2wins87
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Everything posted by 2wins87
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Twins Take Two K’s On Same Day
2wins87 replied to Ted Schwerzler 's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
Minor quibble, but I didn't really get trying to push for 4 innings out of Rodriguez when the game was still technically within reach, with 9 other guys in the bullpen and an off day today. I had this thought before he gave up the home runs. He'd managed to dance out of trouble in his first time through the order, but it seemed dangerous to give too many of the good Dodgers' hitters a second look at him. Anyway, it actually is way too early to be getting all doom and gloom. They have a somewhat tough opening set of series, but their playoff chances will rest largely on how they do against their division opponents. Yeah, there definitely is some weakness in the pitching staff, but there are exciting young guys to watch as well. -
I thought the 4 run lead in Monday's game was a good time to get him in for an inning or maybe even two against a Mariner's lineup that hadn't looked all that impressive yet. Rocco seemed to be managing that game as if the lead was more like two runs. For someone who comes from the Ray's school of thought it sure does take him a long time to have any trust in young bullpen arms. The game before also would have been good, though I think he was still trying to get some of the other arms into a game, so I understand that one more. Winder definitely didn't seem to have conviction behind his pitches last night. I think there was really only one squared up which was the foul ball. Mostly it seemed like his stuff was good enough to generate weak or medium contact when it was in the zone, he just needed to get it in the zone more.
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- chris archer
- caleb thielbar
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The bullpen certainly had some trouble throwing strikes, but without Arraez's brutal inning in the field it would have been a couple runs, maybe even 0, rather than a full-blown bullpen implosion. There was also the 3-2 ball 4 call on Thielbar's last pitch that was close, but a strike by the book and I think by the zone Meals had established the rest of the night. Anyway, not a great showing by the bullpen, but also not something I expect to see often from the pen. Still would much rather have Rogers than Pagan, but I do think the bullpen can be pretty good. We'll see how Paddack looks today, which is the real value if the FO really knows what it's doing with him.
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- chris archer
- caleb thielbar
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I agree on Arraez DHing, but I don't really think Urshela needs to be DHing much. I'm ok with Sanchez there from time to time, especially against lefties, but I don't really think he needs to be the primary DH. I don't know if its some sort of traditional bias for the DH being a power guy, I wouldn't really expect this team and Rocco to have that kind of bias, but Arraez is probably the best suited player for the DH spot on the team as one of the best overall hitters and a somewhat shaky fielder. When a lefty is pitching there are plenty of RH bats that are probably at least equivalent statistically, since Arraez does have the platoon splits you would expect, but I also never mind seeing his bat in the lineup since he has good at bats almost all the time.
- 52 replies
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- chris archer
- caleb thielbar
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Pretty good series overall. Definitely out-played the Mariners despite the split. I was pretty skeptical of the way the front office approached the pitching this offseason, but of course so far it looks like Wes Johnson and co. are back to their wizarding ways after last season's mixed results. We'll have to see how they fare against the better Dodger's lineup.
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- dylan bundy
- jorge polanco
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15 years? Edit: Oh "how?" and not "how long?" Movement and a different arm angle I guess.
- 45 replies
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- dylan bundy
- jorge polanco
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3 Things to Look for in Dylan Bundy's Twins' Debut
2wins87 replied to Cody Christie's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
I think the dislike of the sinker is pretty league-wide, so it's a really weird choice. The Angels have not seemed to be a particularly deftly run organization over the last decade so who knows. It seems like he mostly threw the sinker to right handed hitters last year, which was a continued trend over the course of his career. Maybe he thought it was more effective against righties, who have been somewhat of an issue for him over his career, but were really an issue last year. Seems like the more obvious solution would be to eliminate it all-together though given how clearly inferior it has been to his other pitches. -
One small sample stat that has stood out to me from this weekend is Emmanuel Rodriguez's 6 BB to 2 K. He did a pretty decent job of talking free passes last year in the complex league, but his strikeout rate over 30% was also a point of caution. I'm sure that coaches are in every prospect's ear about being more selective, but I'm eager to continue watching to see if maybe something has stuck a chord with him. I'm already pretty excited about his power.
- 23 replies
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- sawyer gipson long
- mark contreras
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I'm not sure I have a full answer but probably mainly data collection and manpower. Pitch tracking and other techs have now become ubiquitous at big colleges and in high school circuits. And I don't know for sure that this is true but I think that even as data has become a bigger part of scouting, the number of traditional scouts has not decreased and has most likely increased. It's just a much more cost effective way of acquiring talent, and it's not just smaller market teams trying to find a cheaper edge, the big teams now focus just as much on building their pipelines and everyone needs to keep up with the crowd. Also I think basically every sport has a lot more infrastructure around it at the amateur level these days, which is part of why things like world records have mostly continued to keep progressing steadily over the years. Baseball is not really different and it's probably led to getting the eyes of evaluators on young players earlier and more often.
- 27 replies
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- royce lewis
- christian encarnacion-strand
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I think modern scouting has gotten better and better at identifying truly special talents more accurately earlier. CES seems to be a guy who has been on the rise quickly for the last few years though, so we'll just have to see how long that continues. He has certainly had the most exciting start to a season for any prospect that I can remember. Hard to fault him for not walking yet in two games when he's been crushing pitches to early in the count to get close to walks for the most part. He had 5 BBs to 26 Ks in 92 plate appearances last year, so the plate discipline definitely seems to be a weak spot still. We will see more swing and miss when he's not quite so dialed in, but it seems like improving his pitch selection could help to mitigate that. Reportedly the Twins viewed him mostly as a first baseman when they drafted him, but his hard work and defensive improvement this off-season has forced them to give him a greater opportunity to prove he can stick at the hot corner.
- 27 replies
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- royce lewis
- christian encarnacion-strand
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Cavavo, Rodriguez, and Kalai Rosario could potentially do a lot of damage in the middle of the mussel's lineup, with Miller hopefully setting the table
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- christian encarnacion strand
- dereck rodriguez
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Seems like some genuine overreactions on Kirilloff from one game against one of the best lefties in the league. I think he might have a slow start, he is one of a few guys that I don't think was quite dialed in by the end of spring training. However, he's not going to be a super high strikeout guy, and he'll most likely be a pretty good hitter.
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- alex kirilloff
- jhoan duran
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Don't forget Mauer also missed the first month of 2009 with back issues. He had a monster year but it could have really been one for the ages had he been healthy to start the season.
- 22 replies
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- byron buxton
- carlos correa
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Assessing the Twins Trade for Chris Paddack
2wins87 replied to Ted Schwerzler 's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
Ok so Fangraphs updated their depth charts. I noted that they projected the Twins starters for 9.7 WAR prior to the trade and 3.4 WAR for the bullpen. Rogers accounted for 1.9 of that bulletin number. After the trade they project the starters for 10.6 WAR and the bullpen for 1.8 WAR. So they lose 0.7 wins on paper in the deal. This is about what I expected, actually slightly better than I was thinking. Archer picked up 10 relief innings in their projection, I think he just lost innings overall, though he's still projected for 80 some innings as a starter. Probably guys like Winder and Jax lost some projected starting innings and picked up a couple bullpen innings as well. Most of Rogers' innings went to Pagan. The team innings totals actually don't even match the sum of the projected player's innings so it's not a perfect projection but I think it does a good enough job of setting baseline expectations. I've come around a bit on what they might hope to do with Paddack to exceed his current projection, but I don't think you can give any extra credit for what might happen. As it is, the move probably will cost them a bit this year, maybe just a game overall, but still something when they might be in a very tight race for the final playoff spot. Maybe there is decent value from this trade next year, but at the moment I just can't really get behind a trade that probably makes them worse this year.- 86 replies
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- chris paddack
- brent rooker
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Minor League Report (4/7): Sands Stymies Bats
2wins87 replied to Ted Schwerzler 's topic in Twins Minor League Talk
Minor league app says Canterino.- 13 replies
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- cole sands
- jake cave
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I enjoy following prospects as much as anyone, but watching a successful team is always more fun than watching a few young guys break out on a bad team. I'm not saying Rogers is the difference between a good and bad team, and my hopes for the team for this year are really just to make the expanded playoffs and maybe get on a bit of a roll to actually win a series or two. That is certainly still a possibility, but this trade still makes the team clearly worse in 2022 on paper, when they are clearly on the bubble of playoff contention. It's not like Paddack and Pagan will likely be crucial to the team's success in 2023 either. That will depend on successful moves next offseason and solid progress from a number of prospects or recently graduated prospects. That's what annoys me about this trade.
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- taylor rogers
- chris paddack
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I don't really buy into the idea of "proven closers" either but that's different from saying that there are definite tiers of relievers. Rogers might not quite be in the Hader and Hendriks tier but he's right below there. 5th most reliever WAR in all of baseball from 2018-2021 Any reliever, even Mariano Rivera, can blow some games from time to time. But I'm thinking more about guys like Zack Littell and Cody Stashak getting blown up by the Yankees in the middle innings of playoff games in 2019 rather than Nathan blowing saves in the 2000s. They are subtracting a very good bullpen arm. Everyone else will move up a spot in the leverage chain, and the chances of blowing a lead somewhere in the middle and late innings just goes up a bit everywhere.
- 262 replies
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- taylor rogers
- chris paddack
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No they can only lose them, but that's kind of the point.
- 262 replies
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- taylor rogers
- chris paddack
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How does adding a 6th starter give Balazovic or Winder a shot at more innings though?
- 262 replies
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- taylor rogers
- chris paddack
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This move seems perfectly calibrated to maybe allow them to get to the playoffs but definitely ensure that they don't win any playoff games.
- 262 replies
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- taylor rogers
- chris paddack
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I get it but I don't really like it. The value is skewed toward having the longer control on Paddack and Pagan versus Rogers. But they are giving up their bullpen anchor for this year in order to receive rotation depth and bullpen depth. They also clearly don't really believe in ace relievers and think they can build a solid bullpen out of spare pieces. They may be right about that as we've seen, but we also saw last year they can spend enough time losing games due to failed experiments that it might not matter once they figure out which spare pieces are actually good. Sure there may be upside for Paddack, but most likely he will be a mid to back end starter. It's depth for the upcoming years but I think it would be overly hopeful to say that this won't make them worse this year. Fangraphs depth charts projects the rotation and bullpen WAR before this trade to be 9.7 and 3.4 respectively. We'll see what happens after they shuffle around the expected roles, but I don't see Paddack projecting to do much better than Archer, and I don't see Archer or whoever else gains bullpen innings making up even half of Roger's value.
- 262 replies
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- taylor rogers
- chris paddack
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You should read their explainer, there's a lot of work that went into it and most front offices use pretty similar models, though they could differ quite a bit on certain inputs. The short answer is that Rogers is only under control for one more year and is already making a salary of 7.3 million. The 7.2 million valuation is his excess value over this one year of control. His total valuation would be 14.5 million for this year. Paddack would be under control for 3 years, is only owed 2.3 million this year, and is likely to earn raises in arbitration up to a point that is probably similar to Rogers for his final year. The 17.4 million valuation is his projected excess beyond those salaries over the total 3 years of control. Probably around half of that would be from this year since his salary will go up. So he's probably expected to be worth about 9 or 10 million per year for each of the next 3 years. That's a pretty middling projection, and the projections clearly indicate Rogers is expected to be worth more this year. Paddack only has more value because of his years of control and cheaper salary. The Padres might want Rogers, but it would clearly make the Twins worse and I hope the front office isn't seriously considering trading him if Paddack is the main piece coming back. I would also hope that someone like Winder or Balazovic could at least perform similarly to Paddack in 2023 and 2024, so I don't really see why the front office should be so interested in Paddack's value those years. He seems like a mid rotation arm at best. They have about half a dozen prospects in AA and AAA that project to be somewhere around there.
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What Twins Over/Unders Are You Taking in 2022?
2wins87 replied to Ted Schwerzler 's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
Buxton being a legitimate MVP candidate but not making the over on 26.5 HR strikes me as a very odd take. The power has been central to his breakout. He's not going to suddenly turn into a super patient OBP guy, he's going to be aggressive and try to hit the snot out of the ball. If the results are similar to the last few years he'll only need to get to 400 or so PA to beat the over. Whether he stays healthy enough seems to be the main question to me.- 23 replies
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- byron buxton
- miguel sano
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2022 Wichita Wind Surge Opening Day Roster Preview
2wins87 replied to Seth Stohs's topic in Twins Minor League Talk
Looks like a lot of competition for the starting pitcher spots. Canterino, Funderburk, Gross, Sammons, Schulfer, Vallimont, Varland, Woods-Richardson. A few of those guys are probably destined for the bullpen long-term anyway, and I'm not sure what kind of workloads Canterino and Woods-Richardson in particular will be able to handle. Probably some piggy-backing and quite possibly a 6 man rotation to start the season though. Interested to see what Cruz does out of the pen. I don't pay too much attention to relief prospects before they make it AA, but you gotta be excited about the velocity.- 33 replies
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- austin martin
- simeon woods richardson
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