Cap'n Piranha

No of course it's not. But you didn't say Donaldson has been average; you said "monumental bust" and "bustaroo to the max". If you'd said "Donaldson's been fine, but I was hoping he'd be a difference maker", I'd agree with you. As that's not what you said, don't try and move the goalposts, just take the L.

This is not even close to true. 2.4 WAR in 116 games, 14th amongst all 3B since the start of 2020. If you calculate PA/WAR, Donaldson moves up to 12th, ahead of Arraez, Seagar, Chapman, and Bregman. He's made about $21M, which means he's right on that $10M/WAR benchmark despite the missed time, since WAR is a counting stat. If your issue is with the availability (or lack thereof), then I presume you hope the Twins don't extend Buxton at any price?

I actually did read your post, but I don't know how much you agreed with me when you started it be claiming I "dodged" something. That generally implies someone deliberately left something out, as they knew it wouldn't be helpful to them. I'd recommend you not use that kind of language if you don't want people coming back at you. I'd also recommend you not make assumptions about the actions or inactions of other people when you have no possible way of knowing.

I'm sure we could have, but at a certain point, the savings you realize just isn't worth it anymore. If a team insisted the Twins cover $40M in salary in order to get a C- prospect who's 22 and repeating rookie ball, I'd rather hang on to Donaldson, and hope he can rebound.

The post I quoted mentioned the runs he gave up--why would I parrot information already given? I was simply pointing out that in the miniscule 2-start sample size the poster provided, one of those starts came against the 28th ranked offense by wRC+, a team Happ faced while with the Twins. In that Twins start, Happ arguably pitched better against the Pirates than in the Cardinals start. For what it's worth, the Braves are also a below average offense by wRC+ (98). As such, using Happ's "renaissance" as evidence the Twins don't know what they're doing with pitching is pretty silly. That isn't to say the possibility that Falvine is indeed screwing up their pitchers is is impossible, just that Happ is in no way proof of it.

To be fair, one of those starts was against the Pirates, and was 6 IP, 1H (a HR), 2 BB, 5k. Here's Happ's line when he faced the Pirates while still a member of the Twins, on April 23; 7.1 IP, 1H (a 2B), 2 BB, 3k. His other start was against the Braves, where he gave up 5H and 1 BB with 4k across 5 IP. Not bad, but not exactly great either. Going forward, if we assume Happ pitches every 5th day, he'll finish the season against @KC, Pit, @Pit, @Cin, LAD, Cin, SD, @Mil, Mil. Let's see how he does in what would be 6 straight games against above .500 teams, with 4 of those teams having top-12 offenses before we say Falvine/Wes are messing pitchers up.

Right, which is why I said I'm not opposed to giving him more run as a starter.

I think this is the most likely path. I'm not opposed to giving Jax some more run as a starter to see if he can keep building off the progress he's made, but if Jax is on the Twins 2023 roster, the odds are it's as a 6th/7th inning reliever, with potentially reverse splits (so far, he's been more effective against lefties than righties, but that's very SSS, and could normalize quite quickly).

Yes, as we all know, the only metric that defines success with pitchers is strikeouts. It's not like Merrill Kelly, Wade Miley, Cole Irvin, Marcus Stroman, Hyun-Jin Ryu, or Kyle Gibson are all top 30 in WAR and have lower k/9 than Jax. Oh wait, it's exactly like that.

Houston strikes out less than any other team in the majors--I could see where they altered the approach of the pitchers in that series to not attempt to get strikeouts, but rather let the team who wants to put the ball in play, put it in play, hopefully with weak contact. As it turns out, Jax only induced 5.3% weak contact against Houston, his lowest rate this season (until last night, when he induced no soft contact). Yet another reason why I'm not jumping on the Jax Jalopy just yet.

I'm hopeful on Jax, but realistic enough to understand his .137 babip in his last 4 games is in no way sustainable. The babip he featured in his first 5 games (.296) is probably closer to what he would really land at. As such, the last 4 starts should be seen as likely a lucky hot streak, and the real criteria for success will be if he can limit walks, and keep the hits to singles, instead of doubles.

$183M for 16 WAR is $11.4M/WAR. In a market where the going rate is $8M-$10M/WAR, that's not great, but it's also not bad. Throw Cruz back in, with his $34ish million and 7.5ish WAR, and now they're at $207M for 23.5 WAR, or $8.8M/WAR. If anything, this shows why spending big in FA should be viewed as a last resort.

From what I could find, he had surgery on February 26, and was expected to take 2-4 months before he could get to light jogging/an exercise bike. At the high end of that timeline, it's only been a couple weeks since he was able to do even light activity, so no, I don't think he'll get any game action in the next 4-6 weeks.

That's fair, I'm not that interested in the behind the scenes nuts-and-bolts of team operation, so my previous post was speculation on my part, but based on logical assumptions. I will say that some of the issue this year is players not living up to their previous performance, and that does have to fall, to some degree, on Baldelli.

Definitely agree! I would love to have a more analytical FO that looks at stats, and doesn't just rely on scouting and draft position. Or, and maybe I'm going out on a limb here, the FO saw something that they thought the Tigers overlooked that they could emphasize. Or perhaps they looked at his perfectly acceptable k numbers from 2019 and prior, and thought that perhaps the Tigers had messed him up over the last couple of years, and they could rectify that. I called out draft position not because I think that on it's own warrants a big league spot, but because it speaks to the idea that there is undeniable talent that, at least once upon a time, existed in Burrows. If the FO thinks they can bring that out, why not take a flyer, in a lost season, when there is no downside to what happens with Burrows anyways? If he succeeds? Fantastic, we found a piece moving forward, and it cost us essentially nothing. If he fails, he helps us lose games so we can get better draft positioning. Win-win.

I would imagine that Baldelli plays a role in offseason acquisitions. Will the FO sign whomever he wants? No. Will they not sign someone if Baldelli tells them not to? No. But to pretend that Baldelli had no role in what players currently appear on our roster is probably not based in reality.

To be fair, Burrows had thrown 64 pitches and gotten six outs, compared to Garcia's 32 and 7...

He was a first round pick just 6 years ago, who had barely any MLB time (15 IP). I have no problem with them running him out in a lost season, and seeing what there is to see. However, it does seem like we did indeed see what we saw, so if he wants to go back to AAA, I'm fine with that, but it seems it's time to investigate some other options (like Garcia, Hamilton, Cano, Moran, etc.)

Bro, you gotta calm down a little bit. Saying you're making a strawman argument is not condescending when it's what you were doing. When you brought up Hand, I talked about how Hand has not been good this year, and out of nowhere, you brought up Colome. We weren't discussing bullpen signings; I didn't say Hand was worse than Colome. You brought that up, on your own, even though it was in no way related to anything that was being discussed. I said I didn't think the Twins would be incapable of matching a 2/$20m for Pineda, and you brought up the Twins not giving 1/$10M to Hand as evidence that they wouldn't offer that. I gave ample explanation for why Hand may not have been attractive to the FO, and therefore would not have wanted to spend $10M on him, but would want to spend it on Pineda (since Pineda has been a better pitcher). Bringing Colome into this is completely outside the parameters of the conversations (would the Twins match a hypothetical 2/$20M offer to Pineda), and as such, is a strawman argument. To be clear, making strawman arguments doesn't make you a bad person or anything, and it certainly doesn't mean I think I'm better than you. It means you're not engaging honestly in the debate. Stop taking non-personal things personally. As for using the word specious, I'm not sure how that's talking down to you. It's a fairly common English word--I'm not dropping archaic German words on you, and then taunting you when you can't define them. If you'd prefer, I can rephrase what I originally said--given that the Twins did not move Pineda at the deadline, either the rest of the league is not particularly interested in Pineda (bearing in mind that there was a team who gave two actual human players for J.A. Happ), or the Twins are REALLY interested in Pineda. Either way, this would suggest that this offseason there won't be some crazy bidding war for Pineda's services, nor will he be able to get 2/$20M from any team he wants. If he wants to chase a ring, he may have to take a discount, and if he wants the biggest contract offered, it may come from a team not ready to compete for a ring. Stating that Pineda will go elsewhere to get a ring and a 2/$20M contract is plausible, but doesn't add up when you take into account no team was willing to make a legitimate trade for him 10 days ago (or the Twins want him so bad they wouldn't trade him, implying they'll match just about any offer), I'm honestly sorry that you feel condescended to, and talked down to, but that's just not based in objective reality. If I was objectively condescending you, as I mentioned before, a moderator would have quickly posted a warning in the thread, deleted my post, and probably locked the thread. As none of that has happened, I think I can safely say I've not been rude nor dismissive to you. With that, I'll be moving on from this--hope to see you in some other threads!

Wow, this is...quite the response. I'll quote you right back at you--I'm telling you what I think. If you don't like it, then don't like it. That said, why are you on a message board engaging with other people if you don't give a damn about what they think? Why not just retreat back to your own echo chamber? I was in no way condescending, and made no personal statements about you at all. You can't make the same claim, although for the record, I don't play fantasy baseball, and haven't for years. You introduced the topic of Hand, and made it out to be some black mark on the Twins front office that they didn't sign him. I provided all kinds of reasons for why the Twins would have been wary of signing him, and how he's not been a good pitcher this year. Rather than engage with that, you went even further off topic, and brought up Colome. So now, on a thread about whether or not the Twins will re-sign Pineda, you've brought up, on your own, two different pitchers. Also, you're right, I didn't know how things would turn out; trust me, if I could predict the future I would not be spending my time on this comment board, I'd be taking Vegas for all it's worth. That said, you didn't know how things would turn out either, and if you legitimately think that trading out Colome for Hand would have somehow made the Twins competitive this year, you're dreaming. As for Berrios, he wasn't a particularly good match against pitchers on the level of Cole or Scherzer. That's not his fault, but when Berrios is your best starter, you're not going to win playoff series against the likes of NY/LA. It's also not like the Twins were going to find themselves in the playoffs this year or next, so what is the point of Berrios, exactly? Will the Twins non-competitiveness prevent them from being able to sign Pineda? Possibly, if he decides he wants to chase a ring. But not because they can't afford to match a 2/$20M deal, which is the only point I've been making. Finial thing--no one is talking down to you. The moderators here do an excellent job of enforcing standards, and had I actually been dismissive or condescending to you, my post would have been edited, if not completely removed. If you think someone disagreeing with you based on facts and logical reasoning is talking down to you or telling you what to think, a forum dedicated to conversation and debate is perhaps not the place for you.

Hmmm. Maybe Kenta's 5 game resurgence had more to do with facing the Royals once and the Tigers thrice. If so, punting on 2022 by trading Berrios looks to have been a very prudent move.

Boy, Kenta just clearly is not there mentally. He should probably pull himself out of this game so he doesn't keep hurting the team.

Total mental breakdown there by Kenta, giving up that homer.

Ok! Stay tuned, game hasn't started yet.

Smalley, talking about Votto, opines that when you get on a hot streak where your mechanics are just right, it makes hitting a homer just as easy as hitting a single. Which suggests that almost every hitter has broken mechanics more often than not.