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jorgenswest

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Everything posted by jorgenswest

  1. jorgenswest
    No. They do not have the pitching. It would be a mistake to try to sign several guys a bargain prices and hope to squeeze out one more year. Instead they need to sign one pitcher spending in the mid 20s per year. That would have been the cost of Berrios in free agency. They need to find the rest either in-house, in trade or be better than everyone else at finding a Chris Flexen. Someone that comes out of nowhere and is young enough with control to be counted on for a few seasons. I expected Falvey to be the guy that can find those pitchers. No more one year stop gap pitchers. They don’t plug the gap and it only gets bigger the next year.
  2. jorgenswest
    Duffey will be 31 in December. This might simply be decline. The decline can be sudden for relievers. They often have one really effective pitch and when they lose a little on that pitch they don’t have anything else to fall back on.
  3. jorgenswest
    Reading about guys shining like Leobaldo Cabrera is a big reason I enjoy these reports. He may not be a prospect but fighting back into affiliated ball through the Empire League after getting released by the Yankees in 2018 makes for a good story. Thanks to the crew that provides these reports. I really appreciate them.
  4. jorgenswest
    I am uncertain about Dobnak’s status if DFA’d. Would it be more likely that he passes through because of the contract? Wouldn’t a team claiming him have to pick up the contract? I am not so sure his contract is a reason he stays on the 40.
  5. jorgenswest
    A few September starts isn’t going to change his development. The Twins aren’t going to learn anything they wouldn’t learn working in the minors. I still think they should bring him up. They should bring him up because it will simply be more interesting and fun to watch the game. I would look forward to his few starts. The Twins are in the entertainment business. Ryan has earned the call up. Bring him up in September. Limit his pitches. Entertain us.
  6. jorgenswest
    I hope the Twins take a seriously internal look at themselves and find the truth in what he has said.
  7. jorgenswest
    While the market seemed hot for pitching it was almost exclusively better starting pitching than Pineda. I think it can be argued that Pineda is a better option than Lester and the Twins could have had a return of Lane Thomas. Thomas does have 4th OF potential but would the Twins have space for another OF on their 40 man roster this winter? Maybe. He could be a better to retain than Cave but is Cave someone that will be kept on the 40 this winter? Similar players will be available inexpensively this winter. Pineda might be a comp to Heaney. His ERA is better but Heaney has the better xFIP. Even if they could have substituted in Pineda for Heaney they are adding 25 year old AA starter Jason Junk who they would need to add to the 40 or expose in rule 5. I think the Yankees would prefer Heaney with his better health track record but maybe the Twins could have added another pitcher here. It seems at best the value of a starting pitcher like Pineda was a marginal prospect already on the 40 or needing to be added to the 40. These are the kinds of players they will find this winter DFA’d by other teams or exposed in the rule 5. I am scratching my head why a pitcher like Pineda or Heaney didn’t have a better market this year. Perhaps the supply of better starters brought down their value to players on the fringe of the 40 in return. Maybe retaining Pineda for two months has at least as much value.
  8. jorgenswest
    I don’t know about Gore but the concept of buying low as the Rays did with Glasnow and Meadows should be considered.
  9. jorgenswest
    It will not be a failure to set the bar high and end up keeping Buxton and Berrios at the deadline. A failure would be to trade them for a larger quantity of lesser prospects. The Rangers may well come out ahead with the volume of Yankee prospects but I think the likelihood of getting an elite player is significantly reduced. They do need to move Pineda and hopefully Simmons for the best they can get. There are a few possible sell high opportunities in Donaldson and Thielbar. Their value will decline. The same may be true about Duffey. They do need to move on from Happ, Robles and probably Colome. Keeping Belisle instead of looking at Anderson was a huge mistake. They can’t make that same mistake with Hamilton by keeping Robles around.
  10. jorgenswest
    The pitching has been so bad from so many that I have to wonder how much is on Wes and how much is on the front office in building this roster. When you veteran starter gives allows 14 base runners in 23 batters getting 9 outs while giving up 9 runs it is hard to put the responsibility for this game anywhere else. I am doubting Wes made any changes to Happ. The front office was horribly wrong believing they could get another year out of Happ. The bullpen options aren’t any better. No manager could navigate the final 6 innings with the bullpen pieces provided by the front office.. Was simply bad luck that the Twins are getting 10th percentile performance from so many of their acquisitions. That doesn’t seem possible. Has the physics of the game changed with the new ball? Has that impact been greater on the types of pitchers that the Twins analysis favors? Did their analysis lead them to more pitchers who were positively helped by spider tack? They have failed miserably in projecting performance of pitchers and they need to take a hard look at the scouting/analytics that led them to those pitchers. A serious internal review needs to happen.
  11. jorgenswest
    Robles season long poor peripherals have been hidden much of the season by an ERA that gave the impression that he was a better option among the bullpen. While ERA does tell the story of what has happened it is a horrible predictor of future performance outside of multiyear samples for relievers. A better predictor is xFIP and Robles xFIP has been the poorest among Rogers, Alcala, Thielbar, Duffey and Colome for much of the season. While his monthly ERAs vary wildly his xFIP monthly has been pretty stable in the 4s and 5s. He has one season in the last five with an xFIP below 4. He has not had a month this season with a xFIP below 4. He is the same pitcher he was in the winter when there was little interest. I would have been surprised if there was much interest at the deadline.
  12. jorgenswest
    The Twins need him next year and I don’t move him unless I get an overpay for a player under control. It should be more than a fair deal to motivate the Twins to make the move. Fair deals don’t move the needle. They need to find some highly motivated this year to pay a little more.
  13. jorgenswest
    Overpays only for these three or keep the asset for 2022. I think these are fair deals but it overpays. I would also be cautious of buying high on any prospect. The small sample of this season really needs to be in line with previous seasons and we don’t have 2020 data. If a guy is riding this year to their highest prospect status regression should be expected. There might be more value in buying low.
  14. jorgenswest
    This is Alcala’s first full season. If they don’t want to endure the growing pains of a young pitcher the alternative is trading them while they are prospects and use free agency for the pitching staff. I did wonder why Alcala was the choice. He pitched yesterday. Robles and Duffey had several days of rest. Robles threw 7 pitches this week. Neither a Rogers or Minaya pitched yesterday. Why Alcala?
  15. jorgenswest
    I was glad to see it reported that the Twins asking price for Kepler is exorbitant. It should be for any of the assets they have under control beyond this season. Seemingly fair deals don’t make this franchise better. They need someone to come in and offer some level of overpay for Kepler. If there is a team that is going for it this year with a pressing need they might get that overpay.
  16. jorgenswest
    We define bust very differently, Sano’s .489 slugging percentage as a Twin is listed second all time behind Harmon Killebrew. Using OPS+ to adjust for hitting context he ranks 19th just behind Justin Morneau. The data from baseball reference includes the time the franchise was in Washington. I would be very reluctant to sell low on Sano. I would bet on the upside we have seen previously over Rooker’s upside.
  17. jorgenswest
    Is there very much value in using ERA, FIP or home run rates to evaluate relievers at their small samples? It is even hard to use strike out and walk rate at Hamilton’s sample. Any walk rate change from early season to now can easily be explained by random variation due to two small samples. Low BABIPs, high LOB% and low HR rates can make a mediocre pitcher’s ERA look really good in reliever samples. I can’t find hope in the numbers because the sample is just too small. I would find hope if there were reports of a new or improved pitch as shown by pitch level data. It might be there. The Twins have it. More importantly they see him every day. We are pretty blind in the data we can see,
  18. jorgenswest
    Eno Sarris in his Rates and Barrels podcast sees Ryan similar in style to Ben Lively and Yusmiero Petit in his fastball use and the way he hides the ball. Another comp is Freddy Peralta. No starter uses the fastball as much as Ryan. Early in his career Peralta threw the fastball nearly 80% of the time. Now in his fourth year Peralta has a good slider which has made his fastball a very good weapon using it 55% of the time. What is the best path for Ryan towards success in a starting rotation? It is going to take time. This is Peralta’s fourth season. Ben Lively is in Korea. Petit eventually settled in a career as a set up reliever. Should he start as an opener or following an opener seeing batters once or twice with heavy use of his fastball? Will he need to bounce back and forth to the minors for a few years developing pitches to complement his fastball? Ryan is major league ready for 2022 in the sense that he has success as he moved up the ladder. He might not be ready to be a successful major leaguer without a few years of growing pains. Can we wait through that struggle?
  19. jorgenswest
    Arraez does see more pitches than any other Twin batter. Sano is right behind him in second spot. That number is virtually the same, Arraez has a high contact rate up there with Astudillo. Perhaps it is the combination of the two. They are both more middle of the Twins pack on swinging at pitches out of the zone. Sano does see a lot of pitches which is a burden on the pitch count. He probably doesn’t swing early enough in the count and maybe more early aggression is part of the solution.
  20. jorgenswest
    How do you measure working pitchers? Batters that make a lot of contact? Batters that see a greater number of pitches? Batters that see a lot of strikes? Balls?
  21. jorgenswest
    The Brewers must be pretty happy about Adames.
  22. jorgenswest
    He’s a kid with a really tough decision to make. I am sure he feels a commitment to his teammates. I think it was simply a post of his emotions and his decision at the moment. He may well swing the other way when to comes time to sign. I can’t imagine that an agent would advise him such a post would actually cause the Twins to make a better offer. The Twins really need to wait and see who they have left to sign and allocate the remaining pool to maximize the talent they are bringing in.
  23. jorgenswest
    In isolation the Donaldson deal looks fine after two years. Is it possible that the mistake was devoting so many dollars to position players and then trying to get with one year deals on pitching? Let’s suppose they could have won the Ryu deal with the Donaldson money and then did a one year deals on a 1B? Are they better off? Does a more reliable starting pitcher have a positive impact on the whole staff by reducing the load on the bullpen? note- if you are interested in debating again whether Ryu or another would have signed with the Twins let’s find an already existing thread to do that. The wonder here is whether the Twins are devoting too little of the budget on pitching.
  24. jorgenswest
    MLB batters torched Berrios to start his career across more than the 6 starts Thorpe received. My point is larger than any one player. I advocate and have advocated for the Twins to invest innings into their young pitching rather than fill with decline phase veterans on one year contracts. You end up with the same problem of no starting pitching depth every year. If the innings go to Wells (though I think he is a reliever in Baltimore) instead of Thorpe the concept is the same. Invest innings in young starting pitching next year. Give them a long leash. It might be a season or two of mediocre seasons with struggling young pitchers. It is also a way to develop a foundation they can build on.
  25. jorgenswest
    In Whitley you go for the huge upside. It might be worth the risk. He can be an ace or he might be Alex Meyer. I think I might buy low on Whitley to headline this deal. The Astros use of Brown and really limiting His innings. His last start was 50 pitches. I am not sure his traditional statistics have much value. It might be a relative buy high. I think the Twins can do better for Rogers.
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