LaMonte Wade Jr.'s Giants Performance

[purplesoldier4u]

4 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

They dealt a 4th OF for a guy.....they chose the wrong guy. But man, people act like they gave up a great player.....I too preferred Wade over Cave, but the hope was NEITHER would play much this year.....

People* whine the farm system isn't good, then whine when they deal from depth and are wrong. People whine they have a 40 man crunch, deal a backup OF, and then get mad when he's good for another team. 

*not calling out the OP here, but this site.......and a HUGE swath of users who somehow want a great farm system, but to never trade a guy they like.

Dave St. Peter?

[bean5302]

The reality is the Twins replaced LaMont Wade with Kyle Garlick. They didn't make the decision based on a roster crunch or Jake Cave. The Twins had no faith in Wade to be a legitimate option at the MLB level so about a week after they traded Wade, the Twins signed Garlick, who is another corner-only outfielder with 1 option. The biggest difference between Wade and Garlick is Wade has plate discipline vs. Garlick having power.

[Otto von Ballpark]

9 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

The biggest difference between Wade and Garlick is Wade has plate discipline vs. Garlick having power.

Also, Garlick hits RH and Wade LH.

As it was, 2/3 of our opening day starting outfield was left-handed, as was our 4th OF / backup CF, plus our top two near-ready OF/1B prospects.

[nicksaviking]

I mean I completely get the trade. The Twins had so many corner bats; they already had Kepler locked up long term with Kirilloff, Larnach, Rooker, Wade, Blankenhorn, Celestino, Sabata, Wallner and of course everyone likes to talk about Baddoo. Wade had shown next to nothing since 2017 other than a good eye at the plate, he was easy to pick out of that group as expendable. The problem isn't that they traded Wade; they had waaaaaay too many corner bats, something needed to be done.

The problem is that conventional prospect rankings say that you have to keep Kirilloff and Larnach and anyone who is the "elite" prospect, when in all actuality, the odds that the "elite" guys will pan out are probably only minimally more than the guys who are only the lower level prospects. If you have a glut of prospects, trade the TOP guys for the positions of need and trust that the quantity of prospects will end up producing what you want. The odds that your top prospect will actually be the best prospect is probably pretty low. 

I mean, what kind of pitching might have the Twins have got back last winter if the team had instead moved Kirilloff or Larnach? Likely something pretty exciting.

 

[ToddlerHarmon]

8 hours ago, jmlease1 said:

Look, this sucks for the Twins and is great for the Giants (Wade has always seemed like a great dude, so good for him).

but could someone tell me where in Wade's history anyone saw this kind of slugging coming? In his limited time in the majors with the twins he showed a discerning eye at the plate and no power to speak of. In his whole minor league career his SLG % was .409. outside of rookie ball and a short stint in A+, he's never hit for power. Literally never. His value at the plate before this season was primarily tied to his ability to get on base (decent average plus plenty of walks). If his SLG% this year was around his career average we'd be saying "Hey, good luck LaMonte but you're who we thought you were".

The retro-grade on the trade right now sucks, but I don't recall a single person saying LaMonte Wade was going to turn into a power hitter. The organization kept Cave over Wade because they saw them as being pretty comparable value overall as hitter but were more comfortable with Cave in CF. (Seeing as how SF has only had Wade out in CF twice this season, I suspect they don't see him as anything other than an emergency option out there too.) And literally out of nowhere Wade is slugging .581. If he slugs .415 does anyone care?

there's also zero question that Cave was better than Wade in 2019. 2020 was a down year for Cave, but Wade didn't show a lot in his limited chances with the Twins either. So betting that the guy with 2 years as a quality 4th OF would bounce back after a weird pandemic year was a pretty reasonable bet at the time. If the twins had said "We're keeping Wade over Cave because we think he's about to have a big power explosion" everyone here would have laughed at them. everyone.

I did not expect the power, but I will raise my hand as expressing disappointment at the time with the Twins jettisoning reliable OBP for the free-swinging Cave.

Either the player evaluation or player development processes for the Twins are broken to have failed this many times in the last couple years. Not just who was dropped, but who was acquired. So far, their best acquisitions off the top of my head (Cruz, Donaldson, Maeda, Pineda, Odorizzi, Hill, Romo, Clippard) all had track records of success elsewhere.

[Dodecahedron]

15 hours ago, jmlease1 said:

If the twins had said "We're keeping Wade over Cave because we think he's about to have a big power explosion" everyone here would have laughed at them. everyone.

Although Wade was never on my radar, I always thought Cave was never going to pan out.  So no, not everyone would have laughed.

We also have no idea if anyone else wanted Cave, so there's that.  It's possible the Twins tried to unload Cave and keep Wade.

[Brock Beauchamp]

16 hours ago, ashbury said:

They've even managed to turn hits into misses. Waiver acquisition Matt Wisler giving them a magical unicorn season, and them saying "nah, he's not that good" and releasing him, stands out for me - I think we could have found a use for a guy with an OPS-against of .706 in 2021 even if he isn't magical this time around.

The evaluation process is looking pretty iffy to me.

It's possible this organization has just rolled natural ones an inordinate number of times over the past 12 months but with every passing day and another mistake piles up, that becomes increasingly unlikely.

Not impossible, but very unlikely.

[TwinsDr2021]

13 hours ago, nicksaviking said:

I mean, what kind of pitching might have the Twins have got back last winter if the team had instead moved Kirilloff or Larnach? Likely something pretty exciting.

 

I for one was saying trade one of those two guys for pitching (I mean I wasn't commenting on the site last year but I was reading it and telling every friend that would listen)

The had a huge abundance* of left handed corner outfielders. I was a big fan of Baddoo, but in no way seen this coming this early in his career. The scouting reports said he could be this kind of player further down the line.

*They had 7 (Rosario, Kepler, Wade, Cave, Laranch, AK and Baddoo), so far Rosario left for nothing, Baddoo got taken for nothing, Wade was traded (I liked this) for nothing, Cave will probably go for nothing at the end of the year, Laranch and AK have played well enough to be considered next year, but are still not guarantees, which leaves Kepler. That IMO isn't a good job of roster management.

 

[wsnydes]

The other consideration that I have not seen mentioned is that Cave had more MLB experience.  For a team that was expected to be a serious contender, keeping proven players (even of Cave's caliber) over unproven ones makes sense.  

[jmlease1]

1 hour ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

I for one was saying trade one of those two guys for pitching (I mean I wasn't commenting on the site last year but I was reading it and telling every friend that would listen)

The had a huge abundance* of left handed corner outfielders. I was a big fan of Baddoo, but in no way seen this coming this early in his career. The scouting reports said he could be this kind of player further down the line.

*They had 7 (Rosario, Kepler, Wade, Cave, Laranch, AK and Baddoo), so far Rosario left for nothing, Baddoo got taken for nothing, Wade was traded (I liked this) for nothing, Cave will probably go for nothing at the end of the year, Laranch and AK have played well enough to be considered next year, but are still not guarantees, which leaves Kepler. That IMO isn't a good job of roster management.

 

Thank goodness we let Rosario go. As fun as Eddie was and was a decent enough player for us, he's been pretty poor for Cleveland. For all that Larnach has really struggled to adjust to the constant flow of off-speed stuff, he's been at least as good as Rosario at a fraction of the cost and with substantially more upside. And even with the injuries that have clearly reduced his defensive capacity, Kepler has been better than Rosario.

Baddoo is something of a CF; he wouldn't have gotten taken in the Rule 5 draft at all if he no ability to play there (even if he plays it rather like Jake Cave...adequately at best, poorly at worst). Not sure he really fits in here. A lot of people liked him, but it took a team overtly not trying to win at all this season that also had some deep Twins connections for him to get taken in the Rule 5 draft.

Kirilloff looks great when healthy, and pretty solid when fighting an injury. Larnach has a little ways to go but has terrific upside. We also still have Wallner coming along in the minors, who has shown tremendous power in high-A and will certainly be in AA next season, even with a lot of Ks. Even if Cave leaves, we still have pretty good organizational depth in LH corner OFs...a position that's pretty easy to fill at the MLB level for $5-8M.

This year has sucked because almost every bet the FO made has come up craps this year. (they were right no one would pick Jose Miranda. They were right to let Eddie Rosario go. But there have been a lot of misses this year, especially on the pitching side) The previous two years had a lot of success. Is the failures this year because of arrogance and stupidity, a failure of process? Or is it literally terrible luck? That's a really hard call, IMHO, and shouldn't be judged solely through the lens and emotion of a rotten season.

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

Wade was also left off the playoff roster for the Houston series, in favor of Kirilloff.

Kirilloff needed to be added to the 40-man, and Sean Poppen was the DFA casualty. Not promising Poppen will be great but I was very surprised as i assumed Poppen was ahead of a half dozen other guys.

[Jocko]

That is the right question to ask. Since the trade of HOF'er Big Papi there are dozens of Twins players who never excelled in the Twins system, but went on to perform much better in another system. There is a fatal flaw in the Twins organization that fails to develop players to be the best they can be. If I was someone like Jose Berrios, I would want out as soon as possible. In fact, if I was a Twins player anywhere in their system, I would want out.  The Twins don't need to clean house in the roster. They need to clean house in their organization from bottom to top. 

[Betterbaseballnut]

I think the front office has done nothing real good for the Twins. With out Ryans players we would have been the White Sox and Tigers in total rebuild mode for three years instead of division champs. The hitting Austudillo for Gordon in the 10th inning leaving Willians to run if he didnt drive in a run was the worst piece of baseball managing Ive ever seen. If Kenta gets hurt with the pitching we have at deadline we dont win ten more games. Broom Falvey, Levine, and Baldelli and lets get baseball people like all the other teams in our division and at least compete again.