IA Bean Counter

Likely picked Dollander Crews Pool of possibly available - Langford, Skenes Waldrep, Clark Gonzalez Next Tier and wildcards - Bradfield, Lowder, Mitchell Its too hard to follow, but right now these are the players I am focusing on. Langford Gonzalez are you college batters Clark has the potential to be elite. We will have a very good pitching prospect available at our pick most likely. Waiting to see injuries and performance. Bradfield has elite speed, depending how this season goes with stealing could prop him up a bit. Lowder has the stuff. Mitchell would be the best Catcher available.

Regarding the pitching staff, yes we have spent capital to build our current staff. Up to this point those trades have actually been overall beneficial to the club. Ryan, Paddack came over in deals for players on expiring contracts. Maeda has been more valuable than Graterol. We do lose a couple years of control in that deal. Beyond that the pitchers we have given up as prospects is Petty, Hajjar, and Povich and a couple other lottery arms. Gray will be one of our best pitchers for 2 years and we can decide if we will extend or let him walk. Petty could hurt in the long run. Beyond that Hajjar and Povich are very replaceable arms. Although we don't have any per say ace arms in the minors/majors we have some very good arms. Ober and Winder both look like #3-5 pitchers, the issue with both is health and ability to handle a full season load. SWR and Varland both look very durable with good stuff. Likely #3-#4 type of players. Raya and Priellip both look like good prospects with very high floors but lots of variability. Then you have some lottery arms in Balazovic and Canterino who both appear to have talent but again can't stay healthy and now some questions on ability with Balazovic. Where we were 6 years ago, with essentially no major league staff and not much in the pipeline, I guess this is a huge improvement. Most likely we won't have to spend a lot of capital on pitching staff, but I think this will become the MO of the organization. Overload on bats and trade. We are loaded on infield prospects, we have too many. We will also have another draft with lots of early picks. Any full year draft since 2018, the Twins have done very very well. The 19, 21, and 22 drafts the front office has likely been in the top 8 in performance in my opinion. Now they have traded off some of that capital to get us where we are today, but I have a feeling they will just continually improve the big league club and the minor league system. We have lots of arms this year, some on their last year, it opens up the opportunity 1 or 2 may be traded off for someone else with more control or a prospect to replace or we just keep moving forward with what we have. We have let 3 players traded away as prospects that have a decent shot at performing well in the big leagues, Encarnacion-Strand, Steer, and Petty. The Twins I think will clearly win the Arraez for Lopez trade, but time will tell. No offence, in the grand scheme of things we haven't given up a lot especially big league talent (only Arraez who appeared to not want to do an extension). I think the Twins can easily continue to keep this up, I just don't think they will need to.

Tells me probably not very satisfied with Twins employment and the home dynamics were taking a toll. Wish he would have finished out the year, but understandable the position likely wouldn't be available. You just don't see many drop from the pros to the college ranks or vice versa.

This is a year for Martin to prove his skills. To me he is a .280 to .300 hitter and a .400 OBP player if he can continue to progress and make it to the big leagues. Personally I think of last year as a 1 off year for him. I think he needs good health and confidence, and I think he finally started gaining that confidence towards the end of last year and it rolled into fall ball. With his speed I think he will be a good asset in the outfield. I don't think his defense will make it at SS, possibly 2nd, but might as well use the wheels in the OF.

Boy it appears time plays tricks on us a bit. When we started the offseason it was clear the team was trying to manage the roster with a lot of potential possibilities that they thought the offseason would go. I think they thought they had a shot at resigning Correa but they weren't sure. They wanted Miranda preferably at 3rd and still do. So in a very short order we traded Urshela and then got Farmer for essentially the same price we got Urshela for. Yes Urshela is better than farmer but it made sense at the time. Ultimately we are talking about 9-10 million dollars for Urshela. We then used 11 million on Gallo. The real question is between those 2 who has a better year, my bet would be on Urshela but I could see Gallo winning that. We have some flexibility with this roster, and overall I don't think losing 1 year of Urshela is really that big of a deal. Zips is expecting .280 average .340 OBP and 15 home runs for Urshella. They expect Gallo to have .195 BA .330 OBP and 25 home runs. effectively slightly more upside with Gallo just on expected stats. Eh, we won't know until we play out the season but the offseason went over about as well as anyone could have expected, and if the biggest thing we can complain about is we would have been better off with Urshela than someone like Gallo . . . well lets just say we must not have too much to complain about.

He had like 48 innings of elite production now almost 3 years ago. Now he purposefully did not pitch last year, to hurt his draft stock (it may have done so anyway). Even with the workout, his 3 major pitches are still there. The control was a tad off last June but still rusty. I fully expect him to be very strong at A and A+ ball this year. I have no doubt he will be the ace on each team. His talent is that good.

We only need 1 Pagan. Maybe Barnes could offer a little more upside. I think Pagan performed better in August Sept.

Priellip is far from a lotto ticket. However, he had limited innings success and basically 2 years of not competing. He looks like a #1 or #2 from the left side. We still have to wait and see what he looks like in getting the rust off, however I really think this is going to pay off, and was the reason the twins were willing to trade off our 2 lefty prospects from the 2021 draft.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10058936-twins-trade-rumors-max-kepler-drawing-a-lot-of-interest-after-joey-gallo-contract The issue is there is too much smoke here. It sure looks like they are willing to trade on their terms.

We have a redundancy in right field with both Kepler and Gallo. I suppose you could flip one to left field, but then there really isn't a spot for Larnach. With that said there have been lots of rumors about trading Kepler and I expect that to be the last big move other than possibly signing another reliever. Starting pitching looks deep, so likely not an area we would add. So the question is do we get prospects or do we trade for a reliever. Do we just hold off, and deal with the logjam in the outfield - or dfa celestino and/or larnach. Some interesting decisions coming up.

So we give up Evan Sisk and Cruz but will have possibly added Alexy, Ortega and able to retain Enlow. We gained some lottery arms and gave up a couple and gained an excellent defensive RH OF. The twins keep improving on the margins. I’m still waiting for them to pull the trigger on Kepler. I don’t think the Twins could have a drawn up a much better off-season.

Umm . . . We are creating more of a pipeline, but also realized we used 3 of our better pitching prospects from the 21 draft class to get the current pitchers we have. I personally like it. We can utilize them for now, and worst case flip them for an awfully good prospect at the deadline. We have never said before we have too much pitching. We can now let these pitchers develop in AAA rather than sending them to the wolves. We have a couple projects in AAA this year we have picked up off the scrap heap I am happy about. For long term Pitchers we have Joe as #1. Then I personal think Varland will be the next best pitcher of the next group. I hope 1 of Ober/Winder can stay healthy enough to be a quality pitcher. Personally that is a pretty good pipeline. Add in SWR, Priellip, Raya, Festa and Balazovic, I think the starting pitcher pipeline will be ok.

This is a great position for the Twins to be in. Miranda gets another year to show us what he can do at the MLB level, and 2 is we can get a better baseline of what Lee can do at the pro level by seasoning in AA and AAA. We have seen players hit a wall at AA or AAA - however, Lee who has a very good IQ and work ethic will most likely do fine. he is a high floor, medium to high ceiling. He will likely not be a superstar, but a very very good foundational piece. We are set to continually have a very good infield for the foreseeable future.

I have no concerns with Arreaz wanting a bigger contract and getting paid what he feels he is worth. Even still this is a very good trade possibly great trade. If López is a #2 pitcher for us for the next two years it is worth trading Arreaz along with the two prospects. I expect Arreaz to regress with being in a stronger division. A .290 -.300 average hitter is still good but with no power it is not worth López potential. Arreaz was a great Twin and I hope he proves me wrong and gets the payday he deserves.

Julien may make an immediate jump to the big leagues otherwise I see him up in short order and likely in the top of the order or in the 9 spot due to his OBP and steals. Martin obviously has more refinement to do, but fall league shows what he can do when he can remain healthy and not get dinged up (which I might add he did get dinged up and tailed off a bit). The other high OBP player would be Brooks Lee that could have an impact on this season, but I think he has one more year of seasoning in AA and AAA. Injuries and underperformance will determine this outcome, and I would still not be surprised if Kepler is traded. What I do know is the Twins will only trade him if they think they are getting a surplus on the trade. The next few seasons comes down to Buxton, the homeruns are nice, but I want to see more contact. As a table setter he is much more valuable like he was in the 2021 season with an OBP of 360 than near 300 last year. I guess the most realistic hope is he is around 330 to 340. Then add in correa in the 2 spot and you are pretty well set. If you can plug in a Martin, Julien or Lee in the 2 spot, then you have a very good top of the lineup. Personally I never want to see Buxton steal again (which sounds utterly ridiculous with the new rules) however go look back at his injuries, a good chunk of them come when he has been stealing bases. Our mashers for this year and future years comes down to the develop of Miranda, Larnach and Kiriloff. We need 2 of the 3 to pan out. If they do, or if all 3 can become 20+ home run guys, then this is a very dangerous lineup. I think Vasquez will be steady. The wildcards are Kepler and Gallo. Will the banning of the shift improve their batting average? Will teams just figure out different ways to employ a shift (move the left or right fielder around and completely opening up 1 side of the outfield? I think the ban will open up more of the pull side field. I think this will also give more confidence to the players. I think they tend to try to get to far under the ball to hit the home run which is also causing more pop up outs. I don't foresee us getting the 40 home run Gallo but I could see a 35 home run Gallo. I think the offense will be noticeably more consistent and better than last year. Add in the much improved starting pitching and more established bullpen, I really like where the Twins organization is going. I think we are on the road, to consistently solid performance in the next 5-10 years.