Trov

I wonder if Walner gets put on 40 man and gets a September shot? He is hot for right now, that may not carry into pro level, but we need as much offense as we can get, and he could supply that. However, we have a few 60 day IL guys that may need to come of that will make it harder to find a 40 man spot for him.

I love that his slump is still above average hitter. I think he is just going through adjustment to how he is being pitched. Early in year he was smacking line drives to LF all day long. Now teams are pounding him inside to try to prevent that, leading to him needing to pull more. I am not worried about him at all, and all players have a slump. He is still leading league in hitting, and I would still take him in the box over just about anybody in our line up.

I would add that I am very impressed with his approach at the plate. He seems to have a plan up there and look for specific pitches that he is expecting. Sometimes it leads to him looking foolish, like last night against Wacha where he was up 3-1 on count and took to called strikes because he guessed wrong, but he is clearly having thoughts in his head of what he is expecting. An at-bat later on he pulled a ball deep and foul, then next pitch he smoked a liner the other way, for an out, but it showed he was expecting that pitch and was ready for it. I fully expect he will have good seasons as a hitter, now I just hope he can work on his glove work, where ever he settles in.

I would not say he is underrated. He is hitting overall well, but so are many of the other rookies on the list that are offensive, and all of them play better defense. I bet if Twins were offered most of the other offensive guys on that list, except for maybe Kwan and Donovan, straight up for Miranda they make that move. Not taking anything away from him, and I like him, but he is mostly just bat.

Whether you like his style or not, I do not think he is going anywhere, unless the team completely falls off. We are above .500 and unless we crash the last month of the season we should finish above .500. That would be 3 out of 4 above .500, and we have a good chance to still make playoffs depending on how last month goes. Our star CF has been injured or playing hurt most of this season. We are on our like 5th LF, and used a like 10 starters, and 20 pen pitchers it seems, not sure exact numbers. I am not defending his style, but Rocco has been winning overall, we have no clue if anyone else would have done any better, and I would doubt they would. Also, Rocco is managing how I believe the FO wants, following analytics.

Balazovic concerns me the most because clearly something is off with him. My hopes is he figures it out during off season and he can bounce back. Lucky we were never slotting him in to be in the rotation and have huge depth for next year as well. Martin is disappointing he did not take steps and may have regressed, but he also has been injured part of the year, and you never know how much of a nagging injury he had. He will never be a big power hitter, but hopefully he can be more of a line drive guy that hits the gaps for extra base hits. Canterino is not surprising as he came from Rice who love to burn their college arms out. Hopefully after the recovery of TJ he will give us something.

It was a lefty pitcher Garlick hit against, not a righty. Game cast must have had that wrong.

I expect he breaks at AA next year. As long as he can field a position he will be making his MLB quickly, unless there is a huge regression next year.

He offers very little other than an emergency injury replacement should we need it. He has no offense and can run and play defense, but we need guys that can get actual hits. Imagine him and Leon in the same line up, why not just say we have to auto outs. I mean unless you are asking for a bunt I would tell them to never even swing the bat, their chances of getting on base are higher.

Even before I read I said to myself, Joey Gallo is who he was going to say. Personally, I am not a fan of that style of hitter, unless they are hitting HR with runners on or at least hits with RISP, I do not care how many solo HR a guy hits. Sure, in some games they may win, but all too often they strike out or fail when RISP but when game is blow out one way or other they hit a solo HR so season numbers look good. I used to always point to Trevor Plouffe on this issue, This year Buxton has had a similar season where he gets HR and extra base hits when no one is on, but when runners on he strikes out too much failing to drive runs in. We get in awe of the HR and power, but forget that with 1 out and runner on third they swing through a pitch out of the zone, but love the light tower power when pitcher is just trying to get through the at bat.

I agree that it is a bit of a question if he will get what he is looking for when he opts out. I highly expect he will opt out, I could be wrong, but that was his plan the whole time. Now, based on the rest of the crop teams will have to decide who is getting paid. Of course TEX is out, DET is out, Mets out, and SD are out of bidding. However, Dodgers, Angels, Braves, Seattle, Red Sox, maybe Cubs maybe Yankees depending on their plans with their prospects, Point is there is 4 SS, just like this year, all looking for deals and more teams than players looking to sign them.

I find it highly unlikely he opts in. He will try to cash in again this offseason on a more normal offseason. Dodgers and Red Sox and possibly Yankees will be looking to spend on a SS. Nationals may as well, they have been known to throw money out there. It may be a little risk of him, but I would assume his plan all along was to opt out barring injury.

My biggest complaint is that the team is 100% flipped to analytics. I hated when prior FO and managers were so anti analytics, but now they are 100% all in on analytics. That being they do not work on situational hitting as much. We do not do the little things that help score runs, but care more about getting the extra base hits. The problem is when the extra base hits are not coming, for whatever reason, we are not getting runs across the plate in situations. This is not just a this year problem, and hope we really address it in the future. I am a fan of using analytics, but the problem with always doing analytic thinking is that the numbers from analytics are derived over a lifetime of situations of past results. For example, the lifetime of runners on 2 with 0 out you will score more than 1 run 30% of the time, but with runner on third and 1 out you score more than 1 run less than 20%. The difference in scoring just 1 run increases about 12% when runner gets moved over to 3rd with 1 out, however, the chance of scoring 0 runs remains about the same. So the argument is, especially early in game, is to not move the runner over because your chance of scoring 0 runs is about the same, your chance of scoring more than 1 run is decreased. The counter is that your chance of scoring 1 run is increased. However, many analytic thinkers say just scoring 1 run does not move the win probability that much, even more so early in games, so teams will not play for that 1 run early in games. That is why teams stopped bunting runners over, but even worse, is teams stopped working on hitting behind runners in hopes of moving over at minimum but getting hits still. LH hitters will do it naturally with a pull on the ground, but RH almost never do anymore. Because they never practice it. In addition, when a runner is on 3rd we hardly work on just making sure we put ball in play, but still looking to get the extra base hit. Now, I know it is easier to say than do, but I do not even see anyone try anymore, and that is most likely based on team concepts. The thought is to sacrifice single run innings to have multi run innings, because we do not expect to have as many run scoring chances. I am not saying we should always play for single run innings, but advancing guys to third, then looking to get extra base hit, but at least getting ball in play will help us win many more games than trying to always drive the run in from second.

I am not expect anyone to come up and make a difference, maybe Larnach if he can hit like he did prior to injuries, but he has been up and down his whole short career. We really need the current players to hit like they have in the past. Getting 1 hit with RISP but having a ton of chances will not get it done. We are not hitting HR right now either so runs have been hard to come by. You cannot expect your staff to get shutouts every game.

Berrios has average 5.375 innings per start. I would argue he does not give his team 7 good innings for the most part, being he does not average even 6. He also has a negative WAR this year, meaning in general any replacement level guy would have been better. You use Ryan as a comparison, who also average 5.35 innings, so nearly the same average, just had 4 less games in part due to COVID. He has been good for a 1 WAR so far this year. So he may only give the team 5 to 6 innings even when he is going good, not his call to come out of games, but his innings overall have been of better quality. Berrios when good has given 7 plus innings 6 times, or 25% of his starts. He has pitched 6 or 6 and partial in 6 more games. So half his games he pitches 6 or more innings. Of which all were quality starts. However, when he has not given a quality start, in half his outings, the other half has been pretty bad. He had a couple of near quality starts that the team won, but for most part half his games the teams has had to score a ton of runs because he has given up more than a run per inning pitched. I would say that is a far cry from 7 good innings for most part. Ryan has 7 out of his 20 starts meet the quality start term, but he has many that he pitched into 6th and was pulled, and only 1 of Ryan's starts this year did he allow more than 1 run per inning, a huge clunker of 10 runs in 4.2 innings. He has had a few not good giving up 1 run per inning or close to it, but for most part he has kept games close giving 5 to 6 innings. If Rocco let him go he maybe could have got a few more innings, but he is always quick to pull guys. Maybe if Rocco does not Ryan get blown up and looks more like a Berrios line has, or maybe not. Many of Berrios blow ups have been in just a couple of innings as well.

I personally feel their biggest issue with runners on base is lack of a plan at the plate for most of them. Buxton is one of the worst on our team with runners in scoring position. Despite pitchers having a different approach to him when runners on, he does not change his approach. His OPS with RISP is .625 with a OPS+ of 68. His overall is OPS i .830 with OPS+ of 130. He is hitting a lot of HR, but just not when runners are on. He has 11 HR with runners on, meaning he has 17 solo shots. He is just not driving in runs when he has the chance. I do not know if it is how pitchers pitch him when runners on, or he trying to do too much, but he is supposed to be the leader of the offense, but he is the biggest issue of driving in runs when RISP. Of the 11 with runners on, only 3 was with RISP. I agree someone needs to step up on offense and help carry the team. I know fans do not like the RBI stat anymore, but the fact is our leader has only 55. The only way you win is by driving in runs, so there still should be some value. If Buxton hit like he did with RISP all the time, we would be calling for him to be benched, or at least not DH every game he is not in CF. However, if he hit with RISP like he did without, he would be right up with Judge for MVP talks, driving in a ton of runs, and scoring even more.

I think it is a little early to call Lee a for sure steal, I mean it was not like he fell to end of first, like Trout did, and it is still very SSS. Also, there is only 1 player taken ahead of him in similar situation, that being a college SS/3B. At pick 6 was Jacob Berry, the rest of the players were pitchers or high school, so will be a long time to know if we got the better of the players. Berry is not off to good start like Lee, but again time will tell. That being said, I am happy with what I am seeing of Lee, and I expect his bat to move him quickly through system

Of course he can be better. I also think he will be better. I always like Berrios, but he never got over that hump and he was the default ace for us despite being an ace. He was always good, and in some games great. However, he has had poor starts, or in many cases just one poor inning that blows up quickly. Many times too quick to get a pitcher ready to come in and it gets out of hand quickly. This was not just for the Twins but has been even worse for the Jays this year. I want to be clear I am not Jose bashing, because he was very good for us, and above average pitcher. He just never became that dominate ace type that we knew every time out was a good chance to win. He normally was either great for the game or terrible, rarely in between, and as stated sometimes would turn very quickly. Only time will tell if SWR will be better than Berrios, and I guess more of the question is are you asking during the length of Berrios contract with Jays, or overall career? If we are talking over length of time of contract, so far SWR will not even need to pitch to have a higher WAR. If we are talking over full career he will only need a couple of great seasons to top the 10 WAR that Berrios is near. I feel fans thought more of Berrios than what he truly was.

Teams move up and down the list as players get called up or drafted. The biggest concerns come when you want to make trades that players are not highly thought of. I mean look at last year we traded for Martin and SWR. Some said we got great deal, but now, we are talking about how Martin is possibly a bust. Heading into 2020 Miranda was not on anyone's radar as a top prospect, but then he clicked in 2021 after minors got back and now talking about possible rookie of year. Prospects will rise and fall, but until they prove it in MLB all prospect ranks are good for is what other teams may think of certain players. It is possible every one of the guys we traded away in the last year do not pan out for the teams we went them to. The biggest concern is if year in year out you are in lower range but to drop after making a ton of trades is not surprising.

If you want to use even HOF player Pujols, how long do you want to extend Miranda? He is 24 now, we have him until he is 30 without buying FA years. So we offer say 100 over 10, which if he is betting on himself he would turn down in a heart beat because that would keep him until 34 and would never get a major contract after that. The fact he is 24 now makes it hard to project what he would be willing to take and what his arb years would be. I am guessing he will not want to buy out too much FA years without a big overpay on his early years. The reason I say this is Albert after age 30 started to drop in production. He was still hitting HR at a reasonable rate, but his defense fell, and his OPS dropped at 31, then more 32, then more 33, where it stayed stable around .780 for a few years, then low .700 or below where he was getting way overpaid. Now, if you think he will have the production of his age 25 to 35, and you think he would accept 10 year 100 mil, you would take that in a heartbeat. However, it is big gamble for both, because if he does put up Albert numbers, then he would be very underpaid, but if he falls flat then we are paying a lot for a poor player. I doubt either side reaches that many years of FA. I think only reason either side does deal is to know cost control, but I still feel we are ahead of us on a rookie that was never considered a top prospect until his breakout last year.

I am not a fan of signing guys that are rookies to long term deals. Maybe after year 2 I would be open to it. Not saying I expect a huge drop off, but this has burned some teams, and many times rookies have big seasons then league adjusts, or player tries to adjust and regresses. Not saying they are same player, but one example is Badoo for Detroit. Many fans here hated he was left in rule 5 to go to Tigers, and he had up and down rookie year, but many thought he would be even better this year, but he has been not even playable at MLB level. Now, Miranda has not regressed after his initial terrible start and short demotion. Something clicked and he has been good for months, without much regression. So hopefully he continues it for years, but I am not ready to just say he is a superstar for years to invest large amounts of money.

Just think he is still not in his prime. What is amazing for me is how quickly he adjusts to how teams have adjusted to him. He will go on a short skid and then boom I will start hitting the ball somewhere else. He will foul pitches off until he gets his he wants. This is not something most can do. He is a joy to watch.

I am pretty sure you can say this about just about every team. Not sure where Twins rank in innings per start, but league wide teams are asking less of their starters. I do feel Twins are on the little more extreme, but even our top starters average only 5 innings per start, not just Archer and Bundy. I also believe most teams will give their vets longer leashes based on prior track record. If you cut a guy after one or two bad games, you will never have people to put out there. I feel your article is a little off when it comes to Pagan, as he has not been in high leverage situation since the trade deadline, except for extra inning game where all the other guys where used already. They are not throwing Pagan out there in late innings but using him in lower leverage early outings, like yesterday when we needed more innings from pen. I just want to point out Rogers who, had amazing first 20 games, but since has been not very good, following your argument he should be cut and a FA now, and no team should look to use him, but he will continue to get chances because he has shown success in past, even early in this season. As it pertains to signing pen guys, they are more of a crap shoot than any other position. As pointed out Rogers was amazing over 20 games, and if he was a FA signing people would have said amazing signing, but now he is doing poorly, so he would be a bad signing. Look at Thielbar, early in year he had 2 terrible outings, and had about 2 or 3 bad outings since, but overall he has been pretty good. I am just pointing out that it is hard to judge how a pen is doing unless you look across the whole body of work, and they can have good and bad runs, so hard to judge them at any given time.

Judge may leave the Yankees. It may depend on how willing Yankees are to be over the tax. He turned down a big deal already. I have not looked into the payroll of Yankees for next few years, but they do have some big contracts already in Stanton, Cole, Donaldson. They still need to fill their rotation out with trading Montgomery, and Tallion being FA, Servino on IL. There may be a club willing to pay Judge more than what Yankees are willing to just because of tax level and other areas to fill in next year or two.

SWR since coming back from IL has been like he was at start of year. He started off 4 great games, to then have some ehhh games, then on IL, only to come back with 4 good games again. Not great, but he is showing maybe the bad games were in part injury related. Brooks Lee early numbers sure look like he will hit. He should break camp at AA next year and from there if he hits and there is a need he could be someone to force his way into lineup. I am not expecting he debuts next year, but if injuries arise and he shows his bat is MLB ready why not.