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Cap'n Piranha

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Everything posted by Cap'n Piranha

  1. Cap'n Piranha
    All fine for you to think that, but a player that costs less while still producing does help his team win by leaving payroll space available to get other players. Part of why the Angels are closing in on a decade since their last playoff appearance is because they've been paying 2-3 players $50M-$80M for the last decade, leaving them no space to build up a better supporting cast. Those expensive players soaking up the payroll have therefore not been valuable, since their presence impeded the overall team being better.
  2. Cap'n Piranha
    Yeah, just a difference in definitions here. I'm saying that in a vacuum, the Twins could make an acceptable offer, meaning that they can at least be in the running. The two teams that I could see being the main competition are MIA and NYY (both bottom 5 in 3B wRC+), so I guess it comes down to what are those teams willing to offer, and what do the Cards think of those prospects compared to whomever the Twins would dangle.
  3. Cap'n Piranha
    I see no scenario where Lewis playing the OF is not the most logical option for the 2024 Twins. He's not going to play short. Polanco will likely be back next year since his option has vested, so he's not going to play second. Brooks Lee is likely to take third sooner than later. When you add the benefit of Lewis playing CF (since Buxton seems unlikely to ever be a "fulltime" CF ever again), it's simply a no-brainer. I agree that making the move in the middle of a season is a bad idea (since it's related to how he was hurt last year), but with an entire offseason to get reps? There's no other option in my opinion.
  4. Cap'n Piranha
    I wasn't saying the Twins have the best collection of pitching prospects, I was simply responding to the idea that the Twins don't have the requisite arms to make an offer that STL would accept. Would some other team be able to outdo the Twins? Perhaps. It really depends on what STL thinks of what the Twins are offering--maybe STL thinks with a couple of tweaks they turn Varland into a 2, and they're in love with Raya.
  5. Cap'n Piranha
    Mike Trout and Aaron Judge should not win MVP--because they are not valuable in the sense that they are getting paid more or less appropriately for how they are producing. They should win outstanding player awards, but value brings salary into the equation--Trout is 3rd among hitters in salary and Judge is 1st. In WAR, Trout is 16th and Judge is 27th. In the AL, Wander Franco is probably the MVP; 5th overall in WAR and costs $2.5M. You could also go with Garcia at 9th overall in WAR and only $750k in salary. In fact, you could have Franco, Robert, Garcia, Ramirez, and Heim on your roster for $27M and have 17.6 WAR (Trout is 3.1 and Judge is 2.8) and still have more than $10M left when compared to Trout or Judge.
  6. Cap'n Piranha
    For just Arenado, I'd bet the Cards would be perfectly happy with some combo of Varland, SWR, Prielipp, Raya, or Festa. Especially if they're clearing most of Arenado's salary, allowing them to sign pitching in the offseason.
  7. Cap'n Piranha
    Agreed--I would give up Varland, Winder, and Miranda in a heartbeat for Arenado and cash. I just can't imagine any universe in which STL trades both those guys without getting at least 1 top 100 prospect, if not 2.
  8. Cap'n Piranha
    It absolutely is not. If you don't think you can/don't want to resign him in the offseason, it would be silly to value him as anything more than a 2 month rental. If he's the missing piece (like how the Rays viewed Nelson Cruz in 2021) maybe you don't care. But Hader, as good as he is, does not turn this team into a Top 5 outfit, capable of challenging for a World Series crown. As such, giving up 12 years of cheap pitching depth to be only slightly less at a disadvantage in the wild card round is not a good idea.
  9. Cap'n Piranha
    Quick, name 5 other teams in the last 15 years that have made the World Series with a deeply flawed team, on a par with the 2023 Twins.
  10. Cap'n Piranha
    So just to clarify, the Pohlads won't bring up rookies, because they're pie-in-the-sky, fans will boo, then stop coming to games, and they'll lose money. They also won't bring up re-treads, because again, fans will boo, then stop coming to games, and they'll lose money. So the only player acquisition vehicle left is spending market rate on prime free agents--and you think the Pohlads who according to you care only about whether or not the Twins make money, will choose that last and most expensive of routes?
  11. Cap'n Piranha
    I pass. Arenado's walk rate is the lowest it's been since 2015. His k rate is the highest it's ever been. His ISO is the lowest (save 2020) it's been since 2014. He makes more soft contact than league average. He's chasing more, but swinging at balls in the zone less. He's making less contact, despite getting more pitches in the zone, and he's swinging and missing more. At least according to fangraphs, he's been clearly worse defensively across the board (for what those metrics are worth-having not watched a single Cardinals game this year, I have no other source of evaluation). That all sounds to me like an aging, declining, very expensive player (even with COL paying $4M/year, he's $31M next year, $28M in 2025, $23M in 2026, although only $11M in 2027); the Twins might already have one of those in Correa, so to have those two eating up $50M+ for the next 3 years is a big risk if they both continue to decline from their late-2010's heydays. Now if the Cardinals wanted to eat most of the contract and take back Miranda and a low A flier? I could possibly get on board, but I have no idea why STL would do that.
  12. Cap'n Piranha
    Last year's rookie pitchers were Cano, Hamilton, Sands, Megill, Winder, Varland, Romero, SWR, Ryan, Henriquez, Moran, and Duran. 3 of the Twin's 10 best pitchers by ERA (Duran, Moran, Henriquez) were rookies, 4 more (Winder, Varland, SWR, Ryan) were top pitching prospects (which generally draw a lot of fan interest), and the other 5 combined to pitch 95.7 innings, which is less than 7% of the total innings pitched by the team last year--it's the equivalent of getting 2 outs a game. So now that I've yet again proven that rookies aren't coming up and sinking the ship, do you still want to stand by your incorrect assertion?
  13. Cap'n Piranha
    Umm, the Top 3 OPS on the team belong to minor league rookies (Wallner, Lewis, Julien). Those 3 combined make less than 10% of Carlos Correa, and are hilariously outperforming him. You're just not living in reality my man.
  14. Cap'n Piranha
    What makes more money, a team that plays listless, uninspired baseball for multiple years, or a team that actually builds hope through a collection of exciting young players who together from a dynamic competitive core? The Pohlads are in business, and understand the concept of "startup costs"--losing money now to make a lot more later.
  15. Cap'n Piranha
    Not to quibble, but the Twins now have the 3rd best team ERA, with 3 more teams within a tenth of a run. Jax has one more pre-arb year, so if the goal is to target 2026 for competitiveness, that means he only has two years of team control at that point. I think you could get a solid package for him, given all that team control. I'm not pissed about 2023 performances, I'm realistic that this isn't happening because of massive injury or bad luck issues. It has to be assumed that some of these players might be displaying their new normal. I don't care about a division title, just to get embarrassed in the playoffs. In the past two weeks, other than 1 game, we've seen this team get completely outclassed by BAL and ATL. I have no confidence this current team can compete, and there's no reason to expect things to be massively different next year either. I don't want to turn into the Angels who keep running a slightly different version of a deeply flawed team year after year, and before you know it, we haven't been in the playoffs for 6 years, and the farm system is still ranked 17th.
  16. Cap'n Piranha
    How's stubbornly avoiding a rebuild working for LAA, Boston, and NYM? Rebuilds take longer than 3 years if you wait to start the rebuild until you have to. If the Twins trade everything that isn't nailed down now, they can get a jump on the rebuild, rather than wait until after next year. I don't think Falvine are incompetent. I think they are not capable of building a team capable of winning the World Series, and since that is all I care about, I want them out. That said, you can't wait until the offseason to trade Gray, Maeda, Gallo, etc. Whether Falvine is incompetent or not, they're the only ones that can make in-season trades (unless Joe Pohlad cans them, and would an interim GM really be any better)?
  17. Cap'n Piranha
    I’d rather commit to a rebuild now, and return to competitiveness in 2026 than keep my head in the sand, go nowhere the next 3 seasons, and have to start the rebuild anyways in 2027. The Twins do not have the payroll to spend their way out of this hole, and I see nothing in the minors that suggests a 6-8 player strong wave of high-level talent is about to hit. Trade Gray, Maeda, Jax, Kepler, Gallo, and Polanco now, and get someone other than Falvine in the off-season. Might I suggest individuals from the TB and LAD organizations?
  18. Cap'n Piranha
    Twins are 8-1, and +33 runs against the Royals, meaning they are 37-45 and -6 runs against everyone else. It’s time to clean house and start a rebuild.
  19. Cap'n Piranha
    If the Twins are truly taking a non-top 5 at 5, it better be to save money to convince someone else to keep falling. In this case, the player I would want to fall is Bradfield. I would absolutely love to have a speedy, contact-oriented plus defender in Center.
  20. Cap'n Piranha
    It's pretty hard to hit into a DP with no one on base, or when there are already 2 outs. It's slightly less hard (but still hard) to hit into a DP when there is not a runner at 1B. Therefore, the players most likely to hit into DPs are hitters who bat behind guys who get on base a lot, but mostly via walks and singles; that's a pretty spot-on description of someone hitting in the 3 or 4 spot, IMO. What would be more interesting to me than total gross GIDP is GIDP rate. How many times has Correa produced a GIDP when batting with a runner on first and 0/1 outs? How does that number compare to the rest of the league?
  21. Cap'n Piranha
    Left unmentioned so far are the reports that Correa supposedly took Miranda under his wing in the off-season—and Miranda promptly turned into a bad AAA player.
  22. Cap'n Piranha
    CIN, BAL, ARI, and MIA are all leading divisions (other than MIA) that are demonstrably superior to the AL central; Miami is currently the first wild card in the NL. All of them have multiple players who are better than anyone on the Twins, with impact players still in the minors to further buttress. If you told me I could swap the entire playing roster at all levels with any of those 4 organizations, I would do so in a heartbeat. The IL will not help Buxton. If that was a viable solution, it would have fixed the problem in the off-season.
  23. Cap'n Piranha
    Maybe the Dodgers, Braves, and Rays are always good because they’re good at drafting, And would therefore be even better if they had a wider player pool and increased money to spend? Maybe the Rockies, Pirates, and Royals are always bad because they’re bad at drafting, and would be even worse with a narrower player pool and decreased money? The draft is not straightforward to be sure, but it also isn’t teams throwing darts. The Twins would not have been a more talented team had they made the playoffs last year—that makes no sense. The talent level they had was not healthy enough to make the playoffs. Making the playoffs would mean they do not have a top 5 pick in the best draft in a decade—the organization would have less talent had they made the playoffs last year. Saying being more talented is an automatic way to become more talented is a semantically null statement. It’s like saying the best way to get a higher paying job is to get a higher paying job. For a team that can’t spend to the level of other teams, and therefore must acquire talent through drafting, IFA, and shrewd trades, drafting seems like a fairly important thing to do well at, no? Especially since it’s the only one of those 3 paths that is not reliant on other entities to occur.
  24. Cap'n Piranha
    In a micro sense, yes. In a macro sense, no. In a macro sense, I'm sure all of us want the Twins to win a World Series. Therefore, if the Twins are unlikely to win the World Series in any given year, it is preferable to miss the playoffs in order to accumulate better draft positioning (after all, if the Twins make the playoffs last year, they don't have pick #5 this year). The only exception is if it's an up-and-coming team like the 2023 Orioles. This Twins team is not up-and-coming; it seems much closer to down-and-going.
  25. Cap'n Piranha
    Hoping you can take 3 out of 5 scoring 1-2 runs a game (meaning your staff has to stand on it's head for multiple games) is not a promising strategy. The premise is that in the playoffs, the Twins will run into a bunch of pitchers at or near the level of Strider--last night was an indication of what the result might be.
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