2wins87

There are a lot of ways that inexperienced, stretched, or just bad defense can lead to guys getting on base without the official scorer handing out an error.

Personally I'd much rather see them fill the rotation with guys that might not quite be ready than sign more Shoemaker, Happ, or even Pineda types. I would have thought they'd have plenty of options earlier this year, but there is definitely a question of how many healthy pitchers they'll have next year. Obviously they will have to make a free agent signing for the rotation, but I hope they can convince someone good to come to Minnesota and concentrate the money on a bigger free agent splash. I think the opening day rotation could/should look something like this: 1. Free Agent 1 2. Ober 3. Free Agent 2? 4. Dobnak 5. Ryan AAA Depth: Jax, Duran, Winder, Balazovic, Sands, Strotman, Vallimont Potential options later in the year: Canterino, Woods-Richardson, Enlow, Maeda hopefully--depending on health I actually would feel ok about that rotation if they can actually get a decent free agent to lead it, and maybe they could even go without the second free agent, though I don't see a situation where they don't make at least two signings for the rotation. There's plenty of downside risk with unproven guys, and several of the minor league options also have potential health questions, but it still seems like they will have plenty of options to fill in if certain guys falter or get injured. If things go right they should get enough run support that their purported plan of competing next year wouldn't be out of the question. If things don't go so right it probably won't be any worse than Happ and Shoemaker this year, and we can at least get an idea of which of the young guys can be counted on as #2 or #3 starters going forward.

Infield defenses in low A don't tend to be great at suppressing BABIP on ground balls

That's Rodriguez's 8th homer in just over 100 plate appearances. He's showing some serious power for such a young guy, though has also struck out a bit more than you'd like to see.

Thanks for the great article. I noticed his peripherals recently and remembered his name from being a second day draft pick, but it's good to get some recent scouting data. I wonder if he's a bit too in the zone which has lead to a bit higher batting averages against him than you might expect with the rest of his peripherals. If he's already got the command he can work on refining his approach in different counts and situations though. That slider looked perfectly placed to get hitters at any level though. We're starting to see a lot of potentially solid mid-rotation arms pop up from all over the system. It seems like developing those top of the rotation arms is still a challenge as always, but I definitely believe they've built up the depth to fill up the middle and back of the rotation with competent homegrown guys for years to come. Hopefully if the front office can stop needing to fill out the rotation in free agency they can get a couple top targets to build around.

Fangraphs has a really good stats filter that lets you combine upper minors performance (AA and AAA) across all minor leaguers. Check it out here: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/minor-league?pos=all&lg=2,4,5,6,7&stats=bat&qual=y&type=1&team=&season=2021&seasonEnd=2021&org=&ind=0&splitTeam=false&players=&sort=19,1 There's no one else who's still of prospect age and who's had enough plate appearances that has been any better than Miranda. I'm pretty excited about his future.

Does Jefferson Morales have a chance to stick behind the plate with decent defense? He played more in the outfield than behind the plate in Fort Myers, leading me to think they didn't think much about his defense at catcher. His two starts in the field in Cedar Rapids have been at catcher now though. I've only seen about an inning of him behind the plate. It looked like he moved pretty athletically, but I didn't see anything to indicate how good his overall receiving and blocking were. His overall stats suggest a guy that's very good at controlling the strike zone, with a bit of pop too. If he can be a decent catcher and maybe even add more power he seems like someone who should be getting a lot more attention.

I'm not sure I really do agree with this when it comes to AA and AAA stats. I think they get to be fairly projectable at that point it you are looking at the most predictive ones. There is obviously still variance, but particularly focusing on things like K%, BB%, and ISO, there aren't too many huge surprises, at least to the downside. My top predictor for hitters in the lower levels would be K rate anyway, and taking his whole career into account he's never had an issue there. I feel pretty comfortable projecting that he'll be at least a solid regular based off of this year. It's just hard to find counterexamples.

A little nit-picky but you have to use PA as the divisor for K%, not AB. Sabato has been striking out in the 30-40% range, not 40-50% as you say. Still not good in the lower levels, and I don't disagree with anything else you've said, but all of those walks affecting the K% calculation have also kept his overall performance from being truly awful.

I think the main knock on Miranda is that he'll provide minimal defensive value, but I think national evaluators will generally be a bit slow in acknowledging a breakout, even if he was reasonably well regarded early in his professional career. It hardly matters at this point though, he'll have his chance to prove it soon. I think an entirely statistically based approach will love his production this season though. The level of both power (ISO) and contact (K%) just aren't seen very often. And of course he just turned 23. I'm going to be very interested to see how ZiPS and some of the other projection systems treat him for next year. I'm still not entirely convinced on Wallner right now given his strikeout rates, though it's been better in the handful of games since returning from the IL. His left-handedness should give him a better chance of succeeding than a RHB with a similar profile though, and his raw power is undeniable.

Good buy low pick. Seems like maybe he'll require a little bit of leftover money if he wants to rebuild his value and can leverage that. I like the idea in the 11th round though.

This front office definitely likes college pitchers with big frames, and he certainly fits that bill. They haven't been able to improve all of them, but we've seen some success with Winder being the prime example, and the potential is certainly there with Hajjar. I expect they will have drafted a few more pitchers that fit that description before the day is done.

Hajjar at 61 seems to be fitting back into this regime's MO. Good pitching frame, one good secondary already, the coaching staff probably think they could add some velocity and will need to refine a third pitch.

What's the story on Cavaco's early exit? Hopefully nothing serious.

I didn't see the whole start but it looked like they were having him throw a lot of sliders, especially early in counts, and he was having trouble getting strikes with them, leading him to fall behind a lot. He still needs to be able to get strikes with his third best pitch too, but I'm not too worried that he'll be able to throw strikes with his 4-seamer and "splinker" based on this start, or his previous starts where he was utilizing them a lot more.

He had a pretty solid August, and was really good in the playoffs for Pensacola despite not being called up until the last game of the regular season. Interestingly, he's been an absolute playoff monster in his minor league career, even going back to 2018 when he had a pretty rough regular season: https://www.milb.com/stats/florida-state/2018/postseason-cumulative I don't really think we should read too much into minor league playoff performance, though we can certainly include it the full picture of their yearly performance. Still he seems to have a knack for performing in big spots, evidenced again this week by his huge 2-run bomb against a pretty solid relief prospect who had Wichita down to their last out. I could see him really jumping on his first opportunity in the majors when that call eventually comes. He's really looking like a great overall hitter now after a few years of not quite living up to the potential that was there.

The craziest thing to me is Julien's 8 for 8 stealing bases. I wasn't under the impression that he had anything better than average speed. Is he faster than I thought or is he just picking spots really well?

Not very excited about any of the three early round DH-type college bats (Rooker, Wallner, Sabato) taken by this front office right now. All of them strike out too much. We've seen Rooker get pretty exposed against MLB already. I have a hard time believing Wallner or Sabato will fare any better given the amount of swing and miss in A ball.

Yeah Lynn came in pissed about his off-season negotiations and never wanted to play for the Twins when they had him. No need to bring that energy back. Their pitching depth looks to be replenishing now anyway. Knock on wood they won't really need another arm in the rotation.

As others have said, the Twins left-handed (and switch) hitters are no slouches. Non-issue.

I expect a minor move when Hill goes on the 60 day DL. Basically a small guarantee to a veteran pitcher, who will compete with Dobnak, Thorpe, Smeltzer, and Graterol during spring training, and may or may not make the 26 man roster when the season starts (and will be able to sign elsewhere if he does not). I think Falvey and Levine are comfortable relying on their development of rookies, though their MO during the last few years has been to add depth as a backup.

Yelich was already a very good player in Miami, this article understates his talent quite a bit. Here's an age by age comparison: Age 21: Yelich - 118 OPS+, 1.8 fWAR; Kepler - Minors Age 22: Yelich - 118 OPS+, 4,1 fWAR; Kepler - -34 OPS+, -0.1 fWAR Age 23: Yelich - 120 OPS+, 2.4 fWAR; Kepler - 93 OPS+, 1.3 fWAR Age 24: Yelich - 134 OPS+, 5.4 fWAR; Kepler - 94 OPS+, 1.5 fWAR Age 25: Yelich - 117 OPS+, 4.6 fWAR; Kepler - 98 OPS+, 2.7 fWAR Age 26: Yelich - 166 OPS+, 7.6 fWAR; Kepler - 121 OPS+, 4.4 fWAR The main difference is that Yelich has always hit the ball incredibly hard. Every year that statcast tracks he's been in the top 10% of the league for average exit velocity, usually in the top 5%. Kepler has never been in the top 10%. Not to rag on Kepler who became an excellent player last year, but he basically only reached the level of player that Yelich was in Miami, and I don't see how he reaches present day Yelich territory without increasing his exit velocity by several MPH or making some other drastic change in his contact rate and/or plate discipline, and I don't know how that happens.

Biggest major league surprise has to be Polanco, who has been excellent despite never gaining much national recognition as a prospect. Biggest MLB bust is probably Meyer, though that was in large part due to injury. Jury is still out on Gordon and Stewart, though they are looking like busts too.

Kepler was only ranked in the national publications one year, and Gordon was ranked essentially just as high as Kepler's BA ranking by both mlb.com and BP at some point. Gordon was more highly regarded as a prospect for longer, maybe it was never correct but it was true. Gonsalves never really ranked very highly nationally, so I would probably bump him to the honorable mentions to put Graterol somewhere on this list, who will probably be ranked in the 30-50 range for the second consecutive year.

Obviously depends on what the development staff thinks, but if there's any chance that he'll be better than Dobnak or Thorpe as a starter to begin the season, then they have to try that out. We already know Pineda will be out and the back of the rotation is still very unsettled. There is no reason to hold back at the beginning of the season because of an innings limit. If he is good enough to get the innings he could be a very good part of the bullpen after Pineda comes back and potentially be an injury replacement later in the season.