chpettit19

I'm going to start by saying I'm good with firing Popkins so people don't yell at me. Because I'm good with firing everyone at this point. But I don't know what we think it will change by just firing Popkins. Popkins was brought in because the FO has a certain idea about what makes a good hitting coach, and what a good offensive approach is. If they don't change those ideas (and I have no reason to think they have, or will) whoever they bring in wouldn't fix the problems. And, as others have mentioned, there's not a lot of world class MLB hitting coaches sitting on their couches in July looking for a job. If this FO fires Popkins they wouldn't suddenly bring in a hitting coach that specializes in slapping the ball around and never striking out. I know I'm a broken record around here, but coaches simply don't have magic potions that suddenly turn bad hitters into good ones. I'm fine firing Popkins, but I don't know what people think that's going to fix. Gallo isn't suddenly going to be a contact hitter. Kepler isn't going to suddenly loosen up his swing so it isn't so grooved and rigged. Miranda won't suddenly stop swinging at everything. Castro isn't going to magically be an .800 OPS bat. This lineup is flawed. Severely flawed. Firing a hitting coach isn't going to undo those flaws. This lineup simply isn't good enough. So I'm good with them firing whoever. But if it doesn't include Falvey and Levine it isn't going to matter anyways. Not for this year, or any others.

You seemed to have missed the phrase "part of" in my response. Perhaps the "case of tunnel vision" is in your reading. I'm a big proponent of defense mattering, but offense matters more. Especially in a corner outfield spot on a team that struggles to score 2 runs most nights. Yes, I would put Wallner out there and sacrifice some defense to see if he can help pick up the offense. You want to change nothing while the team continues to be completely incapable of scoring at a reasonable pace in the name of "keeping the starters that began the year out there because that's what fans pay to see." Brilliant.

Nope, we think it's a POSSIBLE solution to part of the Twins problems. We know he ISN'T a solution so we'd like to see if someone else is.

Fair. But the idea that they don't know who has a legit chance to succeed unless they call them up is inaccurate. They didn't need to send me to the bigs after college to know I wasn't a major league player. The obviousness shrinks as the talent rises, but it doesn't disappear. Holes in swings end careers. It's that simple. If you have multiple holes in your swing, or multiple pitches you can't hit, you simply can't succeed at the major league level. If you don't have a second pitch, or can't throw multiple pitches for good strikes, you simply can't succeed at the major league level. Because the real major leaguers are too good. The pitchers will throw you off speed pitch after off speed pitch until a team sends you back to AAA (see: Larnach, Trevor). The hitters will sit on a pitch and absolutely destroy it time after time until a team sends you back to AAA (see: Pagan, Emilio. Oh wait...).

I think there was a 0% chance the Marlins were trading the reigning Cy Young winner. And I'm not even sure what they would've done with another starter. They already had to start Ober in AAA this year. You may have been someone who didn't trust Mahle or Maeda, but they weren't going to take away their rotation spots before the year even started whether fans wanted it or not. Completely agree that Arraez alone would not have saved this offense. If Correa was hitting to career norms, and Buxton could play CF (opening the DH spot), and Polanco were healthy and his usual self offensively this offense would look way better, even without Arraez. Arraez would be a nice addition to that trio, but just having that trio doing what they're capable of would have people bemoaning Arraez far less. I'm also not sure how they fix this in the near term. I do know that running the same 13 position players out there isn't the answer, though.

Kepler has a low batting average on a team setting low batting average records; he is the solution how?

I don't like keeping those guys around either, but the idea that anyone "won't get a 40 man roster spot no matter what (they) do" isn't one I buy. I've been calling for them to move on from guys for a while. I'm with you there. But I don't see it as close to throwing semi-educated darts at a dart board as you seem to. I don't know if you're someone who attends games, or spring training, but I'd suggest seeing if you can bump into a pro scout someday and have a chat at a game. It's absolutely not anywhere near an exact science, but it's far better than just blind guessing. Wallner was a high pick for a reason. He's playing well in AAA. He plays Max's position. I wouldn't have picked him that high, and am not at all sold on his ability to be an MLB regular, but I don't get why he isn't someone they take a chance on to see if he's better than Max at this stage of their careers. That 1 change can't tank this season, but maybe it can help save it. I think you may change your view a little if you sit and talk with someone who does this for a living, though. There's not as much competition for MLB spots as you may think. The difference between those guys and minor leaguers is gigantic. I think people underestimate what it takes to be even an average MLB player. I'm all for giving Wallner a shot over Gallo or Kepler. Fine with seeing what Larnach can do for the rest of the year, too. But there's nobody else on that AAA roster that has all that reasonable of a chance of being a 90, or 111, wRC+ guy. Legit major league players are night and day better than minor leaguers. And if you talk with someone who can break it down for you in real time it may change your view on things a little.

I think the word "improving" is pretty key here. Changing the lineup is really straightforward. The only straightforward option for trying to improve it is to lean on the young guys and hope they're better. I'm not sold that they are, but hoping that the current guys magically become better is a really straightforward way to not improve. I don't agree with the idea that the young guys can't be worse that gets mentioned here pretty often. They absolutely could be. But they could also be better. I think it's time to find out, but a large chunk of that is my fear that they go into next year with the same questions on the younger guys. If I'm being totally honest with myself, I'm not sold on any of these young bats being real answers. I don't think Wallner hits enough to make up for his bad defense (Gallo with negative defensive value is his most likely outcome to me). I don't think Larnach is significantly better than Kepler with the bat (he simply can't hit off speed stuff), and he's not as good defensively. Celestino is no offensive answer. Martin just started playing again. Basically all the big bats in St Paul strike out a ton there, and I don't know why we'd think they'd be better at that in the bigs. I just don't see a real straightforward answer in the minors. I'd still make moves and give them chances, though. I would've done it a month ago, actually, because it'd have answered the question of which spots really need outside help. But instead we're where the OP describes and have no idea if the young guys are actually answers, and bringing in outside options just means we won't know for next year either.

Oh there's more mistakes than successes in the world of sport. Not just with the Twins, but any team. The hits are far fewer than the misses. Professional sports are really hard. It's why the rest of us are on the internet talking about them, and not playing them. Mickey Moniak has gotten chances. He's continued to get them, and it's because he was pick 1-1 back in 2016. He's actually an example (in a very, very small sample) of a guy who gets chances to stick around because of his physical tools in hopes that he eventually puts it all together. I'd argue the Angels did see it, and it's why they went and got him from the Phillies. Did the Angels see something the Phillies didn't? Likely not, but the Angels were more willing to give him AAA time to see if a "change of scenery" helped unlock some things. I haven't watched many Saints games, and don't know how Williams is going about putting up his numbers. He's 26, was an 8th round senior sign pick, and provides 0 tools outside possibly his bat. In order for him to be an MLB regular he has to absolutely mash. Can he? Maybe. But he had an absolutely scorching June, and it's carrying his overall numbers this year. Did he do all that damage against a bunch of different pitch types, in multiple quadrants of the zone? Or did he happen to hammer fastballs over the heart of the plate for a month? I don't know. But I'm not going to say the Twins are doing anything crazy if it's obvious that he has a hole or 2 or 5 in his swing, but happened to have a month where AAA pitchers couldn't hit those holes. I don't know enough about him to have an opinion. He has a strikeout rate over 32% in AAA. That alone is enough to give me real questions about his ability to consistently hit major league pitching. I'm not a fan of Kepler still being here. I thought the Gallo contract was worth the risk since his known MLB upside is an all star, gold glover. I have no answer on how Pagan got a contract this year. My point is that there's a whole lot more to "getting chances" than looking at minor league numbers with no real context. I'm all for giving some of the young guys a shot over Kepler, Gallo, Pagan, etc. I don't have high hopes that they're great players or anything, but I know what those 3 guys are, and I know they're not good enough to get the Twins where I want them to go. I do think people talk about Wallner around Twins Territory like we're sitting on Barry Bonds or something. He's got massive holes in his swing, and he's going to K at incredible rates. Teams don't (or shouldn't) need to see a guy in the majors to know they have holes in their swings. It's why I despise the "just call him up cuz you don't know what you have until you do" narrative that some fans enjoy. They do know. If you can't hit a high fastball in the minors, or elite breaking balls for strikes, you can't hit in the majors. Teams don't need to see you in the majors to know that. And with all the extra data out there now the other teams will embarrass you until your team is kind enough to demote you if you have a huge, and obvious hole. The idea that "they can't be worse" is wrong. These guys could be worse than Kepler, Gallo, and Pagan. The worse MLB player is still better than a whole lot of minor league players. But a whole bunch of minor league guys could be better than them. I want them to move on from those 3 guys, but let's also be honest enough to admit that Wallner, Williams, whoever could be far worse just like we hope they're far better.

Love it. Let's see if he can stick in CF.

Totally fair. I think 19 is too high to rank him, but I'd guess all 5 of these guys are higher than him after the draft if MLB cares about their FV rankings, or the fact that their draft/prospect specialists have both stated that all 5 would've been in the running for the top pick last year. I don't think Lee has done anything this year to show his draft spot was too low, and he was really a 1-1 guy. MLB has them all with FV grades of 60, or 65, while Lee is a 55. But there's more that goes into rankings so it's possible they'd put the kids lower. I'd still like to see them take the 60 FV guy, and I'd rank them (in my obviously super expert opinion 😄) all ahead of Lee.

My exact thoughts. Take a swing at the highest likelihood of an absolute star instead of your best chance at getting another average major leaguer. We know what a team full of average players can do. Struggle to stay at .500 and get swept out of the playoffs. Try to find a star!

I think there's some debate on the 2 high school kids being above Lee. In fact, I'd argue the opposite and say there's not much debate that they'd clearly be above Lee. If they would be likely #1 picks in most of the recent drafts, and Lee went 8th, wouldn't that mean they'd likely have gone before him last year, and thus be ranked higher than him? I think any of the top 5 would immediately be the Twins top prospect in most public rankings, and the real debate is where the guys in the next tier would rank compared to Lee. And since I don't see Lee as a future star, I really hope they take someone who jumps him in the rankings immediately.

A lot of it has to do with stuff we as fans aren't really watching, or even privy to sometimes. We can all look up minor league numbers since we have access to the internet. But how a player comes to those numbers is far more complicated, and that's what (good) teams are looking at when making a decision on who gets more chances, and who doesn't. Since it's draft time I'll use Skenes as my pitching example. He put up insane numbers this year, with incredible velo numbers that we can all see, and I'd guess he dominates at the lower minors immediately, and maybe even the high minors this year. But what teams are looking at are how he gets hitters out. The SEC is as good as it gets in college baseball, but there's plenty of guys at that level that 100+ over and over just blows away. He didn't need more than his fastball and slider. In the bigs he most likely will need to develop his change to at least have it in the hitter's head if he wants to dominate as a starter. But his fastball and slider will get him time because they make his ceiling sky high if he develops a 3rd pitch, and teams are willing to be patient with potential. For hitters they're looking at how they reach their hitting numbers as well. Larnach, as is well known, really struggles with off speed stuff. He can mash minors pitching because those guys can't get their off speed stuff over as consistently which leads to them throwing him more fastballs which he then pounds. Because he has the potential to spray the ball around the field, and hit 450 ft homeruns, he keeps getting chances to show he can figure out how to hit breaking stuff. Elite physical talents gets you extra chances. The good teams are the ones who are able to figure out how each player's individual talents will play at the next level up. The Arraez's of the world don't get so many chances because their margin for error is so much smaller. He's an extreme example because he's basically 1 of 1 in baseball today. It's really hard to hit well when you can't impact the ball well. He has to hit it at the right angle, and in the right direction, constantly or he's hitting lazy fly balls or 20 hoppers. But a guy like Larnach who can hit the ball much harder doesn't have to be as precise. But guys in the minors who put up all their numbers by being pull happy, fastball mashers, with big holes in their swings don't get many shots because teams know MLB pitchers will carve them up. So really long post just to say the sample size, and chances a player gets, are based on the "how" of attaining their numbers paired with physical gifts so they're all on a spectrum. And it pays to be 6'4" and really athletic.

Welcome to Twins Daily! Great first post. I'm with you. If they go with Gonzalez I'm going to lose my mind. The baseball gods gifted them the #5 pick in a draft with a clear top 5. Take one of the top 5.

He definitely has the possibility to dip. And they both had team control left so it's not all about just this year when it comes to the trade. Pretty crazy, to me, to judge a trade less than 100 games in. As for pitchers vs hitters games, yes, the hitter appears in more, but Arraez gets 3-5 PAs a game he plays in while Lopez faces 20+ hitters in the games he plays in. Where the separator comes in is a hitter also fielding. They get more opportunities to impact a season overall if they get enough balls hit at them, but then you have to factor in their defense, and can't just point to their hitting line and say it's all that matters. Marcus Semien lead baseball with 724 PAs last year. 5 guys had at least 700. Sandy Alcantara lead baseball with 886 batters faced last year. 7 guys had at least 800, and 38 had at least 700. So just looking at games played vs games started doesn't tell the whole story on impact. If you're just comparing hitting to pitching, a starter actually wins. The defense is the difference maker.

Well there's a little more to it than that. The Rangers, for example, have a total bonus pool of $9,925,300 this year. If Skenes is demanding 9 mil (not saying he is, just an example) that'd leave them with less than 1 mil to sign the rest of their first 10 rounds of picks. It'd be one heck of a bold move for their FO to give 1 guy 9 out of 10 mil available to them. Unless they're planning to go over their bonus pool and incur the penalties associated with that.

*Qualified NL players.

Losing Arraez (Tony Gwynn 2.0 as I like to call him) will always, and forever, make me sad. Lopez wasn't the guy I wanted back in the trade either. But I'm willing to bet any amount of money you want that Arraez doesn't hit .400 this year, or any other year, and Lopez looks much better than I thought he'd be. Luis topped out at .355 on July 9th last year and went downhill from there. He's started to dip a little in Miami this year. Will be fun to see where he ends up at the end of the year. I'd bet he ends up higher than .316, but I'm quite certain it's going to be below .400. This trade has the chance to be both incredibly depressing incredibly joyful. Will be fun to track the remainder of these guys' careers. Right now it's looking pretty even to me, because I don't think Luis Arraez is actually going to hit .400.

Oh, for sure. At the end of the day it's all a crap shoot. And we're all going off what we read, since, as far as I know, there's not many actual MLB scouts roaming these threads daily. My concern with the Twins is that they seem to be very much model driven. As in data over human scouts. And their model seems to heavily favor college bats (they've as much as admitted this). I was also in a Q&A with Levine a couple years ago where he talked about their belief that finding impact bats was harder later on so they go that way early in the draft. This combination leads to less athletic guys with big college exit velo numbers (Wallner, Rooker, Sabato, Larnach types) that have a naturally lower ceiling as an overall player. Jenkins isn't as fast as the other 3 top bats, but he's still getting mostly 55 grade evaluations on his future speed from what I've seen. If the Twins model is spitting out Jacob Gonzalez (as some rumors have suggested) as the likely BPA at #5 it seems to me like the model should be thrown out. I'd definitely prefer Crews or Langford, followed by Clark, but I'll take Jenkins (or at least the profiles I keep reading on him) over anyone outside the top 5. Him being ranked well doesn't guarantee him anything, but when basically every source you can find says there's a top 5 followed by a drop off, and you're picking #5, I just don't want them "getting cute," as has become the phrase used around here. Take a big swing. I have no problem with a team taking a big swing on a consensus top pick, and that pick not working out. I have a huge problem with a team passing on a consensus top 5 talent for a lower talent, and then that guy not working out. Even if they saved money for a better pick at 34 or 49. I want stars. This team needs stars. Not DH, or no defense corner bat, stars. True stars. The top 4 bats all get pretty much universal "star upside" grades. Take the star upside guy. Teel sounds like his ceiling is "really nice player." I don't want that with pick 5. I want "perennial all star." Go big or go home. To me, this is the baseball gods testing the FO. "We blessed you with a massive jump in the inaugural draft lottery. We gave you 5 guys with pick 1-1 upside, and put you in the 5th spot. Don't slap us in the face by taking Jacob Gonzalez."

Dang, that's intriguing. 1.5 years of Goldy for Julien would be something I'd be awfully tempted by. And I don't believe he's ever been given a QO so it's possible if he maintains his production they could have him for another year, or get a pick back for him. I don't think Julien will ever field well so he's a bat only player for me. And I'm pretty open to trading some of those guys. It'd depend on what their internal thoughts are on Polanco ever being healthy again, Lewis' future position, and how close they think Lee is. Really intriguing trade.

Jenkins is also 5th on my list of top 5 guys, and I'd prefer Clark because of his ability to stay in CF. I'm not sure if Jenkins will be able to or not, but I'm quite positive Clark will. Crews is my preference over Langford because I also don't think Langford is a CFer in the pros (he's fast, but does not read balls well). But I take Jenkins if he's there. Along the lines of what @Beast said, I don't care even a tiny bit about organizational "need." The organization needs talent. It's that simple to me. If these 5 guys are truly the 5 most talented, and would all come in as the likely #1 prospect in the system from day 1, you have to take one of them. I don't care if the Twins have 75 lefty hitting corner outfielders in the organization if none of them are as good as Jenkins. Accumulate the most talent you can and go from there. It'd definitely be more desirable for Jenkins to be a sure fire CFer, but if he's Juan Soto, or Barry Bonds, or Christian Yelich (the MVP years), or Larry Walker, or "pick your favorite lefty cOF" why do we care? If he's the highest ceiling player left at 5 take him. I don't care about bonus pool manipulation, "organizational need," what hand he hits with, or anything else. Take the highest ceiling player available at #5. If that's Jenkins I'll be happy and start watching our new #1 prospect on MiLB.tv as soon as they get him signed and in uniform.

I agree that the Twins would very likely have offered that 4 year deal, but if I were Berrios at the time I'd have said "no thanks, trade me" as well. Good for him for getting paid. It's looking like Toronto may be paying more for his MN performance than his Toronto performance, but nobody expected him to struggle like he did last year. I'd guess most trades are pretty "meh" kinds of things in terms of win/lose. Which is the goal for both teams. They're both looking to pay equal value just in different currency. People suggested trading Ober? That's a bold move. I have real questions about his ability to hold up as a starter, and am fascinated to see how they handle his innings the 2nd half, but he's a legit arm with team control through his prime. Would be really weird to trade that. Even if he breaks down this year you still have him as a pen weapon into his 30s. He's there best development story as a FO. Hard to believe they'd trade the 1 guy they can point to as having developed start to finish into a legit MLB starter.

I think it's pretty fair to say both Kepler and the Twins expected more than a league average hitter. I think it's pretty fair to say they expected him to have an OPS+ over 100 more than twice in 8+ seasons. Especially when 1 of those seasons had a funny ball, and the other was only 60 games long. You'll never convince me that the Twins or Kepler would honestly say they'd be happy with slightly below average offense out of him in the vast majority of his years. I don't for 1 second think it's only fans expectations that have been missed. You don't hit a guy in the top 5 of your lineup for half a decade and expect them to spit out below average numbers. He's come up short on all expectations. But, yes, he's a legit major leaguer that would find a spot on many teams. The problem is the team kept pretending he was suddenly going to be a top 5 hitter. And those circumstances have lead to him not meeting expectations. If he were the 4th OFer his performance would be meeting that role's expectations, but even then he'd have come up short on expectations, because all involved expected him to be more than a 4th OFer.

I don't know that I'd be excited about the deal, but I wouldn't be crazy upset about it. 15, 17, 18, 18 before his opt out isn't bad at all for a mid-rotation guy. But if he doesn't improve I assume he'll opt in, and then I'd be pretty cranky with 24, 24 in his age 33 and 34 seasons. I think the trade made sense, I think the extension made sense, and I think right now neither side is pointing at this trade as a masterclass in winning trades. Berrios and Ober would be my guess, but that's only because I don't think Ryan's ERA is down at 2.7 after that Atlanta performance.