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Cap'n Piranha

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Everything posted by Cap'n Piranha

  1. 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.
  2. 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)?
  3. 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?
  4. 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.
  5. Cap'n Piranha
    Their seat should be piping hot--if the Twins once again miss the playoffs, Falvinelli should be gone. Making the playoffs 3 out of 7 seasons with an 0-6 W/L in those appearances is unacceptable. That said, my guess is their seat is actually room temperature, and barring some complete and total meltdown in the next 3 months, the Baseball Ops Brain Trust at 1 Twins Way will be the same next year as it was this year.
  6. 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.
  7. 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?
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. Cap'n Piranha
    If only we had a FO that could create a pitching pipeline, we wouldn’t need to worry about replacements. I find it so very Minnesotan to be happy just making the playoffs. We should all want more than that. Just making the playoffs is fine—if you’re an up-and-coming team like the Orioles, with young guys everywhere figuring it out. It’s not fine if you’re a veteran-heavy team massively underachieving; like the Twins. We’re more than 30 years removed from the last time the Twins were a factor in the postseason, and with the exception of a handful of years since then (early 2000’s, 2019-2020), this team has been completely irrelevant. Falvine’s job was to create a sustained winner, and while the early returns were promising, those are long gone. Their team plays in one of the worst divisions of all time, they’ve gotten unprecedented spending power, have repeatedly raided the farm system for arms, and still can’t get the team above .500. With the exception of Ryan, Odorizzi, and Duran, they have more or less lost every trade they’ve made. I don’t want the Twins to make the playoffs because I don’t think whatever Falvine is doing is working, and they’re unlikely to be fired if they make the playoffs.
  14. Cap'n Piranha
    And they managed to score 1 run, on 3 hits while striking out 10 times against him. I’m pretty sure you just made the point you thought you were arguing against.
  15. Cap'n Piranha
    Positions Austin Martin will almost assuredly not play for the Twins; C, SS, DH (self-explanatory, Correa, Buxton) Positions Austin Martin will probably not play for the Twins; 1B, 2B, 3B, RF, CF (Kiriloff, Julien, Lee, Wallner, Lewis--I think that's the best place for him long-term) That leaves either LF, where he will be average at best (MLB LF's this year have a .733 OPS compared to Martin's career MiLB OPS of .742), or he will be a super utility player. There is of course value in having a high-end super utility player making $4M or so across 4 seasons, but that's hardly what the Twins were hoping for when they agreed to get Martin back as the centerpiece in the Berrios trade.
  16. Cap'n Piranha
    I've yet to see this proposed, and I'm not sure why--is there any reason Buxton can't play right field, or even left field if the opposing team loads up on lefty hitters? Supposedly Kepler didn't like playing Center because it was too much stress on his body, so why not solve half the problem by having Buxton play in the field? You can have him out there for Gray's starts (lowest non-IF FB rate of starters at 31%) at minimum, DH 4-5 times, and take a day off. You at least get to let someone else DH twice a week or so, and if he's doing ok, you can start putting him out there for Varland's starts too (37.5% non-IF FB rate).
  17. Cap'n Piranha
    According to Gleeman, Kepler informed the Twins he is not willing to play CF anymore. If Falvine had any self-respect, they would have told him that Kepler would play any position the Twins deemed most helpful to the team, otherwise he could attempt to find employment with one of the other 29 teams. Also, Popkins (at a minimum) needs to go. Now.
  18. Cap'n Piranha
    I personally would love Bradfield. Was reading Kiley McDaniel this morning, and he graded Bradfield as 80 run, 80 baserunning, 70/80 glove in CF, plus hit and plus pitch recognition. Since it's starting to look like Buxton's days in CF might be done for good, taking an SEC guy (read--can make the bigs in 2025/2026) that can tableset and provide elite defense in CF makes an awful lot of sense to me.
  19. Cap'n Piranha
    probably told to. A smart manager would realize that Buxton is batting 4th, so you either want him with multiple runners on, or making the last out. Real time update--Correa blows that plan up.
  20. Cap'n Piranha
    Rocco doesn't play chess, and can't look ahead. If he could, he would have realized the Twins were far less likely to score in the 9th (as opposed to the 10th), and therefore wouldn't have used Duran for the 8th, but rather held him for the 10th. Lopez 8th, Thielbar 9th, Duran 10th should have been the plan.
  21. Cap'n Piranha
    According to Gameday, his 4 seam is sitting around 89ish (has not broken 90), and the slider is not breaking 82. Not gonna fly in the bigs.
  22. Cap'n Piranha
    Any team that rosters Willi Castro at the expense of Alex Kiriloff is not serious about winning.
  23. Cap'n Piranha
    I wonder if Buxton is one of those guys who just don't stay engaged when they have to go 30-45 minutes in between any kind of game action. Perhaps getting out on the field is necessary for Buxton to truly produce at the plate. Either way, this has to get figured out, and soon.
  24. Cap'n Piranha
    The spirit of the IL rule is to keep teams from constantly trading out players who are only slightly injured for a day or two at a time. Without the rule, teams could essentially have 40 man rosters, and every game would have 5-7 transactions after it to trade out BP arms, platoon bats, etc. The calculus is that when a player is too injured to play, but not too injured to guarantee an absence of 10 or more days, a team has to determine where equilibrium falls (is it better to play short-handed for 9 games to get a game, or just give up 10 games for the injured player, but get those 10 games from a different, healthy player). As I mentioned before, the calculus of the Gallo IL move was altered when Correa needed multiple days off. Without that, Gallo probably stays active, and plays in Yankee stadium the past 2 days. With the Correa injury, the Twins were critically short on bench players, and needed to put someone on the IL. Since Correa is far more valuable, and was probably deemed to be on track to be available sooner, the obvious choice for the IL stint was Gallo.
  25. Cap'n Piranha
    How pray would he get on the field pregame without crossing the white lines? Are those only chalked down as the home 9 is preparing for the imminent first pitch?
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