chpettit19

There won't be any real update on him until May. He's doing no activity for a month before they re-evaluate him. So likely a minimum of a month and a half from time of injury to earliest return.

Kepler is an interesting case in any discussion. He was just the lefty they gave ABs to last year and he did well so I just wanted to use him and their main RH platoon bat (Farmer) as the examples. It's all small sample size stuff (97 PAs for Kep) so there's certainly going to be some noise in there. My main point is that being worse against lefties than righties doesn't automatically make you unplayable against lefties. That's what Gleeman's article was mostly pointing at. Lefties are almost universally worse against lefties than righties so it makes sense to platoon, but worse doesn't have to equal bad. Freeman, Soto, Harper, Alvarez, etc. are truly very good hitters against lefties still. Not as good as against righties, but still very dangerous. If you think you have a truly great lefty hitter there's real reasons to believe he can be pretty good against lefties. At least they can be good enough to not be blindly platooned. Agree, the future lineup potentially requires multiple of these guys to turn into better than 100 OPS+/wRC+ bats against lefties or they'll get sliced up by lefties. Will be interesting to see how they approach that. The Orioles are awfully lefty/switch heavy right now, with more on the way. They let Henderson leadoff verse lefties so they clearly have a different philosophy than the Twins. Hopefully the Twins are keeping an eye on them.

I also read Gleeman's article and it softened my stance on the obsessive platooning, but it also got me wondering if there's been any improvements over time. What tools did Tony Oliva have at his disposal to improve against lefties? For that matter, what did Mauer and Morneau have available to them? Is it swing style/type differences between righties and lefties that cause the struggle? Is it exposure to lefties? Likely some combination of both of those, plus other, factors. But we're smarter now. We have better tools at our disposal (Trajekt machine type technology for example). There's only so much you can do about swing differences, but if it's exposure we can do that pretty easily. Video boards aren't the same, and practice isn't the same, but there should be some room for growth and improvement by attacking the exposure problems if that's the driving force here. There were 54 lefthanded batters who faced lefthanded pitchers in at least 90 PAs last year. I chose 90 because that's how low I had to go to get a Twins hitter in the list. But of those 54 batters, 29 of them had at least a 100 wRC+. Are lefties worse against lefties than righties? Absolutely. Almost universally. But worse doesn't always equal bad. Jazz Chisolm was legitimately bad with a 29 wRC+ against them in 94 PAs. Freddie Freeman was legitimately great with a 174 wRC+ against them in 218 PAs. Max Kepler was the only Twin on the list and he had a 108 wRC+ against lefties. If Julien can get to a 108 wRC+ against lefties while maintaining something in the 130+ wRC+ range (he was at 151 last year) against righties does it really make sense to ever pinch hit Kyle Farmer and his 117 wRC+ against lefties and 93 against righties before what's likely to be that spots last time up in the game? If you have a legitimately good to great lefty hitter who can OPS+ or wRC+ 100 or better against lefties I find it hard to see any situation where you'd be pinch hitting for them before the 8th or 9th.

I'd say the Trajekt machine is lightyears more useful than generic batting practice. Live batting practice with a major league, or upper minors, pitcher legitimately trying to get you out would probably be better. But live batting practice with some indy ball pitcher you pick up because you're not going to use your legit arms for that is probably not as useful, and certainly not significantly more useful than a Trajekt machine. Being able to go put in Chris Sale's slider and release point is more useful than a 55 year old lefty on the mound spinning you balls that don't really break significantly or anything before a game against Chris Sale, no? These aren't your typical pitching machines anymore. Julien was legitimately facing balls that moved exactly like Sale, Kershaw, Valdez, Snell, Luzardo thrown balls. I find it hard to believe that's not more effective than any batting practice he was going to get outside of having Thielbar and Funderburk up there throwing him 100 pitches. Obviously nothing matches game action, but when it comes to work done outside of a game it's pretty hard to beat facing pitches thrown with the exact release point and spin characteristics of the best pitches in the game. These aren't your same old pitching machines.

I do know that the Twins, and many other teams, do matchup based groupings based on the types of splits you were talking about, plus pitch angle for swing angle analysis, and more. They have an incredible amount of insane data that tracks which pitch types an individual player's swing is best suited to hit. Julien, for example, has a very steep vertical bat angle. The Twins know that that's likely a large reason why he swings and misses at breaking balls so much. The good news for Julien is that his bat angle is pretty similar to Freddie Freeman's, and Freeman is very good against lefties so there's a chance for him to make some adjustments. The data they have now is insane. Vertical bat angle is 1 data point, but they have so many others that they can piece together to breakdown swings and how likely they are to be successful against different individual pitcher's pitches. They have all that, but I'm not sure they've really figured out how to deploy it all best yet because the game dictates what moves they can make and when so while you can want to get a certain hitter against a certain pitcher the game situation may never allow for it.

For Julien's sake, I hope you're wrong on this. He spent the offseason using the Trajekt machine to learn to hit lefties. The machines these days are pretty fancy. That machine has a video screen that shows a pitcher winding up and throwing the ball from any release point, and the ability to mimic the spin of actual MLB pitches. It's pretty impressive stuff, and I'd think it could be quite effective in allowing lefties to get as many reps as they want/need against "lefties" to improve their abilities.

Feels like you're telling me my own life story!

Bobby Bonilla is still getting paid now despite not having played an MLB game since 2001. Deferred money isn't some magic idea somebody just thought up. It's been happening for decades. Ohtani's deal just has much bigger numbers involved. You don't think anybody in the Jags organization was paying attention to their finances and should've noticed 22 million going missing? It happens. All the time. And everyone in that org, I assume, speaks english and didn't need somebody to talk to the bank for them.

I will also note that Amit Patel was just sentenced to 6.5 years in federal prison for embezzling over 22 million from the Jacksonville Jaguars over the course of 3+ years. These things do happen. I have no idea what the truth is with Ohtani and Ippei, but the idea that it isn't realistic is probably based more on our "everyday Joe" lifestyles and experiences. It's crazy to me that this kind of stuff can happen, but it happens all the time. Smart but shady people get access to large sums of money and can make some of it disappear for quite a while without anybody noticing.

The language barrier adds another dimension to this all, too. I have no idea what the truth is, but Ohtani had to rely on Ippei for far more than the average rich person has to rely on someone.

80th percentile, 27.9 f/s.

It's possible there's some noise in his sprint speed numbers because of this at such an early point of the season, but not super likely. Statcast does take out the slowest of their runs (25% or 33% or something around there, but I don't remember exactly what that equation is). They use the top speed during the fastest 1 second window on plays where they go two bases or more and on plays where they've hit the ball weakly and are sprinting home to first. If he's not trying on even weakly hit balls that's a major problem, but I think that'd be something the clubhouse would deal with very quickly. They aren't counting his speed on routine grounders. Julien currently has 11 "competitive runs" so it's definitely a very small sample size. But concerning still.

Glasnow likely not a great option for fixing the Twins K problems...

Wallner and Julien both currently getting master classes in "the league will adjust to you and you need to adjust back or you're going back to AAA." They both seem like very smart hitters who put in a ton of work to fill holes in their games so I'm sure they're both working on adjustments as we speak. But MLB pitchers are really, really good. If you have a hole they will attack it over and over until you fill it.

Anybody know the story behind Martin wearing #82? It's not spring training anymore. He didn't want a more typical MLB number?

That is good news! I know he threw a pen the other day but hadn't heard an update.

Royce? I think they'd probably be hoping Thielbar, Staumont, or Weiss are ready to come back sooner than later and not have to make a 60-day or DFA decision, but I'm not sure exactly where those 3 stand. I know they were hoping Thielbar could start a rehab assignment soon. Maybe they carry SWR for a week as a long-relief option while they get Thielbar ready if Alcala is IL'd?

And Brent Headrick hitting the IL in St Paul. I believe that makes SWR the only healthy pitcher on the 40-man who isn't in the majors right now. Be interesting to see what they do if Alcala hits the IL.

If you're paying $1/month for The Athletic it's because you're on a special introductory rate. That is not the cost of a regular Athletic subscription.

The Twins are 7th in baseball in BB% right now. They are striking out too much still, and their BAwRISP is horrible, but they do take walks.

Wait a second, you've been going on and on about your research that isn't even complete?! Your data means nothing if you've only done 3 teams, and only done certain seasons. I thought you'd done every team and every season and drawn conclusions from an actual data set. Until you provide data on every team none of this means anything. The very simple reason why it doesn't matter is because if all the other teams, even the bad ones, have the same WAR distribution it's not about your strategy being effective, it's about the ability to identify, develop, and maximize potential/talent. Man. This has been a lot of virtual ink wasted over an incomplete project that doesn't actually present any actionable facts.

Riverbrian summed it up nicely. I absolutely never suggested a particualr strategy for building a dominant team, I just stated my opinion about the 2024 Twins trading Polanco for a broken starter, a volatile reliever, and 2 A ball players. I actually continually repeated that all I was doing was talking about the 2024 Twins trading Polanco and how I thought that was a bad move for maximizing the talent of the 2024 Twins. Then I pointed out that if you aren't going to insist on them following your strategy at all times it's incredibly hypocritical of you to jump on here and attack others for also not following your strategy at all times. We were talking about 1 trade (the Polanco/DeSclafani trade) and you demanded (yes, demanded) that everyone acknowledge your research and that following it was the smart thing to do. You don't believe the strategy needs to be followed at all times so it is nothing but hypocrisy to come on here and demand that the rest of us follow it at all times and not let us decide when it's ok to not follow it the same way you decide it's ok to not follow it sometimes. Feels like a good place to end this.

That makes sense on the Maeda/Graterol trade. If what smart teams do is trade veterans for prospects before they leave for nothing, then, yes, they should've traded him in 2023. There's nothing in your strategy that says "if you've only had them for 1 year then it's not smart to trade them." If you're going to pick and choose who it's ok to lose for nothing then don't attack others for picking and choosing who they feel it's ok to not trade. Especially since Polanco has another year of control left and they weren't going to lose him after this year. The Twins started Ober in AAA last year so wouldn't that be a position of depth considering you've been pushing Lee as part of the depth and reasoning why it's smart to trade Polanco? Ober was far more established going into 2023 than Lee is. And before you say "well pitchers get hurt so you obviously needed Ober there" I'm going to go ahead and just point you towards Royce Lewis as the clear and obvious rebuttal. And follow that up with a "look at Alex Kirilloff's history and tell me he doesn't need extra depth that Polanco could help provide." Maeda was not hurt all of 2023. Could've traded him at the deadline for prospects like you claim smart teams need to do. And, again, Louis Varland was in AAA starting so where's the difference between that situation and Lee? Now I'm at Ober and Varland as AAA depth for last year. Not sure how that's significantly different than Lee being AAA depth this year. Other than it doesn't fit your narrative. Just because those were the only pitchers traded doesn't mean they were the only ones available. There's still rumors that the Marlins are open to moving Luzardo (Padres apparently the most likely destination now), and Julien is a pretty decent comp to Pasquantino who they were rumored to be looking at as the headliner in a deal for him. I didn't say just Julien, but he'd have been my headliner. The point is there were options. There's always options if you're willing to pay the price. You're not hard and fast on following your own strategy and come up with all kinds of reasons why they shouldn't follow it every time. Until you start following your own strategy every single time maybe you shouldn't attack other posters for not following it.