Chris Paddack UCL

[flpmagikat]

idk, I was pretty ambvilant about this trade when it happened. No one knew how Rodgers really looked after the surgery. twins guessed wrong about injured guys. id say bad trade, even without hindsight. with it its just unlucky. 

[flpmagikat]

I mean, yeah the twins have played well, no doubt. Rogers would also easily replace like half the guys on our active roster. we lost a good one

[jimbo92107]

We learned something from the Chris Paddack situation. Thinking that injections of enhanced blood cells will magically repair a torn UCL is futile. He tore it again anyway, just a few months later. Sometimes a bandage is what a player needs, and the platelet injections act like a really good bandage. Unfortunately, the underlying tendon damage was still there, and Paddack's sudden acceleration when he pitches pretty much guaranteed that he would make the damage worse. 

Hey, it may even be possible to "fix" a UCL with platelets, but maybe it takes years, and maybe the fix isn't good enough to serve a major league pitcher. Throwing a baseball 95 mph is not normal usage. For extreme usage, you fix it with surgery.

[howeda7]

11 hours ago, Riverbrian said:

You clearly place a lot of value in the closer position. 

Is it possible that the front office doesn't have the same valuation? 

10 front offices in baseball this year have purposely chosen committee or co-closer bullpens. 

Call it "fireman" or whatever you want. The bottom-line is that Rogers was our best reliever last year and probably would be this year as well.

 

Bottom-line is that I don't think trading your best reliever on opening day with no viable replacement to add a sixth starter who's at best going to be your #3 was a good move for a team trying to win in 2022.  The injury risk only made it even more questionable. We gambled and lost. Badly.

[Riverbrian]

11 hours ago, howeda7 said:

Call it "fireman" or whatever you want. The bottom-line is that Rogers was our best reliever last year and probably would be this year as well.

 

Bottom-line is that I don't think trading your best reliever on opening day with no viable replacement to add a sixth starter who's at best going to be your #3 was a good move for a team trying to win in 2022.  The injury risk only made it even more questionable. We gambled and lost. Badly.

To support what you are saying... whey you say "to add a sixth starter". You would probably have to consider that Winder was also on the opening day roster as the sixth starter becoming the seventh starter after the trade. Not to mention Griffin Jax and Jhoan Duran with a starting background. 

When you look at it that way... I can see what you are saying. 

The thing is... It's May 12th. We are already relying upon that 7th starter. I also don't believe that this May 12th is any different than any other May 12 when it comes to starting pitching volatility. 

A "#3" "at best" is worth more than that top of the bullpen arm no matter the label you place on it. 

As far as the injury risk, I have to believe that the front office has people who check the odometer and tires and have more information than I do.

But... the injury risk is exactly why you make this trade. Starters go down and they go down a lot and starters are the hardest and most expensive thing to acquire. Paddack going down is just another in long line of the reasons why you have to acquire Paddack in the first place. Pitchers get hurt and Starting Pitching is expensive.

 

[jorgenswest]

A high leverage reliever is always going to see more high leverage plate appearances than a starter. Last year even in Rogers shortened by injury season it was 99 to Paddack’s 50.

This is why the Padres made the deal. Their projection for 2022 improved and the Twins dropped slightly given the uncertainty of their starters. The Twins did improve their team for 2023 and 2024. The analytics say this is a good move. The problem with the analytics is the Twins have Correa for one year. This is the year they should have been all in. Trading your best high leverage arm on opening day is not all in. I was disappointed.

I look forward to 23 and 24 and hope the Twins will pick one of those years to go all in. Paddack needs to be a big part of that push.