Eris

Of the hitters only Wallner and Correa showed up last night. Detroit is only a 1/2 game behind in the wild card with 10 games left in the season. Who amongst us gave Detroit any chance of being in the playoffs. That indicates how poorly the Twins have played.

If they want to really fix the injury issues they will need to address it at youth sports. Today’s MLB players likely focused on playing baseball at least 9 months of the year. More in some regions. This is a very significant change from 40 years ago when most high school athletes played 3 sports. I live in NJ and player doesn’t make the high school baseball team if he doesn’t play club ball and they don’t pitch without have a personal pitching coach before 9th grade. There is a whole industry built around this for most high school sports with the possible exception of bowling.

If a team has too many players below average defensively (Miranda, Lewis, Larnach, Wallner, Martin, Castro (CF), Jeffers, not hitting (Kepler, Julian, Farmer, Margot, even Lewis is slumping) hurt (Correa, Buxton, Kirilloff, maybe Kepler) this is somewhat logical outcome. From Lewis point of view, playing 1B or 2B is the least valuable position for maximizing his financial returns during free agency. In a different pre-ACL situation, Lewis would be an above average (maybe even elite) outfielder. But those days are gone and it is 3B, 1B, DH or a disgruntled 2B (which means he won’t be there for long—Boras will make sure of that). One can imagine what a phone call with the front of will be like. “My guy is unhappy at 2B, if you ever want to sign one of my guys again…. “

Adding to the article, I think there is a tendency to overuse the most effective RP. It is very rare to have a relief pitcher with greater that 70 appearances for multiple seasons in a a row and maintain effectiveness.

Base running and stealing are skills. They can be improved if teams / players work at it.

This is an interesting article that well written. Some luck has always been involved in baseball. The Twins have been unlucky with the bases loaded for at least two years. When does this cease to be a discussion about luck and one of hitting approach-a single drives in 2 runs with the bases loaded. Part of this has been mentioned in the article. A significant issue I have with these metrics is that it assumes the batter has no control over where the ball is hit. I refuse to accept this as reasonable. Maybe we should ask Rod Carew or Luis Arraez. Or maybe we can just observe. Some batters will take an outside pitch and hit it to the opposite field. Joe Mauer was very good at that. Other hitters will take that same pitch and try to pull the ball, grounding it weakly to second. A batters hitting skill is more than just hitting the ball as hard as possible with optimal launch angle. I have used this example more than once. Steven Kwan and Trevor Larnach were teammates in college. Trevor Larnach can really mash the ball and he had 2 HR against Sony Gray last night. He was drafted in the first round and has produced 2.4 fWAR during his career to date with 34 HR. Steven Kwan has more nuanced skills, was not a ball masher, was drafted in the 5th round and has 11.7 fWAR with 24 HR during his career so far. It is really a thrill to see Matt Wallner turn on a ball and hit it 440 feet. But this is only one part of hitting.

He pitched Thursday (20), Saturday (9) and then Sunday. He was cruising on Saturday. In hindsight, maybe it would have been better to have Alcala pitch the 9th on Saturday and have someone else cover Sunday. I struggle with the 1 inning relief concept. It is done so the RP will be available the next day. However if pitch counts are low it would be less stressful on the arm to pitch 2 innings and have an extra day off (as warming up should also be considered).

“It’s tough to pinpoint how the Twins front office feels about the communication issuesfrom Kirilloff. While it’s certainly not unheard of for a young player to hide an injury (see Joe Ryan, 2023), it’s not a good look to struggle for weeks on end and get sent down, only to disclose an injury afterward.” My guess is that this is on his agent, Scott Boras. While on the IL, Kirilloff accumulates MLB service time.

Paddock has had 2 TJ, there is probably not of guidance for this and I would expect the Twins to be super cautious.

Matthews pitched well and several great plays behind him. About the trends table. Interesting concept. I think it could be enhanced using more natural choices for colors. Example healthy performing = bright green, healthy trending up = dull green. With 8 choices it might be a challenge, a goal would be that readers could understand the table without looking for the key.

Article is from the NY Post. He played for the Twins in the early 70s. He was part of the trade with the Rangers involving Bert Blyleven. https://nypost.com/2024/08/12/sports/mike-cubbage-former-mets-player-and-coach-dead-at-74/

Interesting choice considering he was not Rule 5 eligible until after the 2025 season.

Verlander and Scherzer were traded last year. There are 20-22 teams in contention for a playoff spot. This makes it a sellers market for impact players and most teams were not willing to pay that price. I am not sure if this is the new normal. Snell was the obvious big time impact player. I’m curious to know what prospects were offered and what the sticking points in any potential transactions were.

Somewhat surprised the Yankees would move Cortes if they acquire Flaherty. They are in a tough division and currently have a wild card spot (with many games left to play). They did something similar when acquiring Frankie Montas a few years ago by moving Jordan Montgomery. Montgomery pitched very well down the stretch for the Cardinals while Montas mahled and quickly landed on the IL.

I’m not sure that using last years payroll is useful as there was about 60 -70 million of unproductive spend (Correa, Buxton, Gallo, Vazquez) This year both Correa and Buxton were/are living up to their expectations. Last year’s season was saved by the 2nd half play of Kepler, Lewis, Wallner and Julien.

There are at least 2 scenarios in which Snell would exercise his option. Both of these would be undesirable from an acquiring teams standpoint especially if they are on a budget. 1 if he gets hurt, 2 if he is ineffective. I don’t know if it is possible to structure a trade contract to take into consideration a future unknown event, such as if Snell exercises his option then the Giants will send the Twins 30 million dollars. What level prospect would the Giants want for a guarantee of such sums of money. Perhaps someone who knows more about MLB trade rules could articulate what is allowed under such a scenario.

Blake Snell has a complicated contract which makes it difficult to agree on trade valuation. He has an opt out after this season and a player option after 2025. Is the acquiring team getting a 2 -3 month rental or a player under contract for 1.5 to 2.5 seasons.

At the time of the trade Drew Gilbert , Astros top prospect was ranked 68 overall. A similar trade would be Festa or Keaschall and a lesser prospect.

Going all-in is a poor idea for any team as winning in the playoffs often comes down to 1 play made or not made or 1 key at bat with the bases loaded. The objective at trade deadline is to make wise trades that help with the current season but don’t sacrifice the future. Steve Pearce was the World Series 2018 MVP https://www.mlb.com/news/red-sox-acquire-steve-pearce-from-blue-jays-c283420492

The challenge with this years trade deadline is that approximately 20-22 teams are playoff contenders. It is definitely a sellers market and impact players will cost a premium. Of the players mentioned only Wallner would return an impact player.

I am expecting the Mets to be buyers. NY is a very unforgiving market and fans will not take kindly to selling when their team is still in the race.

I agree with you on this. I don’t know enough about advanced statistics to understand how defensive positioning factors into these metrics. For example, hitting a line drive directly at an outfielder for an out should count less than hitting the same line drive where an outfielder is not positioned. StatCast captures the degree of difficulty needed for a player to make an out. It should in theory be possible to adjust the stats to account for this (if it is not already incorporated). I believe that for a number of years Max Kepler was a top the lists of unlucky hitters.

It is nice to see productivity and success (and records) from players who are not striking out a lot. There was a TD article about a week ago on this.

Remembering from past years, Rod Carew had many different batting approaches which would be varied depending on the pitcher. I think a lot of this is on training and the expected outcome, i.e. getting a hit vs a home run.

Based on performance, it may have taken Larnach 2 years to recover from his groin injury. Although there are other factors such as skills and pitch selection that make drawing a conclusion difficult I think it is generally understood that people who tear their ACL are at greater risk for additional injuries. This is an interesting article that uses fantasy points to assess performance. Seems that there should be more than 15 mlb players. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10078163/