chpettit19

The Rockies, and every other major league baseball team, has had numerous opportunities over the last few years to get Dobnak for nothing (except his contract) and have chosen not to take him. He's been waived a handful of times and placed on outright waivers. No team has ever claimed him. He's not valuable. He's a negative asset. The Twins would have to pay to get rid of him. Why would they want to do that? This isn't "hating" on Dobnak. He seems like a good dude and was a wonderful story and seems to work hard and I have no problems with him and am glad he got the money he could. But he's not wanted by MLB teams. The league is "hating" on Dobnak. Nobody wants to pay him that deal, as small as it is. All 29 teams, on multiple occasions, have refused to "clear a path" for Dobnak. This idea that he'd be valued more somewhere else is provably false. It's been proven time after time over multiple years.

I'm picturing more of a Homeward Bound situation. The Twins left him behind and he crossed rivers and mountains, maybe fought off a porcupine, to return to where he wants to be.

This is how major league baseball works. Welcome to the world of professional sports. There's no "grave insult." And neither of those players were "cut." They were reassigned to minor league camp since they are minor league players. Neither is on the 40-man. This was always what was going to happen. Yunior Severino was a free agent and decided to sign back with the Twins. If he didn't/doesn't like how he's treated he could've/should've left. He didn't. He chose to come back here.

"They cannot appear in a spring training game for the rest of 2025." Are we sure this is correct? That rule doesn't sound familiar to me.

I don't think cash is going to be enough to get him. If all Philly was asking was some cash considerations the Twins would've (should've?) just done that deal before the Rule 5 when they tried to trade for him. I think the prospects listed are the more likely ask from Philly. I'd guess the deal wasn't completed before because the Phillies asked for a "real" prospect in return and the Twins said no. I don't know why that price would've gone down now that the Twins are forced to keep him on the 26-man all year. Your feelings on the prospects in that general range will determine whether you think they should do that deal or not. But I don't think comparisons to the 2019 picks and trades are all that useful. Unless those other teams had tried to trade for their Rule 5 picks beforehand and failed to come to an agreement. It could be a PTBNL, but that player would likely be from that general range of prospects. Who the actual names are will depend on what the teams think of the Twins system. They'll have different ratings than MLB. But I'd guess if they make a trade it'll be for a guy most of us have heard of.

I don't think there's reason to expect any individual MLB pitcher to throw 160+ innings this day and age. But I don't think Festa has a worse chance than the average pitcher. I don't see any reason why the Twins would artificially hold his innings down, though. Only reason he shouldn't throw 160+ is because of injury or poor performance. Even starting in AAA, those starts shouldn't be artificially held down. He should pitch as he would if he were in the bigs as that's the hurdle he needs to clear and the workload he needs to be built up at. I don't think it'd be advisable to have him used to throwing 4 or 5 innings and then ask him to go to the majors and throw 6 against tougher competition. The need, I think, is sort of the disagreement amongst fans. One could argue that the 2023 Twins needed their 5 best starters in the majors from the start of the season to give them the best chance to win the most games. I don't think there's many people who thought Ober wasn't one of their 5 best starters after spring. The same debate is happening now about Paddack and (mostly) Festa. I think there's valid points to be made on both sides. I disagree with the stance that he can't throw 160+ innings. That's a pretty standard increase in his workload. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a team in the majors that wouldn't be just fine with that jump in innings. And I don't think holding him in AAA for any meaningful amount of time raises the chances that he's still got gas in September. Your Ober vs Mahle example was Ober saving 7 innings in a month. I don't buy that that would equal a meaningful difference in his stamina come September. Reasonable arguments can be made on Paddack starting the season in the rotation, bullpen, or on another team. I don't think it's as clear cut as others may. I'd put him in the pen as a 2 inning weapon. I think the Twins will need about 8 starters again this year like they have the last 2. I'm good with Ryan, Ober, Lopez, SWR, Festa, and Zebby being the first 6 with a handful of other guys fighting for the 7, 8, 9 spots. I understand that comes with some risk, but I think it's a reasonable risk to take. At some point the pipeline has to flow. I'm at the point where I'm ready to start relying on it. It's been long enough that the FO should have established their minor leagues. Time to sink or swim. But I don't think it's crazy to start Paddack in the rotation. Just not what I'd do with the information I have.

I don't think the Ober comparison is all that good, actually. Bailey threw 108.1 innings in 2021. He threw 72.2 innings in 2022. Festa threw 92.1 in 2023 and 124.2 in 2024. Zebby threw 105.1 in 2023 and 134.2 in 2024. Those guys threw nearly double the innings that Ober did the year before he was seeing those short AAA starts to start the year. Sure, you can manage AAA starts easier, but why would they? Neither Festa nor Zebby should be on meaningful inning counts at all this year. Bailey Ober threw 167 innings in 2023 coming off those 2 much lower inning total years. The Twins don't need to hold Festa or Zebby back.

Low minors flier. Some sort of 19 year old lottery ticket is probably the best they can get. Or somebody like Mickey Gasper who's an older, borderline 40-man guy on another team that the Twins like more than that team does.

Blind squirrel and all that. But, yes, that is one of the many reasons I don't see him traded after opening day.

I'd trade 10 Paddacks for any other those guys. I'm not saying the Twins shouldn't trade Paddack, I'm saying I don't see a scenario where they actually do after the season starts.

A spring trade to the Yankees or someone else losing arms (Luis Gil likely out til the All-Star break for the yanks already) sounds like a plausible outcome, but I don't see the Twins trading him at the deadline if he's successful. If he's pitching well enough to bring an MLB bat back in return you're threading an awfully tight needle of finding a contending team that needs pitching and has a bat they are willing to trade off their major league roster. And if the Twins are in the race at all and Paddack is pitching well they aren't going to trade him at the deadline for prospects. Don't see many plausible situations where they trade him in season.

Going to have wait a lot longer than 1 day for the Ryan dreams to come true. Try March 6 on for size.

I won't go as aggressively on the clean sweep as you, but I'm ready to move on from Falvey and Rocco. The folks under them are much harder to have any sort of feel for. We just switched up hitting coaches so no feelings on them yet. I also am a fan of what the pitching development and minor league situation in general are looking like (I'd also keep Sean Johnson as I think he's done quite well running the draft), but the things that appear to be core philosophies at the MLB level have run their course for me and I'm ready for new faces with new ideas. But I think there's a very real chance new people in charge are worse than the current guys. There may not be much room for ownership to be worse, but I think there's a larger chance that a new regime could be worse. Falvey will get a new job instantly. New ownership will hopefully have the right connections and knowledge to bring in high quality candidates. But there's a lot of room below the Twins in terms of team performance. 80-87ish wins for years on end is getting frustrating for us all, I think, but it's better than 60-70 wins.

2 things about the Suns comparison. 1. And this is noted in the article, Justin isn't the head guy in Phoenix, his brother is. I don't know how closely they work together, and I'm not sure anyone around here does. Is Justin even meaningfully involved in the decisions there? 2. The NBA and MLB are very different leagues. Every individual player is a key part of both offense and defense in basketball. The most important part of defense in MLB is pitching. They play 0 role in offense (Ohtani being the historic rarity). Offenses have a position that plays no role in defense. While every player needs to be ready on every play in MLB, they aren't all involved in every play like they are in the NBA. Chasing 3 stars like Phoenix did is team building 101 in the NBA. You're not even in the conversation in the NBA if you don't have 2 legit stars/max contract guys. There are no meaningful minor leagues in the NBA. The Suns didn't trade away a great young core. Ayton and Bridges weren't stars. They kept their star and didn't pay non-stars star money while adding 2 other stars. Chris Paul was born the same year as I was. He wasn't young, and isn't a star anymore. Tell me if this sounds familiar...the Suns problem is their stars haven't stayed healthy. Health has been their problem, not their team building strategy. As for Justin's potential ownership of the Twins, just like any other new owner we won't know if they're better, worse, or the same as the Pohlads for years. Justin had some intrigue because he appears to be a legitimate fan of baseball. That's relatable for us mortals and, I think, a basic general desire we have of any ownership group/person for any of our teams. We want to feel like, at a minimum, the owner cares whether the team wins or loses. I don't think many feel that about the Pohlads. So the idea of a legit baseball fan buying the team was refreshing at the least. I'm sure there are some people who also hope that new ownership is going to throw budgets out the window and just go wild. I don't think that's the hope for the vast majority of fans, though. I think most of us have the hope that ownership that are actual fans and actually care about winning will invest a little more during the up swings instead of "right-sizing" their business. On the down swings slice and dice away at the payroll and make all the money you can. On the next up swing make more smart investments. I think that's a reasonable request from a fanbase. And my biggest hope for new ownership is that they can better take advantage of this market. MN fans will show up. The Vikes and Wild don't have to try as hard as we're more diehard about football and hockey around here, but the Wolves and Twins can get big numbers of fans to show up when they give us a reason. Maybe those fan bases would be more diehard, too, if the ownership did better. The Wolves have been an embarrassment for decades and the Twins just won their first playoff series in 2 decades. Do better at getting the fans to feel connected to the team and show you care about winning. Be better about your messaging (hard not to be better than the current Pohlad and DSP group). Run the team better and adding to the payroll doesn't have to mean you'll lose money because you would be making more revenue. I'm excited for new ownership, but I'm not blindly expecting things to be significantly different. They'll still budget. We'll still be mid-market. But there's at least a chance the new owners care about winning at all. There's also a chance they don't. We won't know for years after they take over. Grass isn't always greener, but the grass we're standing on now is actually dirt.

Jorge Polanco didn't depart via free agency...

But that doesn't explain putting 3 lefties in the top 4 spots. Especially when it pushed Correa to 5. That's making the other manager's job real easy. Just switching Kepler and Correa at least makes the other manager decide which 2 lefties they want to go after. Having fewer lefties will certainly make spreading them out easier, but he wasn't exactly trying hard to separate them last year.

How often were all 5 of those lefties on the roster at the same time? Wallner wasn't on the roster from 4/15 to 7/7. AK's career came to a horribly sad end on 6/11. Julien was gone from 6/3 through 7/20 then again from 7/24 to 8/16. Max missed essentially all of September. Larnach wasn't on the team until 4/16. So, from 6/11 until 7/7 3 of them were on the IL or in St Paul leaving just 2 on the roster. Then while Julien remained in AAA there were only 3 on the roster until 8/16. Then again during September when Kepler's Twins career came to an unceremonious end they were back to just 3. That's a pretty significant amount of time throughout the year when there were only 2 or 3 lefties on the roster last year. To start the year Rocco was going Eddie- AK at the top of the order followed by Buxton and then Kepler. 3 of the 4 lefties in the top 4 in the order with only Wallner separated.

Aaron Gleeman has an article on The Athletic today about Wallner leading off. Interesting quote from Rocco in it: "Breaking up the lefties, maybe it asks the opposing team to answer a question in a different way than the way we posed it before.” The question Rocco used to pose was "what inning do you want me to take all my lefties out of the lineup for you." He stacked lefties. Are we about to see Rocco split his lefties like he has in spring so opposing managers not only have to pick what inning they want Rocco to take lefties out in but also which lefty and which righties their lefties will have to face to do it?! What a crazy idea!

Mookie steals 10-15 bags a year. His speed and base running are secondary to his hitting. Same with everyone else I listed. Some steal a bunch of bags, some steal none. Teams find their best hitters (above average to great hitters preferably) and plant them in the top 4 or 5 lineup spots (or 6 if you're the Dodgers). From there they shuffle them around based on other things like speed, handedness, etc. But the priority is absolutely no longer what it used to be. Lineup construction is about getting your best hitters the most opportunities. You're guaranteed to leadoff 1 inning by batting in the 1 spot in the lineup. Teams figured out that weighing that 1 PA over the next 3 or 4 that will come that game was a bad strategy. After the 1st inning, every lineup spot has nearly the exact same percentage of PAs with runners in scoring position (roughly 25%) including the leadoff spot. 4 hole hitters get about 28% of their PAs with RISP, but every other lineup spot is between 24 and 26% (outside of the first inning). Leadoff hitters having to be table setters for the other guys is a myth. Needing speed at the top is a myth. The only difference between lineup spots is the number of opportunities you get in total. So put your best hitters at the top to give them the most chances to be great.

1. They aren't dialing Jeffers back. 2. If they did and he only catches 60 or 70 games teams would notice that and take it into account. 3. Jeffers is nowhere near the hitter Contreras is. Below is Jeffers, Jansen, and Contreras. See if you can pick out which one is Contreras... A little unfair since Contreras has played more seasons. So here they are in a different order with their 1st through 5th seasons to account for Jeffer's entire career. Can you pick Contreras out of this one? This one goes through Jansen and Contreras arbitration years. So, their complete body of work when they hit the free agent market. Jeffers obviously having time to make up ground on Contreras in this one. But 14+ WAR in 2 seasons would have him finishing in the top 5 of MVP voting. I'd call that unlikely. The Twins aren't selling Jeffers as their primary catcher to anyone. He's splitting catcher 50/50. They've even been alternating games in spring. Again, you're just making stuff up to fit your narrative. Scott Boras isn't going to go to the Twins and convince them he's their primary catcher as if they're not aware of how they're using him. And, if you're right, and he craters under a heavier load this year or next the stats really won't be there to match what Contreras is/was doing. Boras isn't a Jedi. He can't make the Twins, or any team, believe something that isn't actually true. Anyone who has Boras is expecting him to get them what they want. Sometimes that's the most money, sometimes that's being in a certain location, it's different for every player. I'm not going to get into it again with you on Vazquez having to learn a new pitching staff. That isn't the years long process you make it seem. Every team uses dozens of pitchers every year. Catchers move teams every year. Vazquez learns new pitchers every year. The Twins have no need to extend Vazquez right now. They can sign any defense only catcher for 3-5 mil next year. Saving a little on him this year doesn't help at all. This isn't a catcher thread. We were talking about catchers in regards to what the Twins could get back for one of their arms. So, let's move on from the catcher talk and get back to talking about the possible surplus of arms the Twins have and whether or not they should trade any of them. A catcher is certainly a reasonable target if they do.

These 2 lefty hitters are pretty similar, right? You probably take the one on the left, but neither has crazy better surface stats, right? One of them is currently playing on a 4 year, $79 million deal and is rumored to be working on another similar deal as an extension. They'll have made $100 million by the end of this year (their 10th MLB season). The other just finished a 1 year, $12.5 million deal and is playing on a 1 year, $15.75 million deal with 2 option (1 player, 1 mutual) years for 21.25 and 18.5 after. They'll have made $57 million by the end of this year (their 11th MLB season). Neither is a good defender in the least. Kyle Schwarber had a .481 OPS against lefties his rookie year. Then .648 and .654. He wasn't platooned. Those first 2 numbers aren't significantly higher than Wallner's. After those first 3 years he jumped up into the .700s for OPS against lefties and has mostly maintained that. And he's going to make $100 million more than Pederson for his career. Our concern is that they're going to treat Rodriguez and Jenkins the same as the rest. We don't know if they will, but all signs point to it and that's our concern. And, again, Wallner put up an OPS over .900 against lefties in multiple seasons at AA and AAA. .900! But that isn't enough to get him an early shot at everyday playing time. Your prediction can be that for Jenkins, but we haven't seen it. If they have 4 or more lefties they can't platoon them all. But going back to at least 2021, the Twins have platooned all their lefties during any time they have 3 or fewer lefties on their roster. Always. With no exception. Our concerns are valid as they're based on real life, actual decisions made by the Twins. Pederson wasn't even platooned his first full season. And had a .691 OPS against lefties. Tanked (.469 OPS) against them his second season while being platooned. Platooned again his 3rd year at .597. Has essentially been platooned ever since his 2nd year and has seen his limited PA OPS bounce around, but his career OPS against lefties is .630. Not .450 or anything, but he's a platoon bat now and it's cost him significantly. There are very real consequences to guy's careers.

Yes, there's a reason. He can't hit them. That isn't the point. The point is that you said you weren't "feeling their angst" because lefties still play 2/3 to 3/4 of the time (107-122 games per year, BTW) because that's how many righty pitchers there are. The "angst" of Twins lefties is that they're being forced into the Joc Pederson box without a real chance of getting into the everyday player box and that has a real effect on their career. I never claimed Pederson would put up those numbers if he played everyday, he was the example that there's very real consequences to Wallner, Julien, Rodriguez, Larnach, Jenkins, etc. being put in the "platoon" box for the first 6 years of their careers. Potentially hundreds of millions of dollars worth of consequences. Players care about that. If your bosses were actively holding you back from a potential promotion with a significant pay increase would you "feel angst?" I sure would.

It's not your career so I'm sure you aren't feeling their angst. Joc Pederson puts up massive numbers. Last 3 OPS+ numbers are 146, 112, and 151. Career OPS of 119. But he's a platoon bat. He's made 62 mil in his career (according to spotrac). Can't get anyone to sign him to big, long-term money. Got 2 years, 37 mil this offseason coming off that 3 year run. Got "just" 12.5 the year before. There's a very real difference between being an everyday player and a platoon bat when it comes to guy's careers. You may not feel their angst, but it's a very real thing.

"Blocked" prospects is a myth. Rushing is already playing 1B and LF for the Dodgers. Endy has been playing 1B, OF, and 2B for years. The kid in Seattle is Harry Ford and he started playing LF last year, and many scouts question his ability to stay behind the plate regardless of Raleigh. William Contreras is a good enough hitter to DH for Milwaukee. I'm not saying not to target any of these guys, or that deals can't be made, but there's no such thing as a blocked prospect if the team wants that guy on their roster. It's why it's not shocking or out of the ordinary that the Twins move guys around defensively. No prospect or player is ever locked in to only 1 position. Unless you're the best guy in the league there's always someone who can bump you. Like Correa moving to 3B had his deal with the Mets stuck.

Jeffers asking for 20 or getting paid 15 would be shocking. That's top 3 catcher money. Those numbers are, shockingly, just made up randomness not based on anything real other than the name "Boras" being big and scary. Boras is real good at his job (most of the time), but every team would point at Will Smith making essentially 13 and say "try again, Scott." Danny Jansen's 8 mil deal is probably the realistic mark for Jeffers. Given inflation call it 9 or 10 in 2 years. Assuming Jeffers doesn't go bananas these next 2 years. Now if/when they deal one of their arms they'll have a very good shot at acquiring a catcher in return if that's what they want to do. I expect Jeffers back for 2026 and a much cheaper Vazquez or Vazquez style catcher to go with him. Perez, Realmuto, Heim, Kirk, Jansen, Jeffers, Rogers, Stallings, Kelly, Diaz, Trevino, Vazquez, Hedges. Plenty of catchers becoming free agents the next 2 years that can be signed for very little or much more. Assuming they don't absolutely nail a catcher pick this year or have Cartaya bounce back to top form, trade is probably their best bet for bringing in a young, top catcher with years of control. And dangling Lopez, Ryan, or Ober could definitely do it next offseason.