chpettit19

It's not about lower seeds advancing, it's about smaller national brands advancing. If LAD were the wild card team and Arizona was the top seed MLB would be totally fine with the lower seed advancing. It's all about a team's ability to draw national eyes, not just regional ones.

You kind of explained the motivation for this. Commercials. I don't know that I'd agree that "most of the tv watchers aren't watching it live," though. I'd guess the vast majority of them are watching it live. Maybe not on TV through a cable provider, but they're streaming it live in some way, shape, or form. And that has commercials. Which is how fox gets paid, and what they base their bids to MLB on. It's incredibly important for the business side of MLB to stagger their playoff games and move it to primetime if they can. But it is definitely not great for fans. I think the thing they should've done was flip today's games. Put Texas/Baltimore in the afternoon slot so they know the result of that game earlier at least. But this is how it's always been, and always will be. The TV revenue is what drives almost every decision because it makes up the vast majority of the league revenue.

Love seeing Lewis back at 3B, but Kepler to the 3 hole with Lewis and Correa 4/5 feels like overthinking things.

The only lefty on the Houston roster is Valdez. That's kind of the point of this thread. They don't have a single lefty pitcher to use today so pinch hitting really shouldn't be a concern at all.

I don't know that you can totally quit pitching to Alvarez. You just have to be better at it (see: Lopez, Pablo). Kyle Tucker is no slouch. Lead the AL in RBIs. Pitching around Alvarez doesn't really solve your problems. It's the postseason. You have to get great hitters out to win. That's how it works.

I'd go: Julien Lewis Correa Polanco Kepler Kirilloff Jeffers Wallner Taylor

Where are you getting your strike zone runs data from? Just curious because Umpire Scorecards is the place I check and their numbers are way lower than that for the Astros series.

Yeah, the rules other leagues have around their contracts (NFL not guaranteeing deals for example) definitely leads to some mid-deal shenanigans. It's a lot harder to threaten to hold out on a 10 year, guaranteed deal, though!

Do you have some baseball examples of "guys who wanted to renegotiate?" I can't think of many baseball players who renegotiated in the middle of their deals, unless they had an opt out. That's not really a baseball thing. The concern is that he'll be paid accordingly by someone else if he stays healthy and lives up to the hype. Twins not exactly known for paying top dollar for stars.

I do apologize, I was just trying to be helpful! I figured you just like baseball so much you wanted an extra game.

Well good thing I didn't say anything about the Twins FO then. I said what I would do.

2B and Julien DHs. I'm not open to Buxton being a fulltime DH so there should be ABs to be had. They spread their ABs out so much anyways I just want the better player. And, to me, that's Polanco.

I had actually started typing out a paragraph about Polanco, but got distracted by something at work and quit. I'd keep Polanco over Farmer because I think he's the better player and I want all the talent I can get, but I don't think they plan to keep them both. A lot of it depends on what they could get in trade for Polanco. I think he's still one of their better hitters next year so I wouldn't be quick to trade him, but I'd certainly be listening if people called on him.

FYI, if he aggravated/reinjured himself they could replace him. He'd then be out for the rest of that series and the following one. I wouldn't carry him on any roster the rest of the postseason (assuming he's never getting back to 100% this year), but just wanted to let you know how the system works in the playoffs. You can replace injured players, but they have to sit the rest of that series and the next.

It's a 5 game series, fyi. So hopefully they're pulling it out in 5 or less!

That Farmer number is lower than I expected. That's only a $1 million raise over his salary this year (5.585 mil). If his number really is 6.6 I'd definitely be tempted to tender him and see if there's a trade to be made. Carrying him into the season wouldn't be the end of the world either, but I think he's a guy who's likely to be at the bottom of the 40-man due to his cost and lack of high playing time. 6.6 isn't a lot by any means, but the Twins have a lot of guys who can cover his positions. I don't know if he'll be on the roster on opening day 2024, but if his number really is that low I'd expect them to tender him.

It's Ober, Lopez, Gray that they announced. Not Ryan.

Yeah, we're talking about hitting baseballs and the effect altitude has on that. Hitting at altitude is different than hitting at sea level. And it takes 1 to 2 games to get used to hitting at sea level again. Not because they're breathing different air or suffering physical effects of altitude, but because baseballs react differently at different altitudes, and that changes not only what a hitter expects a thrown ball to do, but also what strategy pitchers use because the balls they throw do different things. Nothing silly about that. Just cold hard facts of physics.

Falvey sure sounded like he's leaning 13 pitchers so I'd expect Stevenson out and Ober in. I'd drop Paddack and add Ober as I'd prefer 12 pitchers in a 5 game series that has 2 off days, and the ability to pinch run Stevenson late if needed.

Why not start Varland in game #2 because it's a game we're likely to lose anyway against Framber? Twins are much worse against lefties than righties so we should assume they'll lose to the lefty as well. Save the "two aces" for games 3 and 4. But then Verlander will be back for game 5 so we'll likely lose that game anyway and are just doomed. Sarcasm^ You don't save anyone, or use players because you're "likely to lose anyway" for any postseason game. You take your best and you put them against their best as often as possible in the postseason. I'm fascinated by all the people on these boards talking about doing anything other than starting Lopez games 2 and 5, and Gray in game 3 so he'd be lined up for game 1 of the ALCS. You throw your best guys as often as possible, and you don't consider playing anyone who isn't your best option at anytime from now until the season ends.

The team friendly values later in the contract are counterbalanced by the player friendly values at the front end. Julio Rodriguez would be making about 750k this year and a couple mil next year. Instead he's making 10 mil this year and 18 mil next year. That's 25+ million in extra cash in his pocket in the first 2 years of the deal alone. If you're a guy with 2 ACL surgeries before you're 24 there's certainly a little incentive to lock up $100+ million. Even if Lewis signs on into his early 30s he's still looking at being able to sign a massive deal. Xander Bogarts and Manny Machado just signed 11 year deals at the age of 30. If Lewis signs until he's 32 for 150 mil now he will still be able to sign for 300+ mil (contracts aren't going to go down) after this deal if he performs how we all hope and expect. There's certainly some motivation to lock in 9 figures at the age of 24 and guarantee yourself generational wealth while still being able to hit the absolute jackpot on your next deal. Ohtani just set the record for highest arbitration award ever at 30 mil. Mookie Betts got 27 mil. Juan Soto agreed to a 23 mil deal. Lewis is set to make 750ish thousand a year on average the next 2 years. If he keeps up his performance his arb years are probably in the 8, 15, 25 range per year. That totals about 50 mil. Let's say Boras projects free agent contracts to be at about 40 mil per year for Lewis types when he hits free agency. Let's say the Twins want to buy out 2 free agent years. So 80 mil total possible contract amount if everything goes perfectly for Lewis over the next 5 years. For those 7 years he's looking at 130 mil in earnings if he maintains his current production. That's just over 14.25 mil a year for him over those 7 years. You don't think there'd be any incentive on his side to lock in $130,000,000 after having seen himself play a grand total of 72 major league games at age 24? There's a lot of incentive for him to sign. If they drop 7 or 8 years at 15 to 18 mil per year in front of him he'd have to be very tempted to sign that. And 15 to 18 mil is not a huge number for the Twins to spend as long as he's reasonably healthy for those 7 or 8 years. It's something both sides should definitely be considering.

Kirilloff debuted in the postseason against the Astros (went 1-4) 3 years ago. If he's still feeling nerves so badly it makes him ineffective now it's not a great sign for Alex.

Then I'm not sure what you're saying isn't accurate in my earlier post.

But Julien isn't taking the throw from Polanco there. You don't have the guy running the opposite direction from first base taking a throw at 2B, you have the guy who started behind the base who's heading towards first take the throw. They've been practicing that for years. It's how they do it in spring training and it's how they do it in practice during the season. Carlos Correa's responsibility on that play is to cover second, and that's what he's doing when the ball goes under Polanco's glove.

Falvey certainly made it sound like they're leaning 13/13 for this series in his press conference. I'd think there's a strong debate being had since it's a 5 game series with 2 off days, but from the way he talked at the presser it sounded to me like they're leaning 13 pitchers. I thought 12 was too many for the WC round, but they went with that. Will be interesting to see what they do.