Cap'n Piranha
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Everything posted by Cap'n Piranha
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Tell that to Benjamin Button.
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I will bet you a Million dollars the Twins won't beat the Yankees in the World Series.
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This is the right question. If it’s actually schedules, Buxton and Correa being scheduled for rest could have been foreseen days ago, and the plan could have been altered. So either the Twins are making schedules for rest for both players, and then not comparing them, or they literally don’t care if both sit on the same day, which would indicate that they will adhere to a schedule as opposed to flexibility. The third option is that the Twins did indeed assume they would lose yesterday even with Buxton and/or Correa playing, so they decided before the series even began to shoot for 2-1 by trying hardest to win Friday and Saturday. No matter what the explanation actually is, I don’t think Rocco was being particularly honest with Gleeman, as a little logic reveals the inanity of Rocco’s rambling, incoherent non-answer.
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- luis arraez
- chi chi gonzalez
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Is Austin Martin Minnesota’s Best Trade Chip?
Cap'n Piranha replied to Cody Christie's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
Maybe we're selling low. Or maybe we're not. That is the gamble that might need to be taken. -
Say, didn’t you use to be Austin Martin, top prospect?
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In case Rocco was wondering, the 7th would have been a great time to throw Duran out there for two innings, given he’s only thrown 8 pitches in the last 4 days before today. Get through the 8-5 hitters (assumes one base runner), and see what you can do to get a couple more runs. After that, you just have to piece together the 9th against hitters 6-8/9.
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- cole sands
- jorge polanco
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I'm not assuming he won't improve his bat. I'm understanding the reality that he did not improve his bat from last year, so you're assuming he will improve his bat, despite all the available evidence indicating otherwise. Why do you have a .300 AVG baseline for him, when he's literally never done that in his professional career? If your thesis is that the Twins screwed him up by pushing him to add power, and he just needs to return to the approach he had while in Toronto's system, you have to acknowldge he hit .281 there. Obviously I would love to have another Arraez player; but there is nothing in Austin Martin's professional career that suggests he is anywhere near the caliber of hitter Luis Arraez is. You know who is actually more likely to be an Arraez type hitter? Edouard Julien, who is younger and performing better than Martin at the same level (and in his first go-around at that level to boot).
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Why in the love of all that is holy would we expect him to have a 380+ OBP in MLB when HE CAN'T EVEN DO THAT IN AA? Of course I understand the value of high OBP, I just don't think Austin Martin is a good bet to have a high OBP. Martin currently has a .361 OBP in a league where the average OBP is .352, so he's 2.5% better than the average AA Central hitter. That's it. In MLB this year the average OBP is .311, so if Martin maintains his gap in performance to the league, he would have a .319 OBP, which would put him 87th in MLB, just behind Tony Kemp. On average and power, his projected numbers in MLB would be .229 (95.7% of league average) and .329 (84.7% of league average). That's a slash of .229/.319/.329/.648--that makes Martin, essentially, IKF. You really think an IKF clone (except with more speed and much less defensive value) should be considered a top prospect? You're right that my view is based on 2 months--that just happens to be about 35% of his entire professional career. 2 months is not a small sample size unless you're on the IL at least twice during that stretch. I just do not understand why this year's performance is just being blithely waved away as not concerning.
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Average is not meaningless. Average is meaningless if you have power--power hitters can maintain high OBPs in the majors without average, because they'll get walks due to pitchers not wanting to challenge them, and therefore nibbling. Without power, to maintain a high OBP, a player is going to have to get hits, otherwise pitchers will never throw him balls--why would they, since they know he's unlikely to get a hit, and if he does get a hit, it will be a single which is approximately the same as a walk anyways? If you think Martin will tee off when pitchers go after him, then how do you explain his strikeouts? He has 28 in 216 PA this year (for comparison, Arraez has 16 in 188). Since he takes a lot of walks, he clearly has a good eye right? So to strikeout that much means he's not an elite contact hitter. Guys at the MLB level who don't make elite contact, and don't have power, do not have high OBPs--they just don't. Name one guy in MLB around the 80th percentile for contact rate, but with no power, who still has a high OBP. I'll wait.
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You are correct, Martin has one more non-40 man year. I got mixed up when I saw a TC designation next year for him on Spotrac, and incorrectly assumed that meant he had to be on the 40 man--my bad. I hope Martin takes off this summer--it would be awesome if he followed the Royce Lewis 2019 path and went to the AFL and was the best hitter there. The problem there of course is that Royce Lewis is actually younger than Martin, and had that breakout when he had just turned 20 three months earlier, not five months before turning 24. And given the trend we're seeing from Martin, thinking he'll improve is based on nothing other than hope. I would bet big money that if Austin Martin finishes the year at AA with a sub .725 OPS, he will appear on no global top 100 lists next year. There is plenty of reason to worry about Austin Martin. Pretending there's not is just head-in-the-sand thinking.
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And this is all we need to know about your ability to understand statistics. Separate the results from the player--get rid of the name, the draft position, and the fact he was the headliner in the Berrios trade; what about Austin Martin's stat line excites you? Would you be at all excited about a random player with a sub-.700 OPS in his second go-around at the same level? Of course not. So let go of what we hoped Austin Martin would be, and start to embrace the increasing reality that he very well might never be that.
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No kidding it was projection--he was a teenager for half that time. The point isn't that we should be shocked his power emerged in 2021 when there was a power projection on him, and we didn't seem him at all in 2020. 4 homers is small--it's also only 2 fewer than Martin has in his entire professional career, so if someone with 4 homers isn't considered to have power, why would we consider someone with even fewer homeruns as likely to develop power? If Martin can't develop power, he will have to be Luis Arraez to have value in MLB--for his MiLB career (during all of which he was younger than Martin has been at any point in his MiLB career), Arraez was a .331 hitter with a .385 OBP. Martin is .262 average and .396 OBP. As mentioned before, a guy in MLB who doesn't hit for power, and can't really hit for average, is going to see his walks evaporate very quickly as pitchers stop trying to paint, and simply challenge him.
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They have shown desire, it just also takes desire from the pitcher to sign the deal too. Donaldson was the pivot when Wheeler didn't work out (because Wheeler's agent told the Twins not to bother--that's according to Gleeman). Even with Donaldson being a hitter, why would the calculus be any different? The Donaldson deal shows the Twins are perfectly willing to sign aging players to multiyear big-money deals they know are significant risks in the back half IF that player is perceived to be the missing peice for a World Series run. There was no pitcher that fit that bill this year, simply because the Twins were not one starting pitcher away.
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I think an ace that is the final piece to give you a legitimate chance to win a World Series in years 1-3 of the contract would not be considered overspending by Falvine. After all, they gave 35 year old Josh Donaldson 4 years and $100M when they thought they had a chance to win the World Series, and that was when the payroll was substantially higher than it will be at the end of this year.
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Precisely--we should expect a departure. You're thinking of this completely backwards--small to mid market teams (at least the well-run ones) don't spend big to fill holes, because filling holes only makes the boat float, it doesn't make it move. Small to mid market teams (at least the well-run ones) fix the holes internally, and then spend big to buy engines. It made no sense for the Twins to spend big on one free agent pitcher when they entered the offseason with literally 2 mostly unproven rookies as the entirety of their rotation. When the Twins enter this offseason with (hopefully) a solid #2 pitcher (Gray), 2-3 somewhat proven young guys (Ryan, Ober, Winder), 2 established vets coming back from injuries (Maeda and Paddack), and some good depth options (Smeltzer and Dobnak), not to mention a passel of nice prospects (SWR, Balazovic, Varland, etc), spending on an ace makes a lot of sense.
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I think Falvine have completely shown they won't risk overspending on free agent pitching. That is not the same as showing they won't spend on free agent pitching.
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I don't know if an IL stint will fix it. But I do know that 7 weeks of playing in only half the games on the schedule sure didn't.
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If indeed we're not going to get much in return for trading him right now, doesn't that pretty much prove my original point? That Martin should be well down the Twins' list of prospects, and if you can find a team that is still somewhat optimistic about him, you should trade him in a heartbeat, even if you have to recoup significantly less value than you would have had you flipped him last July?
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Is Emmanuel Rodriguez the fastest rising prospect for Twins?
Cap'n Piranha replied to Trov's topic in Twins Minor League Talk
If I was making a list (and trust me, no one is asking me to make a list), I would have Rodriguez as a 19 year old OPS'ing 1.063 in a pitcher-friendly Low A ranked ahead of Martin as a 23 year old OPS'ing .685 in his second go-around in a hitter-friendly AA. Rodriguez could repeat low A next year, spend 2024 and 2025 in A+, and not make AA until 2026, all while losing .350 off his OPS, and he would still be performing better than Martin is right now. -
Is Emmanuel Rodriguez the fastest rising prospect for Twins?
Cap'n Piranha replied to Trov's topic in Twins Minor League Talk
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If only the Twins had done this 6 weeks ago, Buxton could theoretically have been back at full strength now, as opposed to still not being at full strength.
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Are you sure that this is Martin's low? What if this is actually Martin's high? What about his current results as a 23 year old repeating AA screams breakout candidate to you?
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Your math is wrong--he needs to be on the 40 man next year. If you think he's going to be an outfielder, then that means he won't have a starting role until at least 3 of Buxton, Larnach, Kiriloff, Celestino, and Kepler are gone (and that doesn't even mention Emmanuel Rodriguez, who is almost 4 years younger, and is putting up an 1,000+ OPS in a pitcher's league--granted it is two levels down, but at this pace, he'll get promoted soon, and be only a level behind, despite the massive age difference). All 5 of the Buxton, Larnach, Kiriloff, Celestino, and Kepler group have at least 2 years of control, and other than Buxton and Kepler, cheap control. At this point, Austin Martin is the definition of excess, and should absolutely be bait to return players ready to help this year.
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I mean, to be fair, 2019 was Steer's first year with wood bats (and he still hit 4 homers to Martin's career 6). He then didn't get to play in 2020. So it's pretty disingenuous to say Steer wasn't a HR hitter until last year. In 2021, Martin had an XBH every 13 AB's. This year it's one every 18. At this point saying Martin could take off in the power department is pure unadulterated wishcasting, and is not based in any kind of trend. Why is being in the Twins organization a reason to explain lack of performance? Are you saying the Twins are much better at developing hitters than the Blue Jays? How does that make sense given that Martin was better with the Jays org than the Twins org? If it legitimately takes almost a full year for the Twins to make changes to one of their top prospects in the minors, then either the coach should be fired, or clearly Martin is not able to understand what the coaches are getting him to do--which is it?
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When I say 50 cents on the dollar, what I mean is the value you get for him will be much less than the value the Twins had to give up to get him last year. Do you think the Twins could trade Austin Martin and say, Blayne Enlow for Frankie Montas right now? Austin Martin's value is clearly lower now than it was 11 months ago--to say otherwise is to simply not be tethered in reality. As such, if you trade him, you will have to take less value for him than you would have otherwise gotten last year--thus, 50 cents on the dollar. Of course the Twins can hang on to him, and hope he rebounds, but if he doesn't turn it around, and now it's 2024 and he's a below average 25 year old repeating AAA, his value is even lower, and now you're either releasing him outright, or trading him for 10 cents on the dollar. None of this is to say I don't like Martin--I hope he can turn it around. But when it comes to MiLB players I've never seen, but have meaningful track records, I am going to lean heavily on the stats. And the stats tell me that for whatever reason, Austin Martin looks like a career AAAA player at best right now. Given that there is no need for him to be part of the Twins plans in the next 2-3 years, given the number of players the Twins control for the next 2-3 years, I'd rather recoup some value now, rather than risk getting almost no value for him in a year or two. Perhaps that will look really dumb. Perhaps it will look really smart. Only time will tell.
