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Cap'n Piranha

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Everything posted by Cap'n Piranha

  1. Cap'n Piranha
    The Twins payroll this year is just under $128M, which means if you cut off the $10M for Happ and Shoemaker, they would be at $118M. That's pretty much right inline with 2019 ($125M) and 2020 ($122M over 162 games). Given the collapse in revenue last year, and the expected reduced revenue this year, I don't think it's fair at all for the Twins to be characterized as cheap. What two starters could the FO have inked that would have been notably superior at the time of signing, without adding $20M or more in payroll?
  2. Cap'n Piranha
    Coming into 2021, neither was viewed as a bad starter, particularly as a 4th and 5th starter for a team with limited payroll capacity.
  3. Cap'n Piranha
    Here's your quotation I was responding to--"Flexen's 2021 numbers so far have been dragged down a bit by one disaster start -- but unlike Shoemaker, he's been pretty good in the others." That reads to me like you're saying he only had one not-good start. As I pointed out, he has had several bad starts; in fact, Shoemaker has had 5 starts under a 4 FIP, which is only one less than Flexen. Flexen is undeniably better than Shoemaker, but that in large part is because Shoemaker has ben even more feast or famine than Flexen--5 good starts (although not as good as Flexen's), 1 average start, 1 bad start, 3 horrible starts, and 1 worst-of-all-time start.
  4. Cap'n Piranha
    Mikolas' MLB FIPs in the first 3 years of his career were all superior to Flexen's FIPs in the first 3 years of his MLB career. Quibble about how to define success, but Mikolas was, at least by FIP, a definitively more successful pitcher than Flexen in their first three years. Mikolas was also only one year older than Flexen at their debuts, and himself had barely 100 IP at AA or above when he debuted, so it's not like he had garnered a bunch of extra experience. either
  5. Cap'n Piranha
    Flexen was also a 25/26 year old pitching in the equivalent of AA or AAA. He should be expected to do well. Put another way, I'm sure if you busted Randy Dobnak down to Wichita and left him there the whole year, he'd probably win that league's equivalent of the Cy Young. That doesn't all of the sudden make him a great MLB option. Further, if you look at Flexen's numbers game by game, it's not like the one disaster start is his only bad start. By FIP, he had bad starts against Detroit, Oakland, San Diego, Texas, Anaheim, and the Twins (minimum FIP in those 6 is 4.83, with 3 of those starts above 5 FIP). He's given up 4 ER or more in 4 of his 12 starts, and 3 ER in another 2 (and one of those was only a 4 inning start). In reality, Flexen has been feast or famine, with 6 very good starts, one average start, 4 bad starts, and one horrible start. With his low k rate (15.9%, league average is 24%), there is a lot of potential for regression here.
  6. Cap'n Piranha
    Most players in the bigs aren't there solely because their best is that much better than the guys in the minors' best. It's that the guys in the bigs are much more consistent at being their best. Put another way, if Celestino plays the best he is possibly capable of playing, it's probably not that much worse than the best Buxton is capable of playing; he's maybe 85 to 90 percent as good. However, how often does Celestino have a day where he plays the best he is capable of playing? Once every 5 days? Every 10? And how often does Buxton do it? Every 2 or 3? It's like the old football saying about lesser teams beating better teams--if the lesser teams plays a perfect game, they can beat the better teams (it's also how the Twins took 2 of 6 from NYY/HOU, 2 demonstrably better teams). The St Paul Saints would win 2-3 out of every 10 games against the Twins, because 2-3 times out of 10, the Saints would collectively do a better job of playing to their potential than the Twins. But the Twins win 7-8 times because the Twins collectively more often play to their talent. With more time and seasoning, Celestino will either increase the ratio at which he plays to his potential, or he will find himself first a AAAA outfielder, and then out of baseball.
  7. Cap'n Piranha
    The story that isn't told here that is interesting to me is that, in reality, injuries aren't up that much. If we take the number Tom showed for 2021 of 14,350 days, and divide it by .37 (as we're about 37% of the way through the season), we see that the league is on pace for 38,784 IL days. That is vastly down to 2019 (over 21%), and just 13.7% above 2018. Conversely, the Twins are on pace for 973 IL days, up 55% to 2019, but actually below both 2017 and 2018. This makes me wonder--is part of why the Twins won 101 games in 2019 because they were able to avoid the IL? The Twins reduced their IL days in 2019, at the same time as IL days in the rest of the league exploded. Now that they are back to being league average in IL days, they're back to being non-competitive.
  8. Cap'n Piranha
    Numbers 1 and 2 both make me nervous. Polanco's ankle seems to be a body part that will never be fully healthy until he stops playing baseball (maybe not even then). As such, the risk of .800 OPS Polanco vanishing at any moment is an inescapable reality. Add on the fact that both Arraez and Gordon are probably best suited to play second, I think if Polanco keeps this up for another 4-6 weeks, you try and trade him. On Rogers, I may be reading the numbers wrong, but it looks like he is at the bottom of the barrel in fastball spin, Max EV, and barrel rate, while also being solidly below average on hard hit rate. Also to consider--Rogers is essentially throwing two pitches this year, a sinking fastball (and throwing it harder than ever), and a slider (also harder than ever). Unfortunately, his slider grades out as slightly below average, which means Rogers is getting by on one pitch that has some concerns behind it. As he is now over 30, and only has one more year of free agency, I think it behooves the Twins to trade Rogers in July as well.
  9. Cap'n Piranha
    Agreed. When you throw tradition out by having backup catchers throwing 46 MPH softballs, you can't expect the other team to continue to respect tradition. Even if that was some back-end bullpen guy throwing 86, I still don't have a problem with swinging 3-0, but the whole "respect your opponent and the game" thing does not hold water when Tortuga is pitching.
  10. Cap'n Piranha
    Donaldson has the 4th highest OBP on the team; the three ahead of him are Buxton, Gordon, and Refsnyder. I don't think anyone would be excited about moving Donaldson down in the lineup for Gordon or Refsnyder.
  11. Cap'n Piranha
    The Series Win stat is inaccurate--The Twins took 2 of 3 from KC in the April 30-May 2 series, crushing them 9-1 and 13-4 on Friday and Saturday, while getting crushed 11-3 on Saturday.
  12. Cap'n Piranha
    I agree with this. Look no further than the team at the top of the Division Standings that has beat our brains in this year (combined score of the 6 games is White Sox 48-23, an average of 8-4). In the 2016/2017 offseason, the White Sox traded Sale and Eaton for Giolito, Moncada, Lopez, Dunning, and Kopech (Dunning was turned into Lance Lynn). Add in the 2017 mid-season trade of Quintana that netted Jimenez and Cease, and the White Sox added 6 key contributors to their current team by moving assets when it was clear the team's upside was gone.
  13. Cap'n Piranha
    This whole post should be carved in granite outside all 30 stadiums. Fantastic takedown of the inanity of "unwritten" rules.
  14. Cap'n Piranha
    The problem with your reference to other sports is that most other sports are timed, whereas baseball is not. Unless you think in blowouts hitters should simply refuse to swing, no matter the count, hitters will have to swing in order for the game to end. Why is swinging 3-0 and hitting a homer disrespectful, but waiting one more pitch, and swinging 3-1 and hitting a homer is fine? If we are honestly worried about a mad rash of disrespectful behavior breaking out should unwritten rules be done away with, wouldn't it make more sense to simply codify the offending behaviors, and instruct the umpires to eject players who engage in said behaviors?
  15. Cap'n Piranha
    I feel like we have about three more weeks before the FO, if they're smart, will go in to full-on rebuild mode. Commit completely to it now, and you might be able to shave a year or two off the duration. Starting June 1, assuming no improvement in play, here's what I'd like to see happen Kiriloff at first every day (assuming he can return--full health in 2022 should be the priority) Arraez at second every day Gordon at short every day Polanco at third every day Larnach in left every day Rooker in right every day The Twins should eat the salary on all of the following players in order to trade them--if no trade can be made, they should be DFA'd; Donaldson, Simmons, Cruz, Colome Buxton should also be traded as soon as he is healthy, or you get an offer you're happy with. Rogers, Duffey, and Robles should all be traded as soon as you get a decent offer.
  16. Cap'n Piranha
    Just saw this, and love it! One minor thing (as those who know me on this board can I attest--I MUST get crazily specific)--it would appear that ads can pop up over the red circle, as that happened to me just as I was about to take the maiden red circle voyage. A small thing to be sure, and if it's complex to fix, certainly not worth it, but as a minor fix, that would be great! Thanks Brock!
  17. Cap'n Piranha
    My one suggestion--pin the top banner so that it's always there on any page you're on. It made it very easy to navigate back to the homepage. What I've noticed is that without that, you have to scroll all the way back up to navigate to another page, which is mildly frustrating on pages with lost of comments. Otherwise, looks great!
  18. Cap'n Piranha
    I believe the Twins have scored the bonus runner once, when Buxton went yard in Oakland. That was promptly rendered moot when Baldelli left Colome in for the bottom of the 10th, even though he had coughed up the lead in the 9th, and various Twins infielders forgot how to play defense.
  19. Cap'n Piranha
    37% increase in pitches from the 28th to the 1st. 43% increase in pitches from the 1st to the 6th. So if he increases his pitches by 40% when he starts on the 11th, that's 82 pitches. From there, he could pitch on May 16 and only need a 25% increase to get to 100 pitches. 20 days to stretch a guy from 30 to 100 pitches seems pretty expeditious to me.
  20. Cap'n Piranha
    Does this include Buxton? If so--wow!
  21. Cap'n Piranha
    Berrios pitched the second game of the season, and it was 6 no-hit innings. Donaldson has been worth .5 WAR in 17 games--That's 3 WAR in 102 games, which is worth $30M on the free agent market, and we paid $23M, so seems reasonable. He has an OPS over .800, a wRC+ of 127, and has accounted for 2.8 UZR in his 329 innings with the Twins. He is absolutely not the problem with this team.
  22. Cap'n Piranha
    You're right, there were no good options. That includes Rogers, who due to pitching on Monday, was also not a good option. So maybe Alcala, or Thielbar, or Colome blows the lead just the same, but at least then Rogers is available tonight. As it is, we have now pitched Duffey and Rogers two days in a row, so our good options tonight are...Robles? This bodes ill for our chances in a close game tonight; those chances would be better if Rogers was available, but instead we used him in a situation in which it was predictable he would not be good. The upshot is that we traded tonight's potentially good Rogers appearance for last nights predictably bad Rogers appearance. Seems less than smart.
  23. Cap'n Piranha
    I agree in part with this. There's not much you can do when 7-8 guys all regress at the same time, and that is not all on the FO. That being said, for this bullpen to work Colome, Rogers, and Duffey all needed to hold off regression, while at least two out of Stashak/Alcala/Thielbar/Robles stepped up to become legitimate 7th/8th inning guys. That's a lot of wishcasting just to have a good-not-great bullpen, so I think the FO bears some responsibility for making a mostly-downside, little-upside plan for the pen.
  24. Cap'n Piranha
    This is pretty much correct, but I would go further as well. If you're going to pull your starter in the 6th or earlier, you can't immediately go to one of your 3 best guys unless it's a must win game. Thielbar/Alcala/Colome et al have to be used in the 6th and 7th, and Rogers/Duffey/Robles can only be used in the 8th or 9th. If you're going to expect your bullpen to pitch 600+ innings in a year, then the price of that is giving 200 to 300 innings to average to bad relievers. The only way around that is to have 7 or 8 good guys, or to carry 2 long guys at all times.
  25. Cap'n Piranha
    Then we don't have J.A. Happ, and Dobnak and his 8.16 ERA are in the starting rotation. Does that really make us a better team?
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