markos

I'd add the Angels to your list.

I think John's $28M estimate is way too low - probably half what would be required. As others have already pointed out, Buxton and Sano both already received multi-million dollar signing bonuses, so their league-minimum salaries understate their financial security. Then if you look at other comparable players who recently signed, several (Andrelton Simmons, Christian Yelich, Rougned Odor, Kevin Kiermaier) have signed for at least $50M guaranteed. Francisco Lindor reportedly turned down a $100M deal. Finally, I think that most players (and agents) are expecting the Machado/Harper/Kershaw free agent class to completely reset the salary scale. So I think some of that expected jump will need to be baked into any long-term offer. If I'm advising Buxton/Sano/Rosario, I'm suggestion two options. Either take a cheap deal without giving up any FA years (think something like a 4yr/$20M deal); or, take a massive deal that covers FA years or has team options (think something like 6yr/$80M with $20M option years). Anything in between is giving up too much earning potential.

I mostly agree with this, but I have a slightly different take on what it means to be "realistic". If one gives the Twins a 85-win projection for next year (which might be a little steep right now but certainly not crazy, especially with the moves you suggest), a probabilistic win distribution suggests that they would have something like a 25% chance of winning 90+ games. Another way, I think a 90 win season falls within one standard deviation of their pre-season win projections, at which point I'd consider 90-wins a "realistic" outcome. https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/projecting-uncertainty-a-roadmap-to-the-projected-standings/

I completely agree with this sentiment. But I think catcher isn't the lowest hanging fruit right now. I'd put DH, 3/5 of the rotation and most of the bullpen ahead of the Castro/Garver combo at catcher for at least 2018, maybe 2019 too.

That is only counting successful sacrifices that get marked in the box score as such. There isn't anyone (to my knowledge) tracking sacrifice attempts - successful or not. A manager that calls for a lot of sacrifice bunts with a team that is very bad at bunting may not end up leading the league in the sacrifice bunt category but still wasted a lot of opportunities.

Baseball Reference has a pitcher-vs-batter page: https://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/batter_vs_pitcher.cgi?pitcher=hildetr01 For this, I just downloaded to excel and calculated the two separate groups. I was too lazy to go through the 20+ batter with multiple PAs and move their 1st PA into another column, though each batter's hyperlink lists the PAs.

So I'm still concerned about Hildenberger's staying power to anchor a bullpen. Batters who have faced him only once: 76PAs, .374 OPS, 30% K%, 5% BB%, 0 HRs, .200 BABIP Batters who have faced him at least twice: 63PAs, .850 OPS, 21% K%, 0% BB%, 2 HRs, .404 BABIP * NOTE: I wanted to split every plate appearance into two buckets: first time facing Hildenberger, and second (and later) time facing him. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to get that data without manually sorting through the plate appearances for the batters who faced him multiple times. I'm too lazy to do that. So the above data is a derivation of what I wanted, but it isn't exactly correct. Sorry for being potentially misleading. Don't get me wrong here. I think he has shown enough to be penciled into the bullpen going forward. He throws strikes and gets ground balls. He should continue to be able to provide some decent innings, but I'm hesitant to rely on him to continue to work high-leverage innings next year. Basically, I'm fine if he is the third or fourth best pitcher in the bullpen next year, but not if he is their best or second-best pitcher.

There is some evidence that he has increased his sinker velocity since he came back in May. Per BrooksBaseball, it appears that he is back to his 2015 velocity: 4/15 92.39 5/15 92.42 6/15 92.62 7/15 92.77 8/15 92.28 9/15 91.31 ------- 4/16 91.68 6/16 91.44 7/16 91.62 8/16 91.70 9/16 91.00 -------- 4/17 91.58 5/17 92.51 6/17 92.18 7/17 92.65 8/17 92.22

This is where the change in run environment gets kind of screwy. The league-average AL starter ERA in 2014 was 3.82; in 2015 it was 4.02. Now it 4.55. So Gibson's 4.17 from 2014-2015 isn't that different than a 4.75 today.

I've brought this up on other threads, but it is probably worth bringing up again here: Since the end of May, Gibson has been perfectly fine as a #5 starter. Starting since his May 28 start against the Rays, he has: 4.55 ERA - AL average is 4.56 4.55 FIP - AL average is 4.58 53.1% GB rate He has had very solid starts against TOR, CHW, DET, LAA (twice), SEA. He has had decent starts against CLE, TEX, HOU. Over the past 3 months, he has only had three starts where he has given up more than 3 runs. Yes, he is still giving up more contact than one would like. Yes, he is walking too many batters. And yes, he has definitely benefited by having a short lease. But overall, this level of performance is pretty good for the back of the rotation, even for a contending team. He has performed similarly to guys like Josh Tomlin, Tanner Roark, John Lackey and Jaime Garcia, not to mention just about anyone of the staffs of LAA, BAL, SEA and COL. Also, I think it is a no-brainer to bring him back next year. He is going to get a modest raise in arbitration, but he still is only going to get something like $5-6M, which is perfectly fine for back-end starter on a 1-year-deal.

Since Memorial Day weekend: Gibson : 15 GS, 84.1 IP, 47 R, 44 ER, 11 HR, 4.70 ERA, 4.64 FIP, 4.35 xFIP Berrios: 15 GS, 84.1 IP, 49 R, 43 ER, 9 HR, 4.59 ERA, 4.04 FIP, 4.67 xFIP Santana: 15 GS, 92.1 IP, 53 R, 46 ER, 19 HR, 4.48 ERA, 5.09 FIP, 4.72 xFIP

The system has changed since Davish was signed. Otani is under the same hard cap rules that apply to young international signings from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, etc. He can't sign for anything close to the contract you suggested. I think he is staying in Japan until he is 25 and no longer under the hard-cap rules.

Sure, that might be unfair. But I'm talking specifically about what I want to see in this relatively small sample that would force me to adjust my priors with Booker. I don't think it is crazy to say that if he ends up with a 1.100 OPS, I will be very excited and I'll adjust my expectations a fair amount. And if he ends up with a .950 OPS, I will be cautiously optimistic and adjust my expectations a little. And if he stays around his current .800-.850, well, meh. That won't really move the needle for me one way or the other relative to my expectations coming out of the draft.

For what it's worth, Kyle Schwarber and Kris Bryant both made it to the Florida State League a couple months after the draft. They had a .950 and 1.100 OPS respectively. For better or worse, that is the benchmark that I'm using to judge whether or not Rooker is on track to be a fast-moving, impact MLB bat.

I'm not saying they need to move him today, but it should at least be in consideration when Mauer moves off 1B after 2018. Sano is 24, which isn't actually young from a defensive perspective. Defensive ability is primarily about having the athleticism and reflexes to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, and there are a lot of studies that indicate that defensive ability peaks in the early-twenties. What are the chances that he is going to get quicker and faster at this point? It is likely then that we are seeing Sano at his athletic and defensive peak right now. And that peak is already below-average. For as good as the play was last night, he is making plays on <63% of the balls in his zone, while the average 3B is at 70% and the best are >75%. Over a full season, that is 15-20 extra hits. Nothing in baseball is a given, so there is certainly a chance that Sano's defensive progression is an outlier going forward. But I wouldn't rely on it. Given that he is already below-average and that he is probably going to continue to get less athletic, I think he will be the running for worst defensive third baseman in baseball by 2019. And again, I'm not saying they need to move him today. They don't need to do anything until after the 2018 season. But this idea that Sano is now cemented at 3B for the next 5 years seems incredibly limiting. By 2019 there are all kinds of scenarios where it makes sense to move him off 3B. Maybe it is cheaper/easier to upgrade at 3B rather than 1B. Maybe based on the makeup of the pitching staff it will make sense to improve the overall infield defense. Maybe 1B is less of an injury risk, or less taxing on such a big body.

The vast majority of MLB players can make spectacular plays at the edge of their range, but that means very little about their overall ability to convert batted balls into outs. Sano at third isn't the liability that he was in right field last year, but it is a stretch to say that he is an asset there. He is competent in that he can make the routine play, and he is pretty good at charging. But there is a lot of evidence now that he just doesn't get to a lot of balls that better third-basemen can get to. If you look any of the advanced stats (UZR, DRS) or even just the percentange of balls that he is able to convert into outs, it is pretty clear that he doesn't make as many plays as a typical third-baseman. Obviously, in the short-term Sano is staying at third. But looking ahead to 2019 (post-Mauer), it has to be a serious consideration - and prehaps the best way to improve the team - to move Sano to first.

Two thoughts: First, Rosario can be such an enigma. Yes, he is playing great, and there are definitely some encouraging signs for sustainable improvement. But I'm a little skeptical of this breakout. Using June 13 as the start date: .375 BABIP - Rosario is always going to be a high-BABIP guy, but this is pretty extreme 19.3% HR/FB - would be top-40 in the league over a full season. I don't think it is sustainable. I also looked at the StatCast data, and he is 25th biggest overperformer compared to what his exit velocity and launch angle would predict. Second, I can't see any argument for Kepler starting against a left-handed pitcher for the rest of the season. At this point it is a little embarrassing that the Twins don't have any kind of right-handed corner-outfield bat to platoon with him.

I have long suspected that at well, but Mauer's name did not appear in any of his slides listing the top-20 or so players most helped/hurt by the changes. Interestingly, Eduardo Escobar did appear as one the players most helped by the strike zone changes.

There wasn't any speculation on the rise of TOS surgeries, and, if I recall correctly, the doctor who gave the presentation said there hasn't been any actual increase TOS but rather it has just become more publicized. But that was just what he said in passing during the presentation - there were no slides or data presented to support that claim one way or the other. To be honest, it certainly FEELS like TOS is becoming more prevalent. And given that I'm now an expert* on all thing bio-mechanical, it certainly makes sense that any effort to increase arm layback will necessitate physiological changes to the shoulder and pectoral muscles - both of which impact the thoracic outlet area. * I am in no way an expert.

For the second year in a row I was able to attend the Saberseminar at Boston University. Here is a summary of of the conference, grouped loosely by category: There were several presentations discussing pitcher health. First, the technology for pitch and biomechanical tracking continues to march forward. Between cameras and sensors, there are some pretty good, lightweight and fairly inexpensive methods for calculating and monitoring arm stresses. It is rather impressive. Armed with this new data, researchers are starting to draw some conclusions: Arm stress is correlated (obviously) with velocity, but only on a per-pitcher basis. So a 95mph pitch does not cause the same amount of stress for every single pitcher. Instead, there are two independent factors for each pitcher.First, it depends on the velocity range for the pitcher. A pitcher that usually sits 91-92 is (often) going to experience a larger arm stress increase from a 95mph pitch than a pitcher that usually sits 93-94.Second, every pitcher’s stress slope is different. So two pitchers who both sit 91-92 will both experience more arm stress when unleashing a 95mph pitch, but the magnitude of the increase may be different.“Throws matter, not pitches; recovery matters, not rest.” All throws (warmup, long toss, pitches) cause stress on the arm. Not all equally, but they all need to be accounted for. Similarly, the body’s recovery depends not just on time but a myriad of other factors including sleep, nutrition, therapy, etc.Tracking all of this, and creating individual throwing and recovery plans, seems to be the frontier that is rapidly being explored. There was a pretty damning study presented on weighted ball training. I might have the details slightly off, but from my notes and memory of the study: ~70 young HS pitchers were split into two group.Test group did an 8 week weighted ball throwing programControl group did the exact same program but with normal balls throughoutAfter the program, the test group did have increased velocity (average 2.3 MPH increase), but:Test group had significantly more injuries, including a UCL sprain and a UCL tear.The overall shoulder/arm strength changes were the same for both groupsThe only physiological change was that the test group increased their layback - or how far their arm can bend backward.The conclusion that was tentatively drawn here is that weighted ball programs don’t increase velocity via increased strength, but rather by stretching the shoulder/arm muscles/tendons to allow more layback, which in turn has potential negative health consequences. There was a medical talk about Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. Lots of good info for a medical novice like myself. It is incredibly difficult to diagnose, because it has a multitude of symptoms (numbness, soreness in the fingers/arm/shoulder) that often only show up while pitching, not necessarily on the trainer’s table. And it has a multitude of potential sources (muscle, joint, tendon, artery) that may be compressing/inhibiting the nerves. Moving to another topic area, there were several talks from former players and current executives. Many touched on the challenge of getting players to buy into analytics. Ben Cherington talked about how critical it is to have team leaders who can bridge that divide. From a Twins-specific perspective, one of the names he mentioned as a very good ambassador and teammate was Craig Breslow. Another very good presentation was by Fernando Perez. He is an ex-player from the Tampa Bay system. He really challenged the conventional wisdom about the current player development process. A sampling of his observations included: Players are told throughout the low minors to “hunt fastballs”. Because of that philosophy and the middling quality of minor league stuff, he said that he could go days, even weeks, without ever swinging at a breaking ball except by accident. Then he gets to AAA and is told that he can’t get to the majors until he can hit a curve.A lot of hitting skill is developing muscle memory. Does hitting off a tee, BP, soft toss, etc help or hinder the formation of that memory? He has talked with people in other disciplines that involve forming muscle memory (including other sports and athletic activities like dance), and many of them are skeptical that the non-game work is that helpful.Most hitters want to be comfortable with their swings, and resist any changes or challenges during practice that will throw them off. But the entire job of a pitcher is to make a hitter uncomfortable! He talked about the need to develop improvisational hitting skills.A lot of coaching is figuring out how to get players to listen to and apply changes/suggestions. Some players are willing to try anything. Others need to be “tricked” into trying new things.For many (most) minor league players, affiliate assignments are made during spring training. And players are often told they can force promotions through their spring training performance. That, naturally, creates the incentive to come into spring training at peak condition. Is that best for the player/organization, particularly from a health perspective?Moving onto the more sabermetric side… Dr. Alan Nathan did another presentation discussing how baseball changes have contributed to the home run surge. By his estimation (and building on the work of several others), he calculated that the physical changes to the ball have increased home run rate by 15%, which explains most but not all of the recent home run surge. Glenn Healey presented some work on measuring pitcher similarity. The basic idea is to use PitchFX data (pitch velocity and movement) to find pitchers who share similar “stuff”. Looking at a pitcher’s overall repertoire, he could improve next season strikeout projections by looking at pitchers with similar stuff rather than similar results. Bill Petti looked at the factors that go into double-plays. His most interesting finding was that the likelihood of a double-play occurring is 80% dependent on the batter rather than the pitcher. Brian Mills presented research that looked at the winners and losers from the changes to the strike zone in recent years. As has been shown over the past several seasons, the strike zone has extended down a couple inches. In response, pitchers are throwing lower than they did in past seasons. He looked at how batters fared on pitches in that lower zone, and how they have been helped/harmed by the increase in pitches to the bottom of the zone. Julia Prusaczyk of MLBAM introduced a new metric for sacrifice flies. Using StatCast data, she created a model that will combine a fielder’s arm strength and a runner’s speed to define a cutoff line for trying to advance on a sacrifice fly. As a hypothetical example, she explored how Bartolo Colon the base-runner would fair against Bartolo Colon the outfielder. There were a lot of other good presentations. Some were more on the fun side (ex. Under what conditions is it faster to bounce a throw to first); some were just high-level (ex. Using [machine learning technique, financial model, etc] to analyze baseball). This post is already getting pretty long, so I’m going to skip the rest. If you are interested, however, the list of presentations (with abstracts) can be found http://www.brooksbaseball.net/ss17/saturday.html and http://www.brooksbaseball.net/ss17/sunday.html. If you have any questions about a specific talk, I can answer questions in the comments. Finally, there were at least two members of the Twins front office in attendance. I briefly chatted with both, and since I didn’t declare up front that I was going to share my conversation, I’ll keep this as general as possible. One guy works at the Fort Myers complex. I was a recent hire, so I didn’t ask anything about the front office. But he did have a ton of great things to say (unsolicited) about Royce Lewis. According to him, Lewis is not only super fun to watch play everyday, but he is great with his teammates and everyone around the complex. The other guy works in Minneapolis in the analytics group. I didn’t ask about the Jack Goin situation (I figured it was too soon). I did ask about the overall front office changes since Falvey’s hiring. From my perspective, his response was very, very positive. Also, he reiterated what has been publicly stated by Levine and others that they are looking to expand their analytics staff. He said they are swamped with work. Judging by how much time he spent working on his laptop during the presentations, that seems legit.

Almost all of that has to do with the narative around Kerry Wood and Mark Prior in 2003. He managed several good, young pitchers in Cincinatti (Cueto, Latos, Bailey, Leake, Arroyo, et al) and they, by and large, were healthy, effective, and managed properly. And the Nationals, who have a very strong reputation for protecting pitcher health, were willing to sign him.

To get to 85 wins (which is worse than any wildcard team since the most recent format changes), the Twins need to go 29-21 over their last 50 games. That works out to a 94-win pace for an entire season, and is two wins better than any 50-game stretch they've had this year.

This will probably depend on how the Nationals perform in the playoffs, but Dusty Baker is also a lame-duck manager right now. If they decide not to extend him, I'd be open to bringing him in. He has a good track-record of shepherding young cores to (at least regular season) success.

After neglecting Gordon for too long, here is an update after 466 plate appearances: AVG: .282 OBP: .356 SLG: .436 ISO: .154 BABIP: .354 wRC+: 130 K%: 21.7% BB%: 9.9% Cautions: Gordon has really struggled over the past 178 PAs - a .643 OPS and just a 90 wRC+. This recent stretch has put a damper on his overall line. Positives: Optimisitically, this recent swoon is mostly BABIP induced. He has a .284 BABIP since my last update despite being a career .350 BABIP guy. His walk rate has actually ticked up a little bit during this stretch, and his ISO, while lower than his torrid start, is still higher than his previous career high. Ranking updates: During the past month several prospect analysts have re-ranked players, and Gordon has moved up. Gordon now comfortably sits in the top-40 across the board: BA - #19 MLB - #34 Keith Law - #30 He also sits at #49 in the statistically-inclined KATOH+ projection system.

The Twins can win with Dozier and Mauer when the team has improved enough that they are two of the three worse everyday players rather than two of the three best everyday players.