Minny505

As Valentine from Tremors said, "Yeah well, your half right." 😜

Then who's at 1B? Santana? Vs RHP? I'd rather give Larnach the opportunity out of the gate. Or do you expect Julien at 1B and Lee at 2B?

I would not be surprised if Larnach ends up leading the team in DH starts in 2024. As it stands right now, he is the best fit in the lineup vs RHP, though likely as the 8/9 hitter.

In trying to recreate the leaderboard I based that original statement on, it looks like you're not wrong about me being wrong. Whoops😳 Appreciate you checking on my work. My Fangraphs filter turned off the positional split at some point while narrowing down all the other factors. His wRC+ as a DH since 2021 is an even 120. I'm now curious where your 129 came from. Is that for his career?

No. Soler is a terrible DH. Since the start of 2021, he has over 1000 PAs as a DH and sports a wRC+ of 97 with an OPS+ of 98. 1000 PAs is not a SSS issue. It's a trend.

Early impressions are hard to buck. Many baseball fans still think the Rockies stadium inflates HRs beyond belief. (That crown goes to the Reds stadium) Many fans still believe UCL surgery for pitchers is a coin-flip to return to form. (It's around 85%, IIRC) Many fans think Jorge Soler is a massively better hitter than Gary Sanchez. (Since the start of 2021, Sanchez trails Soler by only 6 points in OPS+...while playing above-average defense at catcher) Julien may be a below-average defender at second, just like Polanco, but he is no longer a butcher. After another season, he may even be perfectly average.

That bullpen depth is ugly after the top 5. When one of them goes down, it's going to increase the difficulty to win those late and close games. I've been pitching the idea of a trade with the Dbacks*, who are oozing bullpen depth. Their 10th guy is probably better than the Twins 6th guy. They desperately need a backup catcher. Vazquez, plus cash, for one of those RPs, like Kyle Nelson or Miguel Castro, makes a lot of sense for both teams. *I recently relocated to AZ and now host a Dbacks podcast with my 12-year-old son. The Dbacks fanbase has said the Twins would never pull the trigger on a trade like that, saying the Dbacks would have to offer more. I suspect many Twins fans will suggest the Twins need to offer more. That seems like it makes for a perfect trade.

The best and highest payroll teams in MLB sign 10ish guys to MiLB deals every offseason. It's necessary to stock the farm system with reliable veterans.

Those were all MLB deals. The deals referenced here are MiLB contracts only. That means they play at AAA, not MLB. Teams need 20+ pitchers to get thru most seasons. These guys would be option 15-20.

If FO comes down to retaining Polanco OR bringing in a SP like Montgomery, Stroman, Clevinger, or even Paxton or Ryu, I pull the trigger. Ditto if it's a trade for a SP (indirectly). There is no reason to trade him to make room in the infield though. He looks like the primary DH right now, allowing the equal-level-fielding Julien to platoon with the superior fielding Farmer at 2B. But I would like them to trade him if the money saved from his salary is reinvested in the pitching staff.

Simeon Woods Richardson literally had the best Stuff+ rating of all AAA Twins pitchers in 2023 and 10th out of all 1,239 AAA pitchers, Stuff+ is a metric that measures the physical characteristics of a pitch, aka "stuff", then compares results across all pitchers, using a 100 rating as average, the way all + stats do. This kind of pitch modeling is based on the modeling that the majority of front offices use to evaluate pitchers, both how good they truly are and how to optimize them. His gaudy Stuff+ would indicate he is having issues with command, tunneling, sequencing, deception, mix, or any number of things. But the one issue that Simeon Woods Richardson does not seem to have is his stuff. If he succeeds at the game's highest level, it will be precisely because of his incredible stuff, despite his other shortcomings. Below are some resources if you would like to dig deeper into this fascinating, and insider level, pitcher evaluation tool: https://library.fangraphs.com/pitching/stuff-location-and-pitching-primer/

It's 4 years of Duran. I think. Though Fangraphs has it listed as 5 years of team control remaining, which I don't understand. If the Twins still had Pagan/Cologme as their closer and they could get Duran and his 4/5 years of control for Lee, I would do it. I would try to squeeze a bit more out, but I would still do it, due to the depth of Twins infielders under team control at the moment. The exercise is not about trade/surplus value. I suspect Lee and Duran have roughly equal value on the general market (in a trade value exercise I would rank Lee right ahead of Duran). The exercise, however, is about which players, and everything about them, are more likely to help the Twins win the WS. Maybe thru that lens, you still view Lee as more valuable, but I do not. I believe Duran, and what he brings to the Twins, vs Lee, has more value to the team in his role than his replacements in the org. Jenkins is certainly more nuanced. I would not trade him straight up for Duran like I would Lee, but I would if another decent player/prospect was paired with Duran in said theoretical trade.

I respectfully disagree on value measured by "Which current players in the organization are most indispensable to fulfilling the vision of building a champion?". First, look at the top closers out there, their contracts, and their age: Edwin Diaz, Kenley Jansen, Raisel Iglesias, Liam Hendricks & Josh Hader. Duran, certainly not at the top of the best closers in MLB, belongs in that conversation. His age and contract relative to his Closer peers is quite envious. And as we've been witness to, leading up to the breakthru of Duran, the next best option has been terrible enough to effectively tank the season for the rest of the team. Lee, who I suspect has relatively equal general market trade value to Duran (FWIW, BTV agrees), is somewhat redundant on this roster with Julien, Lewis, Correa, Kirilloff, Polanco, and even Miranda, able to fill the same roles at roughly equal production and performance, based on 50% outcome. On a pure trade value exercise I would rank Lee one spot ahead of Duran, but in terms of value to the Twins winning a 'ship, I rank Duran higher. Similar to Lee, Jenkins has more general trade value than Duran. But his distance from the majors, and his 50% outcome, make him more dispensible to hoisting that coveted piece of metal. As for Jeffers, he drastically outperformed his xwOBA in 2023. He's definitely a Top 10 catcher, arguably in the Top 5, but ditto Duran and Closer. Both have four years of team control, though Jeffers is a Super 2. Again, for the Twins, I deem Duran more indispensable in helping the Twins be the only playoff team finishing their season with a win at some point in the future. It's all relatively subjective though and a really brilliant exercise, so I appreciate you getting the ball rolling on these super fun discussions!

4-5 might be aggressive, but 7 is not. I would absolutely have him ahead of Buxton and Jeffers. Possibly Lee and Jenkins. Lee and Jenkins are the type of prospects you trade for a pitcher like Duran...and the Twins need Duran more. Buxton is amazing when healthy, and if he is healthy, he's a bonus. He is not a building block. I can't consider that type of player asset as more valuable than Duran who is a building block. Catcher is the RP of the lineup. They are the most volatile and oft-injured players in said lineup. For the time being, the Twins still have Vasquez and Camargo on the roster, making Jeffers not nearly as valuable to the current iteration of the Twins.

Kepler is the most obvious regression candidate on the team. He might be so obvious that no one on the trade market wants to pay for his 2023 production level. Jeffers and Castro seem the least likely to regress based on age and natural progression, yet they both dramatically overperformed their xwOBA in 2023, so neither would be a surprise. Nobody should expect Stewart to put up a 2.21 FIP again. That's just natural volatility for the IP sample size. Anything under 4 would be a continued improvement based on his age and career numbers, regardless of his SSS performance in 2023.