chpettit19

"According to Baseball Prospectus, the Twins have lost the league’s second-most Wins Above Replacement due to injuries" That is the relevant part. I don't have all the hard data as I'm not a baseball prospectus subscriber. But 2nd in baseball means there's only 1 other team that was hurt more by injuries. Pick whatever team you want to be there. Chicago seems to have been your thought. Either way, a neutral company who couldn't care less about making the Twins look good or bad says they've lost the 2nd most WAR in baseball to injuries this year. Not even counting the Buxton rest days when he wasn't on the IL. That's pretty relevant to this talk about how much the team lost to injuries.

Mr Gleeman just wrote about this 2 days ago, actually. Here's a paragraph from his article: "They’ve placed a league-high 31 players on the injured list for a total of 1,928 days lost, second-most in the AL, including 10 players out at least 100 days. According to Baseball Prospectus, the Twins have lost the league’s second-most Wins Above Replacement due to injuries, a clear link between the days lost and games lost."

I'll preface this by saying I'd absolutely take Francona over Rocco. So before anyone scolds me I'm laying that out from the jump. That being said...part of why I don't think managers matter all that much (they matter, but not greatly) is that Francona was handed a great pitching staff and a bad offense and the pitching has been great and the offense has been bad. They're 22nd in baseball in runs. He's not spinning gold out of yarn with some magical managerial lineup genius. They're 8th in baseball in ERA. Is he doing something magical to get a bunch of arms we already knew were good to be good? If the managers were switched what do we think the team ranks would be? Right now it's Cleveland at 22nd in runs, 8th in ERA, and the Twins 17th in runs, 19th in ERA. Do we think Rocco drops the Guardians down to 15th in ERA and 27th in runs? Does Francona jump this pitching staff to 11th in ERA and the injury riddle lineup to 8th in runs? That's the question to me. How much could a great manager really change in performance if the roster is the same? I don't know, but it doesn't feel like he'd magically have the Twins pitching staff in the top 10 in ERA or anything.

What's your point here? That I'm right about bunting as a strategy for producing runs being bad, but also right about there being situations where it does make sense? Yes, bunting late in games when you know you need just 1 run can be a smart move. No, the Twins laying down more sacrifices in order to "manufacture runs" throughout the year wouldn't help this offense.

I didn't at all suggest Petty wasn't doing well or can't be very good, so I'm not sure what isn't fair. And his breaking ball was considered to show real promise coming out of high school (you can find the phrase "flashes plus" and 55 grades all over the place for it coming out of high school). So I'm not sure where this "questionable secondary pitches" narrative is coming from. Sure, there's the typical question of developing a changeup type pitch for any power high school arm as none of them need a changeup to dominate hs hitters when they can throw 100, but that's the same concern as 99% of high school power arms. I'm not trying to justify the Gray trade by suggesting Petty hasn't been good or won't be good. I'd do the trade today knowing what kind of season both of them have had. Or are we supposed to expect the Twins to only trade non-prospects for above average major league talent? Both teams can "win" this trade. Most of the time trades are made with the idea that both teams will "win" them in the end because the teams have different goals. The Twins needed to upgrade their rotation for 2022 and 2023. The Reds were selling and looking to build for the future. This trade accomplished both of those goals. 1 prospect for an above average major league starter is a smart trade. Even if that prospect turns into the next Max Scherzer. So, no, I will not look back at this as a very bad trade no matter what Petty becomes. You can look back at it however you want, though. And I haven't seen Petty make any top 100 lists yet. Fangraphs still has him at a 40+ FV and 14th ranked in the Reds system. MLB.com has him 9th in their system. Don't have a baseball america account so can't confirm, but looks like they might have him 7th in the system. Keith Law only updated his top 60 midseason, but he wasn't in the top 60 or honorable mentions (Emmanuel Rodriguez did jump up to number 53 so that's exciting), and he wasn't in his preseason top 100 list. The Athletic also did an article about the Reds system after the trade deadline and he wasn't in the top 10 system prospects for 2023 after they took out the graduations from this year. So I guess there's still some industry hesitation on him.

For sure. My bigger concern would be someone like SWR who's not to 100 innings yet this year after he was wildly mismanaged last year with his trip to the Olympics where he didn't throw a single pitch. He's 21 in AAA doing well, but will barely crack 100 innings on the year. That is not ideal for him as you'd like him to be at 150+ next year when he hopefully gets the call to Minneapolis. Prielipp is another one who I'd like to see get a ton of innings next year, but my guess is that this FO will have him on a relatively strict inning count coming off his lost 2022 season. The other guys the Twins have been calling up lately aren't guys with much of a chance to be true frontline guys. Overall, though, I just push back on people who blindly throw out minor league inning counts to try to prove the Twins are developing nothing but 5 inning starters. The Twins very well may be only developing 5 inning starters, but that's because they may just not be developing anyone good enough to really front a rotation and throw 200+ innings like they were doing with Berrios, not because they're totally unwilling to let anyone go deeper. The Twins need to start finding, and collecting, true top pitching prospects. Better than SWR/Balazovic/etc. Prielipp may be one. Maybe Raya? But otherwise most of their young arms aren't equipped to be what the team really needs at the front of the rotation, unfortunately. But if they could fill the 2-5 spots and most of the pen with young guys maybe they'd finally spend on a #1 in free agency? Haha, not even I think that dream will ever come true! And now I'm sad ?

It's exciting, but also a little frustrating, to see the Twins turn Ober and Varland types into major league pitchers after being late round picks. Just need them to hit on some of these higher round picks and get some #1 pitchers out of things! Laweryson looks like he could at least snag a pen role in the bigs at some point, and even that would be a very nice development for him. I hope he continues to develop and we see him in Minneapolis next year sometime!

Use whatever term you want, but you're most definitely talking poorly about the FO and Rocco. I mean it's the entire point of your post right there. I don't know why suggesting you're ragging on them gets pushback. You're saying they're bad at their jobs. Use whatever term you want to describe that, I guess. And I'm not even saying they haven't earned ragging. Just confused why you'd push back on that. This back and forth started because you called Macphail, Kelly, Ryan, and Gardenhire "smart baseball people" while suggesting Falvey, Levine, and Rocco aren't "smart baseball people." I pointed out that Ryan and Gardenhire did nothing more than the current regime is doing. 6 playoff wins in 18 seasons for Ryan after taking 8 years to even have a .500 team. Your real point is that you enjoy the scrappy style of baseball over the current iteration of the Twins. I agree with that. Those piranha teams were more fun to watch with Santana and Liriano on the mound and action happening all over while the Twins were hitting. But those teams also completely failed in the playoffs. The recent Cleveland success lead to 1 World Series loss (which I'd certainly take for the Twins), and a bunch of early exits. But the teams are more enjoyable to watch. I brought up 2019 simply because you brought up 2002 and suggest Ryan/Gardenhire should get some bonus credit for that team because they "should have gone all the way." I was simply pointing out that "should have gone all the way" doesn't mean anything. If you want Ryan to get credit for that 2019 playoff failure, fine. Looks like it's 6 playoff wins in 21 seasons since it was his teams in 2017-2019 that also failed to win playoff games. I'm just confused why Ryan gets labeled a "smart baseball person" when he had 6 playoff wins in 18 (or 21 if you want him to have credit for those early Falvey years) seasons. Doesn't seem like something we should be super impressed by. You want to win. I want to win. Every Twins fan wants to win. It's what we watch the games for. Falvey is attempting to build a pitching pipeline like the one he built in Cleveland. He just hasn't succeeded yet (and maybe never will). So I don't know what the "but he is smarter" comment even means. He setup the pitching development program in Cleveland. Then he set it up the same thing here. He's not trying to be smarter, he's trying to do the exact same thing. And I'll just point out that Cleveland has brought in a bunch of power over hit, non-scrappy guys over the last handful of years, too. Franmil Reyes. Yasiel Puig. Bobby Bradley. Josh Naylor. Carlos Santana. Jake Bauers. Carlos Gonzalez. Hanley Ramirez. Yonder Alonso. Edwin Encarnacion. Josh Donaldson. They've hit the gold mine in pitching development lately and it's carried them in the regular season to competitive records. Every team is attempting to replicate what Cleveland has done with pitching development, including the Twins. It's just not that easy. And paying for the kind of pitching Cleveland has isn't realistic for the Twins, or basically any team. You have to develop it. And the Twins haven't managed to develop anything more than #3-5 type arms. So they've failed. And it likely costs Falvey his job in the next couple years if he doesn't turn Varland, SWR, Balazovic, Prielipp, or anyone into a frontline starter. But nobody in baseball is trying to emulate the Cleveland offensive strategy of continually not having enough hitting to win in the playoffs.

Fine, you can take Macphail and Kelly and label them as smart baseball guys because of their rings. But Terry Ryan and Gardy did nothing demonstrably more successful than the current regime has. "Should have gone all the way in '02?" Based on what? You liked the team? Twins should've gone all the way in 2019 then! Reality is that '02 team won 1 series before getting destroyed 4 games to 1 by the Angels. I just think Ryan and Gardy get a lot of love for not actually accomplishing anything. They won 1 playoff series. You're mad Falvine hasn't won in 6 years while praising Ryan for 1 series win in 18 seasons. The Twins were awful from 94 to 2001 when he took over. Just trying to provide a little perspective. If Falvey should be fired for his first 6 seasons I can't imagine how upset you were (or would have been, I don't know how old you are so don't know your level of investment in the 90s) when Ryan's teams didn't crack .500 until his 8th season. They then won 1 series the next season before following it with 2 more playoff game wins total in his next 11 seasons. Terry Ryan oversaw 6 total playoff game wins. 6. Don't get why his "success" is something we should be aiming for. I mean if you're going to rag on them for Maeda being on the IL at least acknowledge him being the runner up for the Cy Young in 1 of his seasons after they traded for him. They also traded for Sonny Gray and his 3.09 ERA this year. Also traded for Joe Ryan. Also brought in, and developed, Jhoan Duran. Seems to be a success for them there. Developed Miranda. Ober/Winder/Jax developed. Louie Varland. Drafted and developed Jeffers. Arraez seems to have developed alright. Lewis sure looked nice when he was healthy. Seem to have gotten Gordon figured out and developed. Kirilloff and Larnach seem to have developed nicely when they're healthy. They certainly need to upgrade whatever processes they have for health/strength and conditioning/whatever keeps dudes off the IL. Totally failing there. I agree they aren't a very scrappy team, and those scrappy teams are more fun to watch. But those scrappy teams also got crushed in the playoffs. Agree they need to spend on some front line pitching. Although, they did spend some prospect capital for Gray and Mahle. But would like to see a big FA signing for the rotation.

Oh, I'm with you. I'm not suggesting they sit back and assume these things happen. I'd resign Correa to a 7 year deal and then figure out what to do with the excess after that if/when Lewis and Lee establish themselves, and Miranda shows that this is who he is moving forward and the league doesn't figure him out. Was just having a little fun with that proposed hypothetical of those 4 reaching their peaks and manning the IF for the Twins for the next 7-10 years. Need a few happy thoughts during this injury riddled stretch of brutal Twins baseball.

Serious question...why do we think Chicago is going to be significantly better in 2023? There's no way anyone thinks Cueto is going to repeat his performance this year again. Lance Lynn isn't exactly young so I'm not sure we should expect a bounce back from him. Probably reasonable to expect Giolito gets back to being a 3.50-4 ERA guy. Do we think Cease is a 2 ERA guy or his previous 4 ERA? I'd bet most likely he's a 3.5-4 guy like Giolito. Kopech likely right in that range, too. Don't think there should be any real expectations for Crochet to come back and light the world on fire. Especially not in the rotation. They don't have any top arms ready to take over. So they have 3 guys who are likely 3.5-4 ERA guys, but don't the Twins have that in Gray, Mahle, and Ryan/Maeda/Winder/pick 1 guy? Hendricks is starting to show cracks and isn't getting any younger. Maybe Crochet rejoins the pen to team with Bummer as big time lefties? Has Lopez found himself in the pen? Looks like he might have so if he's added to Graveman they may have a pretty solid pen. I'd give them the advantage there over the Twins. I don't think we should expect Jimenez to be any healthier than Buxton. Both seem to be guys who will hit the IL every year. Grandal doesn't appear to be Grandal anymore. Abreu isn't getting younger, but will likely be a solid BA guy even if his power never comes back. Tim Anderson will likely still hit .300, but boot or throw away so many balls that he negates much of his offense. I think the safe bet is that Moncada isn't going to reach the All Star status many had him pegged for. Robert looks like the real deal in the box, but makes a bunch of weird boneheaded plays like some of our favorite Twins do. Andrew Vaughn looks to be finding his groove, but is a negative if made to play the OF. I don't see their defense getting significantly better, and I don't see the juggernaut offense that is significantly better than the Twins. Overall I say the rotations match up pretty closely, Sox get an edge in the pen, offenses are pretty even, and Twins get slight edge on defense (depending who they have at SS and how many games Buck can play in CF). I don't see the massive jump for the Sox. Maybe La Russa is holding them back as much as some think Rocco is holding the Twins back? I just don't see them being "much better." Cleveland is a wildcard as who knows what all the rookies look like in year 2. Could be a huge jump, or a bunch of Badoo style regression. And I'll have to see KC and Detroit actually perform significantly better before I believe that. Neither of those pitching staffs give me any reason to be scared of them. And neither do the offenses.

In this hypothetical I think I go Lee-Lewis-Arraez-Miranda from left to right. Definitely Lee and Lewis on the left side, though. They have significantly better arms than the other 2 so they're the ones I want making the longer throws. It's fun to dream on what this team can be if those 4 hit their peaks. And you add in that OF trio at their peaks and the offense looks really nice, and cheap! There are some real things to hope on for the future of the Twins. Let's hope they are able to make smart moves to supplement the young guys while getting the young guys to perform to the best of their potentials!

Outs are bad. A productive out is better than a non-productive out. But both are bad. Teams no longer find it useful to freely give up an out to advance a base runner 1 base (especially from 1st to 2nd) when it doesn't actually increase your chance of scoring. You may not like it, but that's the new reality of the league and it's not going to ever get back to the point where offenses are willing to give up their most valuable asset for anything outside of an actual run scored. It was a recurring dream for 100 years that pitchers didn't throw splitters either. Do you want Duran or Maeda to quit throwing their splitters because nobody threw one for 100 years? We've gotten smarter and adjusted how we play the game because of it. Sacrifice bunts are bad baseball outside of a couple very specific situations. For 100 years it was also every team's dream to have a SS who could field, but not hit. Same with 2nd basemen. No 2B are expected to be legit bats and a SS better be able to hit and field. You can ponder whatever you want, but the provable fact is that bunting is bad strategy. I'm sorry if you don't like that change in the game, but it's one you're going to have to accept. (Now bunting for a hit against the shift is a different story, but with the shift ban next year it's probably a less useful tool)

I just don't think what they do with Rocco is going to have any meaningful impact on selling tickets. 2021 went terrible and the fans were slow to come back in 2022, but after their hot start they did come back. Now the entire roster is injured (only slightly exaggerating there) and they aren't winning, or even fun to watch, so the fans have slowed. I just don't think firing Rocco should be done for any reason other than you think there's somebody out there that you can bring in and the team will win more games with that person at the helm. I don't think the FO thinks there's a better option, but could certainly be wrong. If they think there's someone better and are going to fire Rocco I wish they would've done it during the season when things started going downhill instead of waiting til after the year. Maybe that shake up would've sparked something. I also have friends who won't go to MPLS at all and think that has a real impact on ticket sales. Not much the team can do about that. I think we mostly agree. It's going to be hard to sell tickets when there won't be many dramatic offseason moves to point to (I'm guessing) as reasons for renewed hope. Losing Correa is the most likely major move and it's going to be hard to produce a counter positive move that outweighs that. I don't think a new manager sways that in any real way. If they don't think they can win with Rocco they should fire him. But I think firing who you think the best option is simply to appease fans is a good way to get yourselves fired the next season when the new guy doesn't do better.

I think he has a real shot at it. Should start the year at AA and then it's just a matter of strong performance and the right injury to a major leaguer or 16 like this year.

If any of the guys you just listed were still prospects come 2024 there'd be absolutely nothing to be excited about. Those are all college guys who need to be graduating next year if they're to be looked at as top 5 system prospects in any system. Steer is already in the bigs. If they aren't all getting major league time in 2023 the Twins did a great job trading them. So I strongly disagree that the top 5 for 2024 would look any better with those guys still around.

For what it's worth the Twins pull the ball 39.3% of the time vs 38% league average. Go to center 35.5% vs 37% league average. And go oppo 25.2% vs 25.1% league average. Arraez, Gordon, Miranda, Larnach, Kirilloff, and Celestino all have quite nicely dispersed spray charts. So I guess the Twins are able and willing to develop that particular skill in at least some of their prospects. And nobody bunts anymore. You're going to have to give up on that dream. There are very few situations where bunting makes sense.

Fine, take out my comment about firing him. My point is that he may be part of the problem, but he can't shoulder all the blame. "His mistakes" aren't just his mistakes. This is the philosophy the FO believes in. He is going to keep referring to his spreadsheets. And any other manager that this FO would hire will refer to spreadsheets. That's my point. He's part of the short start problem (and managing by spreadsheet), but he's not the main driver of that bus so simply blaming him is inaccurate. And replacing him fixes nothing when it comes to that particular problem.

I haven't been a Rocco fan or naysayer since 2019 (I think he's just one of the 90% of managers who are simply average managers), and I wouldn't show up to Target field simply because they fired him. What gets fans to show up is Ws. If they fire him today fans aren't suddenly going to flock to Target Field to see Jayce Tingler, or whoever replaces him, manage. I won't be shocked if they fire him or if they keep him. I think it's short sighted to fire him for having 16 guys (or whatever the number is right now) on the IL during September. Would you show up to more games immediately after he was fired, or would you actually want to see some Ws starting to stack up before you ventured down to Target Field more regularly (I don't know where you live, but hypothetically speaking)? Firing someone for the sake of firing someone isn't good organization management. If the Pohalds, or Falvine, don't think Rocco is good at his job then they should fire him. If they think someone else sitting in his office leads to more wins in 2023 then they should fire him. Because that's what the fans will turn out for. They aren't going to sell more season tickets in November because they fired Rocco. They'll sell more season tickets in January if Ober/Winder/Varland pitch well the last few weeks, Mahle makes 1 more good start before the end of the year, there's a video released of Maeda throwing filth in a bullpen session, Lopez stops sucking, and they sign a legit #1 starter during the offseason. So I don't buy the "Pohlads will fire him cuz it'll sell more tickets" argument at all. There aren't that many fans who think Rocco alone has tanked this team and will suddenly invest in tickets without seeing them actually win some games. I also don't know why we expect more than 63k for a weekend series against the Guardians with half their roster on the IL. I have season tickets and I wasn't going to waste any of my last few flex vouchers watching a bunch of AAA guys play.

Can't you just flip this and say all 4 of those people weren't smart baseball people because they were also the reason for the '93-2000 failures and '11-'14 failures, and the other random failure seasons mixed in between '87 and '14? Ryan and Gardenhire were in charge at the start of "the streak" so why do they get credit for some sort of great success when they've accomplished 1 post season series win more than the current regime? Terry Ryan was also the one who made what many consider to be the single worst roster decision in Twins history. Not sure why they're considered smart baseball people and this regime wouldn't be when they're basically doing the exact same thing. Some inconsistent regular season success with no playoff success. That's basically the entire Ryan/Gardenhire tenure.

Sure, there's a difference in the HS vs College guy situation. But the argument around here tends to be people trying to connect minor league inning numbers to the major league team pulling guys early and saying they're developing nothing but 5 inning pitchers and will never let guys go deep. I don't particularly like the 5 inning start situation for the Twins, or baseball in general, but there's way more variables to the minor league numbers than people around here tend to use. For example, Varland was top 15 in all of affiliated minor league baseball in innings pitched before he got his call up. The lack of depth in starts in the minors shouldn't automatically be connected to the major league team pulling guys early. Minor leaguers have never thrown competitive innings for this long of a season. It's more than building up in game arm strength and being able to go 7 innings a start, it's about being able to make starts from April through October. You can go around and look at the Kershaw, Verlander, Scherzer types minor league inning totals, and they weren't down there throwing 200 innings a season either. It's a false connection people try to make. Even though I understand the tendency to do it based on the current major league pitcher usage.

Rocco is to blame in the sense that he seems to agree with this pitching philosophy. But I don't know why we'd think firing him would lead to someone who doesn't agree with that philosophy taking over. So I don't think the short answer is yes in the sense that replacing him fixes the problem. The short answer is actually probably no. The FO is to blame.

David Festa has thrown 103.2 innings in his first year. Travis Adams is at 100.2. Povich had thrown 78.2 before he was traded which was a 103 inning pace. Pierson Ohl only has 91.2 so I guess he's trailing everyone by a lot. I assume the exclamation point on Petty's innings is just excitement that he's doing what a number of other Twins 2021 pitcher draft picks are doing. And Festa has a 2.43 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, and 108/34 K/BB ratio as a 13th round pick. Petty being younger does give him an edge, but turning Petty into 2 years of Gray and still developing a pitcher with those kinds of numbers is a pretty big win for the FO I'd think. Steer would've been a nice fill in for Polanco going down, but Mahle being in the rotation would've been nicer. That injury makes that deal less appealing for sure. Strand will be interesting to follow. He's likely a DH in the majors so he's going to have to maintain those numbers as he moves up to have value. But I'll take Miranda and Lee over those 2. Steer is older than Miranda, and Strand is older than Lee. If the Twins are willing to let Lee advance quickly, if he earns it, I'd much rather have Miranda, Lee, and Mahle over Steer and Strand in an already crowded infield.

Very well said!

I mean there's still vendors yelling out to get your beer from them and whatnot, they just aren't having to walk up and down the stairs. There's a vendor at the top of at least every other staircase of the lower level and they all yell "beer here" or whatever if they don't have a line. I did notice earlier this year that there weren't any folks walking the stairs and commented that it was weird, but it's not like they've totally disappeared. They've just made it so the fans have to walk up the stairs to get their beers now. It does take a little away from the nostalgia, though.