Tom Froemming

LaVelle has reported on it now, but only adds that "a source close to Perkins confirmed late Tuesday that he would be interested in working with the club in that (front office) capacity." Odd way for things to end, even if it was somewhat expected. I can't imagine he's too pleased that Levine spilled the beans. Would've been nice to announce at TwinsFest or something like that so fans had an opportunity to show him some love, but what is done is done, I guess.

It’s possible both Alex Cobb and Lance Lynn end up costing roughly the same amount combined as Yu Darvish all on his own. Add to the top or aim for depth? Which of those strategies would you prefer the Twins take when it comes to upgrading their rotation?I threw this idea out on Twitter last Friday. I figured it was possible a total investment of $120 million may be able to net a team Darvish alone or the combination of both Cobb and Lynn. ... and it doesn't sound like they'll go nuts for either of those two. MLB Trade Rumors noted that Cobb has already lowered his asking price from $100 million down to $70 million. This was just me spitballing some numbers, so it’s entirely possible that none of those three pitchers sign for anything close to the deals I threw out there, but just play along and let me know which of those two options you’d prefer. Click here to view the article

Both Torii Hunter and LaTroy Hawkins said similar things about their own kids during TwinsFest; that they'll listen to anybody but dad. I believe Royce Lewis said something along those same lines during his interview with Sid and Co., so it's possible maybe those really young and talented guys haven't really had to go deeper than that yet.

From the original report, the news that's out there is nothing close to an official retirement announcement. This was a radio station relaying something Thad Levine said. Or maybe said. They don't even sound that confident ... I would feel a lot better about this if something came out from Glen or at least one of the main beat writers, but what do I know?

TwinsFest is a great destination for fans to gather, meet the players and maybe score a few autographs, but it’s also the source of a lot of great information. WCCO did an amazing job providing coverage from the event, and made tons of interviews available online. Here’s some of the quotes I found to be most interesting ...I encourage you to check out the full interviews for yourself, there are hours of audio available online. All of the Friday content is available on the Sports to the Max page, Saturday’s interviews are on Steve Thompson and Eric Nelson’s page and the Sunday talks are on Sports Huddle with Sid and Dave. Naturally, there were a lot of common themes that came up, one of which was getting to the playoffs and the team’s goals for next season. Let’s start off with my favorite quote from the entire weekend … Zack Granite on playing the Yankees in the Wild Card game: “It was a really cool moment for me, I had a lot of family there, but I’m tired of them now. I want to kick their ass next year.” Jose Berrios on goals for 2018: “When you taste a game like that – playoffs – you want to be there for the rest of your career. So now, we go to Spring Training with that expectation. We’re going to prepare our bodies and our minds for October.” It was also really interesting to hear some of the pitchers touch on their past struggles, lessons they’ve learned and ways they approach the game Kyle Gibson on his second-half surge: “I really found my fastball. I found some trust in my fastball. I always had trust in the sinker, but I don’t know that I knew exactly what that meant. But then I found some trust in my four seamer as well. I think what that allowed me to do is use four seamers early, just throw the tar out of it all the time, and get ahead of guys with that. Everything played off of that a lot better.” Ryan Pressley on routines: “A lot of big league players will tell you it’s all about setting a routine. I didn’t even know how to set a routine until two years ago and I’ve been up here for a while. It’s finally starting to click and I was finally able to get stuff done. Last year when (Matt) Belisle came in, watching him go about his day was impressive. It was really fun to watch, and that’s why he’s got 12 years in the big leagues. He goes about his business and does it the right way. That’s what I want to learn from these guys (the new free agents) coming in here.” Trevor Hildenberger on adjusting to the majors: “You hear so much about the strike zone and how small it is and how small it can be for rookies. But ( Jason) Castro really made a huge impact stealing strikes for me, framing pitches. He was getting me calls that I thought I had no business getting. So the ability to frame pitches I didn’t realize was such a huge factor until I got to the big leagues.” Trevor May on Tommy John surgery: “(Ryan) Vogelsong, he gave me a really, really detailed rundown of the first couple months … He was like here’s some things you really need to focus on, things that worked for me and are the reason why I’m still going strong.” And May on rejoining the Twins: “If you’re doing your job. and where you need to be, it all shakes out in the end. It doesn't matter how quickly for me it happens, I just want to make sure when I’m here it’s go time and it’s not like ‘you’re rehabbing from Tommy John,’ it’s ’you’re part of the team Tommy John’s behind you.’” J.T. Chargois on his health: “I’m feeling good right now. I think that through spring training last year I developed a little mechanical glitch in my follow through and through a lot of video analysis I’ve broken that done and figured it out. So my arm’s doing well and I’m ready for spring.” Zach Duke on his strengths: “My strength is randomness. I throw from a couple different arm angles, I’ve got about eight different pitches and when I’m on I feel like I can throw any of them at any time” It was also interesting to hear some of the hitters talk about adjustments and their approach at the plate. Byron Buxton on adjustments: “Not really being able to fail back in high school and in little league, it was very tough for me once I got up here. All the negative thoughts start coming, and that was a first for me. That’s what it took for me to realize I’ve got to make adjustments in this game and you’ve got to make some changes. Finally I got strong enough mentally to realize I can handle this and change my swing.” Max Kepler on the mental side of the game: “The mind is powerful, and it can get in the way of baseball, for sure.” Brent Rooker on Brian Dozier: “The whole thing about hitting to me is just trying to make your body work as efficiently as you can to get everything out of your ability and everything out of your strengths. So you look at a guy like Brian who’s maybe not the biggest guy, but who hit 40 something home runs a few years ago, who continually hits 25-plus home runs, he’s got to be doing something right. He’s learned how to use his body and use his swing and his mechanics to get the most out of his athleticism, most out of his strength, most out of his talents, which is something I really respect.” Alex Kirilloff on the type of hitter he is: “I try to be as well-rounded as I can. I’m not a real big mechanical guy. I focus a lot on timing and vision. That’s taken me a long way, I’ve worked on that from a very young age and that’s brought me a lot of success so far.” And, of course, there was some great stuff from the coaching staff. Manager Paul Molitor on dealing with personalities: “We try to make these guys better, but whatever you want to call it — new generations, millennials — you have to try to find what clicks for them and what gets them going. I’ve done more millennial studying than you’d want to know about, to be honest with you, but you try to get in there and certainly the relationships are as important part of today’s game.” Hitting coach James Rowson on the young hitters: “They just need more at bats. The more experience they get, the better they get. So I think last year was a chance to give them a chance to fail, give them a chance to go out there and be themselves and not worry about what they do wrong but try to stay positive with them and let them do what they do right.” And Rowson specifically talking about Buxton: “It was never really about the leg kick in our discussions ... I always say ‘you can’t fire a cannon from a canoe’… If you’re not strong in your lower half, you’re not going to be able to execute that swing consistently. So what we talked about with him was just getting to a point where he was stronger on his legs. He could feel his legs and he could feel like he was grounded when he was going to take a swing. He started to feel that by eliminating the leg kick a little bit at first. It gave him the feeling that he needed … once he got that feeling, I told him ‘go out there and be an athlete and do the best you can. Don’t think about it, just go out there and react.’” Outfield instructor Jeff Pickler on helping players improve: “The neat thing about our outfield group is that it’s not so much what I’m telling them, it’s things they’re coming to us saying they want to do better.” Pitching coach Garvin Alston on how he got into the business: “I wasn’t sure if this was the direction I wanted to go in, or if I wanted to go back into teaching and doing things of that nature. So what ended up happening was a player, Andrew Bailey ... at that time (2008) was struggling through some things and we worked. And we worked hard. And in doing so, I saw him turn a corner and get better. And I said ‘you know what? This is fun, being able to help.’” Third base coach Gene Glynn on Alson: “He’s an up-beat, real positive high-energy guy. Really smart, very intelligent and organized.” Glynn also pointed out that he was Alston's very first professional manager. He as at the helm of the Bend Rockies back in 1992, which also happened to be where Alston made his debut after being drafted in the 10th round earlier that year. There was also some interesting talk of payroll and potential transactions, as you’d expect for this time of year. Brian Dozier, responding to a question from Sid Hartman regarding a potential extension: “I knew you were going to ask me that. I do want to stay here. That stuff takes care of itself. I’m sure we’ll talk in spring training just to see where both sides are at.” Owner Jim Pohlad on the budget: “We set an overall budget, we don’t sit down and just spend all the time just on player payroll … There’s just a number put in there and it’s not like ‘ok this is the number you guys have to spend, go spend it or not.’ We build in I would think a not conservative number for sure, a more aggressive number.” Mike Berardino of the Pioneer Press wrote in length about Pohlad and CEO Dave St. Peter's comments regarding Yu Darvish over the weekend. If you went to TwinsFest, please share anything interesting you overheard, or your experiences from the event in the comments. Click here to view the article

I was too. I didn't realize how bad things have gotten the past five or so years. Last year's quickest team (St. Louis at 22.7) would've ranked 20th back in 2011. Last season 11 teams exceeded 24 seconds on average compared to just one team in 2011.

Sorry to poor salt on your wound, but I just saw another one at the "Buy It Now" price of $200.

I'm not sure what the league average is, but here are some more numbers: Twins Avg. pace: 24.8 seconds (eight slowest in baseball) Avg. pitches/game: 145 Cleveland Avg. pace: 24.0 Avg. pitches/game: 142 So a 20-second pitch clock in theory would've saved about 21 minutes from the average Twins-Cleveland game last season. I suspect players will find other ways to slow things down, but a pitch clock could make a huge difference. To find the pitcher pace numbers at Fangraphs, go to the Pitch Info tab and click Plate Discipline. Pace should be listed at the far right.

This might be a bigger deal than I first imagined. FanGraphs has pitcher pace info. Not a single qualified starter had a pace under 20 seconds last year. The two slowest were Sonny Gray (28.3) and Alex Cobb (27.3). In a game where those two squared off and each threw 100 pitches, the 20-second pitch clock would save 26 minutes. That's even before we apply that same idea to the bullpens, who are even slower. Pedro Baez, Bud Norris and Joaquin Benoit all averaged more than 30 seconds between pitches last year.

From the sound of Rosenthal's initial article, the players are somewhat concerned about fan backlash. "But some players, believing the new rules will be unpopular with fans and damaging to the game, want to absolve themselves of responsibility while putting the onus on Manfred to deal with any public fallout and unintended consequences, sources said." It's nice to hear the players are taking the fans into consideration, but they also need to realize that we like to watch baseball. Not guys fidgeting with their caps on the mound or adjusting their batting gloves in the box. We don't need to see you and your catcher discuss every single pitch or a guy who's been warming up in the bullpen for 15 minutes go toss another eight pitches on the mound before play resumes.

Isn't it 2:25 right now? If they're going to make a stink about it, might as well slice it down more than that. I appreciate the fact that Commissioner Manfred is open to tinkering with some things in hopes of making improvements, but if he pisses off the MLBPA over a bunch of petty changes that's really going to be a drag.

I wouldn't have a problem with a pitch clock and restricted visits but, 1) I'll be pretty upset if this dispute causes some kind of labor issues, and 2) there are better ways to speed up the game. How about cutting the time between half innings? Also, for me the main frustration when a game takes longer is that it ends later. There comes a certain point on a weeknight where I've just gotta pull the plug and head home/go to bed so I'm not a wreck at work the next day. Why not start the games at 6, or at least 6:30, instead of 7:10?

Welcome to Twins Weekly. This feature intends to help readers discover anything they may have missed, encourage prospective writers to get active and provide readers an opportunity to offer up requests for content. We finally had another move to talk about this week, as the Twins signed reliever Addison Reed.Let’s take a quick look back at all the articles from the front page in the order they were published. This edition of Twins Weekly covers Friday, Jan. 12-Thursday, Jan. 18. The Time For A Buxton Extension Is Now - Nick Nelson Looking Back: Twins Draft Kirby Puckett - Seth Stohs Twins Arbitration Notes - Seth Stohs Rosenthal: Twins Agree to Deal With Addison Reed - Tom Froemming Exploring The Back-End Of The 40-Man Roster - Cody Christie The Twins Almanac for January 14–20 - Matt Johnson Still A Few Dozen Tickets Left To See Joe Nathan At The Winter Meltdown! - John Bonnes Gleeman & The Geek: Ep 351: Addison Reed! - John Bonnes Joe Nathan, Fernando Rodney, And History - Nick Nelson SethSpeaks Podcast (Episode 2) Features 1st-Rounders Lewis, Rooker, Kirilloff - Seth Stohs Twelve's A Crowd: Twins Are Rolling In Relief - Nick Nelson Each Minnesota Team’s Greatest Finish - Cody Christie Not So Fast: Is Eddie Rosario Already Losing a Step? - Tom Froemming Get To Know Twins Third Base Prospect Andrew Bechtold - Seth Stohs Three Twins Breakout Candidates For 2018 - Cody Christie Twins Daily Blogs Below are some additional items of note from the blog area. I've pulled excerpts from each piece in an attempt to hook you in. Why Yu Darvish Will Be Cheaper Than Everyone Thinks By Andrew Thares In years past, the available marquee free agents were almost exclusively signed by the richest teams in baseball. In fact, 9 of the 20 richest contracts in MLB history were signed by either the Yankees, Dodgers or Red Sox. However, as MLB front offices are starting to get smarter, they are starting to learn that these big time free agent contracts are almost never worth it in the long run. As a result, teams are starting to shift their focus toward lower tier free agents they can sign to short term, and more reasonably priced contracts, like relievers. New Approach on Signing Yu Darvish By jharaldson My idea is for the Twins to offer Darvish a massively over-market contract for 1 year. Here are the details: -1 year/$40 million -Vesting team option for a second year at $15 million if Darvish does not pitch at least 100 innings. -Majority of the $40 million is in the form of a signing bonus so as to allow a tax favorable payment to Darvish with his current residency being in Texas, a state with no income tax. The Reed Option By Jamie Cameron Reed joins a Twins bullpen shaping up to be vastly different, and potentially much improved over its 2017 iteration. In addition to returning standout Trevor Hildenberger, the Twins have added Fernando Rodney, presumably filling the vacant ninth inning role, and Zach Duke, returning from an injury-plagued 2017 season. In the former trio, the Twins seem to have established a model for the traits they are pursuing in improving their bullpen; inducing ground balls and a lot of strikeouts, hardly a pioneering recipe for success. In Reed however, they have added a pitcher who generates more fly balls, so what about Reed has made him such a consistent a reliable late inning reliever? Mitch Garver & Zack Granite back in CR for Winter Caravan By SD Buhr Garver played in 120 games for the 2014 version of the Kernels and hit for a .298 average. His career has steadily progressed each year since. Granite's time in Cedar Rapids was cut short by injury in 2014, but he returned in 2015 and immediately hit so well that he earned a quick promotion to Class A Advanced Fort Myers. Wanting to make the most of what time I had with each player, I asked them both the same question to kick off the interviews. If you could go back in time, knowing what you know now, and give the Cedar Rapids Kernels version of yourself one piece of advice, what would it be? 2018 Breakout Candidate: Stephen Gonsalves By Lenzy2108 Gonsalves' batted ball data in minors suggests that he is a flyball pitcher, which isn't a huge deal as Target Field is a pitchers park and...well...you know...Buxton/Rosario/Kepler. But what impressed me even a little more is that hitters don't hit him well. At levels where he made 15+ starts his LD% are as follows: 17.2% (2015 High A), 13% (2016 High A), 18.1% (2016 AA), and 19.2% (2016 AA) which are all below the MLB average of 21%. Admittedly, I know this is a little bit of apples and oranges using a MLB average to analyze minor league numbers, but I do think it gives you a gauge for where he's at. Again, Target Field tends to treat fly ball pitchers well especially with our defense...another positive sign that this could be his year. Prospects for 2018 By Physics Guy The 2018 Twins have significantly fewer holes than the 2013 squad. It was a challenge to come up with ten players who have a chance to debut and rank them according to their potential to help this year's team. All players on this list would be making their big league debut. Video of the Week Check out this sweet, sweet tater mashed by Twins pitcher Mudcat Grant in Game 6 of the 1965 World Series. Here's the Baseball-Reference box score for that game. eBay Item of the Week Speaking of the 1965 World Series, take a look at this beaut. This is a Red Wing Pottery commemorative ashtray. The current bid at the time of posting was $51, but that's sure to rise now that it's "as seen on on Twins Weekly." Quite the way to remember a great season ... I guess. Download attachment: TwinsAshtray.png Additional Links Prospect Retrospective: The Career Of Justin Morneau By John Sickels of Minor League Ball I also had a very enthusiastic report from a scout who called Morneau “a young Larry Walker.” I made sure to put him in the book, writing that “Morneau probably won’t stay at catcher because his mobility is limited, but he definitely has enough power to handle first base. He’s a long-term prospect and his grade (C+) reflects that, but I have a good gut feeling about him.” Twins front office brings in the brainpower By Patrick Reusse of the Star Tribune The Twins have added 40-plus positions to the baseball department since Falvey took over and “several million dollars’’ to the staff payroll. They will be adding more jobs over the course of 2018. Should the Twins be worried about Fernando Rodney? By Mike Berardino of the Pioneer Press Wednesday marked Rodney’s fourth outing for Escogido in the round-robin playoffs. Just one of those appearances has been scoreless, leaving Rodney with a 15.00 earned run average, six walks and four hits allowed through three innings. Highlights from the 2018 TwinsFest schedule By Maija Varda of Twinkie Town Twins top prospect Royce Lewis will kick off his first TwinsFest experience by being paired with Joe Mauer at an autograph table on Friday from 4:15 pm to 5:15 pm. Will Joe carry on Harmon Killebrew’s legacy by directly chastising Royce for illegible autographs, or will he just passively aggressively comment on how fast Royce signs his name? We all know it will be the latter. Minnesota Twins: 5 best middle infield duos in team history By Nate Palmer of Puckett’s Pond Unfortunately for the past decade or so of Twins baseball, we have often observed some less than stellar middle infields. Several of those middle infields we have experienced have been downright frustrating. A lot of the reason for that frustration begins and ends with the revolving door at shortstop. In fact, 2018 may mark the second time since 2005 that the Twins will have the same Opening Day shortstop as they did the previous year. (Please, please baseball gods don’t turn this into a jinx!) More Podcasts Baseball is Good Episode #31 Ryan Turnquist By Cory Englehardt Ryan is a huge MN sports fan and we will talk baseball, sports, growing up a sports fan and anything else that comes our way. Please give it a listen! MWS: Mike Berardino Reveals His Hall of Fame Ballot By Brandon Warne of Zone Coverage In this episode of Midwest Swing, Brandon catches up with Mike Berardino (@MikeBerardino) of the St. Paul Pioneer Press to reveal his Hall of Fame ballot. T&L Supershow ep. 53 By Twins and Losses This week Dan and Panda cover all of the recent MLB free agency moves, along with what the Twins have been up to. Then they take a trip to the local retirement home and break out #OldFriend Barry Campbell to talk about the Minnesota Wild, and answer a thousand fan questions that you sent in! Calling All Bloggers!!! One of the biggest obstacles to overcome when writing is figuring out just what the heck to write about. Well, here’s a topic to consider … What was your favorite Twins team? Not necessarily who you think was the best team ever, but which year do you have the fondest memories of or the strongest bond to? Just to be clear, this simply an idea I'm throwing out there to consider. Reminder: Anyone can start a blog at Twins Daily. If you're interested in being a regular writer for the site, the blog section is how you get your foot in the door. The only reason you're reading my words right now is because I started my own blog at Twins Daily. Calling All Readers!!! I don’t want to leave you out, either. If there's anything you'd love to read about next week, please let us know in the comments. OK, that does it. Enjoy TwinsFest and the Winter Meltdown if you're attending. Twins Weekly will continue to be posted every Friday morning at the site. Have a wonderful weekend everyone. Click here to view the article

I'd be happy if the Twins traded Baxendale to the Marlins for Kinley. It would be a win-win in my eyes. The Twins would then be able to send Kinley down to the minors and D.J. would have a great opportunity to break into the big leagues. He seems like a great dude and has pitched well in the minors, I'd love to see him get a shot. He'd have a much better chance on a rebuilding club and could be valuable to them as a long reliever/swing man.

Lol, no. The thing about any data is that it's based on past performance. These sprint speed numbers say what was measured. What comes next is anybody's best guess. The theory I offered up at the end of the article was that Rosario may have been hampered by minor injuries the past two seasons, enough to slow him down but not enough to keep him out of the lineup. If I was to make a prediction, I'd bet his 2018 sprint speed will go up. But again, that's just my guess.

Sprint speed is measuring speed in terms of feet per second in a player's fastest one-second window. From a Mike Petriello article: "Of course, there are so many plays where a runner is merely jogging to first after having popped up, or trots home easily from third base when a teammate doubles, and those non-competitive plays don't exactly tell us anything about speed, so we had to find a way to exclude those plays and include only plays where maximum effort could be expected. To account for that, we took all batted balls (excluding over-the-fence home runs), and looked at plays where a runner or hitter attempted to advance two or more bases (excluding runners who started on second base and the batted ball was an extra-base hit, as they can often jog home). Of the remaining runs, we'll sort them from slowest to fastest, and take the average of the fastest half. If that sounds complicated, it needs to be, but the results are extremely satisfying." Let's just forget the numbers for a second. In terms of your own evaluation/eye test, would you say Eddie's defense and base running has gotten worse the past two seasons? I would, and given his age, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. So that's why I threw out the theory that he may have struggled through some injuries we were never made aware of. There were multiple times in the game recaps where I'd point out Rosie taking a really inefficient route to a ball. Could that be because he was missing that top gear and didn't properly account for it when he initially broke to the ball? I think it's possible.

2017 sprint speed 28.2 Kepler 28.1 Grossman 27.7 Rosario 2017 UZR/150 (all outfield positions combined) 0.8 Kepler -0.1 Rosario -9.3 Grossamn 2017 BsR 3.1 Kepler 0.1 Grossman -0.6 Rosario

Eddie Rosario had a huge breakout year in 2017, posting career highs in virtually every offensive category, but he also saw his defensive and base running metrics take a dip for the second-straight season. Is it possible we’re already seeing the decline of Rosario’s athleticism, or could there be something else going on?When Rosario came up to the big leagues in 2015, he was raw as a hitter but both his speed and defense stood out. Fast forward two years, and it appears Rosario has turned a complete 180. Here is Rosario’s three-year trend in sprint speed, UZR/150 and BsR. Everything is trending the wrong direction. Download attachment: RosarioTrend.JPG In terms of sprint speed, Rosario has gone from the 32nd-fastest player in baseball in 2015 to 150th last season. That’s a drop from comfortably inside the top 10 percent to outside the upper third of all players. He’s lost exactly one foot per second on average over the past two seasons, which can be a huge difference when you’re tracking down fly balls in the outfield. Below is a look at Rosario’s sprint speed the past three seasons compared to some of his teammates. He went from easily being the second-fastest player in this group to slipping down to fourth. Download attachment: TwinsGraph.JPG And here’s a look at Rosario’s numbers in relation to a handful of other players around his same age. Download attachment: MLBSpeed.JPG So what do we make of all of this? Well, the pessimistic approach would be to conclude that Rosario’s athleticism is already eroding. But he’s still only 26-years-old, so I find that a little hard to believe. Is it possible that Rosario has played big parts of the past two seasons with undisclosed minor leg injuries that have sapped him of some of that speed? The only time Rosario has been on the DL was when he fractured his thumb in late 2016, but he’s surely played through a few scratches and strains. What do you make of Rosario’s defensive and base running declines? Related: Minnesota’s Base Running Resurgence Eddie Rosario And The Battle For Plate Discipline Click here to view the article

Is there any reason why he shouldn't expect to beat Zack Greinke's 6y/$206.5 or David Price's 7y/$217m?

I enjoyed reading this. I don't have any more/better information that you would, but ... If Darvish can't get more than $135 million, the MLBPA may want to consider filing a grievance. The game is in as good a place financially as it's ever been. If contracts for the top free agents suddenly start going down, I think there should be a real concern from the player's perspective. Again, I'm not saying there's no way Darvish signs in your predicted range, just that if he did it would be a pretty big red flag.

This is awesome! It's so hard to know how a guy is gonna handle his first cup of coffee, but I could see Gonsalves as the type who could successfully battle through some struggles even if he doesn't hit the ground running. It seems like he likes to be challenged and wouldn't shy away from trying to make adjustments on the fly if any deficiencies are spotted. If the Twins make a big addition to the rotation, things are going to look pretty packed, especially with May coming back. But there are always injuries and other things that open up doors.