twinstalker

It would border on miraculous for McCusker to have a 25% K rate after being over 30% in the minors. And that's if he'd done it at age 22-23. Now in his age 27 season, McCusker's outlook isn't good based on any comps anywhere. Judge and Cruz have nothing in common with McCusker except body size. I look a bit like Bill Gates, but no one would compare us in any way except we're both in technical fields. The biggest hope for McCusker is that pitchers don't pitch him the way they need to right away, and he kills it for a short while until they do. Still, there's an outside hope that he's got some Wallner in him. That his "bad stats" are mostly about putting up his "good stats." I don't know about that with him. For one, he wasn't all that good or interesting last year, and so unless he figured something out in the offseason, I'm afraid he's not destined for any sort of greatness. He's definitely a cross your fingers guy. I took a chance on him in a draft the other day, more for early returns than anything else. If he helps me win a few games before pitchers make him look silly, I'm happy.

Bowen has done nothing. You mention it yourself...a 6+ FIP is actually unplayable. If you were to predict the amount of runs he gives up in his next start (extrapolated to 9 innings), it would be over 6, not under 3. Gonzalez, whom I liked in the deal, had a tough year. Repeating the year and doing well is not success. He will need to crush AA upon promotion this year to get back his prospect status. Though I will say I wasn't quick to take it away from him, as I've still kept him in my top 15 after ranking him 9-ish last year. Topa is still TBD and doesn't make up for the Twins 2B issues. The SP we received was injured with a prognosis of very probably not helping the Twins. The shame of it was the Twins never saying that and never adding depth along with him. So what we have is Polanco crushing for a reliever doing okay in low leverage situations. I mean, if we want to get technical about it.

Either Buxton didn't call loudly for the ball or Correa ignored him, as I've seen him do with others. One of them was clearly at fault. It wouldn't shock me if Correa heard him but said "I'm Carlos Correa, your leader" and expected Buxton to back off. I've seen it already this year in left field with Correa...and the LF did back off when it was his ball. Here Buxton didn't, and Correa backed off at the last second. It was Buxton's ball as long as he called it strongly/loudly.

That would be awful if a guy with a AAA ops of .996 and an MLB ops of .393 got labeled a AAAA player just shy of his 30th birthday. Mickey Gasper's picture is next to the definition of AAAA player.

25 plate appearances. But let's pretend that means something so I can say this: A guy like this coming in shows exactly how poor the Twins hitting development has been. We know he's bad. We've watched him for years. Bring him here, and he's immediately better than 3-4 guys we were playing.

Thanks for the weekly recap. Kyle DeBarge would be a good one to mention, as he has missed many games (I think hit on wrist). As usual, many issues with the top 20 list. Lots who should be substantially lower or off. Dasan Hill is probably the Twins third best prospect, competing with injured Soto. Glad to see you've finally put Keaschall ahead of EmRod, that only took a year. :-) Seriously, though, it makes me wonder what the thought process is. If a guy can't control the strike zone in the minors, he's going to get killed by MLB pitchers. The exception is when he doesn't care because he hits so many homers. I don't put EmRod in that (Wallner) category. Also, a ton of walks in the minors is usually a negative or at best a neutral predictor. I don't think I'd have Amick on my list, or if I did, he'd be much lower. But it doesn't really matter if you're going to continue to rate Raya highly...the credibility is gone. He's never been a good prospect, and the Twins have some good prospects. I'm pretty sure I can come up with ten pitchers in the minors I'd rather have. I repented earlier this week on DeBarge, though I think you've generally got him placed correctly, so I'm not sure he'll be much more than Eeles or even as good. Speaking of which...I'm pretty sure Eeles is still a part of the Twins. He wants to say hello to ten or more of the guys you have listed. It would be awesome for someone to find out what his surgery was for (it was a knee), how and what he's doing, and when he's expected to to start playing again. Finally, I'd be giving Danny De Andrade some love in the top 20. He was top 10 for me when he went down last year, and he seems to be deliver big extra base hits and holding his own. I don't really understand why K. Culpepper is getting all the time at SS and don't think it's a healthy reason but more of a "we drafted him in the 1st just like many of our other bad or meh decisions and now need to show we think a lot of him." I could be wrong, but I have to believe DDA is a better shortstop and younger. DDA is striking out too much, though, same as Amick but a year and a half younger.

Amick has zero traits of a 1B, except a too high K rate. Right now he's projecting as overmatched and is certainly not who I'd rank 13. Maybe he improves, but I don't think he will ever be of impact. Meanwhile, I'm guessing Payton Eeles is not on any list. One of those two will produce positive results for the Twins. Wanna bet which one? Any updates on Eeles' knee?

Well, I had them for a month, thinking I was going to pause Fubo a month ago, so I could actually watch them on either app and both worked fine. I canceled the twins.tv subscription on April 27 and was watching them through Fubo only since, when I actually did pause my Fubo on Friday. Saw the Fri/Sat games on Apple/Fox but could not re-subscribe this morning after logging into my account. Turns out I found a workaround. By the way, if you need customer service, good luck. And before sending this just now I figured out what I think the issue was. I was using a VPN that placed me in Chicago. Not sure why that would matter.

Canceled (paused) my Fubo over the summer and need to subscribe to Twins.tv. I'll give you twenty guesses as to whether their web site is functional. So, since they don't want my money, any idea how I might watch today's game?

No, he's had great starts before. Remember, this is May 10.

Fred Lynn had another weekend vs the Twins where he did something somewhat similar. I believe it was a number of years earlier but can't remember whether it was with Boston or California. Okay, on my first try I chose 1979, and that may have been it. 8/13/79-8/15/79 Lynn for Boston went 7-11 with three HR and ten RBI, including a two-run homer to tie the game in the bottom of the 7th vs Dave Goltz that first game. But I don't think that was hit. It could be the 5/12-5/14 series in 1980 where he went 8-13 with three doubles, a triple, and two homers, but that like the other was a M, T, W series. I think this was on a weekend. Perhaps it was May 13, 14 of 1978 where he went 4-6 with 2 HR, 4 RBI and 3 BB. But I think it was later that summer, 7/16/78 in the 2nd game of a double header when he hit a soul-crushing two-run homer in the bottom of the 6th in a tie game. The Twins had lost the series opener 5-4, the first game of the DH 5-3, that game 3-2, and the finale 3-2 in 10. I think that's what I really remember. Lynn "only" went 3-10 that series with 2 BB and the homer, but let's just say that after that series, my mind and time were freed up from the Twins.

People think that way. While admitting Bader is not nearly as good as his numbers suggest, what can't be taken away from him is that he's a real ballplayer who makes a difference on defense, a defensively better Dan Gladden. There are a number of these guys sitting out there while some of us are feeling sorry for Keirsey at AAA. It's a business. This is not your daughter's team and Keirsey is not your daughter's best friend. Another note: if comps salary vs production are being done, we'll want to pro-rate them, note that WAR goes negative (cumulative WAR can go down), and these are candidates for RTTM (the number one requirement being that they were chosen based on their "extreme" nature). But... Bader can (and probably will) suck at bat but was a good signing. Coloumbe was a no-brainer to begin with and has never commanded a higher price. France would have to have an injury again to not be worth his min salary. I don't know that anyone could have legitimately argued that in a vacuum they were bad signings. They argument all along is whether they were the best the Twins could do.

Holy crap, did I post this before or after Raya most fun blow-up last night? Regardless, I didn't know about it and am not surprised by it (obviously). It looks like the timestamp is not on my side and makes this look not as prescient as it really was (pats self on back). I argued Raya was maybe around #25 prospect-wise prior to the season. On the other hand, I argued C. Lewis was top ten and DeBarge would be around Raya. Will wait and see on all.

I want to thank you for including strikeouts and walks in the top 20 lines. Strikeouts give us a much better idea what's going on with a hitter, and walks/hbp explain the reduced number of plate appearances (though they don't really tell us anything good or bad). Note: I've long believed a high walk pct is a negative for all but the power hitters, prospect-wise. Of course, it's generally wonderful for MLB hitters.

Very serious here: why in the world would anyone mention Marco Raya here? Exactly what has he done that remotely gives him the title of "rotation depth?" Why do people keep mentioning him? What has he done? Sure, with more massive failures he might/probably eventually become a reliever, but that has no relevance here. I just don't understand. He started out not good, he's been promoted while not good, and he doesn't even pitch the innings a starter might. If Raya were placed on waivers and lost, I wouldn't blink and actually would be happy we had the extra room. As for the trade Bowden proposed, I doubt the Orioles would do that, but it's very close. Forret is a really nice pitcher, and he's pretty close. As long as his lower back tightness turns out to be nothing, he's looking at a promotion to AA soon and is probably (certainly?) a better prospect than Ryan was. He would immediately be the Twins best prospect pitcher after Zebby. I'm not a big fan of Mayo, but the package might be enough to convince me to trade Ryan.

Those are minor details compared to his 26% K rate. Add in he's 22 at A+, and yeah....

LOL. Yeah, he has time to figure something out over the next several years. It's not a Twins thing, though. It always amuses me when people don't want to move on from players who clearly don't get it and excuse them based on age, as if they're going to figure it out. Basically you are who you are. Andrew Wiggins was who he was, and it was obvious in his second year he wasn't going to get better for the Wolves. The things that were missing were not a part of his mindset or character. Yet "he's young" was the constant refrain. No, he was just talented and bad at basketball, a combo that will only tease. Likewise, Julien has issues. He can get better, but he probably can't put up his minor league numbers because he sort of "cheated" to get those. Minor league pitchers as a whole have issues that can be exploited by someone sharp enough to know how. Julien is one of those. It's on the Twins to recognize this along the way and not advance him until he does things the way he'll need to do them to succeed in the majors. Perhaps this is unsuccessful. It certainly would have taken longer for him to reach the show, if he ever would have. When everybody was excited about Julien in spring training 2023, I warned his "success" there was a result of it being spring training, that his minors K rate indicated he was not ready for MLB. I think Julien is the actual start of my rants and consistent messaging on what makes a prospect and what doesn't. Don't get me wrong, I had hope, too, when he was in the low/mid minors. I took him on my fantasy keeper teams. I thought it was possible my ST take was wrong when he looked good initially on getting the call in 2023. When it looked like I was right all along, I hoped he could limit his passivity, something I've seen more of this season than the season plus prior. So far what we've seen is that he can do that if he really concentrates on doing that, but he's not a good hitter when he does, because that's not been a part of his DNA. So, yeah, he can improve, but would you take a average minor leaguer and give him all the chances in the world and cross your fingers and use a 40 spot on him?. No, you wouldn't. That would be foolish. Julien was that meh minor leaguer who, with the Twins permission (apparently), gamed the system and put up great slash lines with bad peripherals. And because our information was limited, we were intrigued. Finally, this absolutely has to be a warning about Emmanuel Rodriguez. Starting pretty early last year I shouted to the heavens that no way in the world was EmRod near the prospect that Luke Keaschall was. That doesn't mean he'll be a bust, but that's a real possibility. It's also in comparison to Keaschall, who's a phenomenal prospect with somewhat limited upside and maybe higher injury risk. (edit: "maybe higher injury risk" is not relative to EmRod but to the average player. No one is higher injury risk than EmRod, apparently!)

Other than he's not great at 3B, why wouldn't you play Lewis at 3B? Listen, if he's going to hurt himself there (I'd suggest the opposite, he'd avoid injury by playing 3B), then there's really no hope for him. As his service time continues to grow toward expiration and absolute free agency (see Boras), I'd simply get what I could for him from a team desperate for something new and shiny, like Colorado. The Rockies might give up a couple of prospects for him, one of them actually pretty good.

Why do you feel Rodriguez is going to be productive? You and I could probably strike him out. Do you really think MLB pitchers won't K him at a rate that's sets new records? I hope that's not true, but I think it's closer than him being Buxton-like.

It would only be a surprise because the Twins generally aren't that smart. Face it, both Gasper and Clemens look just as good, Julien can't field (ironic that the one stretch of games he showed himself at his worst is when people here and with the Twins lauded his fielding a bit). The point is, we're discussing whether Julien should get sent down instead of Gasper and Clemens (dfa), and that tells us all we really need to know.

DeBarge, my personal whipping boy, is doing pretty well. I've been comparing him with Keaschall, since I thought the only reason he was way overdrafted was because he resembled Keaschall in style of play. The knock on DeBarge was that he simply didn't hit (as in hit well) good pitching in college, and that was way too overlooked in my opinion. I didn't know exactly how it would manifest itself in the pros, but I was fairly certain I had my answer after a really bad low A partial season. Now he's doing pretty well, not striking out, and making things happen. As a stats guy with Bayesian leanings, I cling to the prior of can't hit good pitchers, didn't do well in Cape Cod league, and sucked at low A, so one month isn't going to move me much, But I do upgrade him to "has a chance" based on the K-rate (18 in 122 PAs). Last year's K rate at low A was about 25%, so this is a big jump. I still like De Andrade better, but there's some hope, so maybe I'll lay off until he turns into a pumpkin. DDA, btw, is nine months younger, which is still a thing at 21. Amick and K. Culpepper are also hitting well, though they also have some priors to overcome. I've got a couple deep drafts coming up this week, so I'll have to decide if any of these four guys are worth grabbing. I like DDA the best, but he's also the most under-the-radar, so...game theory.

Zebby's date for clearance is in June sometime, I believe, maybe early June. At that point he can finish the season with the Twins and still be under one year of service time when last year is added in.

Derek, the problem is your drafting and development of hitting. You apparently lucked into Keaschall, but it appears the "system" doesn't know what it's doing there.

Well, stats will help. If he's striking out a lot, none of this matters. The difference between MLB pitchers and non-MLB pitchers is monstrously huge. You strike out vs the latter, and you really have no chance against the former. Hello, Edouard Julien. There are exceptions, but those are generally guys (like Wallner) who chose to do things that would make him strike out because those things also allowed him to hit the ball extremely hard and often over the fence. Morales isn't in Wallner's category, so we can just look at his K rates to start and eliminate him, potentially. Age vs level needs to be considered, and if that doesn't seem out of line, really the last general stat to look at is exit velocity. Morales is old for his level. He turns 26 next week, which, while younger than the average AAA player, is old for a AAA prospect. To wit, last year at AA he was older than his competition. Combining these higher levels, we see in 529 PAs Morales struck out 15.7% of the time, which is Luke Keaschall territory. Keaschall, though, was much younger for AA-AAA, and that matters. Let's dig deeper. In 2023 Morales was 1.7 years older than his competition at A+ and his K rate was 20.5% in 200 PAs. This is not a great combination. 20.5% is an okay rate for a non-power hitter who is a couple years younger than his competition. Morales was much older and repeating the level that year. He was very clearly not a prospect, and I'm pretty sure no one disagreed with that back then. I think it's pretty safe to say we don't need to look back further, but if we did, we'd find worse. So the question becomes: did he transform himself? While 15.7% is very good, the age takes away from that. Subjectively adjusting, we might add five points to that K rate, which if he were a 22-23 yr old prospect would be minimally acceptable, maybe better. To me this would indicate someone who could maybe hold his own if he can hit hard enough. In fact, his average exit velocity this season matches what Payton Eeles did last season (86 mph vs 86.9), and it's reasonable to think they're both near their peak. I'm struggling with the statcast data, and some of the summaries are misleading (11.8% launch angle could mean various things). It appears, though, that his line drive rate is low (21%). Not unexpectedly, Morales at this point and time seems like a cuspish prospect at best. He would be better with the bat than Keirsey, probably, but he wouldn't be someone you'd choose to play in the stead of the frustrating lineup on the Twins. His remarkable growth the last two years has brought him here, and if he were a couple of years younger, there might be some upside. Seems a good story with a really low but possible chance of things working out in MLB for a short while. I see 1.000+ yr service time at about 10% and a cup of coffee at about 60%

Okay, I don't think much of Billy Amick, but where is he? It would seem this kind of list is made for his April. Let's check: .922 slug, 0 HRs. Heh.