twinstalker

Well, here you go: he's striking out 15.5% of the time at AAA this year at age 21. Not sexy? Do you want 15 HRs? Well, if he had 15 HRs and a 22% strikeout rate, it wouldn't be nearly as good. Because MLB pitchers would figure him out much more easily than they will as he is now. These days there is a baseline K-rate for 98% of the players that is somewhere around 12% (it's an educated guess). Therefore, a 15% K rate can be thought of as twice as good as an 18% K rate. Now, if you're twice or three time better than most good prospects with the lead predictor, that bodes really well. Jenkins' statcast data is all very good/great with the exception of pulling the ball in the air percent, and his swing and zone swing pcts show he is patient, not aggressive (but not passive like EmRod). He ranks 100th %ile for FanGraphs based on statcast data. Kaelen Culpepper ranks in the 98.33 %ile, but keep in mind most players are simply not real prospects, so two points is very meaningful, and Culpepper's ranking is decent not great in the realm of hitters who have a real chance to be good in MLB. Gabriel Gonzalez is 79th percentile, so you might want to lower your hopes there. Looking solely at a slash line is very misleading. First, Jenkins has a decent slash line of .272/.385/.440. Age vs level and K-rate, the real predictors of how good someone will be at the major league level are quite good and actually it all would be much better if he would quit getting hurt. Assuming his body doesn't just break apart, he's an all-star, and imo he'll be better than every OF the Twins have ever had, save for Puckett, Oliva, and Buxton, and he might be as good as some of that. He's a Lyman Bostock who will hit for less average, have a higher walk rate, and otherwise start MLB 2-3 years younger than Lyman because he didn't go to college. Feel better?

Marek Houston has done anything but answer his draft day question marks. Is he better than most of the Twins minor league players? Probably, and for gawd sakes I'd hope so. But what's he done? So far he's older at A+ than you want from a real prospect. Age for A+ Superstar 18, Star 19, Good player 20, major-leaguer 21, cusp-ish MLB 22, no real chance 23+. There are some factors that affect this to make it less than absolute, so it's important to understand this: if you're at an age that's not flattering above, you need to be killing the important predictive factors, so let's look at one or two: K-rate: a 22 yr old like Houston whose power profile is weak-ish should be striking out at A+ no more than 15%. Drum roll please (because I actually don't know it): 18.3% This isn't horrible, but it's not good. For comparison, Brooks Lee didn't play at A+ when he was 22, but his K rate at age 21 was 15.8%. (His age 22 at AA was 15.9%). This is what it takes to be a little below average MLB hitter. Luke Keaschall looks similar to Lee, better really, as you'd expect: Age 20-21 at A+, Keaschall struck out 13.9% of the time. Lee and Keaschall aren't exactly tearing up the majors, they're 2nd division players. Prospects of their profile (Houston e.g.) need to perform (K-rate) as well as they do to not be that cuspish sort of MLBer. He hasn't done that, and that's evidence you're all getting way too excited for nothing. It was a bad draft pick, especially given that Kayson Cunningham was still out there. But the Twins were probably panicking due to all the mistakes they'd made and felt the need to make a bad college pick rather than a really good high school pick. (and yes, I know he was promoted...I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt by not including his AA stats thus far: K-rate 24.4% in only 45 PA) So far, believe it or not, I've look at four important factors: draft status (college junior), age vs level, power profile, and K-rate. Notice that avg, obp, and slg generally don't mean much. I mean, you wouldn't care if they weren't good to begin with, correct? Guys who are 22 and don't slash well at A+ can pretty much be eliminated from any discussion. The other factors that are important that could make him a little better or worse are things like EV, whiff rate, chase rate, and other statcast stuff that's not readily available for A+. Generally, though, the info we have at hand is enough to profile him.

I wouldn't put Jenkins in with anybody else on the Twins, except Buxton.

Do you actually believe Fedko is an obstacle to anything?

Anything can be true nowadays.

No, the point is that a team, especially the Twins, can't just do what TB does because they don't have the intelligence infrastructure (apparently) to make it work. It's like if an average poker player folded AA on the flop because he saw a top pro do it numerous times. It's not the action you want to duplicate, because that will make you lose more often than not. It's the intelligence you need to be able to understand the nuance of why you might fold AA there. I don't think the Twins have it at the same level, and when you're not as good at the game, you need to shove your aces before the flop, make the obvious play before cards on the board complicate the matter. Game theory is hard.

Baseball America just had the Twins picking Tyler Bell, SS (2B, really) from Kentucky. Emerson went 4th to the Giants. I'm really struggling, myself. It's hard to believe Cholowsky could have gone first last year and is so much worse now. On that basis I still have to rank him first.

It only works if you can properly evaluate talent. Comparing the Twins and Rays has never made sense.

Oof. I don't know how you bring him up with the lockout looming. Despite Boras repping him, I'd offer him for this year and the next eight and see if the lockout leverage doesn't finally convince a Boras client. Make the 7th and 8th years team options with substantial buyouts, and maybe Boras goes for it. Otherwise, Jenkins could be under team control anyway for the next 7 years if the Twins delay.

Honestly, they've got two guys (Morris and Gomez) who maybe deserve to be in a bullpen, and I trust neither for this year. It would be just like the Twins to not trade Ryan and Jeffers and finish 12+ games under .500.

Somebody (super handsome) has been saying that since he was drafted. Amick, too. Twins have wasted, completely wasted so many top draft picks. It's like they go see a guy play, see something good happen, and ignore all the information out there on the guys. In DeBarge's case the scouting reports were that he couldn't really hit against the better college pitchers, that he was feasting on pitchers in his small-school conference. Nobody is going to do as well versus the best pitchers, but it apparently wasn't all that competitive in DeBarge's case. He was ranked much lower than the Twins took him, almost as if the Twins only saw him against bad pitching and somehow were afraid to lose him by waiting the few rounds until they could take him where he was projected. The drafting process for hitters is extremely flawed, whatever it is. They don't seem to account for college parks and think Tennessee hitters have miraculously fallen to them in the second round. Or a Wake Forest hitter everybody was staying away from. They don't appear to understand that strikeout rates that would be great in the minors are actually average in college. Twins 1st or 2nd round hitter draft failings this decade off the top of my head: (2019 13th pick Cavaco was the start for this group), Sabato, Soularie, Noah Miller, Tanner Schobel, DeBarge, Amick, Quentin Young, Marek Houston. Note I said draft failings, not all can be labeled failures yet, as Young and Houston haven't spent a year in the org. I wanted Waldschmidt over Culpepper and Kayson Cunningham way over Houston.

Fedko is the best thing ever to happen to the Twins.

He's better. He's a ton better. And I'll swear it's true until we get value back in a trade.

I defy you to find one that wasn't being sarcastic or simply talking about his early stats. No one was remotely saying he could be Trout-like.

Lee is doing exactly what he was projected to do. He's a below average starter in the major league, in general. I didn't quite know whether that was 25th %ile or 47th %ile. He's just fine if your other two infielders are above average. Somewhere there's a comment from 2 or 3 years ago that spells that out. :-) Nobody liked that comment at the time.

His problem is that he swings and misses far too often. That's against AAA. He wouldn't touch MLB pitches at all. It would be more embarrassing to give him a "chance" than not. He hits the ball hard, so he'd be fun to watch in BP

You're saying he can play OF? Big whoop. Most players outside of Miguel Sano can. The question is whether he can play OF (including hitting) better than anyone besides Buxton and Jenkins. If not, he's not worthy of starting out there.

There's a lot wrong here,, but namely Houston and Culpepper do not project to be stars and certainly don't have a 50% chance to be a star. Buxton is a star, I think you'd agree. Jenkins has a chance, a decent chance. But assuming a star is someone who is putting up Buxton's numbers (maybe adjusted for position) or close, I'm not sure even Jenkins' has more than a 35% chance. You take the best player, regardless of position. I have two names on my list, and you don't want them because they're shortstops (meaning, by the way, they can player everything but pitcher/catcher, probably).

Seriously, please stop it. If your goal is to be a serious journalist, please stop it.

Not sure what the Yankees would give, but I can only imagine they'd prefer to give up an over-hyped one, one of their "prospect" pitchers or one of their hitters currently benefitting from High A Hudson Valley. I'd guess there'd be other teams interested, hopefully increasing the value coming back.

An owner who doesn't know what he's talking about and a GM who's too shy to tell him to keep out of it.

Yeah, but what are the odds the Twins are one of them?

I've been doing a lot of prospecting, and this list looks very weak compared to other teams'. Foremost, Milwaukee's prospects are absolutely sick. All throughout. Surprisingly, though, the Pirates have started to get their sh-- together. If I were the Twins, I'd trade Joe Ryan to the Pirates for Johan De Los Santos and Esmerlyn Valdez. The former is a name you'll all soon know, he's 17 until next month and is crushing the FCL and now is at low A Bradenton.

I would think it would be time to get Jenkins in a car, put it on cruise control, and head it toward St. Paul.

Given that Callis just provided the six permutations of the three consensus top names, this statement couldn't make less sense. Yeah, we know the Twins are getting one of the top three if those three guys are taken first.