Trov

I can see why Cardenas was overlooked. He was 8th round pick. He had a great freshman season in college, but then lost 2020, and drop off in 2021 by a bit compared to 2019. In 2022 with us, he looked more like his 2019 college version. It will be interesting to see if he regresses like in college, or maybe the off year affected him a lot more than we would have liked. He also hit more HR in Low A than his whole college career, so he was not known for power coming out. His college numbers were mostly built on his ability to walk, and get hit by pitches. Unless his power continues to build, I could see him as one of those pesky long at bat walker kind of guy at the bottom of the order. If he can defend well enough, that should be fine for a good backup fringe starter, but if he can build some power, then he could be a clear starter.

I did not see option 4, he gets traded before the season starts, similar to last year when we traded for a SS, only to trade him and sign CC.

It will be interesting to see how high he jumps in prospect lists. He looked like he was set to fly up the list and make his way to AA before his injury. Twins have some good hitting prospects coming up, as long as they can translate to MLB and play some defense we will not have a lot of holes to fill.

The game is always about adjustments, the best players make them quickly. If teams continue to pitch him off the plate, he will just have to adjust to planning for that and leaving anything away, or looking to hit those to RF. Then teams will adjust and pitch him different again, and he will need to figure that out.

He will get a 1 year deal by some team that needs a bat. He may be a big star in a new place. He has always had the ability but never panned out here. I am sure a team will take a shot at him.

No offense to Farmer, but if he has any major contribution to our team next year, we will not be in playoffs.

I love following trade trees like this. Not bad for a guy who played 1 season for Giants and was going to sit behind Joe.

I am not big on him for a long term deal. He has shown a couple of good seasons recently, but has long history of injury, and it took him a long time to pitch at a high level in MLB. He was expected to hit the ground running with Sox, and they did not even give him a QO. Very few pitchers pitch well into their mid-30's and many drop off early 30's with increased injuries. Sure, you can point to future hall of famers as guys that pitched well into their late 30's, but for every one of them there are dozens of guys like Mad bum, David Price, Chris Sale, (who pitched well when healthy but has not been healthy much). Maybe because it took him several years to figure out the MLB level he will do fine in 30's, but I am not willing to break bank on a guy that could be on IL much of it, and or lose production. I would be fine with a 3 year deal with vesting options based on innings pitched, but no 5 plus year deal.

I am not an insider in the Twins organization, so I will defer to their call on Casey Legumina, but I am assuming Sisk will get taken in rule 5 as he is near MLB ready, pen guy, lefty. If he is not taken in rule 5 I will be shocked. That being said, there must be some reason the team, who passes like 5 pen guys through waivers every year, did not see a need to add him to 40 man.

The way Julien is playing Polonco may be out of a job soon. Martin can play OF, and Arraez can play DH or 1B, he was up for gold glove. I am sure pitchers would not look forward to Martin lead off, Julien in the 2 or 3 with Luis the other. The pitch counts could go up a ton, or you just throw it over and hope they hit it at someone.

I would not say no to any of them, if the price is right. I would not seek anyone out to be a closer paid like one, but if we can get one for a reasonable price, maybe Rodgers on a prove it deal, then why not.

He is only a disappointment because he never reached the heights we all expected. He started out hot, and we expected him to grow from there. The issue was he never adjusted, did not take his career all that serious, and slowly became a disappointment. I feel we could have treated him better, the RF experiment was a waste for him. Every time we expected a breakout he would have a huge slump. He just never learned to drive the ball the other way, like Carerra was amazing at. He had the power to crush the outside pitch over the wall, but always tried to pull everything. He became the ultimate 3 out come guy, and personally, they bore me as players.

If the price is right I am fine with brining him back, but it should be on a very cheap 1 year contract.

I hope both are playing with the Twins in the near future and we can debate who is the better player because both are doing great. As for prospect, I think it is very close. I would give the nod to who defends better, and Lewis looked like he could stick at SS in the short sample I saw. Lee may be able to as well, there have been some bigger SS in history that did just fine.

Position players rarely get taken in rule 5, mainly because they cannot hide them like they can a pitcher. Pitchers can get hidden in the pen and only pitch in blow outs, if they are not ready for MLB level, but hitters will only go to teams that are not trying to win. Julien would get taken if we do not add him so he will for sure. I think Sisk will get taken by a team. This is also a time to try and sneak guys through waivers as teams are adding guys to their own 40 man rosters, and passing others through. So do not be surprised if some of our other pitchers are DFA. Really, you just have to decide which pitchers you would rather have on the team.

Relief pitcher, and prospect rarely go together. Unless there is a worry about injury, very few minor league relief guys make it to majors. They need to be super dominate, or left handed. That is why Sisk is the only one as a relief guy I would say is a prospect. As stated Ronny Henriquez was a stater, and most likely will try to get slated back into that roll, but if he fails to as a starter he could be a decent pen guy, but most of the best pen guys, started in the minors and failed as a starter in majors, or were moved because of worry of injury or lack of pitch mix at majors.

I would not give him anything more than 2 years. Not normally a fan of any relief guy past 2 years, normally like the 1 year deals for relief guys in FA. They fall off the cliff so quickly sometimes, and very few teams want to trade for relief guys under contracts and prefer the rental guys.

Edouard Julien might be a huge diamond in the rough kind of guy. He fell to 18th round, and never was considered a top guy, but all he has done since being drafted is hit. He will be a guy that will work the count and take a ton of walks. I think his power has been a surprise for the Twins as he has hit 17HR last year, 18HR this year with 5 at AFL. In college he hit 17 his first year, but then 10 his second year. That really hurt his draft status I am sure.

A couple of things I would push back on. One, this is counter to the idea that the worst teams need should get the higher picks to rebuild. This could actually lead to mid-level, late season "tanking" more than a full season tanking. For example, we were in first most of the year, then just stunk it up the last month in a half, and Cleveland went on a run. By mid-September, it was clear we were not going to do far into the playoffs, even if we made it by how we were playing. Why not then make sure you do not make the playoffs just to get to then fight for the number 1 pick? Also, I personally do not think teams are specifically tanking for the number 1 pick, but they are keeping pay roll down for other specific reasons. Look at the team that said we are tanking, Houston. One would say, well it work out well for them doing so, but when you look at their top picks, only 1 of their number 1 picks helped them in their rebuild, or beyond. Correa was a number 1, and their next 2 number 1 picks never made majors, although 1 did not sign so they then got to draft number 2 the next year and their own number 5, which both of them turned out well. However, the point is, you still need to identify the talent, at the top. They failed two number 1 picks in a row, only to get lucky one did not sign. Had they signed, they would not have got lucky the next year, and maybe not be in the position they are. However, they also had very good international signings. like Alverez, or Altuve, who was part of that tanking teams, most of their starting rotation were all international signings, and later round picks as well they hit on, Pena their replacement for Correa was a third round pick. I have long said, the draft in MLB is not going to be the best or only way to build a team and tanking for high picks will not equal success. In Houston's case, they got more international signing money, then in one year went all in on signing guys and hit on many of them, hence the great rotation they built from international signings. Yes, top picks have a much better chance to help down the road, but very rarely is the number 1 overall the best player out of the draft. Unlike in basketball where the number 1 is normally the best, but not always, in baseball, they are rarely the best. They are good, more often than not, but many times someone later in the first turns out to have the better overall career. Picking number 1 only gives you the chance to ID who the best is, something that is not always easy.

First, I would say still too early to evaluate the trade in full, mainly because Acala is still young enough to develop into a good relief guy, if he can stay healthy. Could we have used Pressley a couple of years ago in the playoffs, maybe, but would he have made the difference, doubtful. In both 2019 and 2020 we were beat and not because our pen blew the game late. If you do not have a lead late in game, the closer makes no difference. Sure, you can say, had we had a better pen it trickles down, but based on how the games went, I doubt even with both Pressley and Hendricks we would have won. If you are not going to win with the player, and you can get something that provides value down the road should you do it? In my opinion, yes. Maybe having Pressley this year, we could have made playoffs, assuming we kept him until this year. However, we do not know how other moves may have been made over the years had we not traded away Pressley either.

I have gone back and forth on the front loaded, so not overpaying as much at end of deal. The issue with that is money is worth more now, then it will be in 8 to 10 years. Meaning payrolls will go up, so even if you are paying for dead money the last few years, it will be less of a hit if you do not front load. However, if you do front load while we have a lot of guys on rookie or less than 3 year service time money, and then first and second year arbs, so your payroll will be lower, then you can get more money to other players on the back end. The player should want to take the front loaded deal as a financial reason, but you never know what pushes people. Maybe we can do a bonilla deal and be paying Correa until we are all dead, and the money will pass onto his kids and kids kids.

I think too many people are expecting too much offense from a catcher. Very few catchers are good at both offense and defense, similar to SS. When you find one that is good at both, they are worth a ton of money because they are super rare. You need to decide your balance between the two. Jeffers and Sanchez slash line is about equal. I do not know how much better Jeffers is to Sanchez, but to be set on Jeffers, he better be much better than Sanchez as it comes to defense, including pitch framing, to draw the conclusion that Sanchez is not the right one, but Jeffers is fine. Hopefully Jeffers can upgrade is offense, because if not, in the next few years his pitch framing will be pointless when the electronic zone finally gets put in.

I expect stolen bases to go up some, but not just because bases are larger, but that should help a little, I mean how often does it come down to just an inch or two? Where I think the rule changes will be the step offs and pitch count will increase base stealing more than anything. Mainly from pure strategy stuff. I am personally looking forward to hopefully more running. I still doubt the Twins will do a ton, unless they get some better base runners up. They operate under the risk reward factor is too low to risk it. I personally, miss the hit and run game, the stolen bases setting up and manufacturing runs. I could go on about how I feel the analytics cloud people's minds to cause them to stop doing certain things in the game. Not saying no analytics, but think people see the data and draw conclusions and forget it is still a situational game and we are not playing on paper or rolling dice.

The move could be made, if they sign a SS to long term deal, because an deal would require either Lewis, or Lee I would guess, and some pitching as well. This would hurt our possible SS options down the road. I am for it if we have SS on lock for another 3 plus years minimum.

I would disagree that as we got to electronic strike zone we will see less defensive catchers and just hitters. Part of catching is more than just framing and throwing out runners, which MLB is trying to get more steals in the game again. There is pitch calling, covering bunts, taking throws at home and blocking as much of plate as allowed, seeing when a pitcher is doing something wrong. Sure, the pitch calling could go to the dug out, but still think there is value from the catcher as he is sitting with the hitter and can see possible things, the coaches cannot, both in the hitter and the pitcher. If you have a weak armed catcher, there will be more steals on them, so they still need a strong arm. I would agree you may see more platoon catchers to give more breaks than the 140 to 150 games a year, but it would take a guy like Joe who actually never caught 140 games in a season, most he caught a single season was 139 then most was 120, so not even he did at as a 150 game catcher, but would DH double digit games as well.