chpettit19

5 years ago is skipping a lot of time to make this point. In 2020 he got 7 mil. In 2021 he got 7.25 mil. In 2022 he got 10.5. In 2023 he got 6.6 mil. He was a fulltime player in all of those seasons. Looking at his pay from 5 years ago and saying he got a significant pay cut and tying that to a significant decrease in role while ignoring the fact that he took only a 1.5 mil pay cut from just last season when he was a fulltime player for 2 teams is awfully skewed data. He hasn't been making big money for quite some time but he's still been a fulltime player.

Paul Skenes, Ricky Tiedemann, Mick Abel, AJ Smith-Shawver, Connor Phillips, Nick Frasso, Carson Whisenhunt, Max Meyer (was on opening day roster then sent down). All top 100 type arms in AAA. That's the Pirates, Blue Jays, Phillies, Braves, Reds, Dodgers, Giants, and Marlins. That's 5 or 6 teams who were/are legitimately trying to make the playoffs this year that all have pitchers that are expected to be better than back end in AAA. It's smart team building.

I'm not saying it's right, wrong, or somewhere in between. But it's an often used strategy that is by no means crazy or outlandish. Elite prospects are kept in AAA to start seasons all the time. Like literally every single season. The O's did it with Jackson Holliday and it's currently looking like they should've kept him there for longer. You're going to be holding your breath a long time if you're expecting teams to start carrying all their top prospects on opening day. Nobody is going to do that.

The vast majority of prospects fail. That's not the argument. Of course most teams fail at this, because most prospects fail. The expectation is what I'm talking about. SWR didn't come into this season as someone people around here believed in. Festa has some fans for sure. Who else do the Twins have at AAA? Dobnak? Boushley? Canterino? Headrick? I think Festa is the only guy that people around here had expectations of more than #5 starter for. And the people with those expectations were mostly saying mid-season for his debut. And I'm not one of those people with that expectation for him. Festa isn't a top 100 prospect, but the offseason leads to many fans staring at the possibilities and convincing themselves these young guys are better than they are and the future of the Twins is as bright as the sun. Festa isn't a great bet at being more than a back end starter. So the Twins have 0 guys in AAA who I expect to be more than a #5. I realistically expect them to have more than 0. Especially by year 8. You can disagree with my expectations for Festa, but I don't see a single starter in AAA with more than back end starter potential (Canterino unfortunately can't stay healthy so he's now a pen arm to me, which I hate to say). My stance is that there are a lot of teams with better pitchers in AAA than the Twins have.

I believe the player needs to remain in the minors for 20 days to lose the option. I don't know how many days he was down, but it's got to be pretty close to that.

What teams have prospects they're excited about in AAA but aren't throwing into their opening day rotation? I'd wager a lot of them. Well, at least a lot of the good ones. It's actually the basis of your entire strategy of relying on young guys. You have to have young guys in AAA to rely on. Good ones. Not just system filler guys. If you're going to do your "rotate through young guys instead of mediocre, or bad, vets" strategy you have to have young guys worth rotating through. I agree with the strategy in general. I just don't think the Twins have done a good job of loading AAA, or AA, with guys you can actually do it with. The average minor leaguer isn't worthy of being part of your strategy if you're expecting to be a good team. Because most won't be any good at all. They'd perform like Varland. They aren't all just automatically high ceiling guys. Pittsburgh isn't doing anything that weird with Skene. I assume that's what you're referring to. They're going to get an extra year out of him while they build his innings over the first 1/4 or 1/2 the season. It's not some outrageous plan. They had Jared Jones in their opening day rotation and kept depth in AAA to rotate through if he struggled. It's what you're asking the Twins to do. If you don't think it's reasonable to stash talent in AAA at the start of the year you need to change your desired "rotate through young guys with options" strategy because it won't work with just any random minor leaguer. "Sitting on good pitchers in AAA" is literally the basis of every good team's team building strategy. The Dodgers, Rays, Braves, and Cleveland have been doing it with pitchers for years. It's why they're good. It's what the minors are for. My stance is that the Twins don't have good enough prospects for this plan right now. SWR came into the year going the wrong way as a prospect. Festa was a good, not great prospect with 3 AAA starts. My argument is that 8 years in they shouldn't be having to rely on those types of prospects.

Agreed that the major misstep was not replacing Sonny, but the non-prospects is something I worry about. They've had time. They should have starter prospects to fill in now. They needed to replace Sonny no matter what, but still not having any close starter prospects they could feel confident in just makes the problem even more pronounced. If you're going to replace Sonny with DeSclafani you better have a AAA rotation full of guys you're not just ok with being spot starters, but are actively excited to see in your 2024 rotation. Just a brutal situation all around.

I only had 1 post in that 6 page thread. That may be the most negative thing I've ever done on this site. His signing wasn't even worth me arguing with strangers on the internet. That's where this offseason took us. Me not even caring enough to throw stats around and argue. So sad.

TD would explode.

As someone who had a herniated disk when I was barely younger than Brooks and still playing baseball (only pitching and not nearly at the level he's at, obviously) I can say it is really hard to play through that pain when it's herniated enough to be causing constant pain. I ended up needing a discectomy so I'm hoping Brooks isn't that bad because it is definitely a relatively lengthy rehab to get back to playing, and living, pain free. He was seemingly playing pain free for much of spring so I'd guess he's in pretty good shape for recovery here. As the article says, most of these things (at least according to my Dr) heal on their own with rehab so hopefully it was a pretty minor one that they seem to have caught pretty early on and he'll do his couple months of rehab and be back to normal. I was expected to be having surgery every 5 to 10 years because of my situation and continuing to play sports after, but I'm now nearly 20 years removed with no significant struggles beyond flareups here and there. Lots of stretching to help keep things working correctly, but I'm by no means in good shape so there's every reason to believe Brooks can do the necessary maintenance moving forward and this will just be a blip on the radar for him.

The Julien story is far from written. I don't think he's going to be "special," but I think he's going to be a very good hitter. Too much swing and miss in his game to be special, but I think he will adjust and tweak his approach as he goes and will square more balls up than he is right now. I still think he'll be an important part of this offense, but not a star.

Fly ball rate up, and overall numbers down, because pitchers figured out he doesn't like to swing at breaking balls, and doesn't hit breaking balls very well because of his bat angle at contact. He mashes fastballs and doesn't swing at breaking balls unless he has to. So lots of first pitch breakers he isn't swinging at which brings his first pitch swing percentage way down and has him start with too many 0-1 counts and then the pitcher is in control. He's still mashing fastballs, he's just getting a lot more breaking stuff that he doesn't handle well. League found his weakness and have a plan for him. Time to see if he can combat their plan. He's likely not as good as he was last year, but not as bad as he is right now.

Very good point. I wouldn't categorize a half season at AA at 21 as "very aggressive" for a player of his prospect status, but also agree that a quick trigger to the majors should/could be on the table as well. I commented on another thread last week about him that I'd be more than happy with him following the Michael Harris II path. He debuted for the Braves at the age of 21 after 43 games of .878 OPS in AA. His debut came at the end of May. If Emma keeps this up (quite possible) and the Twins still need a bat in a month (quite likely) then a jump straight to the majors may be the ticket as AAA may not provide enough of a difference for him anyways.

Shota Imanaga was the choice. That deal is so insanely affordable. Polanco and Imanaga instead of DeSclafani, Farmer, Santana, and Margot makes this a better team, in my opinion. No idea if Imanaga was on their radar or if he had any desire to come here, but Chicago isn't a significantly better market from what I can see.

I'm confused here. I don't see a change in approach at all. Julien swung out of his shoes last year, too. Well, helmet (I've never seen someone lose their helmet on a swing so often). I don't see any change in his approach at all. He hit a HR every 25 PAs last year. He's at about 1 every 20 this year. That isn't some massive change and can easily be explained by a 2 HR game in a small sample size. If he had 3 HRs right now instead of 4 he'd be at nearly the exact same PA/HR rate as last year (25.5 last year, 25.3 if he were at 3 HRs right now). You say not every hitter needs to have 25 HR power, but over a full season Julien was at 25 HR power last year. If he played 150 games he'd get around 650 PAs in the year. At his 25.5 PA/HR rate last year he'd hit 25.5 HRs in 650 PAs. Julien is struggling. Nearly the entire offense is struggling. But I don't see any change in his approach. Small sample size noise? Sure. But he's 1 HR off his pace from last year. Which you claim was a good approach while also saying he doesn't need to be a 25 HR guy even though he was a 25 HR guy. Really confused by this stance.

I'd consider a relatively quick push to AAA to get him some struggles if he needs it. If AA pitchers can't challenge him enough then give him better pitchers to learn against. It's really hard to judge what he needs and how much of a hinderance this could be with the info we have. Patience at the plate is a balancing act that is different for each player and their contact skills. If you don't make contact frequently you need to give yourself more chances to do it. Waiting for 2 strikes is going to lead to a lot of Ks both swinging and looking for someone like Emma. They should be working with him constantly to perfect his approach.

Is his boost in performance from maximizing his pitches in a short burst that would go away if he were a starter? Or, asked another way, is he Louie Varland 2.0 and you'd be replacing Varland with Varland in essence? I don't know, but that's the question I'd be looking to answer before deciding whether or not to stretch him out.

*Obert

Yeah, 1-0 wins are definitely easy to come by and should be the strategy teams take over trying to score runs in 2024. Good call.

Who's the run at will catcher? Detroit has 8 steals in 19 games. Let's not act like they're some super fast team, either. The idea that a need for defense overweighs a need for offense when 7 of 9 hitters are hitting under .200 is hilarious to me. But I'm well aware that your stance will always be to play defense over offense even though no major league team would ever agree with you. When you're running out a lineup with 7 guys under .200, 4 of those 7 under .150, and 1 guy under .100 offense needs to take precedent. Unless the plan is to win a 1-0 ball game they can't be sacrificing offense for defense with this lineup.

My bigger concern is Vazquez and Farmer being in the starting lineup in the first place. Miranda need an extra day off after the off day because he's just worn out after 59 PAs this year?

You think you can force feed pinch hitting opportunities if you don't stack lefties?! Come on. You're better than that. Need to stack lefties to get to their pen early and get Miranda and Martin into the game. He's playing 3D chess and Hinch will never see it coming!

I think it's a triangle of power with Falvey, Levine, and Rocco all making MLB roster decisions together. Levine appears to do most of the contract negotiating based on the stories I've seen, but I'd bet there isn't a player brought in here that isn't signed off on by all 3 of those guys.

Jeffers has been great. In the midst of establishing himself as one of the best catchers in the game and that's been awesome to watch. Healthy Kirilloff is a lot of fun to watch. Healthy Miranda is actually pretty fun to watch as well. Martin and SWR both having nice early season showings is really fun. Buxton in CF is always fun.

My read on the people most strongly calling for heads to roll is that they don't believe in the philosophy. So I was really talking to those people. If their hope is that firing Popkins leads to a Cleveland style contact team coming to a Target Field near them they're going to be disappointed. I think the issue is that many of the Twins hitters aren't very good hitters. I don't think they're this bad, but I don't think they're near as good as many claimed them to be. The Twins have 3 hitting coaches. Are 3 new ones really going to make a huge difference? I guess it's possible, but I wouldn't bet on it.