jishfish

Love the analysis and update! It will be interesting to see if the Twins would consider breaking from their trend of position players early, given there appear to be 3-4 college arms that could be top 10 picks. My gut says no, but I hope if they fall in love with an arm they would be willing to take them high despite the demographic. I doubt Dollander will be there at 5 given his pedigree, but I am highly intrigued by Skenes. He really impressed me this weekend, and I think his combination of size/athleticism on the mound is really intriguing. I thought this article on FanGraphs today really highlighted his mentality and work ethic as well. It will be interesting to see how his work with Wes impacts his growth over the coming months. Right now I think I would be happy with any of: Crews/Langford/Clark/Dollander/Skenes, but obviously a lot of time before the draft for that to change.

I mean in a pitcher-friendly league where only 18 players had double digit home runs over the full season, 9 home runs is still pretty impressive, especially when a majority of the players with more home runs had 150+ more plate appearances. Also, batting average is not the stat I would use to make an argument against this guy when he's walking at a 28% clip. First of all, .272 is still a top 15 batting average in the FSL, plus his OBP was like 80 points higher than any other player.

I think 'we must' is maybe a little strong here. If he's pitching well and the Twins are anywhere near contention, they would be off their rocker to shop him. I think you see how the first few months go, and if he's pitching well you try to extend him mid-season. If not, offer him the QO at the end of the year or try to sign him as a FA. Steer and CES were both nice players and quality prospects, but neither really had a locked in future here since they're both questionable on the defensive spectrum. Personally I like the prospect we got back in Arraez trade more than either of those two, but I'm sure others would probably disagree.

Maybe I'm looking through rose-colored lenses, but I look at Salas' profile and I see a lot of similarities to a player we're very familiar with -- Jorge Polanco. Both switch-hitting SS who were always somewhat fringy to stay at the position defensively. It looks like Polanco was always pretty young for his level, similar to Salas, and neve hit more than 9 home runs during a season in his minor league career. Salas' strikeout rates are a little hit higher so probably not quite the same hit tool as Jorge, but also looks like he has some speed that Polanco doesn't have. Probably optimistic, but I thought the similarities were interesting!

Hmm, not sure if I would completely agree with you on the Max Clark likelihood being low. We've seen this front office take high-upside HS position players 2 out of 3 times that they've picked in the top 15 and preferring the college bat route later in the first round. I think if they had a chance to take the top ranked HS player in this class they would/should. To me, Clark's scouting profile reads a lot like Corbin Carroll back in 2019. But they did pass on him for Cavaco, so maybe I am totally off-base in thinking they would have interest in Clark. Either way, moving up to #5 gives them access to some talent that definitely wouldn't have made it to the mid-1st round, so very exciting! Lots of ways they could go with it.

I think one thing to consider is that based on MLB Pipeline the Brewers top 5 prospects are all OF at AA or above, so I am inclined to think they probably wouldn't have much interest in another COF, especially with Yelich/Renfroe already in the fold at the MLB level. One guy who I think would intrigue them (as painful as he would be to part with) is Jose Miranda. They don't appear to be exceptionally strong at corner IF either at the major league level or in their system, so Miranda would make sense as a major league ready piece who could either start everyday at 3B or bounce between the corners/DH. Per BaseballTradeValues, a package of Miranda, Winder or Woods Richardson, and Jovani Moran could make sense from the Brewers perspective/philosophy. They'd be getting 5+ years of control in a young power bat at an area of weakness in their system, a possible rotation piece, and a bullpen arm (all of whom are MLB ready, which I think MIL would be looking for), in exchange for 2 years of a SP that they probably won't be resigning once he reaches FA. Personally I would make that deal in a heartbeat (with the caveat of signing Woodruff to an extension) but it would definitely hurt to lose someone like Miranda who really established himself at the MLB level this year. I would be curious to hear other people's thoughts though! Is Miranda off the table, even for someone of Woodruff's caliber?

Personally, I think this is exactly the way to think of it, and honestly I think there's a really good team to be built around this idea, with a number of great fits already in house. I think people get caught up in the "they're only going to go 3 innings no matter what" idea, when in reality I believe things would certainly be more flexible than that. I think the other item to consider is that we don't necessarily have to fill the rotation with just bargain bin pitchers. There are plenty of pitchers out there with health concerns or innings limits that I think would be perfect for this type of setup. If you're still with me at this point, let me just propose a scenario that fits this method, while also building what I think could be a strong potential playoff rotation. The way I'm thinking something like this could work is essentially with a 3-tier pitching staff consisting of: starting pitchers(5), bulk relievers(4), traditional relievers(5). First, to fill some spots internally we will have: Ryan and Ober as two of our starting pitchers, Jax and Dobnak as two of our bulk relievers, and Rogers/Duffy/Thielbar/Alcala as four of our traditional relievers. That leaves us with 3 SP, 2 Bulk, and 1 Traditional spots to fill. To fill the final reliever spot, I'm signing someone like McHugh or Knebal to function as a high leverage, proven arm. I want these 5 relievers to be lights-out arms that can shut down the 7th-9th innings. To fill one of the bulk spots, I'm swinging in a trade to bring in a guy from Miami, Elieser Hernandez. There are countless guys both in the organization already and outside of it that I think could fit these roles well, so I wouldn't read too hard into the one specific player I picked. But I did just want to show one stat line quick about why I think someone like Hernandez would be great here: 1st Time through the order: 25.3% K-BB% / .675 OPS / 2.54 FIP 2nd Time through the order: 15.6% K-BB% / .828 OPS / 6.31 FIP The last bulk spot could simply be a rotation of AAA guys as arms are needed throughout the year. I'll let you fill in the blank there, I'm not going to think too hard about it. Eventually I think these could be ideal places for Duran or Canterino to end up long-term if they end up showing they can't handle a starters workload. Finally, I think there are a number of interesting non-bargain bin candidates to fill out the rotation. I'm looking to identify players who maybe have a long injury history and have never hit the 150+ inning mark but are extremely effective when healthy, players coming off of an injury looking to manage innings and slowly build throughout the year, or young players like Ryan/Ober still building their workload. Nobody says these guys have to be scrubs. Two pitchers that I think would be perfect for this type of rotation are Alex Wood and Alex Cobb. Both have an extensive injury history, but have proven to be strong starters when healthy. Let them go out and get their ~15 outs, throw 75-85 bullets, and help to manage their workload throughout the year so they are healthy and fresh going into playoffs. Then to top the rotation off, I think a great fit for this setup could be Carlos Rodon, as someone who is coming off of an injury and maybe doesn't have the capacity to be counted on for 150+ innings. Maybe his market isn't quite what he was hoping it to be, so we swoop in and offer him a 1x$22M contract to let him rebuild his value. If he's healthy going into playoffs, there's a Game 1 starter you can feel real good about. I'm not saying this is the most realistic offseason, and if you asked me if I thought this plan was likely to be put into place my answer would be "of course not". In reality are we going to sign Rodon AND Wood AND Cobb, no definitely not! And would 1-2 of the SP spots and 1-2 of the bulk spots be more likely to be filled with the Chris Archer's of the world, absolutely! But some people are writing this off without even giving it consideration, and I think that's a mistake. We would all love to sign the Gerrit Cole's and Scherzer's of the world, but that's never going to be our reality here. I think ideas like this can allow us to be competitive in a "Rays" sort of way, while also not constraining us to a $70M total payroll. Full pitching staff for this specific scenario is included below for clarity's sake. There are a million variations of this that you could put together, but this is just something pulled together on short notice.