One Prospect the Twins Should Be Willing to Trade

3 hours ago, Seth Stohs said:

Dude has an OPS over .900 in St. Paul too and leads minor league baseball in home runs... Yes, he needs to find a way to make more contact, but when he does, it's usually hard contact. 

Also, I would love for him to become Adam Dunn... 

I agree, the power is legit...but guys who hit .240 in AAA usually hit like .200 in MLB.

If he actually becomes Adam Dunn, that would be great...but right now he looks more like he'd be 2013 Adam Dunn rather than prime Adam Dunn...who was a guy who hit .304 in his 4 minor league seasons. Through his age 26 season, Dunn had 3000 MLB PAs. Rooker has 51 so far. It's feeling a stretch to say he's even gonna be that kind of guy, unfortunately.

Rooker reminds me of Brian Buchanan and I assume he'll have a similar career where he hangs on for a few years, never getting consistent at bats, hits lefties decently, struggles vs righties and is an afterthought in five years.

Hopefully I'm wrong and he is Nelson Cruz.

Arraez. Sano, Larnach and Rooker are all likrly candidates for a potential Twins DH by Committee, while backing up other positions.  Miguel Sano, however, may never be able to cut down his strike-outs.  So, the Twins need another right handed bat to be ready if Miggy doesn’t cut it next year.  Rooker is the most likely player in waiting.   Gotta keep him. 

2 hours ago, jorgenswest said:

How do you measure working pitchers? Batters that make a lot of contact? Batters that see a greater number of pitches? Batters that see a lot of strikes? Balls?

keeping the ball in play, fouling off tough pitches, not chasing balls out of the zone.  Not making the pitchers job easy.  Twins have one in Arreaz and have a few more that are good.

1 minute ago, beckmt said:

keeping the ball in play, fouling off tough pitches, not chasing balls out of the zone.  Not making the pitchers job easy.  Twins have one in Arreaz and have a few more that are good

Arraez does see more pitches than any other Twin batter. Sano is right behind him in second spot. That number is virtually the same, Arraez has a high contact rate up there with Astudillo. Perhaps it is the combination of the two. They are both more middle of the Twins pack on swinging at pitches out of the zone.

Sano does see a lot of pitches which is a burden on the pitch count. He probably doesn’t swing early enough in the count and maybe more early aggression is part of the solution.

Right now he is nothing more than Pie-in-the-Sky till he improves vastly.

3 hours ago, Dodecahedron said:

Ah well.  The Rangers ended up paying the beyond-reasonable portion A-Rod's salary forever once they traded him off.  The Twins can probably figure out that number for Sano and let him go.  It won't hurt as much as that A-Rod thing hurt the Rangers.

It wasn't about Rodriguez not being worth his contract. Rodriguez was the best player in baseball at the time and he was worth his contract.

The Yankees just couldn't really afford to take on the whole contract and the Rangers weren't going to eat a significant part of the contract without big compensation so the Yankees, shockingly, sent a great young player named Alfonso Soriano. Soriano was already a 2 time All Star coming off consecutive 5 WAR seasons at age 28 and he had 3 years of team control left. That's why the Rangers were willing to pick up $67MM.

5 hours ago, Dodecahedron said:

Trade him for three Marv Throneberry baseball cards.

Or...I'll up the ante---------four Bombo Rivera baseball cards with two Paul Thormodsgard cards thrown in as a sweetener

I would trade Rooker in a heartbeat.  Yes, he has power but I would rather the Twins go the way of a rotating DH the rest of this year and next year, utilizing Arraez, Garver, Sano, etc.   Rooker looks like he would mostly provide horrible fielding along with lots of K’s and unproductive at bats at the major league level.

Sano had his turn and is a bust. Give Rooker a decent look and go from there. 
Does Larnach seem disinterested to you? Poor base running, lack of basic fundamentals in the outfield, Sano-like Ks. Disappointed in him.

53 minutes ago, Captain18s said:

Sano had his turn and is a bust. Give Rooker a decent look and go from there. 

We define bust very differently, Sano’s .489 slugging percentage as a Twin is listed second all time behind Harmon Killebrew. Using OPS+ to adjust for hitting context he ranks 19th just behind Justin Morneau. The data from baseball reference includes the time the franchise was in Washington.

I would be very reluctant to sell low on Sano. I would bet on the upside we have seen previously over Rooker’s upside.

You might get a low A guy with moderate upside trading him. Let Rooker play the next 65 games and get a real feel for how he has adjusted to MLB pitching. He is probably more of a 4A player, but we have the opening to see what he can do.

Side note, sure hope there are a few studs available in the draft next year and this one year dip helps us long-term

Don't forget, in addition to Sano and Rooker, the Twins have Sabato coming as well.

11 hours ago, darwin22 said:

Or...I'll up the ante---------four Bombo Rivera baseball cards with two Paul Thormodsgard cards thrown in as a sweetener

Throw in a Hosken Powell, a Dan Ford, and Wille Norwood's glove and we're there.

1 hour ago, jorgenswest said:

We define bust very differently, Sano’s .489 slugging percentage as a Twin is listed second all time behind Harmon Killebrew. Using OPS+ to adjust for hitting context he ranks 19th just behind Justin Morneau. The data from baseball reference includes the time the franchise was in Washington.

I would be very reluctant to sell low on Sano. I would bet on the upside we have seen previously over Rooker’s upside.

I was a critic of Sano when most here did not like him criticized.  However, I have to agree he is far from a bust.   His career wRC+ is 116 which is 7 point s above the league average for 1B.  Even his last 100 ABs produced a wRC+ of 111.  I would trade him if someone else wanted to bet on his resurgence.  In other words, we got something for him but I would not just dump him during a lost season.  That males no sense.

1 hour ago, TopGunn#22 said:

Don't forget, in addition to Sano and Rooker, the Twins have Sabato coming as well.

Absolutely hoping Sabato is a key part of our future, but at his current rate (see below) he's destined, barring a huge 2nd half, to be back in Low A next year.

Other than a strong OBP (.372) over 69 games, Sabato has struggled immensely as evidenced by the following:

Avg:  .187

HR: 4

RBI 26

SLG %: .294

K rate:  40% (94/235 ABs)

Not what I was expecting from our 1st round (27th overall selection) in 2020 amateur draft.

I have no problems trading Rooker, but in order to get meaningful value, he's going to have to play at the MLB level and prove his MiLB numbers aren't a mirage at the MLB level.

Sano is super hard to quantify. He's had a couple great seasons, a good season, a couple weak seasons and a couple outright clunkers. The weak and clunkers make up 4 of his past 5 seasons. It's who Sano is today that has his playing status in 2022 in question. Had Sano committed to being prepared to play 3rd base at a high level, I sincerely doubt we'd be having any such conversation right now. There's no doubt in my mind that Sano could be in the same category as Bryant and Machado. Unfortunately, Sano didn't have that commitment and as a player who cannot play a defensive position outside 1B, all his value is built into his bat making his leash very short when it comes to struggles at the plate.

20 hours ago, jmlease1 said:

I agree, the power is legit...but guys who hit .240 in AAA usually hit like .200 in MLB.

If he actually becomes Adam Dunn, that would be great...but right now he looks more like he'd be 2013 Adam Dunn rather than prime Adam Dunn...who was a guy who hit .304 in his 4 minor league seasons. Through his age 26 season, Dunn had 3000 MLB PAs. Rooker has 51 so far. It's feeling a stretch to say he's even gonna be that kind of guy, unfortunately.

Trade him to Milwaukee as the next Rob Deer!

6 hours ago, TopGunn#22 said:

Don't forget, in addition to Sano and Rooker, the Twins have Sabato coming as well.

Wallner is a similar hitter and is further up the pipeline. 

Trading him is nuts. It's a free lotto ticket. Let the kid play. 

We will get zero in return for trading him...ZERO!

I would not want to trade Rooker - 23 home runs on the season, strong walk rate and super impressively hit titanic 3rd deck home runs in back to back games this week. I’d play him regularly the rest of the season and then re-evaluate.

On 7/24/2021 at 8:24 AM, Captain18s said:

Sano had his turn and is a bust. Give Rooker a decent look and go from there. 
Does Larnach seem disinterested to you? Poor base running, lack of basic fundamentals in the outfield, Sano-like Ks. Disappointed in him.

I think he’s just struggling to adjust to a very quick adjustment pitchers have made to him in throwing a high percentage of sliders and breaking balls. I think he’ll fight through it eventually and be a star. At least I hope so.

On 7/23/2021 at 7:09 PM, jmlease1 said:

I agree, the power is legit...but guys who hit .240 in AAA usually hit like .200 in MLB.

If he actually becomes Adam Dunn, that would be great...but right now he looks more like he'd be 2013 Adam Dunn rather than prime Adam Dunn...who was a guy who hit .304 in his 4 minor league seasons. Through his age 26 season, Dunn had 3000 MLB PAs. Rooker has 51 so far. It's feeling a stretch to say he's even gonna be that kind of guy, unfortunately.

When as a Twins fan, I was following the Toledo Mud Hens, when Kirby Puckett was called up he was hitting around .240 as I recall.

34 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

I support moving prospects, but how about instead we start dealing from the top of the deck? You get next to nothing when you move guys like LaMonte Wade. But as Wade and Baddoo have shown, the chances that the corner bats at the top of everyone's wish list end up being better than the guys at the bottom, are probably fairly small. Rooker for a Smeltzer type?  Why?

How about a Larnach or Kirilloff for something  more substantial?

Teams are stringently avoiding this practice.  Do you know something they don't.  I would be interested to hear why we should follow a practice the top teams have clearly avoided. 

2 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

Maybe because what the Twins have been doing isn't working?

That's a pretty bizarre take though. Teams have been trading known prospects for ever. Graterol for Meada seems like it was a pretty good deal for the Twins. They got next to nothing out of moving the "lower" tiered guys like Wade, Jaylin Davis or Nick Anderson.

Are you saying there is not a significant trend away from trading top prospects?  I most certainly am not saying there are not deals to be made but I don't consider and Kirilloff to be equivalent prospects.  I find it bizarre that you are not aware of the strong preference of other teams to not part with these assets.  What is the basis for your support of practices that are being abandoned by other teams?

Perhaps more to the point I think trading away a player that profiles like Kirilloff, including years of control for a team with as many holes as this one has would be gross incompetence.   Maybe the Twins won't be able to get a reasonable offer for Berrios and he will stay.  However, you are going to be disappointed if they get a decent offer.  No competent executive is going to make 2022 their Alamo as you  defined it in an earlier post.  You have the privilege of being indifferent to the long-term.  The FO is responsible for the long-term health of the organization and they are going to manage assets accordingly.

I see a lot less criticism of Rooker lately, but I wonder why? Maybe because in just 6 games he's hit for .348/.444/.826 OPS 1.271 and that tiny sample has now pushed him to an above average MLB bat for the season at OPS+ 113? I mean, this isn't going to continue, but he's also walked 11% while striking out only 19%.

If Rooker puts together a good run down the stretch, it would be hard to argue against his long term potential and it will be, yet again, another strike against the front office for not recognizing existing talent.