Reptevia

Fantasy fan fiction. Thanks for making me worry about Buxton’s Achilles!

I’m thinking 12-16.

Oh please. To pretend that this team is one piece away from even competing in this division is pure fantasy. I’ll be listening, but if everything falls into place, they finish 2nd. Prolonged injuries to any of Buxton, Correa or Polanco, and the season is probably lost. Beyond those three, there are legitimate question marks at every other position. They are either hoping for vast improvement and health or no regression to players who had a modicum of success in their short careers.

Main takeaway: Twins have 3 above average players on offense. They are going to have a really hard time scoring.

MLB will broadcast games over their app, but the draconian blackout rules will remain.

Turns out that spending billions of dollars for rights, but then only broadcasting to a small percentage of the fan base was a bad business plan. Who knew?

If seven things fall into place, it could be a good year! Unfortunately, that list is far from comprehensive. It’s probably more like 12 things…That said, Go Twins! I’ll be listening…

Predictions: Gallo will barely play 1b if at all. Kepler will barely play CF if at all. Taylor is the starting CF, and will end up with the most innings played there by a WIDE margin. I understand everyone is super excited by the OF defense. Yea! It’s great to have, but only really wins close games. That means we need outstanding pitching because this team will struggle to score runs. [Gordon…”was not that good last year, people seem to be missing that. He was a 1.6 WAR player. He’s a bench guy.”. And that was good for like 4th best on the team? The history suggests Buxton will regress to less than the number of games he played last year. Despite all the rainbows and unicorn kisses on here, this is not a very good team. I’m thinking somewhere around 70-80 wins, and that’s because I’m optimistic.

“No team can survive throwing seven left-handed first basemen out into the field, no matter how well they hit the ball.” Also, no team can survive with Jeffers, Kepler and Gallo in the same lineup. Three automatic outs is too much of a lead to give up unless we win a lot of 2-1 games. Yes, we have FB pitchers. Unfortunately, a lot of the flys aren’t catchable when they’re in the stands. It should be an interesting real world/real time demonstration of how much defensive WAR is really worth.

“I agree that Polanco is probably the key position player this season (assuming Buxton is playing 50% of the games in CF and 30% games as DH). This team offensively could very well go the way of Polanco’s season.” This team as is will have a lot of difficulty scoring runs. Remember, Buxton played 1/3 of CF games last year! Your projections are unrealistic and more than pie in the sky.

I think you spelled Gallo, Kepler, Kiriloff, Larnach and the pitching staff wrong. There really isn’t a player on the team that doesn’t need to prove something this year.

He has less value than Taylor at this point. Better to see what he’s worth at deadline.

I think it’s a decent flyer to take-even at this price. Best case: Gallo=Prospects.

So, if last year is indicative of the plan, Buxton will play about 1/3 of CF games. Taylor plays almost all of the other 2/3. Taylor is the starting CF. It’s ok to say it out loud.

Given the history of this FO, yes. Yes indeed.

Buxton will play CF when Taylor isn’t available or the matchup dictates. I don’t think Gallo will see any time in CF. Kepler only played 9 innings in CF last year. The depth chart is Taylor/Buxton/Gordon.

They are not the same player, and it’s not really close. The Twins needed a starting CF, and last year made it clear Celestino wasn’t ready physically or emotionally. I hope he has a great year and leads AAA in all categories. He should not step foot in the Bigs this year.

Not sure buying rights for untold Billions of dollars and then using those rights to broadcast games to a small percentage of fans was a good business plan. I said it then, and it’s turning out to be true. Some serious mismanagement going on with Bally’s.

These things don’t happen in a vacuum. If Kepler would have made it apparent he could be the starting CF (he played 9 innings there last year), it could have been him. This also infers that last years Buxton strategy will continue. Celestino can go to AAA where he belongs. However, Gallo/Taylor/Kepler all playing at once would be a black hole in the lineup…

Let’s base it on an even larger sample size- his entire career. He’s basically had one good year that was based largely on the live ball (2019). His OPS and OPS+ have declined every year since 2019.

Through all the talk about adding a RH bat, (preferably an OF) no one is really addressing a serious problem. Buxton played 57 games in CF last year. (And the confetti hasn’t hit the floor yet as to what a great year he had). Unfortunately, that is about only 1/3 of the games. We need someone to “fill in” for 2/3 of the games? No. The Twins desperately need a starting CF! Celestino is not MLB ready and is very young and shouldn’t be expected to be counted on to be a starter. Gordon Will likely be the starter in LF, so…go get someone who can handle playing 2/3 of the CF starts.

Try Kepler at 1st??? That negates the only value he has. Might as well play Sano there.

Let’s see, based on last year… 1. Buxton (with understanding- no stealing!) 2. Correa 3. Gallo LF (His bat is his calling card!) 4. Kepler (Metrics!) 5. Polanco 6. Farmer 7. whomever plays 1st 8. whomever is DHing 9. Catcher

“When browsing through Kepler’s Baseball Savant page, you get smacked in the face with his surprisingly good 2022 Percentile Rankings. What conclusions can we draw from this?” We can conclude that modern metrics that only attempt to measure speculative things are pretty much useless. Should one base projections based on facts (past performance ) or should decisions be based on basically hopes and wishes? Logic dictates that wise decisions are based on facts, not speculation.

Terrible analogy. Duran showed us his floor last year. This is Arraez’ ceiling.