chpettit19

I agree that I don't think they'll move on from Gallo until Kirilloff is back, but that's unacceptable to me, and a mark against them. My concern has always been that they are incredibly slow to move off their plan or expected outcomes even when reality doesn't match their expectations. Pagan has to succeed in high leverage situations for an extended period of time before I give them credit for him. Kepler needs to sustain this hot hitting for the rest of the year. And Jeffers is a young player so I don't put him in the same category. Patience is a good attribute, but too much of it is bad. The real attribute you need is knowing when to move on and when to wait. They wait on almost everyone, and it doesn't often work out. The Twins aren't a small market team. They're a mid-market team. They're 17th in the MLB revenue sharing market list. We need to quit letting them tell us they're small market. They aren't. Houston is 15th on that list. I don't care if those rosters have higher payrolls. You get 3 games at home. You should be able to win 2 out of 3 at home if you're a legit playoff team, no matter what your market size is. St Louis is 26th in market size. San Diego 24th. Tampa 19th. I don't accept the "small market" argument at all. Be better at running your team and quit making excuses. There's some self-made limitations to keeping high priced players, but there's also built in boosts for drafting, and they're handed "free" money every year. Build a team your fans want to see, and invest in, and they'll turn out. Invest in your team and the fans will follow.

I agree it's a bit complicated, but you can't trade your best hitter. Buxton is the bigger complication. Julien is atrocious in the field, and I don't have any hope that he ever becomes serviceable as his hands and feet are just so far away from being major league quality. But I'd put Lewis in the OF. Kirilloff in the OF if they refuse to do it with Lewis. If Buxton can play the field some you have the DH spot to put Julien in more frequently while rotating some guys through the IF. Unless they're trading him for an equally good, young, controllable hitter I want nothing to do with trading my best hitter. You find a spot for your best hitter.

Beating up on the bad teams is kind of an expectation for a division winning team so doing well the rest of the way won't impress me much. My biggest question with them has always been their in season adjustments. Carrying severely underperforming vets into August, or all year. Refusing to give young guys a shot until they're forced to. And never really addressing the bullpen. Gallo still being on this team is mind blowing to me. I give them credit for waiting out Kepler's cold streak to reach his current hot streak, but how will they handle his next cold streak with very little time left to bounce back to a hot streak? 1 series win wouldn't impress me a ton as they should be able to win 2 at home against the 3rd wild card team. Making more noise than that could get my attention, though. More so it will be about how they do it. If Kepler is on one of his cold streaks getting to, or in the postseason, do they bench him (assuming there's an option that's hitting well to replace him)? If Pagan is back to blowing lead after lead at the end of the year do they still turn to him in the 7th of a 1 run game in the playoffs to have him blow that lead? Will they adjust and show urgency in the playoffs? Will they start Jeffers behind the plate in every playoff game if he's still clearly the better offensive option or will they stubbornly continue to go every other game with Vazquez? I realize some of those things are more Rocco than FO, but, to me, they're all pretty well tied together. I believe Falvey, Levine, and Rocco's fates are all tied together. But how they go about having success the rest of the way is going to be a bigger part of my opinion than simply winning games.

I would be absolutely shocked if they traded Julien this winter. He's the best hitter on the team right now, and under control for 6 more years.

What does Gallo have to do with any of this? I was having a discussion with another poster about choosing between Laureano and Luplow. I don't care which one of them they choose. Lefties have nothing to do with what I was talking about. I don't care about the very small differences between whatever random waiver claim right handed bat they bring in to be the short side of a platoon outfielder.

Yeah, I was unaware that they dropped the league dependent part of the waiver claim process in the new CBA.

Because of the way human bodies work there's a max to how hard a ball can be hit. With only 21 data points it is far easier to skew the average lower with a couple really low numbers than it is to skew it higher because there's no possibility of a 130 MPH hit. So the percentage of balls hit really hard is more important than the average because the average doesn't have enough data points to tell a real story yet. Stroman has a 20% K rate. Valdez has a 26% K rate. Keuchel hasn't touched 20% since 2017. And it was 0 yesterday. If you're going to go off his 5 IP yesterday you don't get to ignore that 0. The debate is whether or not he can sustain that performance. If he can't K people he can't maintain that performance. He's not suddenly going to bounce back to a 20% K rate after 6 years. Because 2015 was 8 years ago and he hasn't been nearly that effective in 5 years. You're using 5 IP to suggest a 35 year old who hasn't been any good at all in years is going to turn back the clock 5 to 8 years. His sinker was at 30.1 inches of vertical drop last year. It was at 30.5 yesterday. It was 25.9 in 2016. Is he closer to 2022 Keuchel or 2016 Keuchel? I'm not sure where you're getting it being the same as back then when it's 4 inches of difference. Sure, the changeup has more drop, but it lost a significant part of it's run, and was closer in speed to his sinker. Why is his K rate so sure to not be under 14%? It was 13.2 in 2021, and 14.9 in 2022. Why would we think it's so surely going to spike this year? Even if it is 14%, or even 16%, when his exit velo normalizes to the high 80s/low 90s he's not going to be stranding 90% of his runners when he's still allowing 1.5 to 2 runners an inning. Thus his overall performance is not sustainable. Fair enough. If 23 batters was enough to convince you Keuchel is ready to turn the clock back 8 years then we'll just agree to disagree. I hope you're right. It'll be cool to see a 35 year old suddenly start pitching like he's in the prime of his career again. But nothing about his 5 IP, 23 BF start yesterday suggests to me that that's what we're about to see.

Well neither of those guys is a .170 hitter against lefties so I'm not sure what the point is? Over the final 2 months of the season it's such a small sample size of opportunity that I don't really care which one of them they pick. I actually don't think the FO came up with an answer of "no." I think they carried Solano for that situation. They're massive believers in platoon splits and force themselves into really weird spots because of it.

You didn't say XBH, you said XBA so that was my confusion there. By the statcast definition of "barrel," sure, guys weren't "barreling up baseballs." But hitting the ball over 90 MPH is getting the barrel on the ball. And if you're letting 2 guys every inning hit the ball that hard (I didn't even count the 2 other balls that were hit at 88.4 and 88.5 MPH) you're not setting yourself up for sustainable success because a fraction of an inch higher or lower on that barrel and those balls are to the warning track or seats. He gave up an avg exit velo of 88.3 in 2021, and 88.8 in 2022. So seeing over half the balls put in play against him be at, or above, those numbers isn't encouraging at all for his sustained success. I'm confused by your entire stance. You go from "I didn't believe in him and wanted Varland, etc. instead of him" to "his expected data (unless you ignore the expected data I didn't like) and hard hit data were bad, but now I'm a big believer in him because he has an admittedly unsustainable GB% in 5 innings!" All of his expected data points, even from that miniscule 5 IP sample size, are in line with his last 2 years when he was atrocious, but you're trying to sell that we just ignore that because his sample size was so small that a couple extremely low outlier balls in play skewed his exit velo numbers, and he had an unsustainably low launch angle against? Comparing a 5 inning start at the age of 35 to his age 27 season is some awfully questionable analytics work. Oh, and Varland was basically the exact pitcher you're describing being happy if Keuchel becomes. So I'm not sure why those 5 IP made you change your mind on that front. He had a 5.30 ERA in 10 starts while you're suggesting that Keuchel is a clearly better option because you expect a 5.40 ERA (3 earned over 5 IP) over 9 starts.

I guess my overall point is simply that neither of them make any real difference. I'm not interested in playing the "which below average player is going to be 2-5% better than the other below average player" game. Neither of these guys significantly improve the team's chances of winning playoff games so I'm just not interested in which player they shouldn't be relying on that they go with. I don't want either of them on the roster. But, as you said, moot point now.

Interesting. Thanks for the heads up.

Sounds like he's headed to Cleveland.

No thanks. Doesn't bring anything Luplow doesn't. Switching around our "hits against lefties only" cOF bat does nothing for me.

Starts with the league of the releasing team (so AL in this example) and goes from worst record to best. If none of them place a claim it goes to the other league and goes from worst record to best.

No, I don't think those things are sustainable, actually. Unless your argument is that Dallas Keuchel is going to have his 3rd highest ground ball rate of his career, and highest since 2017. He has broken 55% once since then (58.2% in 2019). So, no, I don't think he can sustain that. I'm not sure what you mean by "two XBA-worthy batted balls in five innings." He gave up 9 balls hit over 90 MPH in 5 innings. That's nearly 2 an inning. If you're giving up 2 balls hit over 90 MPH every inning you don't get to then complain about giving up 60 MPH hits. No, an ERA of 5+ is not "about as good as you can ask for" from your #5 starter if you're trying to win a division, and think you're a real playoff contender. Not at all. Not even close. There are 7 qualified pitchers in all of baseball with an ERA over 5. Only 13 with an ERA over 4.5. Even dropping the innings requirement down to 90 gets you to 23 pitchers with an ERA over 4.5. Dylan Bundy didn't even have an ERA over 5 last year, let alone 5.40. We can, and absolutely should, be demanding more than 3 runs over 5 innings from any and every pitcher who ever takes the mound for the Twins.

They are absolutely not useless for prediction. In terms of predicting exactly what their WHIP or ERA is going to be for a full season? Sure. But in predicting likelihood of effective pitching for a super small sample size? They're absolutely useful, especially when used in conjunction with K%, and if you emphasize their BB% in regards to WHIP. We're not talking about team building or big picture/season long stuff here, just whether or not we should expect Dallas Keuchel to be useful for a handful of starts. We don't need to do a deep dive into analytics here. I'm all for analytics, but a guy who hasn't been good at keeping guys off base for multiple years, and 225+ innings, hasn't been good at keeping guys from scoring for multiple years, and 225+ innings, and doesn't strike anyone out is a pretty safe bet to continue to not be good at keeping guys off base, not letting them score, or getting Ks. If Keuchel is absolutely perfect with his command and control he can succeed. I don't need analytics to tell me that the chances of any human performing to that level of expectation for any extended period of time, or from appearance to appearance, is miniscule. We don't need to overthink this. The odds of Keuchel being useful for any real amount of time are incredibly small. Let's hope he can hold on for dear life as long as we need him, though.

Guess I could've read the article where it states that this stuff predated this season and was happening under TLR. So there goes my theory.

Not sure BA is really the way you want to go when suggesting Kepler is good and Buxton is bad. Kepler is a career .233 hitter. And this hot streak where he's hitting .328 since the break? That raised his BA this year to a whopping..... .238.

Interesting. This was Middleton's first year in Chicago. Would be interesting to hear from the guys who'd been there a while (Lynn, Giolito, etc.) who were moved on if this is a drastic change from the TLR years previously. Did the org try to swing the pendulum back the other way and over compensate?

Dallas Keuchel had a 2.060 WHIP in 60.2 innings last year. His WHIP in 162 innings in 2021 was 1.531. So his WHIP in his last 227.2 major league innings is 1.6823. We're well aware that a 1 game WHIP isn't a useful data point on it's own. But he hasn't been good for years. His WHIP in AAA when some people around here were claiming he was dominating was 1.25. That's not exactly a great data point for him suddenly being better than a 1.6+ WHIP at the major league level.

I'm just not overly interested in that sort of "cross your fingers and hope" strategy in August with a team struggling with consistency while trying to win a division. Maybe he only gets 3 starts and is released when Ryan comes back. Not the end of the world. But this isn't the route I'd go, and this FO's obsession with holding onto vets scares me and makes me think we'll see 8-10 starts out of him even if he starts giving up 7 earned in 2 innings every other start. I generally want to keep hope and prayer vets away from this FO because they don't move on from them quickly.

I am willing to bet just about anything that 35 year old Dallas Keuchel is not getting back to 29 year old Dallas Keuchel levels.

You say "20-30 points lower" like he was hitting .150 in those situations or something. 20-30 points lower was still .280. He was a .286/.412/.410/.822 hitter in high leverage situations and this is what you want to complain about? This is your big "he was overrated" argument? He only hit .286 in 1500+ high leverage PAs? Had an OBP over .400 in 1500+ high leverage PAs? Yeah, real downer of a hitter in high leverage spots. He had an .822 OPS in high leverage situations and you're mad at it. That's quite a hill to die on. And walk offs? How many chances at a walk off did he have from 2008 to 2017? Was he 0-100? 0-5? 0-0? Going to need some more context before that's a big "got him" argument.

I think a WHIP of 2 with an inability to strike people out is completely and totally unsustainable.

"During his last few seasons?" Few is 3. So his 3rd to last season he hit .265. Definitely not ideal. Down year for sure. His second to last season he hit .305 with a 115 OPS+. He was 15th in baseball in BA. His last season he hit .282. I assume you were a fan of the Arraez trade since he was a first baseman without power. Mauer was the best catcher in American League history when they extended him. A Hall of Famer in his prime coming off an MVP season. I will never understand even questioning trading that player. There was no reason to think he didn't have another 6 elite years in him. If your FO tells you their rebuild plan is going to take 6+ seasons you should probably find a new FO. I will never understand the idea of not trying to have great players until your "rebuild" is complete, or close to. Imagine if the Rangers would've taken that approach instead of signing Seager and Semien. To each their own, but I will never understand why anyone would want their team to not bring in, or retain, great players at any point. Not going to argue that you should've enjoyed Mauer's career as much as you enjoyed Killebrew, Oliva, or Carew's. Or even put him in their category, objectively or not. But he's a Hall of Famer. Why would we ever want the team to trade him? Especially when we knew he'd prefer to stay here if they offered him anything reasonable. I just don't get that stance. Even knowing how his entire career played out afterward.