Cap'n Piranha

It could be argued Polanco would actually be more valuable at second than at short. Last year 15 players qualified at short with a wRC+ of 100 or more, compared to only 10 at second (which is somewhat misleading as both Torres and LeMahieu appear on that list). Polanco's 4 WAR is more likely to be an upgrade/bigger upgrade at second than at short. Unfortunately, the Twins can't take advantage of this, due to not having an in-house option at short, and the need to keep Arraez at second.

Last year 87 hitters had a better wRC+ than Rosario, including such luminaries as Domingo Santana, Kole Calhoun, Brian Anderson, and Danny Santana. The 3 year stats you shared above show an erosion in his production, which would be even more pronounced were it not for last year's power explosion (61 players had a SLG of .500 or better in 2019, compared to 26 in 2018 and 41 in 2017); in fact, Eddie's gone from 34th in SLG in 2017 to 41st in 2018, and finally, 61st in 2019. As you also showed in your 3 year rundown, Eddie's OBP is rapidly approaching hazmat levels--only 7 qualified players had a worse OBP than Eddie last year; even the hollow shell of Albert Pujols had a better OBP. Even in Eddie's good years of 2017 and 2018, he was 88th and 96th respectively in OBP. This is directly related to Eddie's insistence on swinging more often (swing rate of 59.1% in 2019, up from 54.9% in 2017), especially at pitches out of the zone; Eddie swung at 46.3% of pitches out of the zone in 2019 (compared to 37.6% in 2017), which was 4th worst in baseball. So what we have is a player who is shedding power (relative to the league), getting on base at replecement player levels, demonstrating nearly league-worst discipline, and becoming a defensive liability at the same time he approaches 30 and becomes vastly more expensive, all while playing in the Twins' position of greatest organizational strength. As this series (somewhat) approximates a trade value ranking, I would not be shocked at all to find that other MLB organizations view Rosario as at best the 5th most attractive outfielder in the Twins system, and quite possibly as low as 7.

Anything to not have to give credit to Falvine, I suppose. Let's just ignore the Houston Astros purportedly being in pursuit.

No, you didn't miss it, you just made an uninformed conjecture, rather than attempting to clarify.

He is a reporter. He reports for the Athletic, specifically on the topic of the Twins, but given that he spent the last 14 years involved with writing/editing about baseball in general, I feel comfortable that he is more plugged into the league than any poster on this site--after all, anyone who has more contacts than Gleeman league-wide is in all likelihood employed by some aspect of the baseball industry, and is probably not spending a ton of time posting anonymously on a message board. It's certainly possible Hosken Bombo Disco is a ghost account used by the Twins front office, but somehow I doubt it. I also don't assume everything Gleeman says is inside info, but when he prefaces something by saying something to the effect of "people within the Twins I've talked to," or "Ken Rosenthal answered my text by telling me his sources told him," I take it as pretty solid information.

I think Cave and Wade would both individually go for more than Rosario in a trade, based on my summation in my post above. When you combine the fact that they're younger, cheaper, and more controllable, all while being reasonably comparable in on-field production (unless, as I said, Rosario was injured for most of last year), the only team I can see preferring Rosario would be Gardy and the Tigers.

100%. See below for a comparison; Player A--.276/.300/.500, 103 wRC+, 38.8% hard hit, 15.4% soft hit, 1.2 WAR. Player B--.251/.351/.455, 113 wRC+, 52.3% hard hit, 5.5% soft hit, 0.9 WAR. Player C--.196/.348/.375, 98 wRC+, 38.3% hard hit, 14.9% soft hit, -0.2 WAR. Player A, is Rosario, B is Cave, and C is Wade. Cave put up 75% of the WAR Rosario did, but needed only 39% of the plate appearances to do so, meaning he's a much more efficient player. While Cave's babip and hr/fb rate both seem high (particularly the hr/fb rate), at least some of that can be contributed to Cave's ability to make a lot of medium to hard contact. Wade was victimzed by an insanely low babip of .200, which is not sustainable, and clearly based on SSS (he only had 69 PA's). Wade is far better than Rosario at controlling the zone (17.5% out of zone swing rate, compared to Rosario's 46.3%--this leads to Wade getting more pitches to hit; 44.4% zone rate compared to Rosario's 37.6%) and making contact (Wade had a 5.8% swinging strike rate and 92.5% zone contact rate; Rosario was 11.6% and 85.1%) Both Cave and Wade are also better OBP options than Rosario, which is where this team could use some help. Further, they are both, younger, far cheaper, and have much more team control than Rosario, all while being, if not better, really not that much worse. So to sum up, unless Eddie was playing the last 2/3rds of the season hurt (from June 1 on, he OPS'd .766 with a 94 wRC+, with under 38% hard contact and over 16% soft contact, with a 12.3% swinging strike rate, all while swinging at almost half the pitches outside of the zone), it makes way more sense to roster both Cave and Wade for 10% of what it would cost to roster Rosario.

Um, because none of them were desirable enough to be able to set their own terms? My information came from Gleeman, and was stated on the Gleeman and the Geek podcast. I know for a fact that Gleeman is far more plugged into the league, and the Twins specifically, than I am, so when he says something, I take it as truth. I don't personally know you, so it's possible you're even more plugged into things than Gleeman, but I doubt that.

Call me crazy, but I'd rather have Cave or Wade as my full-time left fielder over Rosario this year.

Dude--Odorizzi, Cruz, Pineda. All signed/traded for by Falvine, 11.3 WAR last year. Without them, the Twins win 90 last year, and are sitting at home in October. That's not even taking into consideration the 5.5 combined WAR of Castro, Gonzalez, Schoop, Cron, and Cave, nor the 5.2 combined WAR of Perez, Harper, Dobnak, Romo, and Littell. That's 22 WAR from 13 players acquired by Falvine, without which the Twins go from 101 wins to 79. While I'm frustrated the Twins couldn't get an impact player in FA this offseason, there's not a ton you can do when Cole is determined to go to the Yankees, Strasburg wants to stay in DC, Wheeler's agent tells you not to bother making offers, Bumgarner insists on going to Arizona, and Donaldson (seemingly) is only interested in the Twins as leverage. Free Agency is a two-way street, and Falvine can't just snap their fingers and force whomever they want to sign here. If what you're looking for is a front office that makes aggressive trades and signs free agents to megadeals, you should probably consider switching your fandom--that's just not going to be the Twins, and getting annoyed about it won't change that.

Jim Thome put up less WAR in his run with the Twins than Cruz did just last year. Cruz was 33rd in WAR in the entire league, despite missing the equivalent of a quarter of the season--Jim Thome when he signed with the Twins was nowhere near the quality of player Nelson Cruz was when signing with the Twins. Odorizzi has also put up more WAR in his two seasons than Pavano did in his entire Twins run. Over the past two seasons, Odorizzi has accumulated the 24th most WAR of all starters with 300 or more IP, all for a guy who OPS'd .558 in AA as a 22/23 year old last year. Your belief that they're acquiring players in the same way, and therefore are docking them some portion of credit is ridiculous--apparently the only way you're willing to give them full credit is if they sign a massive deal in free agency, or trade multiple prospects for an established star. This ignores the fact that this is a small portion of team building for a small market team, and guarantees nothing--look at the Phillies who, prior to last season, signed one of the two best free agents available, then traded for the best all-around catcher, who happens to be a 5 WAR player. What did they get for these moves? A .500 record, a 4th place finish in the division, and missed the playoffs by 12 games. If you want to give all the credit for development to the coaches, then why are you giving credit to TR/BS for signing/drafting players? Furthermore, if we agree that the coaches hired by Falvine have driven the development of Garver/Arraez/Polanco/Kepler et al, shouldn't we ding TR/BS for NOT hiring coaches that were able to develop them?

So now they don't get credit for a move because it's too similar to what TR would have done? Cruz, Odo, and Pineda combined for 11.3 WAR last year, which is literally the difference between making the playoffs and not. And if you're going to give them credit for hiring good coaches, by extension shouldn't they get credit for the impact those coaches made? It seems quite popular to denigrate Falvine since they weren't able to sign an ace in free agency, and reduce what they've accomplished. However, it seems clear to me that Falvine is immensely better at running a baseball operation that TR/BS, and the fruit of that is already starting to come to bear.

Do they get no credit for developing the players/hiring the coaches? Outside of the fact that Odo, Cruz, Pineda, Littell, and Romo are their guys, Kepler, Garver, Polanco, Arraez, and Duffey are far more valuable now than they were prior to the 2017 season. They've also added Lewis, Rooker, Sands, Larnach, Jeffers, Duran, and Alcala to the system. Falvine clearly have a plan they are capable of executing; the only question will be if that plan pans out.

Um, in August of 2019, Bailey faced the Brewers, the Cubs, the Giants, the Royals, and the Yankees twice. Combined win percentage of those teams was .529, which is the equivalent of an 86 win team. Only one of the bunch was truly bad, one was pretty good, and the Yankees were obviously great.

The game is starting to lose chairs, and there's not that much music left to be played. I agree that at this point the Twins need to do something to send a message. Similar to when the Tigers signed Pudge to a deal most people thought was way too high; it demonstrated the Tigers were serious about winning. We need to do something right now to show this isn't going to be the same old Twins, hoping for internal growth. Whether that's blowing away Cole's highest offer, giving Donaldson 4 and $128, or putting Rendon in the quarter-billion club, something is needed to kickstart this.

This would be a lot more convincing if the two quotations weren't from people within the Twins organization who have a vested interest in maintaining the belief that Lewis will stick at short. I'm not saying Borrego and Zoll are being dishonest, simply that there is no reason for them to make any sort of statement about Lewis not being able to stick at short. The first evidence we will get that the Twins no longer view Lewis as a shortstop is when he no longer plays the vast majority of his games there.

I'm not talking about him outperforming Chapman (or any of them, for that matter), simply responding to your assertion that none of the three would be a key contributor to a playoff race in 2020. I'm also not saying any of the three will be key contributors, just that there is a very easy path for all three of them to appear on the roster, at which point they could play their way into contributing. Kiriloff struggled through injuries, but still had a 121 wRC+, Lewis just OPS'd .975 in the AFL, and Rooker had an OPS of .933 in AAA. If the A's were willing to take Kiriloff/Lewis + Rooker + Duran/Alcala for Chapman, I'd do that for sure, but as a number of posters have mentioned, it seems like it would take a lot more for the A's to part with a 6 WAR player making 6 figures. You'd probably have to make them a godfather offer, something like Arraez + Lewis/Kiriloff + Graterol/Balazovic, and even that might not be enough. After 2020 however, you might be able to do something.

This is a big statement that could easily be very wrong. All three of these players are a good first 6 weeks and an injury at the right spot away from appearing on the 26 man roster. At that point, anything can happen--just ask Luis Arraez.

I'm saying they have sifted through a terrible pitching staff (tied for last in ERA, 27th in FIP, 24th in xFIP in 2016), and markedly improved (9th in ERA, 4th in FIP, 5th in xFIP in 2019). It would seem that Falvine does know how to improve a pitching staff, and a big part of that was jettisoning pitchers they identified as not good enough--in other words, they correctly evaluated talent.

Levine comes from Texas, which once upon a time gave A-Rod a 10 year $250M contract, and has been in the top half of payroll every year since 2011, including top ten in 2012 and 2014-2017. The Rays' pitching staff was 1st in WAR, 3rd in ERA, 1st in FIP, 3rd in xFIP, 3rd in k/9, 3rd in bb/9, 1st in HR/9, 2nd in SIERA, and 1st in swinging strike rate. I would love for Falvine to emulate the Rays' pitching staff. Odo, Pineda, Dobnak, Littell, and Smeltzer have all worked out pretty well so far. Alcala, Bailey, and Duran all show promise. 8 pitchers in 3 years suggests a decent ability to identify talent--the question is if they can find elite level talent without regular access to the two most common avenues; high draft picks and high payrolls.

Or, since they've been here only 3 years, 2 of which were expected to be non-playoff years, maybe the fact that they've almost completely shed the rotation from 3 years ago is a sign that they know what they're doing.

I mean, they never had the chance to draft him, so it's a little unfair to imply not drafting him was a mistake.

Right, this is total speculation at this point. Either the active roster will be the same as the 40 man roster, or it won't. UP until this point, in September, the 40 man and the active roster have been the same thing, so the only question will be if this rule is a "Game Day" rule, wherein 12 players need to be "healthy scratches", or if it will be a true reduction to 28, requiring roster moves in order to change the active roster. If it is the latter, the other question will be if there is a relaxing of transaction requirements; for example, if a player is removed from the 28 man, but not the 40 man, does he need to spend 15 days not ont he 28 man roster (other than due to injury), or can he be reinstated sooner? It obviously can't be for the very next game, otherwise it's the same as doing "healthy scratches", but perhaps it would be reduced to 5-10 days, or maybe even allowed to reset for every new series. It will be interesting to see!

All relievers, regardless of when they enter the game, must either face 3 batters, or finish an inning. Therefore, if you have 2 outs and a lefty up, you can certainly use a loogy, that's just the only opportunity. As I understand it, there is no limit to how many players you have in the dugout, just how many are available to be used. For example, when a player gets hurt, he is free to sit in the dugout during the game even if he is on the IL. If indeed in September you can change your 28-man roster without needing to option players, the 12 players not on the "active roster" will likely just sit in the bullpen/dugout. As other posters have pointed out, if this is the case, all 4 starters not scheduled that day will be deactivated, meaning it's not really a 28 man active roster, it is a 32 man roster (with only 1 starter active, each team can have a mix of 27 relievers/position players).

The premier league does stop the game for 15 minutes at halftime. They also have turned their uniforms into advertisements, to the point where you could be excused if you believed it was the Manchester Chevrolets playing the Brighton American Expresses. I for one prefer the Twins against the Mariners, not the Minnesota United Health Cares against the Seattle Microsofts.