twinstalker

Unfortunately, Sano's desires to be a good 3B probably won't outweigh his appetite for, well, food. Other than his obvious affection for food, his mentality won't play a part in his move. Being 24 is why he can play 3B now. When he's 27 and the desire to be the best fielder he can be has waned, he'll be only a 1B. Everyone sees that, and I don't think it's really going to matter when, post-Mauer. In 2019 Mauer might well be gone (I think there's a good chance he stays cheaply to be part-time on a Twins winner). Dozier will be gone. Gordon will be up and will have struggled. Polanco will be here. Sano playing 1B most of the time probably depends on whether Rooker, Lewis, or some wild card forces playing time. Whatever happens, I don't see this as being too crowded.

What I meant to say was that it is clear by looking at the Appy league we have the most talent in baseball. How else would you explain six championships since 2000? First off, all the "prospects" in any league are younger than the league. That's a large part of what makes them prospects. It's usually by about 2-2.5 years in rookie ball unless a college guy goes there first for a little wooden bat seasoning. Second, last time I looked, about half the teams in the Appy had a short season league in between it and the low A ball affiliate. My point was Elizabethton beats up on rookie league pitching. And that the best hitters this month includes those very guys plus two guys who are not really prospects at all and one who's going to be 27 by the time he ever takes a team-meaningful AB for the Twins. That is, three guys going against inferior pitching and three guys who have the distinct look of AAAA.

So let me see if I've got this straight. The six best hitters are 31, 29, and 26 or playing in a league that is advanced rookie ball for the Twins but the equivalent of the GCL for a number of the other teams. (Hey, why do you think the Twins win the Appy so often?) This bodes badly for the organization.

Yeah, a few points. 1) Pohlads have made horrible business decision after horrible business decision. The saving grace is that Falvine probably doesn't care about Jim Pohlad losing a few dollars. I'm not sure I understand the insurance thing, though, if in fact it's true what someone said. If Hughes salary is fully insured if he can't play, and you know he can't play, then it is a really good move to keep him on the 40 in the offseason, 60-day DL him in the season, and start spending the 26 million or whatever to help your team. 2) Someone mentioned the Twins might trade some of these candidates for a player before the Rule V. Trust me, that kind of trade doesn't happen because other teams are trying to pare down their lists, too. 3) Comparison of Diaz to Kepler regarding protecting against Rule V: ugh. Kepler was always more highly thought of than Diaz. But even if they were the same, Kepler could play all three OF positions and 1B. 4) Gimenez is a definite drop but will likely be in spring training next year. Slegers is a definite no-keep unless they just have no one else, really, to keep. Keep in mind this team will likely be adding MLB bodies. Falvine understands the organization now and will add where appropriate.

I don't think this discussion makes as much sense without the context of the number of spots they'll have available. And you leave a guy like Enns out of the discussion, assuming he'll be a 40. We've got guys who will not be on the 40 (e.g. Belisle) and we've got guys who could well be dropped (e.g. Vargas). We've got guys on the 60-day DL who may or may not need to be included. Given all that, yes, Gonsalves is a lock and Littel is a lock, but Lewis Thorpe has to be next. His stuff is definitely good enough to stash on an MLB roster for a year and use as a mop up. On the other hand, who in the world would stash Lewin Diaz? Roster spots for position players are at a premium these days, and if you aren't a valuable defensive player, you do not get selected in Rule V.

I'm very afraid of being put on double-secret probation for what I might say here, I'll start with this: do you know who traded Mejia to the Twins? Does he value his farm system (in trades) the same way other GMs do? Does he overpay compared to other GMs? And finally, was his team a possible trading partner this season? Also, how good is Mejia? Is he that much better than Littel? Any better? All I know is that the Twins won't have to use a 40-man spot to find out yet, and they can use it on someone they know is ready (Gonsalves, Enns, free agent) while not having to start Littel and Watson's clock. And even though I don't think Mejia is necessarily where he needs to be, are you telling me you had confidence in Mejia at this time last year? Last year, instead of spending $4 million for two guys (Littel and Watson) who are free to keep in the system and two more who may be immediately helpful, they gave up Nunez (who's opportunity cost could have landed a Littel) and Alex Meyer for someone (Mejia) no better than Meyer and a guy just like Enns (Busenitz).

I haven't read to see if someone's responded to this, but consider the logic for a moment. First, the low A guy is now on your team for a year or two before you have to place him on your 40 man roster. In essence, the cost to keep this relatively valuable commodity is free. Whether you trade Kintzler or not, his 40 man spot opens up. Over the winter you get the chance to fill this spot the way you want to fill this spot. That may be through free agency or as part of a different trade. Whatever the Twins do to fill that spot, they could not have gotten Watson to keep for free if they had traded for a good young player with lots of upside. That's obvious. Now find me a team that will deal a good young player with lots of upside for Kintzler. It ain't happening. Hey, here's something you can do, if you want. You can get both Watson and Kintzler for the cost of Kintzler by paying for Kintzler in free agency. But my bet is that when Kintzler becomes available the Twins will look elsewhere with their money. In other words, the best play to make here that is something another team would actually do is to trade Kintzler for a far away prospect.

There are a number of game theory moves being made here that the old regime seemed not to be adept at. Thus far, the general impression I get is that these trades not only are decent in and of themselves but help to better situate the Twins system. Foremost, if you thought the Twins were anything but smoke and mirrors, and this recent slide combined with CLE and KC going on terrors didn't convince you 2017 is over, well, I can't help you. Nobody can. You're a hopeless romantic, maybe with little interest or grasp of the process it takes to create a winning organization if you think these trades seem non-worthwhile. Over the past few days the Twins have added money to sign some Int'l guys, two guys who might help soon in relief and two guys who have a chance to be a part of future rotations (with a downside of relief hopefuls) at the expense of Huoscar Ynoa and $4 mil that was only going into the Pohlad pockets. The only real lottery ticket in this mess is Ynoa, and the Twins gave him up because lottery tickets don't pay off. TJS Burdi is a better bet than Ynoa. The two potential starters do not have to go on the 40 man this winter, and given that they'll be 8-15 on the Twins list at A+ and AA to start 2018, that's huge. These are the moves that other teams make that we never notice and suddenly we're asking where Corey Kluber came from. The new regime understands what to look for, pitching-wise, while we know Terry Ryan had very little competence in this area in the last decade plus. If you're going to be upset that the Twins gave something up toward this end, be upset about the lottery ticket Ynoa, not Kintzler, an ex-Twin either now or in a number of weeks. But keep in mind I've lost a lot of lottery tickets and never worried I couldn't find them to check the numbers. Littel isn't a lottery ticket, he's a good gamble. He has a good chance to pay off. As does Watson. The relievers Moya and Enns will have to go on the 40-man, one of them in place of the useless JRM, but that's okay. They're not important in or of themselves but represent a larger group of players with a real chance to be helpful, and they allow the Twins to fire more bullets in the offseason, if needed. As for Dozier and Santana, both appear more helpful to winning and providing veteran leadership than they are at having prospect value. Ride them out unless it makes sense to take an offer.

If you define a heavy number of teams as 25+, you're right, it isn't close to true. I define heavy as more than a few. In other words, many, but I should clarify I was talking about starters and not including guys currently on the Twins. In other words, Romero and Gonsalves. I dig for starting prospects across all of baseball, and those are the only two I want from the Twins. Hell, I think the Brewers have three at AAA, and I don't think much of the Brewers (though that's changing). In other words, ugly. Put all the lipstick you want on it, it's ugly. So, yes, my statement is very true if you're objective. I'd say I've easily found 12-15 teams where it's true for me (8 of top 10), and I'm biased to like Twins! Falvey and Levine, let's hope they know what they're doing.

Well, for those nitpicking on the 1-2 starter thing: There are a heavy number of teams where if you combined one's system with the Twins, 8 of the top 10 resulting pitching prospects, maybe 13 or the top 15, would be from the other team. Now add to that that the Twins major league staff sucks, and what you've got is a sh*tshow of a problem. Absolutely the only hope for the Twins lies with the new blood.

I will raise my hand if someone asks who thinks Tonkin's been given enough rope. I doubt any "wow" reliever gets cut, so Tonkin basically gets one more chance to prove he belongs. When he fails this last time, and a better option comes along, I would expect Tonkin to be a Cincinnati Red via waiver claim. Or, if the AL gets first shot, I would expect Tonkin to be a Cincinnati Red via waiver claim (okay, maybe the Whities, A's or Angels give him a shot).

Weird title, as if we thought Andrew Miller might sneak in there. The bullpen is the last place the Twins should be addressing right now. Falvey and Levine are under no illusions about this team's chances. They have a Herculean task of finding a pitching staff for an eventual contender, and I'm sure out of that, a few relievers will be found. They also will have the full year to make those acquisitions a bad team can make (waiver claims, etc). More interesting is the rotation, because Santana, Hughes, and Santiago will in no way be a part of the eventual contender. So the questions are all about whether Gibson will show anything positive, and who among Berrios, Duffey, Mejia, Gonsalves (!), and Romero will be considered true rotation guys for that contender. It will be a long wait for Hunter Greene, so who will emerge or be acquired in the meantime? The relief is a question for one or two years from now. If the Twins somehow blow our minds and contend this year, well, you can't spend your time and resources preparing for the flukey when there are so many important issues to address.

I've never understood why these things go in reverse order. OMG, do you think Sano, Buxton, and Berrios will be in the top 10? (to use a past year's example) The interesting part is not whether Fernando Romero is in the top 10, we know he is, but who is worthy of prospect status. I would just list them in order until I found no one worth listing. I doubt that goes to 50, though. ;-) Hmmm...actually looking at your 41-50, maybe there are 50 legit prospects.

Hopefully the six months the Twins wasted here won't prove a negative. Well, that' silly. It is a negative. Just plain stupid. When he's put on the 40-man roster, he'll be six months behind. When he runs out of options, he'll be six months behind. When he's needed as an emergency pitcher while in the upper minors and on the 40-man, he'll be six months behind. Six months behind where he should be.

Ugh. Regression to the mean refers to the selection of a group on the extreme of a scale and finding the expected value. The sample average of values the subjects take on is offset from it's expected value, which is closer to the overall mean. If you take a random sample of 10 players' batting averages, the sample average is centered around the expected value of those ten players. Compare the sample average of the 10 BAs with the average of those players' 10 lifetime averages. Take the difference. Repeat this process n times. The average difference will be 0 as n goes to infinity. Now take the ten highest batting average players one year, do the same thing. Unfortunately, there are only 100 years of this, but there are ways to make it work and avoid some biases that creep in. Compare the average of the 10 season long BAs with the average of the lifetime BAs of those ten players. Calculate the "sample" mean minus the lifetime mean. I would guess that almost all those differences would be positive, indicating a bias. It is, of course, a selection bias. The true expected value of batting average for those 10 players is not the center of the sample averages. It is offset toward the mean of the whole population. This is called regression to the mean. Regression to the Mean has little to do with eventually ending up at the mean. So how does this fit with the Twins? Well, we didn't select them because they were the best team, but we're sort of talking about them because they're doing so well. There are so many issues that affect record at any one time, but one of the biggest issues in baseball is autocorrelation. Hot streaks, cold streaks. Probability of success changing due to prior success the day before or over the last week. If the games thus far represented a random sample, and if autocorrelation didn't exist, and if the team didn't change in any way over the course of the summer, then maybe the winning pct now can produce a confidence interval for the season winning pct that shows a tight interval excluding anything resembling the last four years. But with the issues of autocorrelation, changeover, injuries, and such, it's totally unclear how the Twins will do with a new manager and prospects coming up, though having played 35% of the season lowers variation and keeps the interval tighter. My feeling is that the Twins are better with Molitor, Allen, Polanco, and Buxton, and it wouldn't shock me if they finished above .500.

First, Hicks was a different animal. There was nothing but hope that said he was ready for anything other than an attempt at AAA in 2013. The Twins stunted his development by crossing their fingers. Given his development rate at the time, 2013 should have been spent at AAA, last year he should have seen his first substantial time in the majors, and this year he should have been expected to be ready. Buxton, on the other hand, learns and adjusts very quickly. The Twins have many considerations wrt Buxton and their current makeup. They have Schafer and Robinson in there currently, they are not yet out of contention, they have Hicks mostly ready and Rosario possibly close enough. Both will be given a chance (it's obvious that Molitor has a lot of affection for Rosario). Buxton will need to stay in the minors through most of June to guarantee non-super two status, and the Twins will need his impetus at the gate when there's not much else to cheer for. This all screams for sometime in July.

I see no upside for the Twins on this. If he deserves more at the end, he would be easily tradeable. What is more likely is that they're fixed into paying $6 million and $9 million for a guy who won't be the best 2B on the team at that time. Dozier has no financial incentive to play well until the 4th year now, whereas he'd have to battle to keep his spot without the contract. There was just no reason for the Twins to do this. I know they want their brand to have consistency in personnel, but this doesn't really get at this, other than not allowing them the option of dumping Dozier and his salary.

You appear great at googling 1977, because I doubt you remember Jobs and Wozniak from then. What you should remember is that it was the Summer of Sam, and that seemingly every celebrity died that year. When I think of 1977, I remember Elvis and Bing dying and the Twins big year, which ended up being about huge years from individual players. I remember that Sunday afternoon at my dad's apartment in Fridley, listening to Herb call the game, and how excited I was because we'd ended 1976 so well--I thought we had a chance. Besides all the stud seasons from Carew, Hisle, Bostock, and Goltz, what I remember most about that season is Glenn Adams and Rich Chiles joining the team (Adams big year), Tom Johnson winning a boatload of games, Geoff Zahn and Paul Thormodsgaard (sp?) being iron men, and at the very beginning of the season I think it was Mike Pazik and Don Carrithers getting into an accident and losing their seasons. To me at a young age, I had held high hopes for Pazik that year. The way I remember it, he had started out on fire, and then his season (and maybe the Twins') went up in smoke because some woman went the wrong way on an exit ramp or something. No googling. :-)

Well, if Terry Ryan is in here anywhere, I'll ignore the rest. :-)

I would point out that Hughes seems to be one of those every-other-year players. While a number of those careers are of course due to random variation, it's easy to conceive that some are not; that they are the product of a negative autocorrelation. Perhaps he "bears down" after a bad season and relaxes after a good one. That's a possibility to consider, but otoh his FIP has been very consistent over the years, and it's down nearly two points this year. Just saying: he's a pitcher, and one year does not mean he's a god going forward. The best course of action is NOT to extend Hughes. It is to figure out good deals when the time comes, like they did with Hughes, and then figure out the next good deal with another pitcher when the time comes. Phil Hughes will never be a good deal again. Be happy with the three years. As for the bonus. If the Twins really wanted him to have a shot at it, they wouldn't have pulled him after 7 innings and 90 pitches vs Cleveland on Friday. Instead they guaranteed he'd have to pitch into the 9th for the first time all year in his last game, if he were going to achieve it. Sure, it's easy to act as if you wanted him to earn the bonus, and I have no doubt that Gardenhire would have given him the 9th, but the Twins protected themselves pretty well. It's like they said "well, we'll give him the chance if he proves (again) that he deserves it, but odds are very much in our favor."

He's a good player, and he's got a good reputation league-wide. While the Twins don't yet have a replacement, they will very, very soon in Polanco. Polanco is going to hit and field well at 2B. His bat is quick, and he's shown the ability to adjust to higher levels. He should be very similar to Santana, though I think his bat will be better. I think Polanco is the safest bet in the organization, after Buxton. Given all that, yes, you need to deal Dozier next season. You're not losing Dozier, you're gaining whatever you get back, because we'll have his replacement in the wings. The Twins, though, besides having very little clue on optimizing talent, absolutely love Dozier, from what I can tell. I think they think he is the model ballplayer. They're not necessarily wrong there, but the importance they place on that is probably far too high.

Guys with 150 IP and 115 K at A+ or AA almost always do not become major league starters. Or if they do (because their organization doesn't recognize the issue), they get knocked around until their fate becomes bullpen or bust. There are exceptions and nuance to consider, but I wouldn't get too high on any pitchers in this category. That's why Meyer,Berrios, Thorpe, and (eventually, with K/9 improvement) Stewart, and a couple others are the real hope, and the others are real longshots.

Ugh. Schafer. Scrap heap. Fooled. Next.

He's not on the 40, but there's no difference now for him to be placed there compared to putting him on in the fall to protect him from Rule V. He'll still have three years of options starting in 2015. If it's not Correia getting DFA'd to make room for Meyer, I think it's Florimon. He needs to get MLB starts, though, because he'll be in rotation next year.

You're right that Santana needs to play SS. He might be the best CF the Twins have until Buxton gets there, but Buxton will be there by July, barring injury, and Santana has to be able to handle short to play. I'll take issue that Hicks doesn't need time at Rochester. At Rochester he'll face a number of pitchers who have proven breaking balls and change-ups, at least at a superior level to AA. That's what he needs to prove he can hit. A good slash line at AAA is important for Hicks. Another guy who needs to prove something at AAA is Arcia. Unlike Hicks, though, it's not the slash line, because Arcia will have a terrific slash line there and has proven it in the past. His problem at MLB is his K rate, and if you go back to his AAA numbers, his K rate there is alarming. I've said before (maybe here, maybe elsewhere), and Roy Smalley mentioned it on the telecast yesterday, that Arcia can't identify pitches. Until he is able to do so, his upside is Jacque Jones, and that would be a shame. He's got way too much talent to simply be a "guess" hitter like Jones was. This one is really on Twins management. Arcia should not be flailing at the big-league level. He should be sent down with a complete understanding of why and what he has to do to get back, which is strike out less while maintaining decent hitting stats.