chpettit19

The change in schedule doesn't really make a big difference in how challenging it is. The biggest changes in win percentage of opponents from the new schedule is like .008%. A bunch of the games we used to play against the Royals and Tigers will now be against the Pirates and Rockies. A bunch of the games we used to play against the White Sox and Guardians will now be against the Cardinals and Braves. It all balances out pretty closely.

I don't expect a 2024 arrival, but I don't think it's outrageous to think he could see some bullpen work in the last half of 2024. Like Chris Sale or David Price (more like Price since his was a very late callup, mostly for the playoffs). If they're competing next year and could use a boost for the stretch run I would hope he'd be an option to come up and unleash a barrage of slide pieces.

Quit ruining my vibe! Let me have my dreams! 😄

Oh, the technology in place now is incredible. But I know spin rates and extension numbers get people heated around here so avoided that side of things in a post that was already pretty long. But to keep this about Prielipp, the article says his slider spin rate is over 2900. You're talking top 10 in the majors at that level. Like that is the elite of the elite type stuff if he is back to that moving forward. So those who are into that kind of data should be real excited that he already has an MLB out pitch.

Prospect ranking is so opinion based it's really hard to have too strong of a feeling one way or the other on any of them (in my opinion). "Sure thing" top prospects fail all the time. "AAAA ceiling" type players turn into stars all the time. It's just a bunch of educated guesses. And then there's differing styles in what people look for in their rankings. A number of people here are like you (from how I'm reading your post) in that they weigh AA/AAA players with production over lower level guys with projection. It's also really hard for the average fan to even pretend to have any idea what "experts" are even seeing/describing in their "projections." I can tell you that the people doing the national rankings have a ton of real connections with major league scouts, and, many times, are former scouts who prefer to not have to travel around so much so just write about and rank prospects now. And real scouts are looking for things most of us aren't, and their "projections" are incredibly in depth and well educated. Doesn't mean anyone should base their rankings off that instead of high minors production, but when scouts are talking about a college sophomore as the best arm in the best college baseball conference and a possible top 1-5 pick in the draft it means they're seeing things they see in the best of the best arms. There's also a difference between minor league production and major league projection. You can look at minor league leader boards and see a bunch of dudes with really nice minor league production who will never reach the majors, let alone succeed there. How you get to your production matters. As an example, Matt Wallner is a oft debated guy around here because he has some nice minor league production, and has debuted in the majors. But he's not loved by national prospect rankings because he really struggles to hit (and maybe recognize?) off speed pitches in the minors. He's gotten to his production by absolutely destroying fastballs, and laying off enough breaking balls to survive. You can do that in the minors because many of the pitchers can't control their breaking stuff well enough to make you pay. Guys in the majors can. A pitching example would be Kohl Stewart. Had really nice minor league numbers in terms of runs allowed stats, but wasn't striking anyone out. Guys thought it was weird early cuz he had good "stuff," and that he'd eventually start getting the Ks. As he progressed the Ks never came and he started falling down ranking boards. His runs allowed numbers never got terrible in the minors, but he struggled in the majors because when you can't K guys you rely on weak contact to get outs. Guys in the majors have weak contact far less than guys in the minors (it's why they're in the majors). So when he couldn't get the ball by guys they were hitting it much harder and his runs allowed stats tanked. If you ever get the chance to talk with a major league scout it's absolutely fascinating to listen to what they look for and how they think. I highly suggest it. They're crazy smart folks when it comes to watching baseball players.

It's still the offseason so hope is still flowing steadily for me. I'm a little greedy and am hoping Lee debuts this year and Prielipp in 2024. Why not have 2 guys who had a chance to be top 5 picks in 2022 both bust out quickly and take this franchise to another level?

Polanco is an interesting piece for the Twins. I see him as both the most vital "X-factor" for the 2023 Twins, and the most likely high-end trade candidate for the 2023/2024 Twins. They absolutely need him back to his old self offensively (and if he can combine his BA from earlier with his new found patience of 2022 this could be his best season yet!) to give them a legit top of the order, and an acceptable offense overall. There's way too many question marks at the bottom of the order that they need Correa and Polanco to be stars at the top (along with Buxton when he's healthy). But he can also be the guy that brings back some real prospects if things play out a certain way with the Lee, Lewis, Martin, and Juliens of the world. I'd need to see an awful lot from multiple of those guys in the first half to think about trading Polanco at the deadline, but next offseason may be the end of the road for him with the Twins. Which would be a bitter sweet thing. He's been the best of the previous core and it'd be hard to see him leave. But, if the new core arrives this year the way we all hope, they'll have too many IFers and Polanco would be the obvious trade candidate for restocking the farm, and even freeing a little cash for a free agent starter (I can still dream they'd pay an arm!). I don't see this as a "make or break" season for Polanco. Even in his down 2022 year he was still well worth his contract. For him to "break" means he completely fell apart and is a 1 WAR, or less, player. I don't see that happening at all. Polanco can be his typical top 10 2B in the league self this year and still get traded. His future with the Twins is far less dependent on him (unless you think there's a chance he's just toast and can't play anymore) than it is on the prospects. If they hit on multiple IF prospects it turns into being a better option for the org to trade him than pay him. That's just the cruel truth of professional sports finances.

I don't know where the right place to rank Prielipp is. He's got "best prospect in the system" upside, but hasn't thrown in a professional game yet. I'm ok with this general range of ranking. He may be the single most important prospect the Twins have right now. He was in line to be the #1 overall pick in the draft last year had he not been hurt. He's the 1 guy in the system with a real chance to be a true #1 starter. He's everything we've been asking for out of a Twins pitching prospect. But he hasn't thrown a pro pitch and may never be that guy again... There were good reports out of his time in instructs last year. I hope they're aiming more for a controlled 80-100 innings pitched than 60 this year. But he's the guy we need to cross our fingers and hope he hits his ceiling. He changes this whole franchise if he does.

For what it's worth, Keith Law has Salas #5 in the Twins system. Behind E Rod, Lee, Lewis, and Martin (in that order).

I get that you don't want to go further with the comparison. Because it's a terrible comparison if you have hope in Wallner, but don't like Gallo. You want to use Wallner's minor league numbers and compare them to Gallo's worst season in the majors. Yikes. The chances of Wallner ever making an all star team are miniscule. Gallo has made 2. You don't like Gallo striking out, but you're ok with Wallner having a 30+% K rate in the minors? Come on. And Wallner brings negative defensive value. Wallner is hoping and praying to be half the MLB player Gallo has been. Whether you like it or not.

Isn't the natural flip side of this that you can't support Wallner if you complain about Gallo?

Are the Twins philosophically opposed to stealing bases? Their minor league numbers don't look like it. And I'm not sure who in the majors should've been stealing more bases. I don't think they're philosophically opposed to it, I just don't think they've had major leaguers who can do it well enough to do it regularly. I can buy the Varland argument. Wallner makes sense being higher if you're more into certainty than ceiling (which is entirely fine). Don't know why Festa or Mercedes should be ahead of him, though. Festa is 3 years older than him at the same level (yes, Festa was better there, but 3 years is a lot). Mercedes hasn't even debuted in America so I really don't get the argument there. We should be thrilled if Mercedes is in A+ at 19 like Salas is.

I like the Polanco comp, and it'd be amazing if he reaches anywhere close to Polanco's career. I also see a lot of Brooks Lee in him. Even their swings look similar. Probably too big to stick at SS, but have the arm and general talent to move to 3B/2B and succeed. Good contact skills and pitch recognition, but questions on just how much power they'll develop. Salas with more speed at this point, though. If Salas ends this season in AA as a 20 year old it'd certainly be worthy of a top 10 system ranking, and even worthy of the top 3 or 4 system ranking Fangraphs appears to have for him. He's hard to rank in this list because we just have so much more knowledge about the other guys as we've been following them far more closely. 19 years old and holding his own in A+ is nothing to sneeze at, though. You're talking about only a handful of guys a year who do that. That's a legit prospect.

Another thing about discussions on the balanced schedule is that people tend to make it sound like all the games against the Royals and Tigers are turning into games against the Yankees, Astros, and Dodgers. We don't get to play the crappy teams in our division as much, but we get to play the crappy teams in other divisions more. The Athletic did a pretty nice deep dive into the new schedule last week, and the difference in strength of schedule is pretty minimal. Using last year's team records on the new schedule has the Guardians, Dodgers, White Sox, and Padres as the 4 teams with the most additional games against winning teams. The Guardians at 14, Dodgers 11, and Sox and Pads at 8 games. But the Guardians and Dodgers still rank in the top 5 easiest schedules with just a .007 increase in opponent winning percentage. The new schedule isn't nearly as dramatic as people are acting.

I like them playing the Astros and Yankees early. Get them out of the way early, and hopefully the team is healthy for the most part which will give them a fighters chance to win a few games against them. Play roughly .500 ball against those 2 clubs in April in addition to hopefully beating up on the Marlins, Nats, and Royals could put this team in a great place early. Not that that means a lot as we saw last year. But it's better than being in a terrible spot early. As terrible as it is to say, let's just get through April healthy and see where we're at.

I mean your stance is basically that no Rice pitchers should ever be drafted. I strongly disagree with the "Lewis in CF was a mistake stance." He was no longer rehabbing an ACL. He was fine. This idea that CF is somehow inherently dangerous is preposterous and based on no actual information (news flash: SS's put stress on their knees too, and even jump for balls sometimes!). Kirilloff's wrist seemed awfully ok when he was in AAA absolutely raking. You can't add Lewis or Kirilloff into the Paddack or Mahle trades. Nobody knew Dyson was injured so that's purely revisionist history to fit your narrative. They didn't bring Lewis and Kirilloff in knowing they had injury concerns. You're just taking injuries and saying the Twins should've known guys would get injured. Paddack and Mahle are entirely different than Lewis and Kirilloff. Even Canterino was different in that he threw 96, 94, and 99.1 innings in his 3 seasons at Rice. That shows an arm that can hold up, but wasn't ridiculous usage by a college pitcher by any means. Also, you've listed 6 guys in 7 years they've been in control. That's less than 1 per year, but somehow that's a "pattern of lack of awareness about injury and conditioning." That's literally what the article points out. Confirmation bias. You're going to have to do a whole lot more than point out 6 guys, 3 of which don't even remotely fit your attempted narrative, in 7 years before it's a pattern. "Seems" is the key word here. The Twins got hit hard by major league injuries last year, and to an extent in 2021. No arguing that didn't happen. But is their minor league system being hit harder than other team's, or does it just "seem" that way? And, no, I don't agree it's on the Twins to reset "unreasonable takes/narratives." Like I don't understand that in any way. "Hey, I'm being unreasonable, but you need to fix it, not me" is an unreasonable stance. It makes no sense at all. Nobody is saying you have to praise the Twins or the FO or pretend the team hasn't failed the last 2 seasons, and the last 2 decades in general in the postseason. But being reasonable about it is an option. It's also squarely, 100% impossible for the Minnesota Twins to reset the narrative of every fan. You're trying to claim the Twins ignore injuries and are mad about it. These pages are filled with other fans mad the Twins aren't clearing the way for Larnach and Kirilloff and Winder and Ober. It's literally impossible for the Twins to fit both of those narratives. But that's your unreasonable expectation. So, yeah, I'm going to say at least some of it is on fans putting a little more thought into things and not being unreasonable.

I follow that flawless explanation crystal clear! 😄 I do understand where you're coming from, and agree that I want information before I hand my money over for anything. Where we disagree is on what information is needed from a sports team before we feel like we have enough information. And that's completely ok. I don't need to know their plan for making the team better, or getting their players healthy. I just need to know what the roster is (I'm smart enough to know if the roster is good or bad), and that the players are healthy enough to play. Them telling me Buxton spent 3 hours with the trainer doing treatment I know nothing about that day doesn't change anything for my investment in their product that day, but knowing he's playing, and where, does. Them telling me the offseason plan is to sign players X, Y, and Z for certain salaries while trading player A for player B doesn't change anything for my investment in their product the upcoming season, but them actually acquiring players X, Y, and Z and trading player A for player B (and me feeling players X, Y, Z, and B are good) does. You, and clearly others as well, want to know more. And that's fine. There's probably a line somewhere between us that the team should be focused on to bring in as many fans as possible while not sharing more info than they have to. That's the great balancing act of every business with their consumers.

The quote about not being transparent was about civic leaders. But the Twins were also "transparent" about their offers to Correa. Certain fans want even more than that, though. That's what this current discussion is about. They want "the plan." The information "we" get will never be enough for some people. And that just is what it is. This "debate/conversation" will never end. Because there's no end to the amount of information certain fans think they're entitled to. Even if that information being made public would hinder their team's ability to be competitive they still want it released. They feel they deserve to know about all the behind the scenes stuff. So they'll continually ask for more and more. I just find that ridiculous.

I followed, I just wanted to talk about Lewis and brag about one of the things I was finally right about!

I've been driving the Lewis bandwagon since that AFL performance. I was calling for him to be on the opening day roster all last off season because I expected him to come out firing since he was healthy again. I'm not quite that high on Martin, but am feeling much better about him after watching his swing in the AFL and seeing him really attack the ball. I plan on getting to some early Saints games to watch Martin there. Hoping he makes it hard to keep him there long with a similar performance!

I'm not seeing the connection here. So he got in better shape and that means he won't hit for power now? It sounds like he ate better and worked out more. Not sure how that equals the Twins taking away his power. He openly admitted he wore down at the end of the year and needed to be in better shape. I could argue that him slimming down and being in better shape will improve his power numbers because he'll be able to sustain his performance better over the course of a full season. And if he can play 3B well he can shift over to 1B when the time comes and be good enough there. Mass<>Power. Strength and/or bat speed= power. Byron Buxton doesn't have a whole lot of mass to him, but he sure can hit for some power.

I, too, am happy with the AFL results, and really hope they translate to AAA, and, eventually, the bigs, this year. He retains all his potential, but the likelihood he reaches it has taken a huge hit. Hoping he lights Fort Myers on fire and we can have a better feeling about him heading to St Paul this year. But a healthy dose of skepticism is awfully reasonable at this point. I can give you a real basic timeline on the changes. He hit with the "original" stance all season until he was hurt towards the end. When he came back his hands were higher and his leg was cocked more (the 3rd stance shown). His good final month, and great AFL, were with the new stance. The awful majority of his season was with the old stance. Now that doesn't mean he hadn't been putting in work behind the scenes to change different things all season and we just saw the hands at the end. Or any number of things that could've been going on. But that new hand and leg positioning didn't appear until the end of the year when he returned from injury. But, like you said, we are simply making inferences upon assumptions upon speculation about what lead to that change. I was simply pushing back on this idea that the Twins coaches screwed him up like Buxton (and I've now seen claims they screwed up Lewis) and the Twins coaches need to just leave guys alone and quit trying to make them all sluggers. The assumption made by some is that he failed last year because the coaches wanted him to be a slugger. My contention is that they weren't trying to make him a slugger, but were trying to get him to more have some power. Which is what every team does with every hitter. I'm pushing back on the idea that the Twins were trying to get him to be a 30+ HR guy at the expense of his BA. That wasn't their goal. The goal was to keep his BA and get him to 15-20 HRs a year. Cuz then he's an all star. I'd bet Martin was on board with that plan. Development isn't linear. Maybe it took a year of struggles and tweaks to finally find the right recipe. Who knows? But the idea that the Twins just want everyone to hit 30 bombs and don't care about BA simply isn't correct and that's what I was refuting. They just want players to get as close to their full potential as possible.

I think them continuing to promote him, and giving him 5 starts in the bigs in what was just his 2nd full professional season, says they're going with his results. The article didn't say he "can't pitch" because of his lack of "stuff," it said it can create a ceiling for him. Which is true. Doesn't mean he can't improve his "stuff," though. He's improved it this far, and will continue to work to improve it more. A 15th round pick becoming a #3 type starter in the bigs is a gigantic win. Even if his "stuff" limits him to being a #3 starter it's still not a suggestion that he "can't pitch." It's just that he won't ever be Verlander or deGrom. Which very few are. And, FYI, Smoltz threw gas, I think you're thinking of Greg Maddux who didn't throw real hard in his Atlanta days, but he did have filthy "stuff." His secondary pitches were significantly better than Varland's, and his control was maybe the best baseball has ever seen.

I think the key to looking at AFL stats is comparing them to the other top hitting prospects in the league. Him slugging nearly .500 shouldn't make us think he's going to slug like that in the majors, but seeing him be top 15 in the AFL in slugging should make us feel a little better about his ability to hit the ball with authority. Martin and Julien were at, or near, the top of the leader boards in a lot of the AFL offensive categories. Absolutely shouldn't think their actual numbers translate, but should be encouraging that they were a couple of the top performers amongst some big name prospects there.

Sorry, mine got long, too... Yeah, as a couple people already pointed out, I disagree with the stance that we're treated any different by sports franchises than our civic leaders (you really think they're telling the truth?), employers, the businesses we purchase from, or the places we bank. Civic leaders lie to us constantly. Campaigning is literally just them telling whatever segment of the population they want to vote for them what that segment wants to hear. They aren't transparent with a gosh darn thing. Unless you're running the company there's a who lot you aren't told about the behind the scenes of a company. Your employers don't tell you anything you don't need to know. Businesses we buy from? They literally have patents and copywrites so that we don't know what their "secret recipes" are. Corporate secrecy is the key to a whole bunch of the businesses we buy from. I work hand in hand with Amazon everyday and they won't tell me how they make decisions on anything. Banks give you the baseline of what you need to know about your account, but they're not giving us details about how the bank is run or their business strategies. I think the difference between those things and sports is that some fans feel they're personally owed information about the athletes and teams because they build that emotional connection. Same reason some people are so enamored with the personal lives of celebrities. They build an imagined connection with them through their art (music, movies, whatever) and decide that means they're owed more information. People being irrational about "their teams" doesn't mean the organizations owe us information on what Byron Buxton is doing for rehab everyday. It doesn't mean we're privy to Correa's ankle imaging. We're kept in the dark about the main going ons of everything you've listed, but then you expect sports teams to be open because people grow overly attached to grown men playing a game. I don't buy it. The information some fans are asking for is absolutely not known by the other teams. The other teams have general ideas about things, but they all have their own proprietary data and info. Giving out the medical information on a player just because fans want to know would give the other team an advantage. Rocco saying "Buxton is sitting on this day, this day, and this day, and Correa is sitting this day" allows the other manager to manage his pitching accordingly. Why would we want that? Telling the fans what their offseason strategy is would cost them a great deal of leverage in trade and contract negotiations. Why would we want that? My argument would be that the internet, 24 hr "news cycle," and the constant leaking of information has lead fans to believe they're "owed" more and more. We're not. Byron Buxton doesn't owe me his treatment regiment. It's ridiculous to me to suggest that's information I deserve, or even need. The Twins don't owe me their offseason game plan. It's ridiculous to me to suggest that's information I deserve, or even need. What we're "owed" is the player and team's best efforts to provide an entertaining product on the field. That's what we pay them for. But my definition of entertaining is different than yours which is different than everyone else's. Just like Coke "owes" us a tasty beverage. That's what we pay them for. But my definition of tasty is different than yours which is different than everyone else's. We aren't owed the secret recipe, the business plan, or the health status of their employees.