Trov

Luplow and Gallo are counting their days on the roster when Buxton and Kirilloff come back no way are those two still on the roster.

One thing he is clearly doing is trying to take the up and in pitch away from the pitchers. He is one that needs to get hands extended for big swings and the up and in will not get that done. So he strides toward the plate and if the pitcher misses up and in at all, there is good chance wallner is going to first. I think it is more than just getting on, but telling pitchers if you want to come up and in to me, you better hit your spot or I will be on first base. If you do miss your spot it will need to be either up out of zone, or back out over the plate.

I get the point of the article, I agree that a more balanced team has a much better shot in playoffs, because you are not counting on guys that are outperforming their norm. However, every playoff team that has success have guys that get hot. Really, I want the hot team with hot hitters over a the long term talented team. I find it interesting you left out the 2002 Twins, a very cute team in my opinion, that upset the much better not so cute Oakland team. That Oakland team made a nice story as well, but they had 3 top starters that by all accounts should have crushed the Twins. We went from the about to be out of baseball, contraction team, to winning division with a bunch of young hitters led by Jones and Hunter. The rotation for the playoffs were Radke, Joe Mays, Rick Reed, Eric Milton. Not exactly a great four guys. We were up against Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito. By all rights we should have lost, but managed to steal one. Then we ran up against the Rally Monkey Angels. I do agree that sometimes teams outplay themselves in regular season and Baltimore may just be doing that. The playoffs are always about who is hot, and not making mistakes. The fact that the Twins have several guys in their lineup that could hopefully step up will be helpful. Both have a lot of young guys leading the way that do not have much playoff experience and you never know how players will respond in those spots too. I think that is where the "cute" teams tend to fall is they made the playoffs but then their mind set where changed. Every pitch is so much bigger. Every little mistake gets magnified, and tends to compound.

I expect they will go with the challenge system next year, and after a year or two of that, they will go full robo.

I agree. I hate when people say things like, "the umps get like 95% right" or something like that. One, that does not tell the whole story, because they actually only get 50% on the calls on the edges. I read article years ago about it, and it is even worse depending on count and how the ump called prior pitches. Some umps also hate to call strike 3 on hitters unless it is a 3-2 count, if the pitch is close. I agree it is the hardest thing to do, watch a baseball come flying toward you, while a bat may or may not come swinging past your face, and you need to not blink and get the call right. I commend the umps that do it great, but we have the tech to make it consistent call, lets do it.

Yes, people are acting like we got division locked up. We have a lot of bad teams to face finishing up the season, and Cleveland has a lot of games against playoff bound teams, or fighting for playoffs, but lets see where we are next week after our last game with Cleveland.

That would be nice to see, sadly we have not beaten some of the teams we really should have over the year. Right now we are 6.5 games behind Seattle, who cannot seem to lose right now. Of course if they start to lose to Texas or Houston that will help. If we keep winning we could make up that ground, but I find it unlikely, unless the three really just split against each other. If either takes over we will not catch them.

I agree, and hope it happens in MLB soon. However, my concern is that MLB will still hold off and both hitters and pitchers will have issues when they come up. Both will get used to the robo zone, then come up to MLB and have to deal with a whole new zone.

Pitchers are by far the hardest to predict in the draft. They are hard to predict from year to year. Some guys look like future HOF then fall off a cliff, and some guys find late in career surges. Even the top pick guys that everyone has as a top pick fail, I point to Mark Appel, taken in top part of draft 2 times, number 1 overall, and barely made the majors at age 30 after being out of MLB minor leagues for a period of time. We all want top pitchers, but even spending high draft picks on them do not work out always. Just because this team has not developed Ace level guys, does not mean they have not managed to develop reliable pitching and many times later in draft.

You point something very interesting the robo ump affect. I do not know if the strike zone is any smaller than what the MLB zone should be, so it could be argued that the zone is just being called correctly. I did not read the article you speak about. However, it does make some sense that it means numbers are a bit inflated because those borderline pitches that robo ump calls balls, because they are balls, the MLB human umps will call strikes.

I fully agree 1 thru 3. However, I think Ryan can regain some form and be better than Ober. Now if Ryan does not return to form and continues to give up long balls like he is pitching BP then I would do Ober.

First, with 6 games soon against Cleveland, a little early to say we will make playoffs. I am hopeful, but lets get past those games. We lose 5 of 6 then we are fighting it out for division all over again. We win 5 of 6 and we are coasting into playoffs, not really but much clear path. If the Twins think resting will make foot better, then go for it, but the issue, to my understanding is very specific to each player and how it has affected them. He clearly is doing better of late, and resting may not get the results you want sometimes.

I was reading a different forum and a commenter brought up an interesting note about AAA this year. Specifically, that AAA is using robo umps and MLB is not. The post talked about walks being way up and that is leading to more hard contact because to avoid missing the corners the pitchers are working more of the middle. Personally, I think that is what baseball is looking for, more offense and balls in play less getting called strike 3 on a pitch you could not if you tried as a hitter. That aside this is not a post about if the robo umps should be brought to MLB but if they are not and stay in AAA will that hurt the development of the player. I point to both Julien and Wallner as two guys who played a decent amount in AAA this year, not a ton, but enough to get used to the robo umps. For those who are not aware, AAA has 3 days of full robo umps, and 3 days of challenge system. Both of the guys have been talked about their eye's at the plate. Julien has been about a 4 walks to every 5 k's over his minor league career, but at MLB level this year with 100 more plate appearances at MLB over AAA he has walked just 4 times more, but struck out over twice as much, 88 k at MLB level versus 42 at AAA. With 36 walks at MLB level, and 32 at AAA. The eye test for Julien is he has taken a lot of pitches for called strike 3 and many times not in the tv box, keeping in mind that is not tied to the robo ump type system. Wallner, walked at closer to a 1 walk per 2 k's rate, with in 305 plate appearances in AAA this year he walked 39 times k 87. At MLB he has 152 plate appearances, with 11 walks to 49 strike outs. Similar I feel like I have seen many called third strikes on balls out of the zone. Sometimes for both players it may not be strike 3 out of the zone but 1 or 2. The question I really have is, if the players start learning the robo ump zone just before MLB level, will that affect their ability at MLB because they will be taking those pitches that in AAA will get called a strike, but at MLB you never know and no way to get it right? Will this lead to guys coming up and taking too many borderline pitches for called strikes? Is it good they are taking those called strikes? Maybe there is comfort in knowing you were right and the ump was wrong? Yesterday I watched Lewis expand the zone on a 3-2 pitch way outside, was that because he was scared the ump would ring him up? Clearly that pitch would not have been, but you start to expand the zone because the umps are making calls you are not used to. Even more so, you are up at MLB level you want to impress, but then umps start taking bats out of hands while you watch, what in your experience in AAA would be a ball, get called for a strike 3. I want to make clear, I do not think all difference in walks and strike out numbers are due to this change in balls and strikes calls, but I think even the small sample I have seen with my own eyes is guys taking pitches for called strike 3 that maybe someone not trained in robo umps would look to foul off worried that ump will get it wrong. The issue with that is sometimes you expand the zone and make the job easy for the ump.

For the first round of games, Ober should not be on the 26 man roster, only because he will not start the first 3 games, and he should not be a top guy out of pen. We can add him to second series if we make it there. I personally do not think he will make any starts in playoffs, baring injures from others. He may be used for a long relief person but we really hope that is not needed. If Ryan is healthy no reason the rotation first round is not Lopez, Gray, and either Ryan or Maeda, and if in second round if we went three games the one that did not start in first round then back to top. I would want 1 emergency long relief guy of one of our current 6 starters, the other should not be on playoff roster in my opinion. I like Ober and think he is a fine pitcher, but he is pitching more than he ever has and had some struggles of late. All it takes is one bad inning and we lose a post season game.

We got a great 2020 season from Maeda, a okay 2021 until injury, and now some good starts this year. All for a bull pen pitcher and a guy that bounced around through several teams before he finally had some good time, a crazy good first half, but second half he has been below average guy, he is also almost 29 and basically still a rookie this season. We did give up a pick who could be something. Personally, I would take the starter for pen guy every time and not worry about it. I would not call this trade a loss at all. At worse it is a good trade for all.

Consetti has been hitting great this year, but he is old for his league. Unless he can tear it up next year at AA and stay behind the plate, I doubt he will get much push by the team. It is nice to see catchers hitting, but there is a reason he was a 4 year college player. It could be he was just a very late bloomer as he did not have any power until his last 2 years of college, but he also failed in both summer league seasons he played.

He is not on any lists that I know of, but in part that may be because this is his second year of full season and he was a 14th round pick out of college. My guess he will climb up a little this year, but will be a bit of an unknown prospect and most likely a future pen guy if he makes majors, but could surprise some.

There is more to building roster than just that, but who did Martin, Lee, and Stevenson face in their 14 plate appearances, I am guessing it was not a future lock for hall of fame like ones at the MLB level. However, I do agree we should look for moving Gallo out and Martin in, but not based on just last night.

There is more to signing a guy at 1 year of MLB service time to long term deal than just locking up. You lock yourself into known costs. The people that think we should just wait until his arb years are done, when he is 29, you run the risk of his arb years being more than you may have planned, which means he is doing great, but still means you may have less in budget. You can also get a year or two of FA time. I would agree with looking to lock him up if you can buy out a year or two of FA, but my guess he will not be on board unless it is for some bigger bucks. I also agree, doing it now would be a larger risk to us as he has not had a full pro year his whole career. He did pretty much play full years 2018 and 2019 in minors, but outside of that he has had many injures. I do worry a little that his walk to K ratio is getting a little out of hand, but overall I love what I have seen from him.

Agreed 100%, and exactly why the players have had issues with that system. We will use the prime years of these guys, then we will either trade them a year early or let them walk after arb years.

I think the issue that is highlighted is all the what if and when healthy stuff. I agree that Buck should only play if he can play CF, unless he is just raking. However, if AK comes back and back to what he was before the shoulder issue, we will have way too many guys we want to see hitting. Lewis should just stay at 3rd rest of year with CC at short. 2nd Julien against rh, and either Polanco or Salano against lefties. Salano has been too solid to just cut in my opinion. He is the glue kind of vet that you can count on for solid at bats and will help in playoffs. First, should be AK if healthy or whoever you feel can defend it and not be an auto out(GALLO). As for OF, Walner and Kepler are too hot to sit. So that leaves just CF, if not Buck, then Taylor is natural option due to defense and despite his lack luster overall offense he still has HR pop. Martin is raking in AAA and I would love to see him get called up to try out CF and if he can defend at average level and hit anywhere close to what he is doing AAA I think he would provide a nice boost. That is a lot of ifs though. I think it is nice that we can talk about the problem of having too many players we need to find at-bats for.

I think it depends on if they plan to use him in the playoff rotation or not. Of course that will depend on other injuries. If they do not plan to use him in playoff rotation, unless they would look to use him long relief in playoffs, if they feel he is nearing end of season do to too much use, then why not skip a start or shut him down completely? I am fine with a 6 man rotation to help rest the other guys overall too. However, if you want to use Ober in post season, you should either go 6 man with him or move him to pen now, if the team thinks the drop in production is clearly due to fatigue.

I would look to bring him back on a 1 to 2 year deal. I believe we have a few young guys that could step up if needed, and overall we have had some good health this year, outside the full missed season of one planned starter, we have not had many stints on IL. However, if those pile up we need as much depth as possible.

There are still plenty games to be a rival games. Rival games get built in fights for playoff spots late in years or in the playoffs, not games played in April.

It will be interesting to see what kind of contract he gets. He may go low years high value to show he can pitch again after a second TJ, or he may take big longer contract. I would look at a contract that pays him as a top DH, but with big incentives for innings pitched built in. Meaning if he can come back to pitch like he has, then he will get paid for that as well, but if he does not, then he will only be the DH he is. The only issue is that if a team is not willing to let him pitch again for some reason, then there may need to be an opt out. Personally, I would only go after him if you think he will pitch again, because right now we have a 15 mil a year DH in Buxton, so will he just ride the pine if we sign a 60 mil a year DH?