chpettit19

Houston went to Wake Forest, FYI. And there were 3 qualified hitters in all of Major League Baseball last year with that stat line you suggested, regardless of HRs hit. Geraldo Perdomo hit 20 HRs and had a wRC+ of 138. Jeremy Pena hit 17 HRs and had a wRC+ of 135. Jose Ramirez hit 30 HRs and had a wRC+ of 133. If Marek Houston is a GG shortstop who hits .280+ with a .360+ OBP and 30 doubles to go with taking 20 bags, he doesn't have to hit a single HR in his career and he's a star. Even take out the SBs and there's only 6 guys. The 3 guys added are named Judge, Freeman, and Guerrero. Take out the 30 doubles and it jumps to 11 guys. Springer, Marte, O'Hearn, Diaz, and some Ohtani fella added to the list. O'Hearn is the worst hitter on that list and had a 127 wRC+. If we drop the cutoff line down to 300 PAs on the year it only gets us to 18 guys in MLB who hit .280 with a .360 OBP. If he's a GG SS he's one of the best players in baseball. That feels like an incredibly unlikely scenario. It's still just the same 3 guys who reached that stat line (Perdomo, Ramirez, and Pena) last year even accounting for guys who didn't qualify for the batting title. Same 6 if you take the SBs out and just want him hitting .280, getting on base at a .360 clip, and banging out 30 doubles. And on that list of 18 guys with 300 PAs, a .280+ BA and a .360+ OBP, the lowest HR total was 8 by Roman Anthony in 71 games. None of them slugged under .460. The Twins had 2 batters with at least 100 PAs and a slug of at least .460. They were Byron Buxton and Matt Wallner. The guys putting up .280/.360 lines aren't typically guys who aren't complete hitters. Not saying none of this can be done. Steven Kwan as a SS is who you're hoping for essentially. But even Kwan has been very purposeful with adding power to his game the last 2 years. I hope Houston turns out to be as good as people are picturing. Good chance there's 14 or 15 teams very upset they passed on him if he reaches these levels.

Blasphemy! Play the game the right way! Bunt. Steal bases. Championships will roll in! <- Heavy sarcasm. 2023 Wallner hit .249 with power. 2024 Wallner hit .259 with power. Dropping him because of a bad year and not giving him the chance to bounce back is absolute insanity and we'd have the exact same posters on these boards complaining for years about "giving up on him too early" when he is putting up .850+ OPS numbers for somebody else. If he hits .200 again next year, that's when you start talking about what his future here looks like. Especially if one of the other lefties actually prove to be worthy of an MLB spot.

I mean Buxton clearly has that potential, but otherwise I fully agree.

More fun to complain about him, demand his release, and then get to complain again when he succeeds elsewhere after getting that release because they "gave up on him too early" just like the complainer demanded.

Hopefully get him back to the hitter he was in 2023 and 2024, but for about 150 games.

Change what opinion? That you need a complete team to win in the playoffs and hitting homeruns is a vital part of that? This will now be the third time I've said that you need to be able to get hits that aren't homeruns as well. But if you can't hit homeruns you won't win. 45% of the runs scored in the playoffs this year have come off homeruns (142 out of 317 for 44.7% if you want the exact numbers). You're not winning if you can't hit them. You need to be able to hit, pitch, and play defense to win in the playoffs. But hitting for homeruns is vital. IT IS NOT THE ONLY STAT THAT MATTERS. I don't know how many times you want me to say that. My comment, for the third time on this now, is aimed at the people who want the Twins to be a speed and defense team because it's "more entertaining" and think they can win playoff series by bunting and stealing bags and "manufacturing runs" and "playing the game the right way." They can't. Nobody can. The playoffs aren't that big of a "crapshoot." Teams rely more on homeruns in the postseason than they do in the regular season. The percentage of runs scored off homeruns in the regular season typically sits in the 38-40% range. The playoffs are usually in the 44-46% range. Yes, facts or data will change my opinion, but you haven't provided any that differ from what I'm saying. I've never said they need to rely on solo homeruns. I've said power hitters like 2025 Wallner who hit .200 aren't the guys you need. I've said pitching is also a need (not nice to have, not a secondary thought, an absolute need). I've said defense is a need. So, no, you haven't changed my opinion that being able to hit homeruns is a vital part of winning postseason games. Unless you think a team will survive giving up 45% of the runs while being able to make up for it by getting more hits off the Kirby, Ohtani, Snell, Peralta, Sanchez, Yamamoto, Glasnow, Gausman, Bieber, Woo, Gilbert (do I need to keep going?) starters of the world and pens full of guys with 100 mph gas and astronomical spin rates. The numbers I provided show an 11% median drop in runs per game from regular season to the postseason. That is taking the Yankees from the #1 ranked offense to the #12 offense. A 9% median decrease in hits takes the Blue Jays from the #1 hits team to #21. The Yankees turn into the As and the Blue Jays turn into the Nationals in terms of runs and hits going from the regular season to the postseason. I think that's important, but you don't have to. They stay the same when it comes to their abilities to hit homeruns (technically it was a 2% rise in homers over those 10 years). The Brewers can be expected to go from the 3rd best hitting team to the Minnesota Twins. That's right, them losing 9% of their hits (1423) turns them into the Twins (1295). The Brewers hit 166 homers this year, good for 23rd in baseball and the 2nd lowest of any playoff team. So, the postseason Brewers are now the Twins when it comes to getting hits and are still one of the worst teams in all of baseball when it comes to hitting it over the fence. The Twins were 23rd in runs scored because they struggled to get hits, but they hit 191 HRs this year. The Brewers being the Twins when it comes to getting hits and even worse on the power end sound like a recipe for great postseason offense to you? Or, maybe, do you think that's why the Brewers have won 3 playoff series in the 21st century? You think that could be why they averaged fewer than 3 runs a game this postseason? Baseball is a game of degrees. 8 to 11% decreases are significant. It's the difference between who fans are clamoring for the Twins to be in terms of getting hits and who the Twins actually are with many people calling for a complete teardown of the entire franchise.

I haven't dismissed any of your stats, and I'm not dismissing that one, but feel free to continue telling me I'm going to dismiss them. And, as I said in my previous post, I am not at all saying HRs are the only thing you need. You deleted a whole lot of me saying there are other things that matter. But you want some stats, so here's some stats. As you can see, the number of homeruns hit per game between the regular season and the postseason stay pretty darn close to the same almost every year (2020 being the exception). The number of runs scored per game go down in the postseason every year (2024 being the outlier on the severity of the drop) and the number of hits per game go down every year but 1 (2021) and by .92 or more in half of the years. So, teams get fewer hits and score fewer runs because playoff pitching is better than regular season pitching because you're not seeing the bottom of the barrel guys often. But homeruns stay the same. Homeruns account for a larger percentage of the runs scored in the postseason than they do in the regular season. Being able to hit homeruns is a key part of postseason success and it's the reason teams like the Brewers never win the World Series despite the claims that "it's a crapshoot" even though it's always a power packed team with a high payroll that wins. For the second time now, you need pitching, defense, and offense to win a World Series. You need a complete team. Part of being a complete team is having power. It's why the Brewers rarely even win a playoff series let alone are an actual WS threat despite putting up very, very good regular season win totals the last decade. Because they can't hit HRs at a good enough clip. But, again, you can't just rely on .200 hitters with power because you need a complete team and part of being a complete team is being able to get some hits that aren't HRs. Keep arguing all you want, but I don't have anymore time today. HRs are a vital part of winning in the postseason and people clamoring for the Twins to be a speed and defense team are asking for them to give up all hope of winning a title.

The playoffs and the regular season are different things. I don't dismiss that data at all, it just isn't about the topic I was speaking on. You can watch just about any postseason game and they'll flash the homerun stat up there 2 or 3 times. They've been talking about it for years. Of course there's more to winning playoff games than hitting homeruns. You need a complete team to win in the postseason. Not just pitching. Not just batting average. Not just homeruns. But homeruns win. It's a statement about people wanting the Twins to be the scrappy little Brewers who hit for average, steal bases, and manufacture runs the "old school" way. It doesn't work in the postseason. Because postseason pitching doesn't tend to go many games in a series giving up a ton of hits. Stars win. I have posts on other threads about how 2025 Wallner isn't the kind of power hitter you need, 2023 and 2024 Wallner are when he was hitting .250-.260. You need stars to win in the postseason because they bring the power, but it's not power alone. To win a World Series you need good pitching, hitting, and defense. Just like to win a Super Bowl you need good offense, defense, and special teams. To win an NBA title you need both offense and defense. I by no means meant all you need to do is have homerun hitters and nothing else matters. It'd be awfully hard to talk in these forums if we all had to cover every possible variable in baseball in every comment we make. Homeruns win in the postseason. Teams with no power who rely on 3, 4, 5, or 6 hits or walks in an inning to score the vast majority of their runs don't win because it's really, really hard to get 3 to 6 hits in an inning against playoff pitching. It happens in some games, for sure. No doubt. No arguing that. But those teams don't win series because playoff pitching is too good to do that to them 3 or 4 times in a series.

That was a statement about their general performance in the postseason. They've won 3 playoff series in the 2000s. The Twins have won 1 and we are all incredibly upset about it. Would we really be happier if that number were 3? The statement was about them having a lot of regular season success and getting nowhere in the playoffs the vast majority of the time. And it's an undeniable fact.

I think this is why some managers like to go with their best arm in the highest leverage situations to face the top of the order instead of just saving them for the 9th...

Oh, for sure, big payroll teams get bounced in the first round all the time, but relying on several role players to stay hot for the entire month of October is a lot to ask. And it's why the lower payroll teams almost never win titles. Eventually they run into a high payroll team who's stars are doing star things and the talent gap is just too much. Homeruns win in the playoffs. It's an undeniable fact. The team that hits the most homers in a playoff game wins over 90% of the time. Because playoff pitching is incredibly good. And it's incredibly hard to string together a lot of hits and/or walks in an inning against incredibly good pitching on a regular basis in order to score multiple runs which is almost always needed to win games. Leashes are short in the playoffs so you almost never get the chance to put up multiple innings of having a large number of base runners against the same struggling pitcher because managers go to their pen so early now. So you have to maximize your scoring innings. And, as you said, it's really hard to get extra runs out of baserunners and aggression. Snell, Yamamoto, Glasnow, and Ohtani aren't going a whole lot of innings with 3, 4, 5, or 6 base runners against them. So you're trying to get to 4 or 5 runs in a game 1 run at a time. It's really, really hard to win MLB playoff games that way. It's why teams pay for power.

Not beating yourself goes a long ways during a 162 game schedule, but when you get into a short series with big payroll teams that have stars all over the field the talent just takes over far more often than not, unfortunately.

FYI, Frelick was a first rounder. And he has over 6 career WAR. No idea why he wasn't included with Turang. Some arbitrary notion of "long-term value" despite both of them being in their 3rd year. Frelick was actually the higher pick (15th vs 21st), but Turang has been the better major leaguer. But Frelick has been a good player. People are so excited about this and want the Twins to follow this strategy but they are also losing their minds at the idea of trading Ryan. They're pissed they traded Duran and Jax. That's exactly what this strategy is. Trade Burnes. Trade Williams. Would've traded Woodruff if he wasn't hurt. Trade Josh Hader. Now they're talking about trading Peralta. Bring back players like Cortez and Durbin for Williams. These same fans would be ripping Falvey apart for that return for Duran. They'd be livid. People hate Roden (full disclosure, I'm not a huge fan), but he's who this is about. Were fans around here super jealous the Twins didn't get Caleb Durbin? Everyone around here clamoring for Andrew Vaughn as the difference maker we needed? All people are actually excited about is the idea of being good. And the Brewers have been really good during the regular season recently. As @nicksaviking pointed out, the Twins had this run. The Rays had their run. The Brewers get bounced very quickly from the playoffs almost every time they make it. This year's series win jumped their total playoff series wins during the 21st century to 3 (1 in 2011, 1 in 2018, and 1 this year). They've won 4 in their entire team existence. People are excited because they're fun to watch, but their strategy doesn't actually win playoff games. I'd much rather be winning right now than losing, but the Brewers aren't some multi-decade powerhouse threatening for rings every year. Because, like the Twins, Rays, Guardians, or whoever else people are going to point to next, they don't have stars. They develop them and then they trade them to the teams that can afford them. You need stars. A whole collection of them. And you need to be developing them. And then you need to give yourself the best chance to develop more, which includes trading some of the ones you've already developed. The Twins don't need to be the Brewers. They don't need to be the Guardians. Or the Rays. They can afford to keep Ryan and Buxton or sign Correa or trade for Lopez and extend him. They have a financial advantage over these teams. But they need to mix those strategies in. And fans need to step back and actually think about what they're praising about the Brewers right now. They built their team by trading their 2 superstar relievers (Hader and Williams) and their stud starter (Burnes). They signed a massive contract for 1 player (Yelich). It's everything these same people are complaining about the Twins doing and claiming the problem is. They're bringing in the same level of players the Twins are (Durbin vs Roden). They used openers, bullpen games, and short starts the entire postseason. They traded for Yelich, McCutchen, Taylor Rogers, Carlos Santana, Mark Canha, and Nestor Cortes. They signed Rhys Hoskins in free agency. They're doing the same thing the Twins are doing. But they're backing it up with Frelick, Turang, Chourio, and Misiorowski instead of Lee, Julien, Miranda, and Festa. The Brewers aren't doing anything differently than any other team when it comes to acquiring players. They're drafting players. They're trading vets for prospects. They're trading prospects for vets. They're trading vets for both prospects and vets. They're signing international free agents. And they're signing free agents. They're just getting more out of their players. In the regular season. And then they're doing like every other mid- or small-market team and getting bounced from the playoffs quickly and with little trouble.

It is really hard to win playoff games against big time pitching when you rely primarily on stringing together multiple hits in multiple innings to score multiple runs. It's why homers win in the playoffs (despite what people want to believe). Snell had a WHIP of 1.26. Yamamoto was 0.99. They're about to see Glasnow and his 1.10 tomorrow. When you need to triple Cy Young quality pitcher's WHIPs to win games you're in trouble. Especially when you have to do it 4 times in a series. It's why 2 of the Brewers 3 wins included them out homering the Cubs 3 to 1. And all their losses include them being out homered. It is just really, really hard to string together lots of base runners against playoff pitching. And, no, this isn't me saying you should build a lineup of low batting average, high slug hitters. But you need to have slug. You need all around hitters. And multiple of them. You need 2023/2024 Matt Wallners who hit .250-.260 with power. You need 2024/2025 Byron Buxton hitting .265-.280 with power. You need 2023 Royce Lewis hitting .300 with power. It's why the Twins so desperately need Jenkins to reach his potential. Why they need GG to be a 20 HR hitter. Why they need to give Wallner the chance to get his BA back above .250. You need those guys to have a legit shot in the playoffs. Because neither contact only nor power only lineups work. You need 4 or 5 guys who can beat you both ways. But you need power. You need to bash to win in the playoffs because you're not going to consistently score runs against big time pitching by having to get 5 or 6 base runners in an inning against playoff pitching. It can work in a game here or there, but you're not winning series that way.

He wasn't even all that good in AAA this year. At 27. I'm generally the "every team makes these little moves, it's no big deal" guy, but I can't even say that for a guy with no options who isn't even an elite AAA guy at 27. I don't see how this even helps the floor of this team in 2026.

I didn't mean to upset you and cause you to feel the need to come back and respond a 2nd time without me having said anything else. I apologize. But at least get your facts straight. The Twins already had Polanco under contract for more years for less than he was worth according to his offensive and WAR numbers. They had him at a bargain. Again, the Twins have plenty of things worth complaining about. And, yes, cheapness is absolutely one of them. But the Polanco trade is far more like the Luis Arraez deal than the Johan Santana deal. The Twins actually don't frequently trade guys about to get expensive; they tend to just let them walk for nothing. It's been one of their worst strategies as a franchise. But they traded Polanco because they felt they had a replacement for him and his money could be better spent elsewhere (they signed Santana to a deal that perfectly fit the remaining financial commitment after the trade just 7 days later). They were wrong in the sense that Julien immediately turned into a pumpkin. But Jorge himself was also terrible for the Mariners. But the Twins still spent that money. If they were trading him to avoid spending the money they wouldn't have replaced that spending. But they did. Because it wasn't a salary dumping trade, it was a salary reallocation trade.

Assist totals aren't a good way to tell if people run on someone. The guys who don't have guys run on them don't get a lot of assists because people aren't running on them. Wallner was tied for 25th in baseball in fielder runs for arm value according to baseball savant. Tied for 8th in their estimate of percentage of advancements stop because of his arm. They have him stopping runners from even attempting to advance 3% more than the average fielder. For reference, the top guy was judge at 7%, Misner and Doyle were at 5%, and PCA, Bleday, Teodosio, and Merrill were at 4%. Those were the only guys better than Wallner at holding runners, according to baseball savant. And he was 34th in baseball in lowest percentage of advancements being safe. The idea that runners run at will on Matt Wallner isn't supported by any statcast/baseball savant data. Not in the least. He's one of the best running game stoppers in baseball.

They had already extended Polanco. He played here longer than his original team control. There are plenty of times that the Twins trade guys because they don't want to extend them, but Jorge Polanco isn't one of them. He got traded because they thought they'd have 160 mil to spend and the owners changed their mind and cut that by 20 to 30 mil (depending on your payroll source). Jorge Polanco is absolutely not an example of "a guy's performance means they'll have to pay him a decent salary" so they traded him.

FYI, next year will be Emma's last option year. His clock is very much ticking. Teams get 3 option years with players. Using 2 of them without a single MLB PA puts them in a very tough spot with him. He needs to stay healthy and get a lot of MLB PAs next year.

1. Ryan isn't Skubal. 2. Crochet didn't bring back a top 10 global prospect. 3. Teams do not trade top 10 global prospects much at all these days. It took 5 years of control of Mason Miller plus a bottom of the rotation starter to get an equal prospect. The Tigers need more position players, too. They nearly collapsed out of the playoffs because they couldn't score in the 2nd half. The Twins should absolutely be asking about all the elite prospects in the game if they're going to trade Ryan, but getting a top 10 global prospect would be shocking. If Detroit offers Clark, they should get the paperwork turned in before they let Detroit off the phone.

I've said that so I won't deny the Colonel the benefit of the doubt on this one.

I would be absolutely shocked if they traded Clark. I'd be very happy with him headlining a deal, but I'd be incredibly surprised if they actually let him go.

I certainly wasn't suggesting Duran is a bad person or making any kind of comment on who he is as a person. I don't know him. Never met him. Don't have an opinion of him as a human. Don't have an opinion of any player as a human unless they've been arrested or have other confirmed actions outside of the public eye. I was just stating that that quote is very likely not real. As for a Ryan trade to Boston, I'm not a fan of adding another prospect who can't stay healthy (Mayer) to the Twins stable. I think he's talented, but he's hurt every year. No thanks. Arias and Tolle would be an interesting start to a package, but I'm not sure it couldn't be beaten by other clubs.

I find it hard to believe that's a real quote. I'm pretty positive Jarren Duran never said he was happy to be traded away in order to help his former team win. As for him as a player, he certainly plays hard, but I'm not sure a 29-year-old is what the Twins need back in return for Ryan. The reason trading Ryan makes sense is because he's 29 and doesn't fit a realistic competitive timeline for the Twins. Duran wouldn't fit that timeline either. He's a good player, but I'd be disappointed if he's the headliner of a Ryan deal.

That'd come down to how badly they want him back. Trevor has no reason to agree to a significantly lower deal until the Twins non-tender him, and at that point he's a free agent and he can go wherever he wants. Are the Twins willing to risk losing him if he signs somewhere else in order to save a couple mil?