chpettit19

Like I said, you can like him. You can hold out hope. He has 711 PAs of .200/.265/.400/.665 slash. After May his slash line was nearly identical to his career line. Justify your belief however you want. He is who he is and it's the slash line I continue to provide. When I can take out 1 very clear outlier of a month and get essentially his exact career slash line for the rest of the season it's pretty obvious that month should be ignored. You can believe the 10%, I'll take the 90. Thanks for the chat, but we'll just have to agree to disagree.

"Maybe" that month is the best he can do? The rest of his season is nearly identical to his career line. I mean it's almost impossible to get closer. He was -.003 in BA, +.004 in OBP, -.001 in SLG, and +.004 in OPS. That is who he is. He's a .200/.265/.400/.665 hitter. He has 700+ major league PAs showing that. This conversation is going nowhere. You can like him. You can hold out hope he's closer to that 70 PA sample size from May. I'll go ahead and take the other 711 PAs that show he's very consistently the exact same .665 OPS hitter. And, no, absolutely not. If he'd cratered back down to his career norms for 4 months and 300+ PAs of .660 OPS he would not be with the Phillies anymore. You know how I know? Because that exact thing happened last season and they demoted him. He had a .908 OPS through May last year, .601 from June through September. Ended the season with a .706 OPS. But the Phillies didn't just carry him the whole season because his May stat line was carrying his season long OPS, they demoted him. He had 79 PAs after May because he was bad and they were trying to win and weren't going to waste PAs on a bad player. So, no, he wouldn't still be with the Phillies because teams aren't naive enough to blindly just look at overall OPS and not look into it any further. He didn't have options left this year so they didn't demote him they DFA'd him. Then the Twins got their hands on him and carried him all season despite him cratering back down and now you're arguing that he's actually good and a good team would still carry him despite that very team having refused to carry him just last season when he did the exact same thing because who he is is the .200/.265/.400/.665 hitter his career numbers over 700+ PAs say he is.

And that's why I described Gallo's season with the Twins as "a disaster." I don't care what Clemens was paid. He's not an MLB player. The fact that he's going into his age 30 season and hasn't hit true arbitration (he'll likely be a super 2) isn't some badge of honor, it's more evidence to my point. He couldn't get to 3 years service time before he was 30. That's the league screaming at you that he's not good enough. You shouldn't be surprised I'm unwilling to consider him a bench player when he has the stats he has at the age of 30. Having such a small sample size at this point of his career that 1 singular month can have such an outsized impact on his career line is not impressive, it's another indictment. Teams that ignore 5 months of data in favor of 1 month of data struggle. Teams that ignore 13 months of data for 1 month of data end up like the Twins. Kody Clemens has 13 months of data showing who he truly is, ignoring that 1 month carried his stat line this year to still below average instead of way below average is bad player evaluation. Kody Clemens is not a major leaguer and he is example A of how bad things truly are around 1 Twins Way.

Because Gallo put up significantly better numbers than Clemens. His career OBP and SLG were both 50 points higher than Clemens. And his peak was All Star level good where he was putting up multiple 800 to 900+ OPS seasons. Clemens great breakout season barely cracked 700 and he's a career .666 OPS guy. Even after his career completely fell apart Gallo still ended up with a career OPS 60 pts higher than Clemens big breakout year, and over 100 pts higher than Clemens career. He was a significantly better player. That's why he got his last couple shots. Shoot, Gallo's season with the Twins was a disaster and he still ended with nearly a .750 OPS while being over .300 in OBP with a .440 slug.

I hope you're right. I just see no reason to believe it. In order to believe that you have to believe he disagreed with things Rocco did and only fired him because he thought it was the right move and Rocco was bad at his job. Nothing he's ever said or done before this move has ever suggested that in the least. If Rocco had been fired early in the season when they got off to a rough start after the collapse last year I would feel differently. This doesn't read, to me, as a move made because Falvey learned a lesson and really thought an overhaul of clubhouse leadership and in game strategy needed to happen. It reads, to me, as the last scapegoat before Falvey so he had no choice but to pull the trigger. If Falvey was doing this because he thought a pivot was necessary, I would have expected that before the season turned into the post-deadline joke it became. It, in my opinion, would've came while the move still could've had an impact on the season.

And after his 1 outlier month of May he wasn't that player. He slugged .400 while hitting .200 with an OBP well below .300. That isn't the kind of power teams want. Especially not from a guy who's "position flexibility" is mostly 1B and the corner outfield. And he's 30, not 25. They'll hope to get more out of him on a minor league deal. His stats after May are almost identical to his career numbers. That's what teams are going to look at. .200/.260/.400. That isn't even a bench bat at the positions he plays. Unless you're the Twins.

I think this is the core question, though. Did those decisions come from on high or was that all Rocco? He played Lee, Julien, Lewis, Miranda, Wallner, Kirilloff, and Larnach all extensively when they were called up. Minus the platooning of the lefties. I find it impossible to believe that Falvey and the front office nerds (I'm a nerd so that's not a rude word) watched him manage those guys how he did and felt it was the wrong way to do it but didn't change a thing over his entire tenure. Falvey and Rocco talked every day during the season. Multiple times some days. There's no way they were putting their heads together to solve the problems at the end of last year and all of this year watching guys underperform while Falvey thought Rocco was misusing young players and didn't make a change. Falvey believes in those strategies, it's why they were deployed. Falvey didn't bring in the Margot, Luplow, and Garlicks of the world because he thought Rocco would use them any differently than he did. Why should we expect anything other than Rocco 2.0 to be hired? I don't believe Falvey fired Rocco because he disagreed with anything he did. He fired him because the Pohlads said they needed a fall guy and Falvey couldn't just use the hitting coaches again. Falvey believes in these strategies and built teams designed specifically to use them. Change needs to start at the top. Until Falvey goes there's no reason to believe different strategies will be used. Joe Maddon has a lot of great stuff out there about the overreaching of front offices into the clubhouse. He's very open about it being the reason he doesn't manage anymore. If the front office isn't going to change their directives to the manager, then who the manager is doesn't mean much. If they are going to continue to build rosters designed to have players move around a lot and platoon like crazy then we're just going to see the same thing. It all starts at the top. Firing Rocco had to happen. No way you could explain away bringing him back next year. But it doesn't solve any core problems because they all start at the top.

Yeah, we'll have to agree to disagree on Larnach and France. France has outhit Clemens his entire career and got legit PAs for the #1 seed in the AL down the stretch. Larnach has a better chance of getting a non-Twins roster spot this offseason than Clemens. By quite a bit. And Lee at least provides possible future value, so giving him PAs down the stretch of a lost season and to start next year makes infinitely more sense than Kody Clemens getting PAs. But that's all besides the point. Kody Clemens wouldn't get an MLB deal in free agency. But he's likely to be on the Twins roster next year because their bar for entrance is set so incredibly low. If he's a super 2 and they pay him more than league minimum it's absolutely an overpay and there's no other team in baseball who would pay him that deal. Ty France made a non-guaranteed $1 million this year. He's outperformed Clemens by a mile in their respective careers and Clemens would be going into free agency at the same age as France when he got that deal from the Twins. Kody Clemens is a minor league player who'd get an invite to training camp. He's not an MLB player. But this article is arguing the Twins should've/would've been happy with Julien being Clemens with the bat. Neither of them are MLB players and it's really not even that close. Thats how badly they've destroyed this team.

Show me those 2000 plate appearances. The Twins had 6059 total PAs this season. Larnach, Buxton, Lee, Jeffers, Lewis, Wallner, France, Clemens, Correa, Castro, and Bader make up 4676 of those PAs. Take out Lee if you want to argue he's worse than career norm Clemens (I'd argue they're essentially the same, but we can take him out) and you're at 4149 PAs amongst those other guys. So, you're already under 2000 PAs without accounting for Luke Keaschall or Austin Martin who add another 388 to the list and now you're at 1522 PAs. So, the starting point for an argument about PAs going to worse players starts at 1500. And if you think Lee playing SS gives him a boost to being better than career norm Clemens since their bats are essentially the same, you're down to under 1000. I will take that bet. If the Twins don't bring him back, Kody Clemens will not be on an opening day roster. He'll be a 30-year-old with limited defensive abilities and a .670 OPS bat. He's a NRI on a minor league deal if the Twins don't bring him back. I fully expect the Twins to bring him back. Like I said, it's not a high bar to make this roster. He won't be the only non-MLB-quality player on it. And that's embarrassing just 2 years after finally winning a playoff series.

I think Outman is safe. While I don't think the FO is as arrogant as others seem to think, I also don't think they're dropping him 2 months after trading a controllable asset for him. Stewart wasn't worth much, but I can't imagine them dropping Outman this quickly after that trade. I think Fitzgerald has a decent chance of sticking around. League minimum bench guy who can play SS seems like a good fit on this roster since I don't expect them to spend any real money. They don't have any other glove that can cover SS and not need everyday time. You're going to play Lee everyday while he's "the guy" there. If/when you call up Culpepper it's to play every day. I think Fitzgerald showed enough to be their bench infielder for league minimum to start the year. Oddly, the selloff may actually "help" (is it really a positive for him to be stuck on this roster?) Larnach stick around. It will come down to what the payroll situation really is. He's not worth what his price will be in arbitration, but they also have so little talent they may keep him around. From what Gleeman has said, it sounds like he has no trade value and nobody wanted him at the deadline. Financially speaking, Larnach will want to stick around. It's his best bet at making 5+ mil next year. But in pure baseball/competitive terms, Larnach should want to be non-tendered so he can look for a role on a competing team even if it cost him a little dough. This will be a very interesting offseason. Not in a fun way where we're hoping for difference makers, but just in the sense that they could turn over nearly the whole 40-man roster from July 31 to opening day and it'd be pretty easy to justify almost all of it. So many open spots available for even halfway decent players.

How many PAs were given to players worse than Julien? Unless your answer is 0 so you're literally arguing he's the worst player in MLB and that's why he doesn't deserve a spot on any roster then I don't understand the argument. 1. The Twins didn't give 2000 PAs to worse players than career norm/June through September Kody Clemens. 2. Just because the Twins, and other teams, had a number of other players who also weren't MLB quality doesn't make Clemens MLB quality. If you're using his season stat line and including the complete and utter outlier that was his month of May in your argument, cool, have at it. Good luck getting the same performance moving forward. But career norm (which is nearly identical to his June through September performance) Kody Clemens is not a major league player. It's why he was available on the waiver wire at the age of 29 with only 402 MLB PAs to his name. I mean this is the Twins in a nutshell. Carrying Jonah Bride on your AAA team the whole season after DFAing him and Kody Clemens on your MLB team the whole season. They have no present or future value. Having people trying to convince themselves a 1B/cOFer who plays a barely passable 2B and brings a .665-.670 OPS bat is a real MLB player. He isn't. And the fact that the bar for entrance onto the Twins 26-man roster is that low explains everything very well.

Milwaukee (friends and family will be happy if they win)> Toronto > San Diego > LA > Cleveland > Seattle > Boston > Philly (would like to see Duran win). Those are the teams I'm cheering for in order. Don't care about the other few.

Clemens doesn't deserve a spot on any MLB team either. He isn't a great defender at a premium position or anything. Kody Clemens is not an MLB player. There's a reason the 29-year-old has never stuck on an MLB team until this joke of a Twins team ran him out there for 112 games and doubled his career PAs. Julien isn't an MLB player, you're right. The point is that Clemens isn't either and giving guys like him nearly 400 PAs is why this team continues to struggle.

If he got to it the same way Clemens did, they shouldn't have been happy with it. It would've just been Julien doing Julien things. Spike short term performance with no staying power. Ignoring the fact that nearly all of Clemens' performance came in a 1-month period of time would be terrible player evaluation on the Twins part. But, based on where the team is at now, I guess you very well could be right. They're going to talk themselves into Clemens being a useful piece and they likely would've done the same with Julien if he had a 1-month outlier. It's why the team lost 92 games. Being happy with performances like that and selling themselves on the idea that the 1-month spike is more meaningful than the 3 months of well below average performance.

Kody Clemens pulled a Julien in a much smaller sample size. Julien was excellent his rookie season while Clemens was excellent his first month here. Julien then fell apart and has been terrible ever since. Clemens also fell apart and has been terrible. The Twins didn't want a 1-month spike in performance followed by an unplayable (on a team with any real talent) 3 months from Julien. Stop trying to make Kody Clemens good because of 1 month. From June 1 through the end of the season Clemens hit .203/.267/.402/.670. His career line is .206/.263/.403/.666. Just stop with him. He is who he is. And an actual good team cut him because he isn't good enough. Julien put up a .220/.309/.324/.633 OPS for the season. Outside of a complete and utter outlier of a month of May, Julien and Clemens put up pretty darn similar numbers. Little more BA and OBP from Julien with more power from Clemens. Essentially the same, unplayable hitter, though.

Means to an end. Need to get the financials right before they can sell because they aren't worth what the Pohlads are asking/demanding. That's clear from them not selling this go round. The other owners don't want the Pohlads to sell for just whatever they can get, they want them in that 1.7 range to keep the price of franchises where they want it. The Pohlads weren't going to invest in the team anyways so you'd then be sitting on a bad and cheap franchise with owners who want out but can't get out for what anyone involved wants them out at. Having a team on the market that can't be sold at the market rate is bad for everyone. The other owners don't want that. They won't tell the Pohlads to sell their team, or even put it up for sale publicly again, until they know they can get the right price for it. The new minority owners help that cause. That's why the other owners will happily approve their money.

Yes. The smart move in baseball from a profit perspective is that if you're going to be bad, be bad as cheaply as possible. It's how you maximize profits because of the revenue sharing rules in place in the CBA. If you're going to lose 90-100+ games in front of an empty stadium, do it with a low payroll. The Twins can't run that low of a payroll for crazy long because the MLBPA will throw a fit, but doing it until after the incredibly likely lockout coming in 2027? They could absolutely do that. And it'd make the Pohlads and their new minority owners (assuming they're approved by the league) a bunch of money. Which is what they care about. So, yes, the logic behind trading Buxton/Pablo/Ryan is to run a bare bones payroll. It's the smart move when you're not concerned about winning and know you're going to set another record for low attendance.

And he's on MLB Network.

Baseball Savant has Wallner at a +1 on fielder runs for his arm. That's tied for 24th in baseball (he's listed at 31). Only 42 guys in baseball have a positive value on their arm for preventing runner advances. Wallner is one of them. They have him with the 4th strongest outfield arm. So, what value, exactly, are you saying they are ranking him 151st on? Because strength and value they have him 4th and 31st. Or 54th (tied for 29th) in value if you go to anyone with 1 attempt. Fielding run value they only have him at 98th and only rank 137 outfielders. OAA he's 85th out of 110. So, what stat exactly do you have him down for 151st in for his arm?

I was an SIS video scout. But fair enough on the DRP.

Buxton's statcast data tells a very different story than this. He's at 4 OAA. He's still amongst the fastest players in the league (100th percentile sprint speed, actually). His reactions are still slow (always have been) but his crazy athleticism continues to make up for it. So, the question then becomes, do you trust the computer tracked data of statcast or the judgements of random interns sitting at computers judging how fast and far Buxton ran? His defense may not be platinum glove anymore, but I think its a massive stretch to say its below average. And there's certainly nobody better in this org.

I haven't seen anything (certainly doesn't mean there hasn't been anything reported) about a timeline for all of it. The owners won't vote until the owners meeting, but I'd assume the rest of the approval process is playing out now. Background checks, financial checks, etc. have to play out. I believe there's an executive committee that goes over things. I'd think the owner vote is mostly a formality, but they won't announce who they are until they've passed all the background and financial checks and that won't be done before the season is over would be my guess.

Because they haven't been approved by MLB yet and they don't actually own any of the Twins organization.

Yes, it is. Being realistic doesn't mean I take things too seriously or however you want to describe what you're suggesting. If I'm going to have a discussion about something, though, I'm going to put thought into it and come to the best, most honest conclusion I can. You're investing the same amount of time and energy into this conversation as I am, but because you have the optimistic view that ignores the reality of where the Twins stand in the national hierarchy your time and effort don't count? It doesn't take me any extra effort to be honest about their position in MLB. I'm home now and will feed and walk my dog before making myself some dinner and enjoying some Master Class and a book. Won't think about this convo again. I don't have to ignore reality and just be blindly positive to keep things in perspective.

If you think Coors only changes offense because of homeruns, you're incredibly wrong, yes. But that isn't even the point. The conversation is about relevance. And Coors Field makes the Rockies relevant because even casual or non-baseball fans know about it. They don't know about Target Field or PNC Park or American Family Field or Great American Ballpark. They aren't the same. Fine, you don't like that the author made the article about just right now? In general, the Twins are in the argument for the least relevant team in baseball. They go after no major free agents. They play in what has been a generally awful and boring division that goes after no major free agents. They have been awful at developing high end talent so have rarely even had major trade assets to ship off. They are almost never in the national conversation. I still follow them. Have my whole life and will continue to the rest of my life. They're my favorite team and always will be. Being honest and realistic about where this organization stands in the hierarchy of Major League Baseball doesn't mean they're going to take my fan card away. It doesn't mean I hate the team. It doesn't mean I'm being negative for no reason. It's just the truth. They were relevant for about 5 years in the late 80s and early 90s, but even in there they went worst to first and were forgotten about immediately in between title runs and immediately afterwards. They're not in the national conversation on a regular basis, now or in a general sense. Even if you want to ignore their current state and just discuss them in general. If you get away from the Twin Cities and Midwest and just talk to general people across the country, the Twins are absolutely in the running for the least relevant team in MLB. There is nothing noteworthy or special about them in a national sense.