chpettit19

What's the point of getting rid of Correa if you're going young? None of the youngsters are true shortstops unless you really believe in Brooks Lee. By virtue of being young they're cheap so Correa being expensive isn't stopping them from committing to the young core coming up. If they move Correa and his money what would you replace him with? How do you improve the 2025 team without Correa? And Buxton.

The reports have widely been that the team isn't adding payroll and Falvey has openly said they're going to have to get creative with roster construction to add pieces. You think they'd openly state last offseason that they're cutting payroll but keep a secret this offseason that they're adding payroll? There aren't many people on here who think they're as bad on the PR and business side of things as me, but not even I think they're that bad at things. They aren't adding payroll.

He was already ok with it when he agreed to sign with the Mets in the first place. The question is whether or not he'd be happy to go to the Mets or how much the Mets are willing to pay him now since after their first deal fell through their 2nd offer wasn't as high as what he signed for with the Twins. But he agreed to move to 3B for Lindor already.

Yeah, I don't see it. Agree with others that if he were truly a catcher he'd be catching and not moving around so much. Gleeman named him as a lock in his Rule 5 article so maybe I'm missing something, but absolutely nothing about him jumps out to me as a must add. What he has going for him is that the Twins have no money to spend and have opened a number of 40-man spots. So he has a chance. But I don't see any reason he's a must add at all.

I have the same thoughts on this as I do on the idea about trading Lopez, if you're going to do it it needs to be for MLB ready/current MLB players. I can absolutely see the logic in it from a budget standpoint, but finding a deal that's not going to make the 2025 team worse is the key. If you're going to make the team worse just to save money then blow it up and start over. I want nothing to do with trading for prospects that aren't expected to be part of the 2025 MN Twins.

And they're doing it knowing their 3 most important players will struggle to play 300 combined games year in and year out. That's a special kind of confidence in their plan. I don't think I've ever been that confident in any plan in my life. But I like to think I thrive in the chaos of not having a confident plan (I don't).

He is the Twins first base and catchers coach. He works with the major league catchers. He is not writing development plans for prospects. He is not training prospects. He is not scouting catching prospects. Just like the Twins pitching coaches and hitting coaches aren't writing development plans or scouting prospects. Might he do some work with the minor league guys here and there at spring training? Sure. But each and every minor league player has their own development plan designed specifically for them and Hank Conger is not the one writing those up. Drew MacPhail is the Director of Player Development. But he has a whole team of people under him and the minor league coaches and player dev guys do all that. Hank Conger is not telling Derek Falvey or Sean Johnson what sort of catchers to draft. He's not telling Kevin Goldstein which international catchers to sign. Derek Falvey decides whether he prefers defensive or offensive catchers. Sean Johnson is the Vice President of Amateur Scouting who's in charge of getting all his scouts to know what to look for in catchers that MacPhail believes his dev guys can train up to be the type of catchers Falvey wants. Hank Conger isn't making any of those decisions. Conger's job is to work with major league catchers. The thing to say he hasn't done well is continue to improve Jeffers behind the plate. Jeffers is throwing very well, but his receiving and blocking is not very good. But the drafting and developing of catchers has nothing at all to do with Hank Conger. Just like the drafting and developing of the hitters and pitchers has nothing at all to do with the hitting and pitching coaches for the Twins. Their jobs are to get the major league players to perform. Not draft and develop prospects.

Very interesting. I'm not a big fan of BTV, but I can see the logic behind that framework from both sides. I'm a big fan of Moreno so I'd be happy with this deal.

The crazy thing to me is the abrupt change between the minors and majors with this strategy. Matt Wallner absolutely destroyed left handed pitching in the minors for multiple seasons. In both AA and AAA. He was a first round comp pick. He wasn't some no name emergency call-up to fill a hole. He did the proverbial "forced his way onto the roster" thing. Then he was forced into the template (stealing your phrase here). That's my biggest problem. You use minor league production/performance to make decisions on everything else, but you have to ignore it on this? You want to limit lower level prospects who struggled against same handed guys in the minors and aren't really expected to be part of your future core? I'm in. Makes sense. But the Wallner, Emma, Jenkins type guys who you're hoping are future All Stars and faces of the franchise? Put them in there and let them go. Drop them down in the order, but let them run. Even when they struggle. Let them learn and become one of your Five Guys. Gunnar Henderson vs lefties: 2022: 14 games 26 PAs (106 vs righties) .130/.231/.217/.448 2023: 86 games 167 PAs (455 vs righties) .210/.293/.324/.618 2024: 103 games 217 PAs (502 vs righties) .257/.359/.470/.829 There were 3 Twins with more than 100 PAs in 2024 with a better overall OPS than Gunnar had left on left. 3. The Twins as a team had 194 PAs left on left in 2024. That's less than Gunnar had alone. Only team in baseball under 200. Tampa had 222. Only other team under 250. There were only 5 other teams (including Tampa) under 300 PAs left on left. Are the Twins smarter than everyone else or the opposite of that?

It's not his job! You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what Hank Conger's job is. Hank Conger is not drafting and developing catchers. He's the first base coach for the Twins. He didn't "take over" for the catching drafting and development. That is not his job.

The Twins are paying Conger to coach first base and work with the 2 major league catchers. Not work with and develop prospects.

Ryan Jeffers had a 75th percentile pop time last year. He does not have a "below-average arm." He has plenty of arm. And it is absolutely not in any way, shape, or form Hank Conger's job to come up with an MLB-ready catcher prospect. He's the freaking first base coach for the Twins. He works with the major league team, not the prospects. He's not traveling around to minor league teams working with catchers and then hopping back to wherever the Twins are to coach first base that night. Not his job.

In the dreaded middle ground. Falvey has his work cut out for him. We'll see what he can do. From the outside looking in it doesn't look like it'll be easy to make significant strides.

I think the problem is that Minnesota's window is right now, too. Or at least it's supposed to be. If it isn't, then Pablo isn't the only guy they should be trading. Any return in trade needs to be a right now return. It'd have to be the original Pablo trade in reverse. Would Baltimore trade Basallo or Mayo for Pablo? The Twins don't really need another no defense corner bat like Mayo unless they think he's a significantly better bat than the ones they have. If they think Basallo is ready for an opening day job behind the plate that'd be a very intriguing trade, but I very much doubt they'd do that trade. I don't see much appeal in trading Pablo for prospects. Clearing 21.5 mil but losing Pablo doesn't make the 2025 Twins better. And if you're going to make the 2025 Twins worse you may as well make them much worse and start the rebuild. And if you're going to start the rebuild I'd rather not have the same people in charge who did this rebuild. I'm not saying don't trade Pablo, I just don't know that Baltimore is the trade partner unless somebody sees an MLB middle infielder or catcher they'd be willing to deal for him.

The funny thing is that the solution to the problem is what so many here complain about. It's moving people off their main positions to new positions. Late. It's drafting shortstops (actual shortstops, not Austin Martin shortstops) and then moving them elsewhere as needed. Yes, it's moving Royce Lewis or Brooks Lee to 2B after having played them at SS nearly all of their minor league career. It's playing Emma and Jenkins in CF as long as they can handle it and moving them to a corner at the last possible moment. It's playing Keaschall as high up the defensive spectrum as you can as long as you can (I'm not sure what their plan with him is, his arm injury muddied the waters this year). It's playing Kaelen Culpepper at short until he shows he can't handle it. And then when they're all reaching the majors you see where your holes are and you adjust. Are there some bumps in the early going when moving from SS to 2B? Usually, yes. And you live with it because you'd rather have Royce Lewis in your lineup than whatever random guy you happen to have playing 2B for your AAA team at that time. Where I do agree with many around here is not turning everyone into utility players at the major league level. Don't call your top prospects up and have them play SS, 3B, 2B, CF, and RF. Call up Brooks Lee who's been playing mostly all SS and put him at 2B and take your limited lumps as he adjusts to that spot. Call up Emma who's been playing mostly all CF and put him in RF and take your limited lumps as he adjusts to that spot. Sorry, Austin Martin, you get to play 2B, CF, LF, and anywhere else we need you to because that's how you hold onto a major league job. Same with Willi Castro. But the guys you're expecting to OPS+/wRC+ 115 or higher get 1 spot and get left there as much as possible. But that spot doesn't have to be the spot they played in the minors. The Twins problem was they drafted too many guys who had no shot at staying up the middle (or weren't up the middle guys to start with) and then moved Lewis to a corner and painted themselves into a corner with no up the middle players to put at 2B. The Twins need to weigh defense higher when drafting players (looks like they may be moving that direction a little the last couple years) or be better at scouting defense. If they really thought Austin Martin could play SS they failed at scouting. Moving lower tier prospects, and poor defensive prospects around the diamond is not bad asset management. It's exactly what they should do. They're not stunting growth, they're doing everything they can to find any place that guy has any shot at being serviceable. The problem is they bring in too many guys who can't be serviceable anywhere. The Padres desired lineup included a SS starting in LF (Profar) CF (Merrill- debuted at 20 years old in CF after never playing it in the minors) RF (Tatis) 3B (Machado) SS (Kim) 2B (Bogaerts). Each and every one of those guys played SS their entire minor league careers and 5 of them played it in the majors. The only one who didn't was the 20 year old who moved to a position he'd never played in professional baseball to make his debut on opening day. Moving positions is not a bad thing. Profar is the only horrid fielder on that list. Tatis and Machado are gold glovers at their position. Moving positions in the majors is not a bad thing. It's only bad when you have a bunch of bad defenders. Correa is going to move to 3B eventually. Most likely. That's not going to be some mismanagement of Correa because he's likely going to be incredibly good over there. It's only a bad decision if the Twins don't ever get anyone who can defend at short. The Twins problem isn't moving guys to new positions. It's having a bunch of guys who can't play defense. Shoot, for everyone who hates what the Twins are doing with prospects and players now go look at Carlos Santana's minor league games played by positions. The Twins gold glove winner wasn't exactly just sat at 1B in the minors.

Can it? Possibly. Should the Twins plan on it? Absolutely not. The Twins should plan on 80 games out of Byron Buxton. Hopefully most of which are in center field. Anything on top of that is gravy. The Twins should, finally, have a legitimate center fielder not named Byron Buxton ready to play everyday in center field for when Byron isn't able to play. If Byron goes out and plays 162 games in center in 2025 then you have an extra center fielder to play in a corner a whole bunch and your pitching staff is real happy. If not, you're not scrambling to fill the most obvious hole in Major League Baseball again. The real question is whether or not the legitimate center fielder is already in the organization (Keirsey? Emma?) or you have to find a way to bring one in while not adding real money to your payroll. The question should never again be whether or not Byron will be able to play more than 80 games. The question should always be whether or not they have another real, full-time center fielder on the roster.

I used a different source. That source didn't like how he fielded at most any position. You chose to use a source that painted him the best possible light. I showed the other side. That's how this works. He had 1.6 bWAR this year so I actually moved him UP to 2. He's never had a wRC+ of 110 in his career (in a full season), but that didn't stop you from claiming he was a 110 wRC+ hitter. The entire point of my post was that you chose to use the source that painted him the most positive. I just showed the other side and then gave the entire range between the two, and actually moved the WAR up by not saying 1.5-3. Generally speaking, between Fangraphs and Baseball Reference Willi Castro is a 2-3 WAR player with a 105-110 wRC+/OPS+ bat. That is definitely a useful player. But the expectations for both Royce Lewis and Brooks Lee are higher than that. Not sure why any of that is controversial.

Unless you use OPS+ and bWAR and then he's a 105 and 2 OPS+ and WAR guy. I'm not saying he's useless, but if Lee and Lewis aren't better than 105-110 OPS+ or wRC+ and 2-3 WAR the Twins, and many around here, are going to be disappointed. Willi Castro is absolutely a useful baseball player. But he shouldn't be a better option at any infield position than Royce Lewis or Brooks Lee. And I'm not even a huge Brooks Lee guy.

I don't think that's a fair representation of what Royce said. Royce said he was nervous about moving to a position he'd never played before in the middle of a playoff push. Much like he never said he never slumped, he said he didn't do the slump mindset. But I don't care where he wants to play. If you can't sit down with him and have an adult conversation with him on November 5th about the makeup of the roster and his best fit being at 2B then he isn't somebody I want on the roster. You're not asking him to move to pitcher or catcher or CF. You're asking him to move to another IF position. It's done all the time by far more established players than him. I think Lewis and Lee could, and would, both play 2B. But reasonable minds can disagree. If both Lee and Lewis' future home for the Twins are 3B and neither have any future at any other position I'd trade one of them this offseason if they have any sort of real value at all. If neither of them can play anywhere else they have no combined value to the Twins and carrying them both is a waste of resources.

Even if they told Lewis or Lee today that they're the everyday 2B? If Lewis or Lee can't be a better overall baseball player than Willi Castro at 2B then they should've traded one of them before last year.

I agree that playing them at 2B isn't really playing them out of position. I'd like to see them have a plan figured out now, though, and give one of them the offseason to get work in and come into spring with their feet under them. I'm not nearly as against moving people around as others around here, but I think it'd be a waste of the offseason to not have Lewis or Lee working out at 2B with a plan of being the primary 2B to start the year. Having any of Lewis, Lee, and Correa working out at the the same position as their primary spot this offseason doesn't make sense. At least to me. Pick a spot for each of them and let them work, while also having Lewis and Lee get some extra work at other spots as insurance. It will be interesting to see if somebody will get moved this offseason. I wanted them to trade Julien last offseason. I'm not sure this offseason is the offseason to unload any of those guys. Keaschall has never played in the majors, but if he's the only one who's good AND can stay healthy you can't risk trading him. Can Lee, Correa, Lewis, or Miranda stay healthy? Can Julien make enough contact to be good again? I'm not against trading any of them (really hurts me to say that about Lewis), but every other team is asking the same questions so their value is just not there. Twins really painted themselves into a corner with so much of their roster that it's hard to move their guys. Any move carries extra risk now. Interesting trade. I'd want another lower level piece coming back from Boston to make up for the extra control they're getting with Lee, but that's interesting. Little injury concern with Casas who hurt himself swinging last year and missed most of the year, but he could be a nice middle of the order bat for the Twins. Especially if you think he has 1 more gear and can OPS .900.

Brooks Lee feels like a ball player. He looks to have some of the better instincts on the team already. But he's always been limited physically. I want Brooks Lee on the Twins, but I don't want the Twins banking on Brooks Lee being a cornerstone. I don't see cornerstone. I hope he makes me look silly for saying such a thing, but Royce Lewis looks like a cornerstone, Brooks Lee does not. That doesn't mean he should be tossed aside, but he never lit AAA on fire and very clearly got overwhelmed by major league pitching. I don't worry about extending him at all. Injuries have now presented themselves as a concern for him as well and I'm not doing long-term extensions with guys I don't think are cornerstones and I can't trust to stay healthy. Only guy I'm looking at extending at this point is Jenkins if their coaches think he's close to a lock to add power and fly to the majors this year. They don't have any other young guys I see as "aircraft carriers" as Dan O'Dowd would say. If Brooks proves me wrong and becomes Chipper Jones then he can have Correa and Buxton's money when their deals run out. But I'll take my chances on that. He's not a guy you need to be worrying about extending yet.

Miranda has the same question for me that nearly every Twins position player has...is he and can he stay healthy? I'm ok with them going into the season with him as the primary 1B (depending on the rest of the roster) if he's 100% healthy and there's no reason to think he has some chronic shoulder thing. He's not going to win a gold glove anywhere, but I think he looked much better at 3B after having put in some work and being healthy. I think he can be serviceable at 1B if he's spending time there this offseason putting in some work on getting better. Going to be an interesting offseason. Jobs are likely on the line. We're going to see how much Falvey and Rocco trust what they've built to this point. Do they think it was the team we saw the first and last month or the 4 in the middle?

Point 1- Their "core" is not Gavin Lux and Will Smith, it's Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. Twins can't learn from that. They weren't "patient" with Lux, they tried to play him early and he failed then he got hurt. The Twins have that same situation with their prospects, they just don't have the ability to cover it up as well. The Dodgers just weren't particularly patient with Will Smith. He played 2 full minor league seasons for them before debuting. Although, I do agree that building from within is a key for the Twins. But literally every major league baseball organization tries to do that. Literally 100% of them. That is not a lesson the Dodgers are teaching anyone. Point 2- Optimize veterans? That's how you want to describe Freddie Freeman's performance for the Dodgers? They optimized him? Come on now. He's a freaking first ballot hall of famer. They didn't optimize anything, they acquired a top 10 player in baseball. That's not a lesson the Dodgers are teaching anyone. Everybody knows it's smart to acquire the best of the best if you can afford it. Point 3- Pitching depth. Yes, everybody knows pitching depth is vital. "You can never have enough pitching" is posted on these threads basically daily. But, again, that's not a lesson the Dodgers are teaching anyone. Everybody knows that already. Point 4- Innovative front office thinking? Do you have an example? You claim they push boundaries but don't explain how at all. I think the Dodgers are the new kings of combining brains and spending after Theo retired from running teams, but they aren't doing anything other teams haven't done before. There are still terribly run teams that spend big (Angels) and medium (Rockies), but there are very few teams left that think they can just blindly spend on big name players and succeed. Cohen quickly learned his lesson and went out and hired one of the smarter baseball minds in the game. The Dodgers are very well run and will continue to be good for a very long time. But they're not doing anything earth shattering.

I think they should just give all their relievers light shows. Light shows are fun. Why can't we get a light show in the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th? Also provides more work for non-baseball players as creative types have to come up with new light shows for each reliever. I'm failing to see the downside. More light shows!