bdhenders

After reading that other article about his pitch mix, heavy slider to righties, and change up to lefties, I hereby dub Him: Super-ROMO.

Great Article! I have one word for the trade: Shocked! Now that I have done a little research past the ERA and K/9, the initial, “but I love Graterol” is starting to where off. I’ll have to trust Falvine, which I am now happy to do since they have pulled off 2 maneuvers I never saw out of the old regime and it looks like the Twins are solid Favorites to win the division. I really wanted a trade for a #1 starter, but if you look at Maeda vs Price’s numbers, the 3 mil/year vs 20 mil/year is a bargain. Also, note the list excerpted from FanGraphs top 125 pitchers for 2020: 31. Berrios 34. Z Wheeler 35. Odorizzi 36. K Hendricks 37 Bumgarner 38 K. Maeda 3 Twins pitchers in amongst the free agents we were coveting, so decent rotation

I agree with ashbury. I was looking at the defensive metrics of Buxton and Kepler and they are impressive. He definitely shouldn’t be negative. In particular, I like the inside edge fielding given by fan graphs, where Kepler caught 67% of the “even” balls (should be caught 40-60% of time) at both positions. For crazy numbers, go look at what Buxton has there. For example, he catches 20% of the Remote (1-10%) balls and 68% of the Unlikely (10-40%) balls. A healthy Buxton goes a long way to improving the pitching staff.

Thanks for the update, Seth. We'll be arriving in Florida today and we're hoping to see some of the minor leaguers practice or play games. Has anyone been able to find the minor league schedule for games? Seth, you said they start next week. Do you mean Monday? It seems last time I was there schedules came out online much earlier.

Hicks is very underrated and the last two years, he's had a better OBP than the beloved Brian Dozier who was batting second all year (big mistake down the stretch, I think, but that's another story). This, along with the high BABIP of Murphy inflating his average, makes me think that Terry Ryan only looks at batting average, not the other stats many organizations have deemed more important. I know this can't really be true, but all his moves make it look like he doesn't care about any secondary statistics, or he trusts the BA over the rest and talks himself into moves that way while every other GM thinks they're getting away with a steal. I hate to see Hicks go, but the Twins have plenty of options in the OF, so I'll wait and see if Murphy can be an everyday catcher before condemning the trade. Let's just hope we don't get rid of anymore good defensive outfielders. That's two in a row and the OF defense was a big reason the pitching staff looked better this year and we got over .500 on the record.