CCHOF5yearstoolate

Not that I completely understand what makes up these metrics, but at least one Stuff model likes the changes in his fastball. Also worth noting that he's gained ~150 RPMs on the slider and it's more of a gyro slider now with 5 inches more vertical break and an inch less horizontal break. The changeup is moving 1 inch less vertically and just under 2 inches less horizontally, but the extra 2.4 mph of velo should help offset that. Of course, he only threw 17 pitches and Statcast probably isn't perfect early on in ST stadiums, but I'd imagine the velocity and movement profiles should be pretty quick to stabilize.

Noah Miller has hit .220/.326/.318 so far. Please be realistic.

The trade is Denard Span-approved and as far as I'm concerned, that's the end of the discussion!

Twins got a more highly ranked prospect from the Dodgers' system and a capable 4th OF who hits right-handed and all people can talk about is "giving up on a first round pick" as if his draft position means he's more likely to turn it around in the batter's box. Talk about getting attached to pure upside...

Corey Seager? I don't think you could find a worse comp for Noah Miller.

I foresee Varland having a very similar 2024 to Bailey Ober's 2023 season. Someone will get hurt, and Louie will have to be ready to step up, and I think he will be. I was fairly encouraged to see an uptick in velocity in his first outing, even if it was only 2 innings. I've seen a few places list Louie Varland as a sleeper for 2024, notably Eno Sarris who has touted his ability to locate three of his pitches in the fastball/slider/cutter and that all 3 of them have pretty good movement profiles as well. Also, I think I need some more coffee. This line tripped me up a couple of times

All I ask is that Twins fans learn to be realistic at some point. Good heavens this isn't that complicated.

Considering he's never played in AA, I'd say basically zero he starts in St Paul. Knee injury basically took out a season of baseball - end of 2022, beginning of 2023.

"Average" means that some of your starters will come in under the average and some over. In the case of 5 starters, 1/2 would come in under the average, 3 is at the average and 4/5 would be over the average. Zero teams in the league have 5 starters with an above average ERA.

Baseball is back, baby! I am beyond ready to talk about actual baseball, even if that's the prospect squad vs the Gophers. As the great Ernie Banks would say, "Let's play two!"

Every team tries to add power to light-hitting prospects to see how much they can get out of them. They spent a season trying it out and then let him go back to doing his thing. I hope they continue to try and get the absolute most they can out of every prospect, and be smart enough to tell when it's not going to work like they did with Martin.

The average starter ERA on playoff teams in 2023 was 4.15

If you can read, why did you say I said he got in on "defense only" when that's clearly not what was written? "Primarily" and "only" are not synonyms. "Primarily" in this context: what is the main reason a player was inducted into the Hall of Fame? Offense, defense or both? Pudge would be another player I would say was elected primarily on defense. You took an incredibly innocuous statement about easily the best fielding 3B of all time and tried to make it into a slight as if I said he was garbage at the plate. I obviously said nothing of the sort. You also focused in on Mark Belanger when I included Lofton, Whittaker, Hernandez and Bell in the same sentence because you're trying to form a narrative that doesn't exist.

So a very minor Brooks Robinson slight is worth downvoting the entire comment.

If you want to split this hair, sure. He is the defensive gold standard at the position and was offensively good (>110 OPS+) in 8 of his 23 seasons. Interesting that's the only qualm you're raising with that entire comment.

I balked at leaving Brock Stewart exposed, because they have control through the 2027 season, but there's no one I'd take off the protected list for Stewart either. After seeing this laid out, I really hope it doesn't happen! This would decimate the Twins' depth, and I imagine this would be true for many other small/mid-market teams.

Noticing that a guy is struggling or fatiguing and shutting them down isn't a "hard limit", besides I don't think Baldelli is talking about their minor league system strategy because he's completely uninvolved with that.

This is the first time I've heard anyone suggest Lewis at 1B, and I don't think I like it haha

This is patently untrue. Catchers have been underrepresented in the Hall for decades and many articles have been written as such, long before WAR was even considered in HOF cases. WAR as we know it today came around in the late 2000's, and it certainly did not become popular or widely used until the mid 2010's - the first prominent use of WAR in trying to argue for player value is most likely the 2012 AL MVP race between Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera. Since the current iteration of WAR has been published in 2009, 4 catchers have been inducted into the HOF in those 15 years - or 1 every 3.75 years. Over the rest of baseball history 16 catchers have been elected to the Hall in 73 years - or 1 every 4.56 years. However, that total includes 3 Negro league catchers in Gibson/Santop/Mackey who were never in the previously eligible HOF pool, so that drops the election rate to 1 catcher every 5.6 years before WAR was even created. Additionally, WAR does consider defense and I would argue that it considers defense much more holistically than the old guard of HOF voters ever has. Why were Lou Whittaker, Kenny Lofton, Keith Hernandez, Mark Belanger, Buddy Bell or Dave Concepción never elected by the pre-WAR voters if they were any good at factoring in defense? You've heard? That's all the evidence you have for your claim? This simply does not jive with reality. The old guard of baseball writers and voters famously do not care for any sabermetric stat, least of all WAR. If you pay attention to recent voting trends, outside of 1 or 2 notable exceptions, the private ballots vote for significantly fewer players. The vast majority of private voters are the old guard of writers who do not want anyone to know how few players they are voting for, and this is proven by the dwindling number of private ballots year-on-year. What the old guard of voters values is counting stats. Number of wins, innings pitched, hits, RBIs, home runs, stolen bases. That is why catchers are severely underrepresented. It's also why third basemen are historically underrepresented, by old heads who lump them in with first basemen as "corner infielders" expect them to hit like HOF first basemen and give very little credit for defense. The only primarily defensive 3B in the hall is Brooks Robinson. Lastly, I'd advise against using WAR from baseball reference if you do care about factoring in defense. Fangraphs gives Yadi (55.6) the edge over Mauer (53.0) because they actually try to measure catcher defense.

The big reason I don't particularly care for cERA is that catchers don't really get to choose who is pitching. Sometimes a great pitcher will choose to have one specific catcher for all his games and they should get some credit for that, but that doesn't happen too often. Twins pitchers & # of games caught by each catcher: Lopez - Jeffers caught 14 games with a 2.89 ERA to Vazquez's 18 games of 4.25 ERA (.281 BABIP for Jeffers to .342 for Vazquez) Gray - Jeffers caught 16 games with a 2.92 ERA to Vazquez's 16 games of 2.65 ERA Ryan - Jeffers caught 13 games with a 3.20 ERA to Vazquez's 16 games of 5.75 ERA (Vazquez caught 6 of the 7 games when Joe was hiding his groin injury, 9 of Jeffers' games were caught before that injury) Ober - Jeffers caught 12 games with a 3.36 ERA to Vazquez's 14 games of 3.49 ERA Maeda - Jeffers caught 7 games with a 3.86 ERA to Vazquez's 14 games of 4.41 ERA Varland - Jeffers caught 8 games with a 2.96 ERA to Vazquez's 8 games of 5.75 ERA *Note that Jeffers only caught Louie 3 times when he was a starter (3.57 ERA in those starts) and Vazquez only caught Louie once when he was a reliever (0 ER) Keuchel - Jeffers caught games 5 with a 6.64 ERA to Vazquez's 5 games of 5.19 ERA Mahle - Jeffers caught 2 games with a 3.65 ERA to Vazquez's 3 games of 2.70 ERA

Catcher ERA isn't used or reported any more because the catcher has as much control over ERA as a pitcher has control over wins. The Twins went 14-18 in Sonny Gray starts and 16-13 in Joe Ryan starts. Nowadays we're able to actually analyze most of the catcher's contributions via framing/blocking/preventing steals. I imagine some smart folks are working on a 'game calling' or pitch sequencing metric, but that probably gets tricky with intended pitch location. Anyway, to answer your question yes you can still find catcher ERA. It's buried on individual baseball reference player pages under "Advanced Fielding". Jeffers had a 3.61 cERA and Vazquez had a 4.09.

Great points, the only thing Farmer does that Lee doesn't/wouldn't is hit lefties. But hopefully with Lewis, Jeffers and Correa/Buxton healthy they won't need as much help hitting lefties this year.

Very true. Worth noting his biggest struggle was blocking pitches that came in basically behind a left-handed batter's back foot. Here's his 2023 blocking numbers/visual that you can compare to Vazquez.

If he proves he's ready to hit in the majors early this season, I'm all in with getting him up and rounding out the infield. But, given his experience and the areas you've noted here I think he needs a bit more seasoning in AAA before he's ready to make that leap. Julien proved by the end of last season that he is able to play at least an average 2B and potential to be a good defender, but there's no argument as to who I'd rather have playing there long term in an infield of Lewis-Correa-Lee-Julien. And he's always been a better hitter from the left-handed batter's box, but if he can figure out how to be a decent OBP guy vs. lefties it would really help this left-handed hitter heavy team out.

Just to expand a little, Jeffers lost a lot of value in framing last season compared to prior seasons. This is primarily due to a steep drop in how many calls he got just off the plate on either side. Since they track every pitch location, it's pretty easy to trust these numbers but I wouldn't expect Jeffers to have fallen off in his ability to frame. He should rebound next year. His blocking has never been strong, but again it was particularly bad last year. It looks like most of his issues here are actually passed balls, which matches up with my eye test. Pitches that you'd expect a catcher to at least knockdown went all the way to the backstop. I wouldn't expect this to be a strong skill for Jeffers. Now his throwing metrics just seem off per Statcast/Savant. They give him a -5 for caught stealing relative to average/expected, but they're also saying he only threw out 5 runners for 14% of attempted steals. This doesn't make sense to me, unless he threw out 8 runners at 1B/3B and they're only tracking stolen base attempts at 2B. Worth noting that within the -5 caught stealing above average number includes nearly 2 full CS from poor receiving at 2B (comically Vazquez hurt him the most with this poor tag, Polo's lazy attempt comes in 2nd) and that number doesn't include this whiff of a tag from Julien on a great throw.