Trov

I am not advocating for this, but I find it interesting that so many are calling to bring up Alex, which I would support, because he is hot, but no one is calling to bring up Beckem despite being just as hot.

I will agree we would benefit at increasing the pitching, in particular the pen. However, I disagree with the sentiment that without adding to starting pitching we cannot win. Both Ryan and Gray could win games in the post season. Also, you never know what you can get from others. If you improve the pen, you will not need 7 good innings from everyone, and we are not likely to ask anyone to do that anyways. Plenty of times teams have won series, despite having the lessor pitching staff, and lessor offense. Both WS we won we were under dogs in the ALCS and WS. Our win over Oakland no one gave us a chance because our best pitcher was the 4th best starter in the series, but yet we still won the series. Then 2020 we had the 2 best starters going into the Houston series, everyone had us the favorites because we had Cy candidate Maneada versus journeyman Greinke, backed up by end or rotation Valdez, then Berrios versus rookie Urquidy. Going into the series we were considered the better offense and better pitching staff, but yet we were completely outplayed. Last year Atlanta really had 2 starters you felt super good about going into playoffs, Fried and Morten, with 2 top high leverage guys, out of the pen. Their offense was not great either. They got hot for playoffs and went onto WS. No one expected it. Of course upgrading starting pitching, pen and offense, would help us win, but to say it is needed to win, or even greater to assume we will, just goes against evidence. Yes, you can point to plenty of teams that when they had the better pitching staff they won, I am not saying it does not help, but there is never a guarantee one way or other. We could go out trade away all prospects for Montas, and Castillo, the best two starting pitchers out there up for trade, and the top 2 pen pitchers, Contrees from Cubs, and some other top bat, and we still could get swept out of the first round. Being best on paper means nothing, it just makes fans feel better going into the games. In terms of the offense, every team offense is always up and down. You point out how we did against 4 top starters, but then struggled against some lessor pitching, but then assume we will struggle against top pitching in playoffs, ignoring how they did against top pitching just recently. To win in playoffs you need a few guys to step up and get hot, it is true for all teams. We know anyone can get into a slump or a hot streak, you just need the team to not be in slump in playoffs.

My issue with Jeffers throwing guys out is his throws are not where they need to be. I am sure much of the stealing is both him and the pitchers, but you watch the throws to second and so often the guy covering comes off the bag the catch it. One of the throw outs he has had was at third, and had the Rays still had a challenge it would have been overturned, but that would have been on the third baseman.

He was in tears not because of how poor LeCroy did, but that he subbed him mid inning because of the stolen bases. It was an emergency roll, but they needed the second emergency guy to fill in. I have nothing against LeCroy, other than he was the guy that replaced Ortiz, because he hit right handed, and we all know how that decision played out. Again, not his fault. I really like LeCroy while he was with Twins.

For the post season, Archer could fill a middle inning role, as he is unlikely to slot as a top 4 starter, at least right now if everyone we have is healthy. That being said, we do not know health, and I am assuming the likes of Smeltzer, Winder, Ober are still pitching like they have shown so far this year. If they drop off near post season then Archer should slot in the top 4, if for nothing else his experience. I do feel the Twins could upgrade the pen overall, but would not want to overspend on any "closer" as we do not follow that normal trend.

Why would we want David Price? Would you want him as a starter or pen pitcher? Either he would be a downgrade from what we have I think. He has pitched 13.2 innings in 13 games giving up 7 runs. He does have 17Ks and only 3 walks, which is good, but he has also given up 18 hits and 3 HR which is not good in such a small amount of innings. Also he has normally been used in low leverage situations and has a negative wins probability added. I am sure Dodgers would love to trade away Price for anything to save his contract and luxury tax.

Mancini is a no for me dog, but the other two I would take, for the right price, but do not feel we need either to make the playoffs. I do agree upgrading the pen will help us the most. I am not for selling off the whole farm though to upgrade just for this season.

These things tend to work themselves out. How often when one person is ready to return someone else has an injury issue? Not saying that they do not actually have one, but for example both Polonco and Gordon have been getting some rest due to some small issues. It is possible one of them get put on DL if neither is 100% when a roster move needs to happen. If no one is going to go on DL, I would not option Gordon right now. He will not pass waivers and he does give some value to this team.

First, I am not big on Rocco, but I am not down on him either. I like that he is willing to embrace a different way to manage and win games, in particular in the regular season. I may not agree with his moves, but I get why he does them, and he very much follows analytics. For most fans they either love or hate analytics. If you hate it, you will hate Rocco. I personally like analytics, but feel some go wayyyyy to overboard with them. I feel some managers that follow them so much do not look at the game situation in front of them and just play the numbers. Something I had issue with when Gardy was here, as he was the complete opposite and did not look at the numbers at all, but always went with the old way of managing. He would pay no attention to match ups or how guys did in past. Personally, I wish Rocco would come off the antilytic approach a little and do more moves based on game situations. However, I get he has a plan and will follow it and work it best he can. I do feel it is not bad in a 162 game season, but in a best of 3, 5 or 7 series, I feel each game needs to be managed differently. Of course we will never know the results of different decisions, and we only attack decisions made that did not work out. I do feel too many fans look at single games in a 162 season and knit pick too many moves in single games without looking at big picture. Sometimes it is worth waiving white flag on 1 game to not put you behind 8 ball in next few games. I will like to see how he manages in next playoff appearance, hopefully this year, then I will form more of an opinion on him and how I feel. I can live with his regular season managing if he does well in the playoffs. His first 5 games have not work out, but part of that is not having Buck at all, and scoring basically no runs and having very little pitching success. It is hard to see if he made good moves when just about everyone played poorly. Hopefully this year we are healthy heading into playoffs, mainly Buck, Correa, and our best pitchers. Will it make the difference, who knows, but if you look at the 2019 series against the Yankees, many of the same moves people attack Rocco for, Yankees did and it work out well for them. Mainly going through several pitchers after having short starts, despite not giving up many runs. None of their starters went more than 5 innings and none gave up more than 3 runs either, using 4 or 5 pitchers each game.

So far none of those guys are living up those contracts. Not sure if that helps or hurts Correa getting close to Seager or not. He was hoping to do better than Seager this past offseason. Story had a good stretch in May for like 2 weeks going crazy, but outside of that he has been terrible. Since May 26th, he has 18 games, no HR, 4 RBI, and his OPS has droped 61 points. Really he just had a crazy 2 weeks so far this year, outside of 14 game stretch he has been terrible. I really do not know if that means people will say, well all these guys got paid a ton and Correa is only one that played up to his contract, we should pay him more. Will they say well these guys were all mistakes, at least so far, should we risk it on Correa will he drop off like everyone else?

Kepler is the perfect example of guys you need on your team to have a winning season. He has quietly had a good year. His defense is very overlooked. He is not carrying the team at any point, but he has just been solid overall also not being a black hole. You can slot him in the second half the line up most games and you never really notice how he is helping. When he was lead off we would pay much more attention to him and what he is doing, but when he regularly hitting 5 or 6 and he is doing good but not great we just kind of not pay attention. I hope he keeps it up, and maybe gets on a hot streak where he can carry the team for a few weeks. Jax has been a huge lift to the pen. He is not doing the high leverage thing, but he is getting the job done regularly and can go more than 1 inning if needed. Most people were ready to DFA in off-season. He looks like he could be a solid pen guy for next few years. I get the point of view that Correa is overlooked a little as he has just been going about his work, hitting the ball hard all the time it seems, but not having too many big moments. Buck has been hitting the big HR both in distance and at times in importance, and Correa has not had one of those type of moments with a walk off or big hit that gets the game winner, but I do not think he has been presented with that chance either. He is just doing his thing and I am surprised we are not talking more about how he is hitting over .300 now, after his low BA start, mostly due to just hitting ball hard at people.

I could not stay up for full game, but when I look at boxscore I wonder why Archer would not go out for 5th. I assume it is because they were going into 3rd time round on line up and for whatever reason he will never get a chance to go a third time round. Maybe it is the right call every time, I mean we won, and none of the pitchers used threw a ton of pitches. I am glad to see both Ryan and Gray are slotted to pitch next two games.

I have like Arraez since he came up. Many have been down on him for lack of power, which makes him not a top prospect, but he brings something very important to a lineup. His approach reminds me more of Tony Gwynn than Carew, but both of them could hit lefties much better than Arraez. Maybe it is SSS for Arraez as this year is even lower numbers than career, but his career numbers are a large split. It does warrant sitting him against lefty starters and pinch hit later in game against a righty. As for the slugging, Arraez is right up with Carew normal year of slugging. Carew career was the .429, but he was normally closer to .400 or lower, he had a few big seasons in slugging to raise the career. Where Arraez does have a bit of drawback is his lack of speed and base stealing. Either way, I enjoy watching his at bats as he almost never gives anything away, and I have a feeling if defenses start to try and rob his line drives he might just start to increase his angle and try to drive it over their heads for those extra base hits.

I just wanted to add in that I would not trade him, as long as still in place to make playoffs. I doubt the return for him would be worth giving up what he would add to the team in the playoffs. I am not a push all in and try to upgrading all the pitching either. I say ride it out, see how it goes.

The news on this is very vague as to why he is on the list. I have not heard what it all is. Some are speculating mental health, some are thinking substance issues, but nothing has been released other than "personal issues". I hope for him he can work through those.

He is mashing in AAA, but I am sure there is some internal discussion about his wrist and has he worked on the few issues he had early this year? I think also they only want to bring him up one more time. I fully agree he could slide into DH or rotate around, but my guess is the team wants to make sure when he does come up, he will be up here for good. He is getting regular swings each day, and I think they want to make sure he will have no set backs on the wrist. Also, is he mashing fastballs only? I have not watched so if he is only mashing fastballs but still rolling over anything not fastballs, he may not be ready to come back up because he will see nothing but offspeed when he gets back up here.

Overall I agree that situational hitting is lacking. However, that is in part based on how players have developed over the years. Most MLB players have always been 1 thru 4 type hitters on their teams growing up, because they are most likely the best on the team. They were never asked to really advance runners. I have long talked about players lack of practicing such situations is the biggest issue. Like guys never bunting, but then asking them to do it out of no where is a problem, they normally fail at it. Over the past decade the game went away from situational hitting, but went to try to hit extra base hits, which requires hitting the ball hard. With the dead ball that has played out this year, doing the little things may be much more of a thing to work on. However, just because a guy wants to do something, does not mean they will, as the pitcher is not going to just let them do it. Also, if the hitters gets a pitch to hit hard, why take it because it does not give you the planned result of just advancing a runner? The Sanchez situation talked about, he did hit the ball the right direction, but just not in the right angle. Guys cannot always hit the ball the way they want to. Now, I will agree we should work more on those situations and get back to maximizing situations. I do feel overall the team is doing much better having better at-bats overall. You will always find bad at-bats to point out in any game. They just get highlighted when you lose by a run or two.

He has managed to take the ball each time, sure for only about 4 or 5 innings, but he has not been terrible. If we were to start playoffs tomorrow, he would not be my number one choice that is for sure, but he has added more value than some other guys.

Many have talked about how we are not ready to win this year, unless we upgrade our pitching. I agree we can upgrade our pitching, but believe getting a top starter and top reliever will drain our farm system and will not be needed to get into playoffs, and once there nothing says doing so will make the difference between a WS win or not. I looked into past deadline deals and only found 2 higher end starters helping lead to WS win in recent history. I am suer there was some middle of road trades that helped, but without knowing how someone else would have done we never know how big of a difference it would be. This post is not about if we should trade for pitching, but if we do not, should we trade Correa. That being said, if you are in the boat of we need to upgrade pitching or season will be a bust, if the price for that pitching is too high, would you trade away Correa to get prospects? Most likely doing so would cost us a chance at playoffs, with no clear replacement. I believe it would greatly lower our chances if we did sneak into playoffs, but much as starting pitching we would not know. It is highly unlikely Correa opts in for next year barring any injuries down the stretch that would eat up much of next year, he will want to get a bigger deal, which we all expected when the deal was signed. The question is, do you stand pat on him hoping we can still make playoffs and do something with him, or do you try to bring in a couple of top prospects, understanding that his value is not super high being just a rental for any team taking him. He also has limited no trade clause I believe. You would also most likely give up any chance of getting a deal with him long term, which is already very unlikely. Both trading and not trading has merit. First, keeping him we have one of best defenders and one of best hitting SS in the league. Bogaerts right now has best WAR of SS but Correa is not far behind and has much less games. Any contending team that does not have a SS or could not move their SS to another position would love to have Correa. What would they give up? That might depend on how desperate they are, if they think they could convince him to opt in, or resign him, or who else is looking for him. You never know who would come back to the Twins and how they would pan out, but with most likely losing Correa for nothing after the season there is merit to saying get value for him. You may upset many fans though down the stretch, and affect possible future FA signings, although think every knew it was a 1 year deal so doubt that would affect many future FA thoughts. On the flip side, if you can make the playoffs having a guy on defense at SS that is as good as he is, and will hit middle of order with chance of hitting HR and getting on base at high clip, has a ton of value. Our offense versus some good starting pitching has shown at least right now they can hold their own. We won two world series in our history, both of which were considered big underdogs in each round of those playoffs but still won. When we had what we thought was elite top pitching or at least a top pitcher, we have not won series. Specifically in 2020 we had two guys that could dominate games that year, and lost both starts after having not great, but not terrible but facing off against aging vet and unproven rookie. We failed to score despite pitching not being terrible it was not good enough. I am a big fan of getting to playoffs and see how it goes. Atlanta last year was not favored. Many teams that win are not favored, but yes many that are do as well. However, sometimes it is a surprise person that steps up. I personally would not be upset either way, as long as the return in a trade helps next year and in near future, not years down the road. But if we try to stay pat with starters and bring in cheap relief guys for very low level prospects, I would be happy with that too.

First, I think the cost of getting Mantas will be pretty high. He is not a HOF bound guy, but he is best out there and as we get closer to deadline there will be a team thinking he will make the difference of getting into playoffs. My assessment is two fold for the NEED for upgrade at upgrading pitching. First, are they needed to get us to the playoffs? Then what kind of a difference will they make? I do not think we need to upgrade to make the playoffs, provided our top end guys come back from injury soon. Our pen will get us into the playoffs as well I believe. Now when we make it, will they be that big of a difference maker? Some top guys can be, the most recent deadline trade I can think of that helped push a team to the ship was Houston 2017, who it looks like gave up basically at best bench players for him. Great deal for Houston. Johnny Cueto was traded to KC in 2015 and he helped in playoffs having 2 good games 1 okay game and 1 bad game. Of note, during the regular season he had a stretch of 5 terrible games, but had about 5 great games too, However, beyond that I cannot find too many deadline deals that led to WS wins, and if you give up your full farm system you better end up with a ship, else it was a failure. If the Twins feel Montas will be a big addition to next years rotation, which I do not feel he will be needed, then I would be okay with a deal, but if he is not needed to fill out the rotation I do not feel he is that much better than what we would march out there, and you never know what the playoffs will bring. He could pitch 1 great game but never get another game, or he pitches several duds, or he could go on a mad bum like run and carry us to the ship. You never know.

Yeah I would not give up much for Noah. I have not seen him pitch this year, but looking at his numbers his K rate is down a ton, his walk rate at about career norm, so not like he is getting early contact outs. I would pass unless it was more of a waiver claim situation. He does not clearly rank higher than any of our current rotation, other than his numbers from several years ago of 2018 and 2016 really. Unless our starters start missing the full year I give up nothing other than money for him, and if we have a healthy staff he would most likely slot near Archer. They are baiscally having the same season overall, just Thor has gone deeper generally in starts, but on the Twins that may not happen.

First, to get what suggested needed, I would say it will take emptying most of our prospects to get 3 high end pen pitchers and a top end starter. For say Montas, I bet it will take minimum Martin and a top pitcher, or 2 lower tier pitchers. I am not certain that gets it done though, might depend on who else is looking to trade for him. For the 3 pen pitchers, not sure who is out there, but they will take many mid level guys at minimum if not a top tier guy depending on the guy and who else is buying. Personally, I am never a fan of trading top prospects for rentals. I am okay with trading for at least a couple years of control. I would not do it, because even doing so does not mean we win anything in the playoffs. Many will say we will not win without it, which may be true, but clearing out your prospects for a little bit better chance to me is not worth it. First, I think we can make playoffs with current team, so any trades you talking about most likely would be to increase playoff chances. So lets look at Montas, he would slot as top guy in our rotation most likely. We do not know if he will pitch more than 1 game in the playoffs, even if he wins his first start, which is no guarantee, as we have seen any starting pitcher can have a bad start. Same thing with pen pitchers, our last playoff game had our "best" pen pitcher gave up a run without getting an out recorded, giving up 2 hits and a walk. So you never know. Sure, if we got overall better pitchers will it help our cause, of course, but how much of improved chances will we have? I am sure Tiger fans wish they never gave up John Smoltz for Doyle Alexander, despite going 9-0 down stretch in regular season, with a 1.50 ERA. Alexander pitched game 1 and 5 against the Twins, losing both games, giving up 6 in 7.1 innings in game 1, and 4 in 1.2 innings in game 5. He helped them get to playoffs, maybe not needed, but back then it was harder to even make playoffs, but in the playoffs he pitched terrible, and Tigers gave up a HOF pitcher for it. My point is, I think we can make the playoffs without upgrading starting pitching, or the pen, and giving up top prospects that can help us for years down the road, or build our team next year via trades, for rentals this year makes little sense. There is no guarantee these moves pay off in playoffs. Yes, the Alexander example may be extreme and there are times were reverse pays off. Most recent Verlander was a deadline trade to Houston in 2017 and he helped push them to win a WS, along with banging on a trash can. All Houston had to give up, looking back is a pitcher that has yet get beyond High A, a 4th type OF and a backup catcher. Of course they had higher hopes when brought them in. No matter the way the FO goes, we will never know if it works out, until it does, and we really we not know if the reverse would have been better.

I think the FO was less worried bout his ability to throw out runners, because for years teams just would not run. However, as MLB is looking to bring stealing back into the game, with different rule changes, changing size of base, and appearing to decrease the power of the ball, that liability is starting to show it may be a huge issue. I am no catching expert, and it may be just his arm is not as strong, or his set up to frame pitches cost him some time, or could be our pitchers do poor job too. However, watching some teams starting to run all over on him may lead to need to change. Since he is not providing any offense, really anyone can fill in for him if they can throw guys out. I would point out that very few catchers are good on both sides, but right now Jeffers is not doing great on either, and as MLB eventually gets the robo ump the pitch framing will be pointless, and throwing runners out will be a bigger issue. Maybe he will change things up when that happens to help with the runner situation, but right now, I would agree he is not an asset behind the plate overall.

On name in the internal options not mentioned is Spencer Steer. He has played some over there, and assuming he is not the best defensive option, but has a lot of offense upside, if he can balance enough he could be a bridge until Lewis is ready next year. I highly doubt we land a top FA SS. Correa was an odd situation where for some reason no one was willing to give his asking price. Now it is possible that teams will shy away from some of those deals as the big SS signings so far have not done great. Seager and Seimien with Tex have OPS around .700. Baez he is fielding fine, but he is hitting terrible for making 20 mil. Story had a hot stretch for like 2 weeks in May, outside of that he has been below replacement player earning 20 mil. Correa has been by far best of them all, and will most likely command the 300 mil he is looking for. I doubt we pay it. Could we hope one of the other 3 top guys agree to something closer to what we want to pay, maybe, but only if last years crop scare off a few teams, which for the LA's and East Coast teams I doubt it will.

Yes we can beat the yankees, the problem is we do not play like we can. Of course they are talented team, we are not only team that has lost to them. However, we seem to always make huge bone head mistakes, like no one trying to catch a pop up in the infield. These get compounded and more mistakes get made. We just play differently against them. I mean over the time Gleeman posted, we had some good teams, division winning teams and like 90 win teams. We had some bad teams too, but it is not like the Yankees were always the best team in league. There just happens to be something against them. No matter the lead it is not safe. We always find ways to blow it. Now, I will say I am happy with how we hit their starters and over last 4 games we have faced 4 pretty good pitchers this year and done well against them. Now we just need our staff to get right.