chpettit19

Why do you assume he's getting middle in pitches? He can have a different approach even at AAA. He's still chasing over 30% of the pitches he sees out of the zone. He's still swinging at just below 70% of the pitches he sees in the zone. Still swinging about 50% of the time at all pitches. The difference? He's making contact FAR more often. Because the pitches aren't as good. But if he's still being fooled and chasing pitches at the same rate despite the pitches not being as good, how does that help him when he gets back to facing the better pitches? He's seeing 3% more pitches in the zone than he was in the majors. So, 3 more out of every 100 pitches he sees is in the zone in the minors. But he's still chasing the same amount. He's still having 15% of the pitches he sees be called strikes. He just isn't swinging and missing as much and is making better contact against insufficient pitches. His challenge, to save his career, is to stop chasing the numbers on the back of his AAA baseball card and start chasing the adjustments that need to be made to improve the numbers on the back of his MLB baseball card. He can lay off pitches out of the zone. The idea that he is just getting middle in pitches and the pitchers aren't fooling him or he's not having full at bats where he has to lay off pitches ever is not reality. He's not having good at bats. The pitches not being as effective at AAA should make it easier for him to lay off pitches out of the zone. But he isn't doing it. He hasn't changed his approach at all. And he can do that against AAA pitching. He's either choosing not to or isn't capable of it. Either way, he hasn't fixed the problems that stop him from hitting MLB pitching.

Confidence definitely matters. But, to me, that's another reason to not call him up until he's actually made some adjustments. If he hasn't made adjustments, I don't care how confident he is, MLB pitchers will continue to expose him and that may destroy his confidence forever.

All good. I probably didn't read your previous statement as clearly as I could have either. Fully agree that having people throw multiple innings in a fluid way is a very useful tool.

The weaknesses Royce needs to work on are absolutely things that can be worked on in AAA. Going the other way and laying off pitches out of the zone are things he can work on against AAA pitching. That's an approach and mentality thing. It's actually what the minors are best built for. It's arguably the most important part of minor league coaching staff's jobs. "This is working here, but it won't work when you get to the next level or 2" is the story coaches have to sell to just about every prospect who walks in their clubhouse. It's why Kyler Fedko isn't in the majors. It's why McCrusher was never used even when he was called up. It's why Sabato is never really going to get a shot. It's why guy after guy is kept in the minors. This is what the minors are for and what the front office and coaches get paid for. They absolutely will never get it completely correct, but they need to be pretty good at knowing what works in the majors and whether or not a guy is truly doing that in the minors. Royce can adjust his approach against AAA pitching. He just doesn't look like he has any intention of doing that. And, yes, that's a very real problem.

Me going higher on the starter innings is even MORE reason to use bulk guys, not less. The exact numbers weren't the point, the idea that having an 8 man pen full of all 1 inning guys is not better for covering mass innings than a bullpen that includes multi-inning relievers. The Twins have not used the piggyback that way recently. They use bulk relievers every 4 days. They aren't tied to any starter, they're just on a rotation. And they pitch as many innings as they can on that 4th day. Maybe it's 1 because Ryan went 7 and they wanted to use the closer. Maybe it's 5 because SWR was awful that day. And, yes, injuries will 100% happen. But, no, you don't need another bulk reliever. There's nothing that says you can't replace a bulk guy with a 1 inning guy if that's your best option. Then your bulk guy would've covered more innings than a 1 inning guy would have and the rest of the pen is more rested to then cover for having to go back to an 8 man, one inning each pen. Using a bulk reliever doesn't tie the managers hands unless the front office forces it to. There is no rule that says you can't have Ryan go 8 or 9 or 10 or 15 innings on the day the bulk reliever was scheduled. You can even completely skip that bulk reliever that day and give him an extra day rest if Ryan or Lopez or Ober or Taj or Abel or anyone goes 7, 8, or 9 and it makes more sense to use 1 inning guys. The idea that there's no role between 5+ inning starter and 1 inning reliever doesn't make any sense. Louie Varland is the guy I really started touting this approach for. He could cruise through a lineup 1 time but was trash after that. He never seems to wear down. He could've been a 3 innings every 4 days guy. Some of those outings would've been 1. Some could've been 4 or 5. But he didn't need to be used for just 1 inning. He could be effective for 3. And he was one of their 10 best pitchers. Griffin Jax is now starting for Tampa. He could clearly be effective for more than 1 inning. He was one of their 10 best pitchers. But instead of using those guys for multiple innings, they used them for 1 inning at a time and limited them to 70ish innings a year which lead to their 13th through 20th best arms getting more innings than they had to pitch. If you had each of those guys getting 100 to 120ish innings you're covering 60 to 100 more innings with your best arms and limiting your 13th to 20th best arms to fewer innings. This article is based off a false premise of this team using a 6-man rotation. They weren't. What they have been doing is using bulk/piggyback relievers. They've been giving guys like Rojas who was one of their 10 best arms more than 1 inning even though he wasn't in the 5 man rotation. If your 9 best arms are all starter types, why would you send 4 of them to the minors or limit them to 1 inning each when they have the ability to do more? The reason this article mistakenly called this a 6-man rotation is because starters got pushed back a day. That happens with every team throughout the season. A guy gets an extra day here and there. You can do it with the bulk guys to. There's nothing that says you have to be as rigid as you're making it out. Figure out how good your guys are and how long they can go in a major league game. Maybe that's based on times through the order. Maybe it's based on health concerns (Duran and Miller being 1 inning guys, for example). Maybe it's pitch count. Maybe it's innings. Who knows. Each guy needs to be judged on his own. But once you know a guy can go through the order 3 plus times (Ryan or Lopez types) then that's what you should be letting them do. Varland types who can do it once? Why limit them to less than that? Let Varland go 3 innings. And as they're dominating at whatever role they have, you can test the boundary (assuming it isn't a health thing like Duran). Varland or Jax crush the 3 inning role for 2 months? Give them a time and a half through the order. Doesn't work? Back to once through. Still crushing it? Now let's try twice through. Get your best arms as many innings as they can effectively handle instead of forcing yourself into using your 13th through 20th best arms for a bunch of important innings. The reason you don't think this works beyond paper is because you have it on the paper wrong.

David Ortiz went to the opposite field 24.1% of the time for his career. Royce's highest season ever going oppo in the majors was 2023 when it was 24.7%. He was 17% in his 3 other seasons before this year when it's 14.7%. Ortiz dropped below 20% 1 time, and that was his last year in baseball. Royce's, by far, best season in the majors? 2023. When he was using the opposite field just 25% of the time. He needs to get up to 20% at least. He's at 11% in the minors. His approach is broken. There is nothing in his approach that shows he's changed anything. The fact that he does seem to rely so much on his confidence being high is all the more reason to keep him down until he truly fixes things. What happens if you call him up on Monday when he hasn't changed the approach we know doesn't work in the majors and he falls flat on his face again? What's that do to his confidence? You quite possibly lose him forever if that's how things go. He needs to make real changes. He hasn't. His approach doesn't work in the majors because the pitchers are better. He needs to change his approach. If the Twins coaches can't convince him to then it's time to do everybody a favor and move him to give him a chance to succeed elsewhere and free the Twins from the situation.

Perfect.

Being deep in SS prospects is all the more reason to not trade him. They have other guys they can offer. Jett Williams is probably the best you could talk them into. I don't think they'd listen at all on Made or Pena. The Brewers build through prospects. They aren't trading top 25 type prospects for a rental catcher and Ryan. They have William Contreras. A hamate break recovering Jeffers carries very little weight for them. And they aren't trading a top 25 prospect, let alone the #1 prospect, for Ryan. Jett Williams and Lara is a far more realistic starting point for a deal with the Brewers for Ryan. And even that may not be likely because the Brewers wouldn't be huge fans of going into 2027 with Ryan as an expiring deal. He's the kind of guy they trade away more than they trade for.

The Brewers are not trading the #1 prospect in baseball.

If he's going to come back and OPS under .550, no, it doesn't need to be considered. He isn't a gold glover or anything. An average defender with an OPS of .550 doesn't have a career. If Royce hasn't fixed his offensive problems, nothing else matters. Royce currently has a worse OPS than any Christian Vazquez season. Royce's offense is all that matters right now.

What adjustments has he made? "the Twins needed to know that the changes were real." What changes were made and why should the Twins believe they're real? There was never any doubt Royce Lewis is too good for AAA pitching. Him destroying AAA pitching doesn't prove he's made any adjustments or changes. You don't present any information on what changes or adjustments were made or why anyone should believe they're "real." Royce's walk rate is 5.2% in AAA compared to the 10.1% he had in the majors this year. He hasn't started laying off pitches and taking good at bats. His oppo% is down to 11.9% in AAA compared to the 14.7% he had in the majors this year. He hasn't started going the other way with pitches. His swing percentage overall has gone up to 51% from the 48.6% it was in the bigs. His O-Swing% (out of zone pitches he swings at) has gone up an insignificant amount from 32.8 to 33%. Again, he hasn't stopped chasing pitches. He's simply making more, and better, contact against inferior pitching. So, I ask again, what adjustments has he made and why should the Twins think they're real? Because it's pretty easy to look at his swing decision and approach numbers and see he hasn't changed anything. He's simply destroying inferior pitching. Why should we believe he's "fixed" and he wouldn't continue to struggle with his swing at everything, pull everything approach in the majors again when he hasn't changed that approach one bit?

Fully agree with everything but the last paragraph. I don't get this notion that having a seven man bullpen is some doomsday scenario if you go with a 6 man rotation or, especially, piggyback bulk relievers. The Dodgers run a real 6 man rotation. The difference is the names in the rotation. An extra day rest should mean starters can go deeper, thus the 7 man bullpen needs to cover fewer innings. But that only works when you have a rotation with names like Snell, Glasnow, Ohtani, and Yamamoto. The Twins rotation is not at all built to go 6 deep and save the bullpen. But the piggyback argument seems to fly in the face of pretty simple math. For 1, its not a 7 man bullpen, its an 8 man bullpen. But 1 of those 8 (or 2 or 3 or all 8 if you want to get crazy) throws more than 1 inning. And if that guy throws more than 1 inning it actually means the other 7 have to cover FEWER innings, not more. 162 games of 9 innings is 1458 innings the staff needs to cover. Modern baseball is not built on starters who go 7, 8, or 9 innings regularly. For ease of numbers we'll say the average start is 6 innings. 5 guys starting 162 games means each starter gets 32.4 starts. We'll round down to 32 to make it easy. That means the average starter throws 192 innings (that is much higher than reality, but it'll serve the purpose of this exercise). That is 960 innings covered by your 5 starters. That leaves 498 to be covered by the 8 man pen. 62.25 innings each. If 1 of them is a bulk, piggyback reliever who averages 2 innings (not even the preferred 3 or 4, just 2) every 4th game, they are making 40.25 appearances. We'll even round this down to 40. So that pitcher throwing fewer games than reality says they could and fewer innings per game than reality says they could, is covering 80 innings instead of 62. That leaves 418 innings for the other 7 relievers. That's 59 innings a piece instead of 62. The real goal of the bulk reliever role is to get that guy 100 to 120+ innings (40 appearances at 3 innings a piece is 120 innings). If you get that you then leave only 378 innings for the other 7 guys. Now we're down to 54 innings for each of those spots. If you have 2 bulk spots getting 200 innings combined? 298 innings for 6 1 inning guys. 49 innings a piece. I am so very confused how people think having 1 guy throw more innings means more work for the other guys on the staff. That is a wild stance to me because it flies in the face of logic and simple math. A 6 man rotation doesn't work the same unless the extra days of rest lead to longer starts. But a bulk reliever creates LESS work for the other bullpen guys. Its really simple math.

This is the biggest challenge for front offices and, too often, owners. A hard, emotionless, realistic assessment of your roster. I don't care if the American League is "down" right now. Has the Twins outlook changed significantly from the 72-78 wins most people expected coming into the season? I'd give that a very hard "no." So, if you're still expecting a max of about 78 wins 1/3 of the way into the season, what are you waiting for? What's the best-case scenario? Half the American League can't get to 78 wins so you sneak in and get boat raced in 2 games and go home? I'm not interested in that. Pretending you're good enough when you aren't is how teams get stuck in, at best, the no-man's-land middle ground. I'm not interested in that. Because that leads to the Twins holding Jeffers and him leaving for nothing. It leads to them holding Ryan and risking a Lopez style complete loss of value. It leads to a worse future in some lost cause hope that the rest of the league sucks, too, and you can pretend you succeeded by sneaking into the playoffs with a below-.500 record. No thanks. But, I will say I don't expect the Pohlads to allow the team to do what they should and treat this as the transition year it is. I expect Tom to force the front office into some bad decisions for the future of this team.

He'd be a pretty significant outlier if he became anything real at this point. But I'd rather see him or any other random AAA guy than Outman. And I'd rather they actually do some real testing of players in years where they aren't good enough to contend, even if those player's likely best-case scenario is a depth piece who never even reaches arbitration because they aren't worth more than the minimum. If you can find an actual 4th OFer or 5th OFer/1B who bounces back and forth between the bigs and AAA based on injuries for the minimum, that isn't a bad thing. If you can quit filling those roles with guys who cost more than the minimum, that's a good thing. Can Fedko be that? Don't know. Wouldn't bet on it, but why not at least see. The team is going nowhere this year. Outman's career is over. Make a kid's dream come true and see if there's something there.

If the new CBA forces the Twins to spend they should absolutely not pay Buxton more than he makes them and they should absolutely not pay Jeffers $23 million. This is their chance to actually go get some players and compete. Spending more on guys than they're worth just to get cap compliant would be an awful result. If Buxton forces their hand, fine. But don't pay him just because. And based on his stance so far, I'd bet he'd be ok taking his 15 mil and being surrounded by better players. Wasting cap money would be a terrible way to start the new era of more competitive opportunity.

That doesn't mean teams will just ignore what he's worth. There are always guys on the block that every single contending team can fit into their roster that don't get traded at the deadline. I have no doubt the Twins could trade Jeffers at the deadline. My doubt is that they get anything crazy back. They have no leverage now that he's hurt, with an injury that is known to hurt offensive numbers (especially power) even after it's healed, and he's a rental player. Will somebody want him? Absolutely. But at a certain cost.

I'm not assuming there'll be a cap system in place, I'm saying it's maybe the only way the Twins significantly up payroll next year. "Highest paid catcher" matters because the QO being so much higher than any other catcher tells you it simply isn't smart (or at least no team has ever felt it was smart) to pay a catcher that much. Paying guys more than they are worth is not good resource management. Especially if you're a team with a limited budget. Catchers simply aren't worth that much. Not even peak JT Realmuto who was significantly better than Jeffers. We don't know what is or isn't advantageous for contracts in a hypothetical baseball cap/floor system until we know the rules that surround that system. No, the normal price for a "high end regular borderline All Star type of" catcher is not 20 million. That matters. The cost for an All Star SS or CF is different than the cost of an All Star 1B or 3B which is different than the cost for an All Star C. His position matters. I don't follow the logic of "building a team around him" not being your goal and caring about finding a better catcher than Jeffers. If the team as a whole isn't the goal then why care about having a better catcher than Jeffers? If you aren't trying to build a winner, thus caring about the team around Jeffers, why care about overpaying for Jeffers just so you have the best catcher available to you?

That's fair. I think there's an incredibly small chance he gets those deals. If he's given the QO, I don't think there's much of a chance he doesn't sign it. The CBA could change all of this. The MLBPA wants the QO to go away. Floor, cap, team control length, all kinds of things could change and none of this will matter anymore. But, based on what we have in place right now, if Jeffers is offered 23 mil for 1 year, I can't imagine he doesn't jump on it.

Jeffers would sign it in a heartbeat. I only said 75% to be semi-reasonable. But the real likelihood is probably more like 99.9%. He's likely looking at something similar to Vazquez's deal. 3 years and somewhere between 25 and 35 mil. If you can get 23 for 1 and still turn around and get that 3 year deal the next year, why would you turn that down?

It, unfortunately, also sets the bar for trade negotiations. I think trading him is the right thing to do, but I expect people will be upset with the return. When teams throw out offers the Twins can't say they need more than a late 1st round pick in value because the other teams know they aren't getting that. So the bar is set at an early third round pick type value. Why they should've traded him in the offseason.

Are we sure it'd likely be in the low 30s? How many catchers have ever signed deals over 50 mil? I'd guess it's more likely the pick is after the 2nd round. Weigh that however you want, but there are not a lot of catchers out there signing deals big enough to get the Twins a comp a pick. Going into his age 30 season coming off an injury that will likely depress his numbers in the 2nd half, I'd say it's unlikely, but not impossible, that Jeffers gets 50 mil. I'd put the likelihood Jeffers accepts the QO at over 75%. Assuming financials are important to him.

How do you plan to build the team around him? If the CBA forces the Twins to up their payroll by 50-75 mil in 2027 (very real possibility that a floor of some sort is implemented, but very well may not go into effect until 2028 or 2029 to give teams a chance to adjust), an argument could be made for having 50+ million tied up in Correa, Buxton, and the catching tandem. If not, there is no way paying Ryan Jeffers the highest catcher salary in baseball is good for the Twins 2027 team. Having 30 mil wrapped up in the catcher position for a team with a 100 mil payroll, 10 of which goes to a guy not even on the team, is not a good use of resources. At all.

There are certainly Boras clients that sign extensions before they hit free agency, but they are relatively rare. The players get a say in whether or not they're extended. The Twins can overpay guys to convince them to stay, but that is not a good team building strategy. If the player wants to hit free agency, or doesn't want to stay here, or doesn't want to give up their chance to pick where they play, the Twins can't just force them to sign. It's not just automatically a failure of the front office when they don't extend guys. Some guys (Buxton, Polanco, Kepler, etc.) are willing to take extensions and not hit free agency. Others aren't. We'll never know what conversations were had behind the scenes about an extension.

$30 million on the catching position for a team with a total payroll that I'll believe jumps significantly above 100 million when I see it? That's a tough spot to be in. Especially when you consider the Correa payment to Houston. The Twins would be paying Buxton, Correa/Houston, and the catchers about half their payroll unless the Pohlads are forced to spend (new CBA) or suddenly drastically change direction in payroll. All these prospects better be REALLY good if you're trying to win that way.

Caminiti and Hartman from Atlanta is my #1 hope right now.