chpettit19

Sonny Gray made a 3 inning rehab start before he came back.

I edited my comment too late, but added the not trading with the Padres piece, too! I know TJ isn't the only thing to measure, that's why I added other elbow injuries. They also had 2 pitchers each miss time on multiple occasions for forearm/flexor tendon injuries, which was also more than the Twins. They've been awful with pitcher health and performance for the last few years. Truly awful.

The Padres had 7 pitchers miss at least part of last season with Tommy John surgery. They had 4 other pitchers miss time with non-TJ elbow injuries last year (Twins had 3). I'm not sure they're the best example of a team taking advantage of great analytics on elbow management. They were tied for 2nd in the league in TJ surgeries in 2020. For reference here's the per team list of TJ surgeries for 2021 from Fangraph's RosterResource: SD- 7 TB- 4 LAD- 3 SF- 2 Pit- 2 Cin- 2 Tex- 2 Sea- 2 Det- 2 LAA- 1 CHW- 1 KC- 1 MN- Maeda NYY- 1 Tor- 1 AZ- 1 Hou- 1 Mil- 1 Was- 1 NYM- 1 Phi- 1 So maybe your argument could be not trading for SD pitchers in general? But certainly not that they have some great feel for arms that won't breakdown.

I don't know if the "3 or 4 innings" is sarcastic or not, but Ober went 5, 6, 5 innings in the 3 starts he had before getting hurt, and the team has been stretching guys out and letting them go deeper as they build their stamina after a shortened spring. Even if they've been a little extra conservative with some guys. But as for the rehab start in general, it's more about knocking the rust off and getting a few innings in a real game that doesn't matter before just stepping on a major league mound and facing major league hitters. You want to make sure the delivery is sound and you've got your control and stuff where it needs to be. Better to have a quick test run in the minors instead of getting plastered for 5 runs in the majors and losing a game for the big club.

Gray, Ryan, Winder, and Ober I have confidence in being effective pitchers more often than not. The question with all four, for various reasons, is the number of innings they'll be able to pitch this year. Bundy and Archer are high volatility options who you just want to get as many good innings out of as you can while eating an L or 2 when they just don't have their control. (news flash: every team has days where their starter just doesn't have it and the game is out of control early. The Reds just scored 14 against the Brewers for goodness sakes and the Nats dropped 8 in the first 2 innings on the Mets. Don't freak out that the Twins will have the same thing happen sometimes) Smeltzer is a reasonable option to have at AAA for spot starts throughout the year and I'd expect him to be added to the 40-man if there's anymore injuries to starters. I'd guess those are your "top 7" guys right now, and I think they can keep you in most games while the offense hopefully gets going when it gets healthy. They're going to need more than 7 starters to get through the rest of the year, though. The question will be if any of the Balazovic, Canterino, SWR types can step up and fill a major league role for any amount of time or if they'll have to cross their collective FO fingers on guys like Chi Chi or a late season Dobnak sighting.

I'm going to go with "win a playoff series" as the context for "being real." The Braves showed last year that just getting in and giving yourself a shot is really the key, but I won't try to argue that with the Twins hanging onto an 18 game postseason losing streak. So I'll say if you win a series there's no reason you couldn't win 2 more in the playoffs. With that being the definition I'm using I'll say I believe the Twins with their 26 best players healthy are "for real." Now I don't have a great deal of faith that they can get into October with their 26 best players healthy and that puts them on the border of being "real" for me. As for the schedule argument, it's awfully hard to ever be "real" if your schedule is full of bad teams that you beat, and good teams you hang with, if beating bad teams doesn't give you any points. Especially when you've not exactly been at full strength for most of the time. Beating the bad teams shouldn't automatically make you "real," but it also can't just be ignored. The Dodgers don't win 100 games each year by simply winning 100 games against playoff teams. Beating the bad teams is part of being "real." Dominating the bad teams and playing .500ish against the good ones is a realistic outcome for "real contenders." The struggle with arguing that for the Twins is the 18 game postseason losing streak. Hard to convince people the team is different until the team does something different.

To be fair Buxton has only had 6 singles and 4 walks. So he's been on first only 10 times. I don't know if any of those also had a guy on second at the time as I'm not going to take the time to look that up, but 10 times isn't a lot of base stealing opportunities.

Terry Ryan was great in his first stint as he was very good at identifying talent and was ahead of the league in finding market inefficiencies to build a contender with a lower payroll. Bill Smith had that terrific international signing class, and basically nothing else. Completely whiffed on the biggest task he had and that was the Johan Santana situation. I think Smith was in way over his head, but leaving Sano, Kepler, and Jorge was certainly useful for Ryan and Falvey. Ryan was still very good at identifying talent when he came back, but, as @Trov said, the game had passed him by and he wasn't building a team that could compete in the current baseball environment and was way, way, way behind the times in terms of player development and technology. Falvey came in and updated the technology, analytics department, and player development programs and has had terrific success (outside of 2021) on the whole. He has done a great job of maximizing the players the previous regimes had left him. The great unknown is what players like Buxton, Rogers, and Duffey would've been under a Ryan lead regime. There were different philosophies that Ryan followed in pitching development, for example, than what Falvey has put in place. Would Ryan and Co. have pushed their coaches to teach Rogers his slider? No way to know for sure, but that's a Falvey staple in pitching development. I think Ryan gets put down more than he should (by me as well) for his second stint, but I have no doubt that firing him was the right move as the league passed him by. Always a fun thought exercise to look back and guess at what may have been under Ryan or Smith the last handful of years.

Baseball doesn't use the word "dead," but they have been very open that the ball is different now than in the 2019/2020 seasons. They designed them to go 2 feet less on fly balls. 2021 had a mix of the old balls and new balls so those stats are a little weird. The big question now is what are the humidors doing. All 30 stadiums now use humidors as opposed to just 10 before this season. The stadiums that had humidors already are seeing the ball travel 2 feet less, while the ones with new humidors are seeing the ball travel 10 feet less on average (Oakland is like 25 ft or something crazy). But there's a lot that goes into that. The drag on the ball is higher this year which could be from them going from dry to humid conditions and then dry then humid as that could be making the seems rise and increase drag. It will be really interesting to see what the season long stats look like on ball distance and if certain stadiums see big jumps at certain times of the year when the humidor is drying the ball towards the end of the year instead of adding humidity like they are now. All that to say that I agree we'll need more data to see the long-term trends, but the baseball itself is also "deadened" on purpose. But it's been great to see the Twins take advantage of the shorter distance and rack up some fly ball outs!

The "no structural damage" part is the super concerning part. He was looking great before the injury last year and it looked like he was ready to take his spot in the heart of the Twins order for much of the next decade. Him still playing through things right now leads me to think the Drs don't have much of an answer to what's wrong and that could be absolutely devastating. If the medical answer is "rub some dirt on it" then he should go back to AAA (or the facility in Florida?) and work on making adjustments to his swing. That would be horrible for him and hope it isn't the answer as he'd basically be rebuilding his lifelong swing. If the medical answer is another procedure or rest or something actually medical he should go on the IL. Maybe even the 60 day. Losing basically another season would be terrible, but he clearly isn't himself right now and looks miserable (as in he's having no fun at all) out there. I'd keep Godoy on the roster when Arraez comes back and send Kirilloff away. Either the IL or the minors. He's far more important and they need to get him figured out sooner than later.

I'm certainly not suggesting they count on him as a key member of the opening day rotation, but it's quite extreme to suggest they shouldn't expect anything out of him at all. Even if he doesn't debut until June next year that's still 2/3 of the season he'd be pitching.

They didn't have a closer when Rogers was here. Rogers has never been "the closer" for the Twins. It's not how the Twins ever used him. He closed some games, yes, but we was never the closer. That's not how they run their bullpen.

How are they supposed to get to the opportunity for 60 good high impact innings without starting pitching? Twins bullpen is currently #2 in all of baseball in Win Probability Added. So to this point the doomed pen without Rogers has provided 118.2 innings of good high impact innings. I suppose you could argue they'd be #1 in baseball if they still had Rogers, but I'm a simple guy who thinks #2 is probably good enough to win a division and maybe even a playoff game or 2.

We should let the team know they aren't serious about contending so their bullpen quits producing (#2 in baseball in Win Probability Added, so they've been really, really good at getting hitters out in clutch situations) and they start losing and quit being in first. They seem confused as all those "no back-up plan" guys have replaced Rogers and performed well. I'll let them know they're all supposed to suck cuz the Twins traded Taylor Rogers on opening day.

Why do you count on him zero for next year? He'll be back on a mound by spring training (assuming this injury leads to TJ and he goes with the new version that everyone seems to be using). He should be able to pitch almost the entire season next year so you must be assuming he'll take at least the entire season to get his stuff or control back. Seems like a real bold statement. You do realize a closer isn't needed if the starter doesn't do their job first, right? Starting pitching never, ever, ever, ever takes the back seat to relievers. You could be the closer for the Twins this year and it wouldn't cost them anything in terms of the ability to contend if the rotation was full of 5 other TD posters. You can't close a game for a save if the starter put you in a 5 run hole.

I know we're not arguing relief pitcher WAR, right? I'm not suggesting Pagan is the 9th inning answer or even a main cog in the pen for the rest of the season. Simply pointing out that the arguments of the trade being ridiculous at the time and this injury confirming it aren't based on anything other than preference for Rogers. It's ok if some people just admit that the FO is as terrible as they claim and they actually "won" that trade to this point and it will be very, very hard for Rogers to do anything this season to make the trade itself a bad one. And if Pagan continues to work some sort of weird magic trick most times he's out there and Paddack doesn't need TJ the trade will be a steal for 2022 as well.

You seem to be confusing your predicted results of the season with importance. To this point in the season Paddack has been more useful than Rogers would have been and the only game you can point to with any certainty and say not having Rogers "damaged" the 22 Twins is the 9th inning blown lead by Duffey early on. Beyond that all you're saying is that you predicted Rogers would be really good and Paddack and the Twins' pen wouldn't be. To this point those predictions would be wrong as Paddack has been good and the pen has more than held it's own. There is no other basis to say Rogers was, or is, "way more important to this team's 2022 chances than Paddack and Pagan."

Contending teams don't trade relievers for starters? Everyone is praising Rogers for his start this year yet he's still thrown, and thus impacted, half as many innings as Paddack. And then there's Pagan's 8.2 innings and 4 saves. Or was losing Rooker and his .227 BA with 2 HRs as a 27 year old in AAA what you're upset about? So I guess I'm here for those who care more about the names on the back of the jerseys than the name on the front.

He certainly wasn't a bust. He may not have been everyone's favorite style of player (I hate 3 true outcomes hitters), but he was most definitely a useful player over the course of a full season. His problem was always the streakiness where he'd have 2 weeks of striking out 75% of the time and 2 weeks of hitting bombs seemingly every other AB. There's no reason to not give him more ABs in the warm weather when he gets back to see if he can get hot and carry the team for a month, but there's also no reason to pick up his option for next year. Expectations have really killed the perception of his career to this point. He's been an above average hitter, but when you're compared to a top 5 right handed hitter of all time throughout your entire minor league career it's hard to meet those expectations. I hope Miguel moves on after this season and does become "the next Ortiz." Why would we not want someone to succeed? It's unfortunate he could never quite put it all together here, but I hope he gets on one or two last scorching streaks to end this season with the Twins and moves on to a new spot and continues to mash 450 foot HRs.

This is the fun/challenge of prospects right here. Martin is attempting to change his approach to hitting and his swing on the fly at AA. That presents a challenge to judging him based on his stats. I was disappointed to see his ST swing look exactly like his swing from last year. I was hoping he'd come in with some changes already made, but he didn't appear to change much of anything in his power reducing swing from last season. His swings now are looking different. He's more upright and has a more prototypical power swing. Is he able to tie it all together and be a high average and decent to solid power bat in the bigs? Only time will tell. But judging him off his numbers now is difficult. Arraez has never, and will never, be a guy who's changing his swing drastically to attempt to get to more power. He's a high average, low power hitter through and through. So of course he's had better averages. Martin is working on changing his swing and approach. If he were sticking with being a high average, low power hitter and kept his super crouched, punch it to right field swing and approach and all he was trying to do this year was hit for a high average and he was failing I'd be concerned. That's not what he's trying to do, though. We're trying to judge a kid in the middle of his adjustments. Hard to get a good read on his future just by looking at his numbers when he's at this point. That swing yesterday was incredibly encouraging, but that was just 1 swing and doesn't at all mean he's adjusted and found a new swing. Lots of work to be done still. We should worry about him the same way we worry about every other prospect until he reaches the majors and establishes himself. But I don't think judging things simply based on his numbers is a good route to take at this point.

Correa finger not broken. Day-to-day. Hopefully Lewis goes bonkers over the weekend and the Twins have a very tough choice to make about what to do with the roster when Arraez returns.

Correa's finger not broken. Not going to IL and is listed as day-to-day. Lewis debuts with Arraez on covid list. Glad Correa isn't gone for long, but bummed Lewis isn't likely to get more than a few days to show what he can do.

I mean it's close, but I'd give the meteor the slight edge on the list of worse things. But I could be talked out of my stance with a solid argument.

Of all the injuries he could've suffered I think this is one of the better ones. It's not a blown out knee or torn hammy or blown out elbow. Broken finger will heal relatively quickly and he'll be back, but it gives Royce the chance to come up and do his thing and establish himself as well. Certainly would've preferred Correa not get hurt, but with the situation being what it is there's worse things that could've happened.

I was probably the biggest Lewis supporter on this site amongst regular posters as I expected him to go Akil Baddoo on things and just be a great athlete and figure things out quickly, but I was ecstatic when they signed Correa (ate crow and reupped my season tickets even). Get the most talent you can and figure it out from there. Especially when Lewis is no sure thing to stick at short, let alone be one of the 5 best fielders in the game regardless of position. Lewis and Buxton in the OF together after Correa comes back still gives my baseball heart butterflies. I'm very excited for Lewis to debut and look forward to him being so good they can't send him back down!