LylesCrocodiles

Marwins career ops is better than Buxton Schoop and Kepler. Almost the same as Polanco. And a little behind Rosario. So he should make the team better most days when he is in the lineup. And I’m guessing he starts 4 days a week all over the diamand.

I love the González move. I’m guessing Duffey will be the 40 man move. And I prefer to keep Adrianza over Cave on the bench. Cave will not play much with González on the roster. And I’d rather have the defensively flexibility with Adrianza over the pop Cave provides.

There is no disputing the injury history. But if they are ever going to be viable major leaguers they will eventually have to play 120-140+ games. And when that happens it will be interesting to see what kinds of numbers they put up. Twins fans have been waiting to see this for a few years now. Hopefully they are both worth the wait.

The zips projections for Buxton are a bit of an improvement over his career averages. It seems hard to have his numbers get worse. Sanos projections are better than the numbers he put up last year. But not as good as his career averages (244/336/477). Zips is only projecting 403 and 411 ABs for them. So about 110 games? The front office has to be counting on more than this because those projections aren’t anywhere close to “players you build around” numbers.

For clarification I don’t see Gordon doing anything for the twins in 2019. He’s still a fine prospect. But if he’s contributing this year something bad has happened to Polanco or Schoop.

Would anyone be surprised if Schoop completely failed? He seems a safe bet to be a league average player. And if he returns to form it will be a heck of a signing. I’m not giving up on Gordon but I have zero expectations for him in 2019. If he plays a significant role it means Polanco and or Schoop are hurt. Or Gordon has played his way past one of them on the depth chart. I’m not seeing that happen

Kimbrel would change my perception of the staff in general. He’s a 70 inning Ace. I would take Norris. He is a Parker-esce arm who has some closing experience. Otherwise I want to see the young kids get there chance.

A few years ago I read an article that broke down a decades worth of top 100 MLB prospect lists. Essentially half fail (never make it to the bigs or end up below average). This is the cream of the crop not some squads top 20 or 30 guys. The Twins will be lucky if 2 of their top 3 hit. After that it will be up to the front office to determine which of their prospects have what it takes to help at the big league level down the road. To simply stockpile “talent” is the easy part of this process. But that alone won’t get the Twins anywhere. They need to identify their iffy prospects and try to maximize their value. If that means trading a few lower level guys with upside for ML or close to ML talent Im all for it. There are so many ways to restock the talent pool each year. But there are only so many ways to acquire guys who can help the big club. I will be disappointed if the FO just sits around waiting for their more marginal prospects to develop into “all-star” caliber players. Sure guys like Baddoo Javier Severino ect have high ceilings but I would to willing to part with any of this guys for proven ML help. To just stock the talent pool and hope it carries you to a world championship is a poor plan. Unless this organization starts to spends more $$ to keep or add ML talent they will be at the mercy of the biggest variable in the game - banking on the ceilings of rookie and A ball prospects. Good luck with that.

If the Twins don’t get 50 starts from these two at their career norms I can’t see 2019 being a succesful season for the Twins. That means Jake MUST be better and Pineda MUST stay healthy.

I will start with the obvious. Early in their careers Polanco has been a better hitter than Kepler. And at a more valuable position defensively. We can all envision better future results for Kepler because he has the tools to be a quality ML right fielder. But I would be shocked if Kepler ends up being more valuable than Polanco the next 5 years. And to pay Kepler $10M more? To me the Polanco deal makes a lot of sense. Kepler? Let’s see if he can really be a .275/.350/.450 guy (he’s a career .730 career ops) before we get real excited about him being a Twin for the next 7 years