twinstalker

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.

He should have been doing this last year at this level instead of struggling at low A. This is a wait and see guy, and I'm not optimistic. If he puts up the same slash this year at AA and maintains the 16% K rate, I'll start to think of him as an okay prospect.

At least he'll be accumulating service time while he's hurt. I'd hate for him to get hurt at AAA and extend team control. Also, remember, immutable forces help those who help themselves.

I don't think we have to wait for years to look back on the title of this article and laugh.

He has as few flaws as any position prospect I've seen come through the system since Mauer, though the upside isn't close to Mauer, especially given defensive position. I highly doubt LK is a hall of famer, but that's okay, plus the dumb and dumber chance is there with him, unlike all but a few others since Mauer. If one did a prospect comparison with, say, Royce Lewis, I think the obvious result would be very different players who could both be great in different ways. The problem with Lewis, though, was that so much of his prospect status was about his athleticism, and he's been robbed of that, really, as the speed is gone, the body is different. Keaschall is a different sort. His immense talent is his bat to ball skills and ability to control and recognize the strike zone. Teams often have this sort of player and win because of it. The Twins very rarely have this type, and that's the Twins fault. In my opinion, jobs should be lost because of this, as it's a very basic reason the Twins are never really contenders for the title. It's why I didn't like the Arraez trade, despite the good return. Almost always Keaschall and Arraez will have good ABs. Keaschall then offers a lot more with speed, some power, and probably much better and more flexible fielding.

That game this past week stressed me out like no other. Morris and Lewis are favorites of mine. Morris is my favorite Twins prospect (not saying best), and I actually met Lewis a year ago when he was in town for the Diamond Awards (minor league pitcher of year). I think Lewis' 2024 is one of the most misleading statlines due to rustiness after missing time with the shoulder. After early walk issues, he was dominant. Morris is 15 months younger than Zebby. That doesn't matter as much with pitchers, and they're both around 24, not 19, but in terms of Twins development, I do think it's a thing. Zebby did not have Morris' 2024 back in 2023. Admittedly, they were drafted the same year and seem to have taken the same path from there, with Zebby jumping ahead, so I'm not sure the age difference means anything in this case.

I understand this sentiment, and you're right based on the premise you lay out. But is he wearing out? Two things: first, the Twins are likely limiting the number of pitches, and there might be some third time through order issues (rather than being taxed) if he's getting hit later, I haven't looked. Second, low pitch counts for minor leaguers are common, especially early. 70 pitches isn't as much the result of being tired, it's just the process of getting to 100 pitches by August. Maybe that's all one thing, not two!

As big a fan as I am, I agree with this.

Zebby is fantastic, but two points I've made before: 1. Zebby wasn't lined up to take Pablo Lopez' start. It would have been after four days rest, and he was working on 5-6 days rest right then. He pitched on a Tuesday, and Pablo's start was to be Sunday, four days rest. It was too rushed for him to get all that many innings. Starting Festa on his regular day and moving part of the rotation back was the smart, necessary move. 2. I think the Twins will do everything they can to keep Zebby under 124 days of service time, which means if they keep him down through very early June, he'll wind up with less than 172 days through two season. That will give them this year and six more prior to free agency. While that's tough on Zebby, arbitration will still be the same offseason, and his salary will rise to nearly what he'd get in his first free agent year in the end. Except the Twins will have control for that year. Bonus point: Zebby is awesome!

EmRod could have hit 3 HRs, and it wouldn't have been as impressive as Keaschall was last night. What we saw was a player who's really not going to get figured out in the long run. He still has a learning curve against better pitching than Elder, but I doubt he'll struggle too much.