ashbury

Do they do any kind of observance at Target Field the day they load up the trucks and send them on their way to Florida? Truck Day at Fenway is always a nice little get-together, low-key but fun for the dedicated fan looking for a way to welcome Spring in Beantown, and the team's marketing folks know their stuff and play along a little bit that morning each year.

Not to mention that no study has ever turned up that kind of effect on run-scoring just from batting order. (Maybe if compared to batting the pitcher leadoff, your light-hitting catcher second, and your rangey shortstop at cleanup.) On top of that, to get 6-9 wins from the offensive side of the equation means something like 60-90 additional runs are needed over the course of the season, because no team is capable of inserting exactly the right number of "clutch" runs at just the right moment, on any kind of consistent basis. You're talking about elevating the Twins to one of the top offenses in all of MLB, instead of right around league-average where they were, just from slotting Kepler in the precisely optimal spot in the lineup? That's simply not a reasonable expectation. 6-9 runs? Sure. Maybe. That might have gotten them to 79-83 for their season's W-L.

Maybe one would reach that conclusion by looking at ERA, but that's a dangerous stat for any reliever. All stats for relievers will be small-sample, but IMO looking at the components that lead to runs scored, for example with OPS-against, is better, and from that I note that Pagan's July-October numbers were below average relative to MLB as a whole, just as his first half was. His last month+ looked good but that followed a rather putrid August so (again on SSS grounds) I'm reluctant to let a 9-game blip (with low BABIP) convince me he suddenly turned things around once and for all. Hoping for the best, given that we seem to be committed to the guy to start the season.

No bullpen is going to be composed of 8 Mariano Riveras. Still, when you go into a season thinking that the key to a particular reliever's success is how he's managed in order to dodge the big bats with the game on the line, he's a pretty good candidate for replacement if at all possible.

What's your guess?

Yes to the latter, and therefore I think your question answers itself. (Also, the subject line of the post.)

To use WAR as a quick-and-dirty measure: Carew racked up a no-brainer Hall of Fame total of 81 wins above replacement in his career. This can be broken into 64 WAR in his 12 years with the Twins and "only" 17 WAR (pffff) in 8 years with the Angels. Even if he had retired rather than accept the trade, he'd have had a strong HoF case (50 is commonly thought to be where you have to at least give strong consideration). And that total of 64 still leads all Twins hitters careerwise - yes, edging out the Killer. No need to factor in his Angels career at all. I wouldn't use WAR as the be-all and end-all for such discussions, because the player's character can and should play a part, but it gives me comfort when looking at Carew's qualifications here. I don't see where debate is possible concerning Carew as top-4 Twin at minimum. Not that anybody cares but I actually prefer Wins Above Average on b-r.com to basic WAR when the subject is MVP-level greatness, and the OP's choice of 4 happens to correspond to the top 4 in career WAA. You know who happens to be #5? You probably won't guess. Chuck Knoblauch. Chuck's 7 years with the Twins really packed a punch. Nobody's putting him on any mountains, though - you want your Rushmore to be guys you love. Some will, some won't. We're lucky the real Mount Rushmore doesn't have Five Stone Faces, or we'd have something really debatable.

I don't blame your reaction. Going from the date stamp, my post was close to bedtime and I was evidently in too big a hurry to click "submit reply." Let me try again to give some substance to support the apparent bland post. I look at this bullpen and ask the FO, "really? You're good with this? No pieces that could be upgraded? None at all?" Obviously every player on the roster is there because of a judgment (or call it a bet) the FO has made. But it's as if every bullpen candidate reflects a bet made last year or last off-season, at the trading deadline or earlier, and seemingly hasn't been revisited. That's not the case with the position players. Gio Urshela was, to all intents and purposes, replaced by Kyle Farmer. Gary Sanchez, by Christian Vazquez. Kyle Garlick by Michael A Taylor. Arraez by... well, a good starting pitcher and by Joey Gallo somehow - wait and see. The starting rotation is a different and more complicated story. But the bullpen? Everybody I see listed as likely for Opening Day was in the organization at the end of last season. Just to be clear, I want a bullpen that will not simply let us limp through a regular season, but is a shut-down pen that inspires confidence heading into a post-season series, hopefully through more than one series as long as I'm wishing. Jhoan Duran is the no-brainer in this collection, by consensus. Thielbar makes me nervous that midnight will strike and he'll turn back into a pumpkin but he does have a defined role and seems able to fill it (or could be replaced pretty easily in-season if need be). I'm not sold on Jax yet as more than "just a guy," but he did construct a good record in 2022 and if it's not a mirage then he might be part of the solution. All the others? The FO evidently thinks "he is capable of more than he's shown," or else more specifically "he will overcome the injury bug," such as Alcala. I don't blame the FO for acquiring Emilio Pagan as a throw-in when they acquired Chris Paddack for Taylor Rogers, if they saw something they liked and something they could thought they could fix. But Pagan followed up a below-par 2021 for the Padres with a similarly uninspiring 2022 with the Twins. Can our FO really believe they will still unlock excellence that past pitching coaches, including now our own, have failed to find? He turns 31 in a couple of months, and probably is who he is. (I'd say he already was who he is, when we got him.) I don't blame the FO for acquiring Jorge Lopez at the deadline, though his record of dominance screamed "small sample size" and I wish they could have paid less to give him a try. He turned 30 a few days ago and I suspect he also "is who he is." Competent reliever? Probably? Shut-down guy? No, I don't think that's what we wound up getting in trade. Trevor Megill? I don't blame... oh please. The fascination with his toolsy stuff should be over with by now. We're his third organization. He's 29. Same comments as the other two above. There are some younger guys who may have ceilings that offer genuine hope of excellence and I'm not going to dive further down this rabbit hole. But the above 3 names are to me clear candidates for improvement, and instead the FO seems to be going with their previous talent assessments that brought these arms into the organization in the first place. Coming back to the theme of placing bets, then, I wanted at first to say that the FO is "doubling down" on their bullpen bets from last off-season and thereafter. But I think that's not quite right - Falvey hasn't said, "Megill? He's our closer!" - and it's more like they are "standing pat" with the hand they hold. They could still discard a few low cards and draw again, but unless there is a move in the works (for when a couple of players can be stashed on the 60-day IL), they've decided not to. I have concerns about the offense too, but if everything comes together this year for a competitive squad, it's the bullpen that could prove to be the weak spot yet again. And I'm perplexed that it's the one area of the roster they didn't address. "Nah, we're good with what we've got" is as much of a bet the FO is placing on their own acumen from a year ago, and/or their vaunted Pitching Pipeline™, as it is on any of the individual cases among these players. I sincerely hope they win this bet, but there's reason to worry they won't.

A-. You neglected to work the word gonfalon into the piece.

Runs are what matter, but ERA isn't a very reliable measure for a reliever. Looking at OPS-against tells more about the guy's game, and Pagan's OPS by month were .796, .767, .819, .718, .936, .568. MLB OPS for the full year was .706. His monthly numbers still amount to "Small Sample Size" but suggest that he was below average all season, in every month except the last, and was actually pretty lucky in May with regard to letting runners score, and he didn't get the same luck* in June, and it kind of evened out those two months. He was putting runners on base and letting them hit for power at about the same rate all season, allowing for fluctuations in the tiny 50-plate appearance samples for batters faced in a given month. September could have been a sign of better things, or might be just fluctuation after a putrid August. Bottom line is that his .776 OPS for the season was worse than the league as a whole, and we want the relievers we count on to be above average. Pagan's problem in 2022 isn't that he was erratic, but that he was consistent. * I don't really believe in luck in sports too much, and usually try for descriptions like "unsustainable," but the overall meaning is close for most purposes.

b-r.com shows a Byron Smith who just turned 24 and pitched for both Boise and Billings in the Pioneer League last year. Sign him up as a lottery ticket type of prospect.

So good. Thanks Seth!

Lots of good ones, but you could have stopped at the first Correa card and still gotten a Like from me.

Betting is exactly the right word. And ultimately, the FO it betting on themselves, and their talent evaluation skills. Like you, I hope they win this overall bet; losing would be costly.

This sums it up for me. I truly don't get the angst I see everywhere about the man. The athletes hire him, not the other way around, and he's not some Svengali who lures players to do things against their own interests. For those who worship at the altar of free markets, he should be their high priest.

Change your passwords, Seth. LEN3 clearly has installed some kind of spyware on your computer!

Nice analysis.

Bringing back the present incarnation of Miguel, which your previous post advocated, does nothing to solve any of this.

It's not 2019 or 2020 or 2021 anymore. And 29 other teams have seen it the same way up to this point, concerning Miguel Sanó.

One person having to go home hungry is not a good outcome. The Bomba Squad went home hungry after a handful of games in the postseason. They should have asked for a menu.

Are you serious about this?

We all lose.

If Polanco's glove proves to be the cause of his eventual departure, I wouldn't expect Julien or Martin to have long tenure here either. Unless, as we hope for Miranda, they make big strides this season.

Weren't the AL Central standings at the end of May 2022 just about as pointless as you are saying the standings at the end of April 2023 will be?

I'd even go so far as to say that what happens in May, June, July, August, and September will together be 5X as important as April.