 24 games and hitting much worse. Agreed Vasquez was so bad the first half it will take a lot to get fans to believe in him, but his defense is why he plays and what you get from bat is bonus and he has been doing well over last month in half.

First they need to decide who gets DFA or 60 day IL. Either Blewett or Dobnak get the DFA, my guess Dobnak gets it like he did before. Funderburk could get 60 day IL as well he is near 30 days on it already so unless you expect him back in next few weeks a 60 day IL may be in cards for him. Then in terms of who gets on 26 man if Blewett or Dobnak do not get the DFA I think either could get optioned, not 100 percent on options left for them.

Matthews may get called up if there is a 60 day IL candidate that will be out for season. If not, it will reduce the chance he gets called up because they will need to DFA someone to put him on the 40 man or DFA someone when the person on the 60 day comes off. Dobnak would be someone they would DFA again, but assuming that might happen when Topa comes off the 60 day.

I would love to see the data on pitchers and innings pitched over a season, and injuries. I just wonder how having a guy pitch 100 innings one season then shutting down for a period of time, only to ramp back up to then increase to say 120 innings the next season. Does that really reduce injuries over the long term? I also wonder how many pitchers do long distance running these days and work on their leg strength. I say that because some of the bests pitchers in the past would talk about how much they worked on leg strength and that is what allowed them to pitch so much. I just wonder how much shutting down for months really helps build up for the future? I have not seen the medical data but sure it is out there.

Varland will get Ryan's spot first. Then they would have to decide between Matthew and Morris if needed. Dobnak, although was terrible in his last pen outing may be tapped to fill starts too. Neither Matthews or Morris are on 40 man, and I do not believe either need to be added during offseason as they both are in their 2nd full season of pro ball. The team hates to add guys to 40 man roster unless they have to in order to avoid rule 5 draft, or they believe the player is going to be at MLB roster for awhile. Sure, the injuries may force that, but when guys get removed from the 40 man they could lose them so that is always a factor.

Our offense is deep enough we do not need Jeffers to hit great, but if he does it is just bonus. If he can hit like he did in April in October he could carry the team a long way.

Shota started off crazy good, but he has had a bit more up and down since his last May start. He has either been pretty good, or very bad. Hopefully he is the very bad version.

I read many fans on hear talking about how we will not be the "favorite" to win the world series and we need to make trades to make it happen. I decided to look and see historically how often the "favorite" team actually wins the World Series. It is a basic look by looking at betting odds pre-season and then post season, as teams most likely changed roster as year moved on. I did not do a deep dive or anything. If the team had the best odds to win either the pre-season or post I considered them the favorite. There was 1 time the preseason favorite was not the post season favorite, but most of the time they were either both, or was a post season favorite. If they tied with another team I counted it as a favorite. I went back to 1995, when the playoffs first expanded to 8 teams. Now I get it, betting odds are not the best judge of who is the favorite, but it gives a decent look as to how book makers and betters may have thought about the team. When thinking about it I was guessing about 20% of the time it happened. It was actually 34% of the time. Two times the pre-season was then tied going into playoffs. Two times the winner was not a pre-season favorite but was entering playoffs. As I said I did include the 2009 Yankees who pre-season was favorite but not entering the playoffs. There are some years where the winning team was considered one of the least likely entering the playoffs, and some years they were close second if they were not the favorite. Overall, if you are the favorite betting odds wise either entering season or entering playoffs, you win it 1 third of the time. Not bad, but far from a lock. Yes, there are years where the second favorite wins, I did not calculate those as the question was just for favorite. There are also years where very deep odds teams and least favorite entering the playoffs manage to win as well. For those who may be wondering, Dodgers were the favorite entering the year this year.

I get the thought that height would help with getting on base, because of walks, but it takes more than just that. For example Altuve the closest in height at MLB level that I know of, walks across all his plate appearances, including minors at 7.4 percent. Eeles walks at 13.1 percent. Altuve also strikes out at 12.7 percent Eeles 12 percent. Eeles is his college and independent league as well as this year with Twins, and Altuve includes his MLB level, but Altuve appears to be pretty close in his minor league time as well. I would agree that his defense is limited most likely to 2nd base but Julien is limited to that as well and he was high on prospect list last year. I think most people do not care about the limited defense as long as guys can hit. It becomes more of an issue if they cannot hit well.