jorgenswest

My thought also. If it works use it every pitch. If it is flawed don’t use it. The only way the middle ground makes sense is if the flaws have to do with tolerance. If for instance it is known to be accurate within a quarter of an inch then they need to build in that tolerance to overturn a call. In other words to turn a strike into a ball there would need to be at least a quarter inch of spaces between the ball and strike zone.

Agree. That isn’t what I said though and I must not have been clear. I think there is value to Matthews in ending the season with a good start and I think Vazquez or Jeffers increase the likelihood of a successful start.

I don’t know if the second catcher is going to be the tipping point between winning and losing. They should be looking for an inexpensive second catcher. He might not be it. I honestly don’t know. At times he looked like a major league catcher like the Woods Richardson start. I think it was his next start where he struggled to block pitches, throw out runners and failed to make a play at the plate.

A claim and they will be taking him to arbitration. He is arb 2. Do salaries ever go down in arbitration when injury is involved? I think it goes up a little from his 2.2 million this year. Are they better spending those dollars on a reliever? I would do it and pay for some of it by not tendering Topa. Pay for the upside. I guess that doesn’t work if they were already planning to cut Topa loose though.

Maybe they made the call on Pereda. If they made the call and will remove him from the 40 at the end of the season I am OK with that. I would rather have Vazquez catching our young pitchers in their last start. If he is still in their plans he should be playing this week.

@Cody Schoenmann I appreciate the work and the forward look. It is impossible to name the acquisitions particularly if they are in a similar career place as Castro and Stewart were when they were acquired. They need to bring in a catcher or two to compete with Pereda and hope a once good prospect turns into a useful player. They need to do the same in the middle infield and bullpen. Hoskins may be better than any other 1B option on the roster but I wouldn’t want another 1B on a one year deal and I don’t want Hoskins on a multiyear deal. He did not come back all of the way from his injury and at this age will be declining. I would trade some of their prospect capital for a middle of the lineup bat.

None of the three is a top flight prospect. Tolle has the future value (50) of a number four starter. Arias has the same future value from the position player side. Garcia is the next prospect tier down (45+) and high risk of getting to his future value. If true they were wise to keep Ryan. I hope they remain wise this off season.

Falvey traded Berrios for prospects and then replaced him by trading our first round pick for Gray. Berrios and Gray were at about the same salary level but they had control of Gray in 2023. I thought it was a brilliant move though some argued the Twins didn’t know what they doing trading for prospects and then trading prospects 6 months later. I also believe every win matters and more competitive games helps the development of the young players. Scoring more runs takes stress off the pitchers. Runners on base make it easier to hit. A better bullpen can put out the fires of inexperienced starters. All of that matters for development. I don’t believe it is the binary of playoff bound or not.

They need to hold out for a top flight prospect and more. I said the same for Duran. There is value in keeping him beyond the hope they are competitive next year. Winning matters. It matters to development. His innings matter. It helps the bullpen and in turn will help the younger starters when the they get a more rested bullpen. Even if they can acquire that top prospect they need to build their own and be willing to live through their mistakes.

It is much more rare to acquire a talent the level of FV55 or better this decade. In the 2010s teams were willing to trade those top flight prospects like Anthony or Kurtz. Other than DeVries who was acquired for an all star with 5 years of service time, has there been a top flight player moved in the last three seasons? I don’t think they get better than a Martin/Richardson or Tait/Abel type return by trading Ryan or Lopez. I think they were a 50 and 45 using Fangraphs. Just for scale here is the number breakdown from the current fangraphs FV60: 9 prospects FV55: 11 prospects FV50: 79 prospects FV45: 192 prospects FV40: 637 propects How many significant players will result from those 928 prospects or the 908 after the top 20? How many of those 908 are going to need to use up two or three options before they settle in?

They have Lopez and Ryan. They have Buxton and some young hitters that should get better. I think it is the right mix to improve many games. Maybe not enough to be a contender but enough to be competitive, The younger players also need to compete and win. They benefit from staying in the race longer. They can spend money and make this team better but they need to do it with an eye on 2027 and 2028. They can’t sign one year stop gap position players. They need to close those gaps. Either acquire a middle of the line up hitter under contract at least two years or go with the upside in the organization. I think they need one veteran middle of the line up hitter. I think they need to be aggressive with their best positional prospects The bullpen is different. They might need to acquire a few one year relievers. If Abel or Matthews or Bradley or Festa aren’t in the rotation put them in the pen. Someone will thrive there. The pen if they are among the 12 best arms. Acquire one or two late inning relievers. They should spend money because spent well they will win more games. Winning games and playing in more competitive games benefits the development of the younger players.

I find myself wondering about the scout they retained. I could not have named Wesley Wright as a Twins scout though I would have listened to @Seth Stohs podcast. They let go of three guys I did know in John Manuel, Jose Marzan and Keith Compton as well as Keith Stohr. Wright was the coordinator and by far the youngest of the group.

Seems like this group would have been key advisors on the players they acquired or opted against acquiring when they traded 11 players at the deadline. Could performance at their main responsibility of scouting professional players factored into the decision? Do the Twins have some buyer’s remorse on any of them? Maybe they voiced opposition to some of the deals. We won’t know but I don’t think it is dollars. The money just isn’t enough in the context of the budget. To bring value this group needs to identify players with a future value greater than perceived by their team as well as greater than the varied public services rank of the player. Have they been bringing that value? Somehow the Twins found Joe Ryan and Willi Castro. Did the push for either of them come from one of the 4 guys they let go? If so, they will missed.

I appreciate the topic. I don’t need yet another thread arguing whether they will spend. I appreciating speculating the possibilities about what they might add if they spend. There are others that will see this discussion as a waste of their time and avoid it. A middle of the order everyday bat like Naylor is a need. A few good bats will be moved in trade. If they don’t get Naylor they certainly can use their prospect capital to win one of those trades. Add that middle of the order bat and then add arms to the bullpen. That would be my direction. I hope there are no team friendly one year free agent deals for position players.

The Twins traded away four positional starters at the deadline. They have been without their starting catcher for a good part of September. I wondered how the new bats stepped up. Together they have a collective wRC+ of a league average 100. They are 7th in the AL in runs scored with Detroit the only team in the central above them with 5 more since the deadline.

What are the main responsibilities of the pro scouting department? Scouting teams in advance of an upcoming series? Advising on potential acquisitions in deadline or off season deals? Advising on free agent pick ups including minor league and rule 5 acquisitions? Where will those responsibilities be assigned now? I read both the Twins article as well as the Cubs from a year ago and it isn’t clear to me what holes will be created. Certainly the dismissing of four talented and experienced voices in the room will be a loss.

Thanks for putting a spotlight on these games. I don’t care what number starter he is given. Do teams assign starters a number or is that a creation of the media? I do care whether the starter shows qualities of. Pitcher that I would want to start a playoff game. Those 5 games can’t be merely luck. I can for the first time imagine Woods Richardson taking another step next year towards being a pitcher they would start in the playoffs.

He might be going back but he is hitting the ball to the opposite field less and hitting more line drives than he was last year or in the minors with Toronto. Like Clemens he has increased his bat speed this year. I suspect that bat speed wasn’t something he returned to but rather something new he has added. I don’t have inside knowledge but launch angle may have been something that the Twins tried to change. If true, that didn’t work. He kept working though and hopefully made the tweak necessary to be a major league starter.

Clemens was born in 1996. Larnach and Wallner 1997. The span between the three is about a year and a half. Rooker was just less than half year younger than Clemens when he got his first shot. He was good but not great that year with 2.1 WAR over a full season and a xwOBA of .343. That is pretty similar to Clemens. Clemens WAR is less but that is weighted by playing time. Rooker had his real breakout in his second full season. Wallner isn’t going to play 1B. I am certain it has been tried in college or summer league or the minors and wasn’t good enough to put in the game. There are no easy positions on the diamond. All positions take talent and skill. He fits best as a starting RF or DH. The challenge with Wallner is left handed starters. He isn’t very helpful on the bench when a lefty starts. He isn’t going to pinch run. He isn’t going to be a defensive sub. He isn’t the hitter you want pinch hitting with runners in scoring position and you need a ball in play. He hasn’t been successful coming in as a sub over his career with a .362 OPS. The challenge with Clemens is you have to believe that this season is not an outlier. He is much more helpful off the bench with his average or better defense at multiple positions. He is also 4th in the team in BSR. Like Wallner he is prone to long slumps as a hitter. The challenge with Larnach is that he has had enough plate appearances to believe that he isn’t going to be better. He isn’t that helpful off the bench either but probably a better option than Wallner to put the ball in play with a runner in scoring position. Clemens and Wallner would both be in my roster next year. I would not plan to tender Larnach and try to find a trade partner with a similar player at catcher, reliever or middle infield that might benefit from a fresh start.

Slash stats need large samples. A full season isn’t enough. It would be tremendously foolish to make decisions based on a partial season of slash stats. Even more foolish to throw out the best games or worst games. All of that doesn’t make mathematical sense. Instead of in season slash stats I think Statcast offer a better picture of how a player has hit the ball with their expected stats. Clemens and Keaschall are tied for third on the Twins behind Martin and Buxton by xwOBA. Clemens ranks 16th among first basemen with over 300 PAs. 1B - AL Central xwOBA .347 Clemens (16) .346 Torkelson (17) .345 Pasquantino (18) .342 Manzardo (20) .319 Vargas (30) I suppose we can ignore the quality of his contact this year. We can ignore how he started with the Twins. We can ignore his best game. Maybe that was all luck.

I don’t see a reluctance to use him. He was in the organization a little over a month before getting in a major league game. In that time he was the primary catcher in St. Paul. Gasper did start 6 times at catcher over that span but it was Jeffers almost every day. Wouldn’t it have been easier to evaluate him playing routinely in AAA rather than getting the 6 of 27 that Gasper was given after Vazquez was out? Pereda has 6 of 10 starts since Jeffers went down. That seems to be the right mix as he gets to know the pitchers.

Jhonny Pereda getting a lot of credit from Woods Richardson on the game he called. They may have found a major league catcher.

Is the game in mlb tv?

Slash stats need such a large sample that I appreciate the statcast expected stats that are based on quality of contact. I think they are a better predictor of future success for those with a small sample in their career. The Twins top four in xwOBA .388 Martin .369 Buxton .347 Clemens .344 Keaschall Clemens ranks 16th in MLB among those that play 1B with over 300 PAs. He is at least an average defender. Only Alvarez has a better xwOBA than Martin in LF. Martin has a positive DRS and OAA in LF. I don’t think they have a better option other than to build around these four players. Three will be very inexpensive. I also think they need to bet on other inexpensive players in Wallner, Lewis and Lee. Betting on inexperienced players to take a step forward was crucial in the 26 win improvement from 2016 to 2017. They may lose the bet but it is time to bet on the player’s in the system.

Does the catcher math change if they implement the challenge ABS system? Maybe there is a once good prospect catcher out there that hasn’t been a good framer. Luis Campusano comes to mind. If Larnach isn’t in the plans than maybe they go for a swap or maybe Campusano is removed from the 40. I wouldn’t devote significant resources towards the back up catcher.