2wins87

I wouldn't argue with you over the results but he definitely looks more confident at the plate. I don't know if his new approach will yield significantly better results in a larger sample size, but watching him at the plate this year I'm a little more hopeful that it will.

I don't know, Gardy brought Perk in for a 4 out save once last year, Molitor's already done it twice. Assuming he does it a few more times this year I would qualify this as different usage.

I was pretty intrigued by him last year but his talent fell pretty squarely between the Twins first and second picks. Undersized guy with the best breaking ball in the draft, I imagine the breaking ball was giving the Kernel's hitters fits yesterday.

If he triples at his minor league average rate over another 350-400 plate appearances he would hit 11-13 more for a total of 22-24. He should end up with a lot.

What's wrong with Duffey for that matter? Mid 90's fastball, good curve, by all reports improving change and good command. I'd put Berrios in a category of his own, but Gonsalves, Hu, and Duffey are all vying for top 10 prospect status in my eyes.

"Often regarded as an opposite field hitter (outside of his relative reliability at pulling ground balls)" This is actually a pretty big misconception. Mauer pulls ground balls more often because everyone pulls ground balls more often. He's actually well below average in GB pull rate, as he is in every trajectory type. It's just that his flyball pull rate is crazy low, or at least it has been to this point in his career.

This is a good point. Control and command might not equal stuff for a guy without any above average pitches, but Berrios has got 3 or 4 above average ones which he can command even if we can't point to a single wipeout pitch. One or two of his pitches might get graded as plus depending on the scout too. This will be effective at the major league level. I was one who had Meyer ahead of Berrios preseason, but Meyer is looking like he's still got a ways to go right now.

My own assessment would be: Minier - Flat Harrison - Slightly up Reed - Slightly up (I think his ERA and WHIP are unlucky, good peripherals, might be above Burdi for me) Turner - Slightly down (his bat showed a bit more promise last year) Duffey - Up (I was a little less bullish on him preseason, he could be headed into the top 10 right now) Rogers - Flat Walker - Flat (yes he's hit a lot of home runs but he's always done that and his K/BB doesn't point to any improvement in other areas) Gonsalves - Up Kepler - Slightly up Thorpe - Slightly down

I can see both sides of the argument. With the compensation pick next year they aren't necessarily risking a lot if he doesn't sign. But one aspect not really mentioned yet is that they lose the pool space that goes with the first pick potentially affecting the rest of their picks. If they draft a guy at #6 who ends up signing for 5% under slot that's $200k to spread around on other picks (guys like Gonsalves possibly). Without the big first round bonus it might be hard to sign other guys later in the draft.

Melotakis had already moved back to the bullpen last year before getting injured. A tenuous connection to the starter experiment at best. Just because a guy is in the bullpen doesn't mean he moves as quickly as expected anyway. Look at Burdi who seems really unlikely to reach the majors this year with how his control has been so far. I see no harm in trying him as a starter as long as he shows promise.

Would the Twins be able to sign Rodgers at #6? I remember Kiley McDaniel mentioning he'd be looking for at least $5 mil, and the Twins don't have a lot of maneuvering room without a second round pick. He's got plenty of leverage as a high schooler and is less of an injury risk than a pitcher which potentially makes it easier for him to pass up guaranteed money.

Very nice story, I'll put the link here.

Cederoth had a very nice start today, definitely his best overall outing of the year. He went 6 innings, gave up 2 runs on 3 hits, 1 hr, and 3 walks while striking out 5. The first run came on a solo homer and the second on a wild pitch following a walk and a double. While the walks could come down a bit more, this is definitely the type of start we want to see from Cederoth.

I noticed Rainis Silva started for the Kernels last night, presumable replacing the injured Navarreto (who has really struggled). Silva was in the GCL last year but he played well there and it's possible he'll be skipping Elizabethton all together. Alexis Tapia has also made a similar jump, he pitched for Fort Myers last night (and once at the end of April also). Not sure if this is the Twins being aggressive with these guys or just getting them some game action while other players are injured. Both have performed well in the DSL and GCL.

They can acquire up to 50% of their original pool through trades, so they could expand their pool to nearly $6 million. The Angels, Diamondbacks, Rays, Red Sox, and Yankees are all unable to spend more than $300k on any player, so there are a number of possible trade partners. I would guess that they will probably trade for space and sign a few more guys for 6 figures while still maintaining flexibility for next year. Not top prospects necessarily but not exactly random, minimum guys either.

Worried that the Twins will stick him in the outfield and allow him to accumulate -30 dWAR over his career? A Dunn-like career at the plate would be a good outcome for Sano. 34 oWAR over a career is very good. We might hope for a bit more but we also might get a bit less. He'll definitely hit homeruns and he's shown he can and will draw walks. I'm not really worried that the Twins won't get some productive years at the plate from him. It's not clear how much of a defensive liability he'll be or if he'll crush at an All-star level or just at a regular level.

We're through about a month of the season so it's a good time to take stock of his overall performance. I use the game logs at baseball reference to find batted ball types, here is Cederoth's game log. Note that line drives and pop-ups are also counted in the fly ball column, and to find the FB% or HR/FB rate that you can view in Fangraph's batted ball stats for major leaguers you have to subtract out line drives. Fangraphs has some good primers on batted ball types and some of the subtleties of how they relate to runs (part 2 of the further reading especially). Anyway, starting with the basics: 18.0 IP (4.5 IP per start)4.00 ERA (6.0 RA/9)9.5 K/9 (21.8%)5.0 BB/9 (11.4%)The K-rate is very healthy, but the walk rate is much too high to be effective at higher levels, which has obviously affected his meager number of innings per start. On batted balls: 64% GB27% FB8.5% LDThe ground ball rate sticks out immediately. I don't think you can directly translate low-minor league batted ball profiles to major league ones, but when hitters have made contact against him this year they have overwhelmingly hit it into the ground. The line drive rate may tick up, but it is indicative of the fact that his stuff is tough for most A-hitters to square up. It's still early, but I think it's safe to say that Cederoth is a ground ball pitcher at this point in his career (this can change). The future is bright for a guy that can get ground balls and strikeouts. However, ground balls do tend to go for hits (and errors) more often than fly balls, which makes it all the more important that he manages to get his walks under control.

I definitely hope to see him up for a decent amount of time this year. I'm not particulary high on his future after seeing his first two years, but he seems to be a guy that takes a while to adjust and we have seen guys like Plouffe and Dozier become valuable guys over the course of several year. He's not going to be a star but he could be a valuable role player. I believe he is in his last option year, so if he's going to become a useful major league player he'll need some experience this year, even if only to become a 4th outfielder at the major league level. If Robinson were struggling and Shafer were hot it would be easier to hide Hick's weakness against righties (not that they should sit him all the time against righties, but he probably shouldn't face them all the time). I think he will continue to improve slowly, and facing closer to an even number of lefties and righties would make his production a lot better overall. And as others have said, he doesn't have a particularly high bar to surpass to be more valuable than the Twin's other centerfielders this year.

Cederoth pitched his 4th game of the season on Saturday. He was tough to hit, but also struggled with his control, and was hurt by some shaky defense behind him. He put 5 men on base through walks, 3 of whom came around to score as a result of errors by his infielders. While all three runs were scored as unearned, he did himself no favors by putting so many runners on base. He did manage to strike out a season high 7 batters, but only made it through 4 innings. Cederoth's biggest issues continues to be consistency and inefficiency which has led to short outings. Later, I'll be posting a summary of his first month, digging into what stats are available.

It's funny to be excited about walks but Walker definitely needs to do that more often. And his strikeout rate is now below 40%! In all seriousness, if he ended the season with a K-rate around 25% but a walk rate north of 10% (and obviously kept hitting for power) I'd be pretty excited about that.

Cederoth got tagged for his second loss yesterday, giving up 3 earned runs and one unearned in just 4 inning of work. The results leave something to be desired, but there were some encouraging aspects of his performance. He managed to keep the ball around the plate enough that he didn't walk anybody, though he did have a passed ball and a wild pitch. Unfortunately, keeping the ball around the plate led to more hits, but 5 of the 8 hits given up were ground ball singles. The only well struck hit was a triple to center. He also recorded 3 strikeouts. If he can maganage to limit walks and keep the ball on the ground as much as he did yesterday, the results should look much better in the future.

I'm generally not in favor of retribution HBPs in any situation, but I couldn't really blame him if he was upset there. I know it's only 3 games but he's put up video game numbers so far. I don't know what else he has to prove in single-A. I hope he's in Fort Meyers before mid-season.

Using the run expectancy table from last year: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/sortable/index.php?cid=1657937 Hunter would have to be safe 46% of the time to break even. If the runners were clued in that he might go they would advance easily and the break-even percentage drops to 42%. This is really not a stupid play statistically, with the added benefit of being really exciting. In general stealing home with two outs doesn't require a very high success rate to be worth it. A steal of home with only a runner on third and two outs only needed to succeed 30% of the time to be worth it based on last years run environment. Obviously stealing home requires specific circumstances to pull off, but if those circumstances arise it's actually a pretty smart play.

Hitting in the majors is hard. Most of the players on the Twins roster who are striking out all the time didn't strike out nearly as often in their minor league careers as Walker has in his. That said, he certainly can be successful in the majors while striking out a lot. Look what Chris Davis did a couple years ago when his bat suddenly started running into pitches a little more often. Walker has that potential too. However, I am a little more concerned about his walk rate. Even Chris Davis managed to post a 10% walk rate a couple times in the minors. He doesn't need to make contact all that often to be valuable, but he does need to be more selective and take more walks.

Cederoth made his second start yesterday. He started off a little shaky, walking the first batter of the game and giving up 2 runs on a trio of singles, but managed to induce a double play to end the inning. He gave up another run in the second, which included a walk, HBP, and wild pitch, but he notched his first strikeout of the game to end the inning. After those two inning he settled in, retiring 9 batters in a row at one point, but giving up one more run on a solo home run, which ended up being the difference in the game. He ended up being tagged with the loss, giving up 4 runs on 6 hits and 2 walks in 6 innings, but also striking out 6 along the way. He was much more economical than in his first start, making it through 6 inning on 78 pitches. The overall line doesn't look great but he did a good job of settling down after the first two innings, pitching his strongest 4 innings of the season after that.