Cris E

Pagan has some sketchy command. On the one hand he tends to walk guys, but on the other he gets strikeouts, but on the other he gives up home runs. The thing is he was erratic all season with several good months and several poor ones, and it wasn't a clean first half second half thing either: his monthly ERA went 3.18, 1.59, 11.42, 3.48, 5.40 and 2.25. The 84 K were nice, but the killer was 12 HR and 26 BB in 63 IP. There were eleven games last year where Emilio gave up multiple runs: five were in June (including four games in eight days!) and four times in August (including a couple against the Dodgers.) He'd been getting far better results than he deserved going into those June Guardians games so it wasn't any surprise that the roof fell in, but he was quite a bit cleaner as the season went on. Overall he pitched more against CLE than anyone else and had terrible results: 10 games (of 59) yielding 11 ER (of 31) in 10 IP (of 63), which was more than unfortunate. Maybe next year they hold him out of some of those appearances? We'll see.

He should focus on 1b where he has the best chance to succeed and he competes less at 2b/3b/ss with the guys that have a far better chance of succeeding there. If you give him a few reps in LF too it would be fine. He's going to hit so he just needs a place to stand in the other half of the inning.

The shift rules changed but we just don't know how teams are going to react to them until they play some games. For teams that still believe in the shift you may see middle infielders standing right at the enter line and sliding over to a shifted spot as soon as the pitch is thrown, or outfielders could be moved around or something. Some teams may just turn back the clock ten years and play straight up, and the world will be watching their numbers as well. It probably won't matter much as most infielders are really good at their jobs and baseball was just fine the way it was played for 120 years.

There are a lot of reasons to discount the defensive numbers a bit from last year, mostly the biblical injury plague, and there are more reasons to wonder how different 2023 will be that make projecting those numbers even harder. The shift is reduced, base stealing may return, health may return and everyone is a year older for good (Miranda) or ill (Polanco, Correa.) I expect our infield defense will be average. Correa will be quite good again, Miranda will be OK, not horrible, Polanco will be around average and Kirilloff will be pretty good. I think they'll hit enough to make it work and it should be a good year.

I was about to post something just like this. Scott Boras used to be Scott Boras and now he's referred to as The Boras Corporation. There are a lot of people being represented by his organization, not just stars and not just to polish Scott's ego. Depending on where they are in their careers that corporation gets guys re-signed quickly, max money, max guaranteed years, etc. (Does anyone really think Scott Boras did or will spend more than a couple hours on José DeLeón's contract?) He's in a position now to not have to play games that might have cost Freddie Freeman the chance to finish his career in Atlanta, for example. Players sign with him because he can do whatever they need done. Boras has changed at least as much as the Twins. (But the slick move he pulled on Correa's previous rep with the one year deal in 2022 was deceivious beyond belief. Wow, he can still wield a knife when needed.)

Dear God. You do realize how hard it is to catch and do anything else? The last catcher before Mauer to win an AL batting title was 1933, largely because catchers get beat up badly and there's also the DH position to content with for top hitter. He won three. You think that's some sort of coincidence? When healthy he was an MVP or close to it, finishing in the top ten in MVP voting four times as a catcher. What the guy was getting paid should not affect your judgement of how well he performed. But he earned his money in the first three years, so you're complaining about the five years when he was fighting concussions. Would you have felt better about his back going to pieces and him sitting on the bench? The fact that he was an above average 1B at the MLB level while he was dealing with this mostly tells me you don't know anyone who has suffered a serious concussion. But here's the deal, he caught most of ten years, 921 games, as one of the top in the game with a solid peak and some fancy awards. If you don't think that's worthy of the hall then you're probably unhappy with most of the catchers that are in there now and will never be happy with any catcher ever entering again. Then again I'm sure you'll never be impressed any any pitcher ever making it either, since the game has changed in many ways. Sorry for your loss.

Sano is at the top of that Unsigned For A Reason list. That showcase was Tuesday, easily long enough for all the excited teams to throw out $5m or $2m or $1m or non-roster invites to camp. Crickets so far though, both unanimous and loud. He was fun but he showed nothing last year and no one has even hinted that they might be interested.

Why give Australia and Canada teams when Great Britain has a squad? Because they have their own identity, because this isn't the Olympics at all, because it's about fun and bragging rights. You want to get all outraged over this then go look into the "standards" that many countries are employing to engage players. Anyone even remotely Jewish can play for Isreal, which makes sense because they've had a broad definition of "nation" for 3000 years. You like Olive Garden, you can be Italian for March. You don't even need to like it, necessarily, but if one of your parents wasn't above eating there you can claim them. I saw this WW2 documentary on Netflix that mentioned the Netherlands plus Bert Blyleven circled someone in my section in 2005 so I am eligible for that squad even though my elbow gave up on baseball 40 years ago. Best advice: take none of this seriously, revel in the joy of baseball and hope the pitchers get enough work in without anyone getting hurt.

The alternatives to Kirilloff are not good. Miranda is likely to get the first call, but after that I really don't expect Gallo to play much 1b at all because his glove is too valuable in the outfield. If I were in player development with this org I'd be on Amazon right now ordering a pallet load of first baseman gloves, and a lot of guys would be be handed the big mitt when they arrive next week and be told to do some learning if they want to claim time. Larnach, Wallner, Julien at the bare minimum are blah defenders in their best positions, guys that could shorten their road to the majors with some time at first base. Polanco might want to tag along if his lateral mobility isn't coming back the way he hoped. For all the talk about positional flexibility that this management likes to point to, sometimes you need to manufacture it like they did with Arraez. EDIT: Wallner has 0 games at 1B in the college/minors and Larnach has one, and Julien has a bunch, mostly at Cedar Rapids in 2021.

Eh, over-rated is a weak analysis point. "Some people said good things but we smart people know better" is just a lame topic. Talk about rentals vs long-term roster construction if you will ( almost none of those guys are back only four years later) but insisting that years of control amounts to a goal in itself makes no sense if your prospects aren't good. And if you like a player you can buy years of control by signing a longer term contract. Control is not a useful measure. You know the last time we had such an outlier offense in a ridiculously high offensive environment? 1987 was eerily similar in both the spike in league-wide power and the Twins' crazy exploitation of it. It was fun to watch the batters slug and the pitchers hang on, and, in the big difference from 2019, they lucked out in the playoffs. You can still see the pennant hanging out in center field.

First the dry: Gordon's performance was all over the place (OPS+ from 79-150) when his babip was quite high from April thru August, but he was quite average (97 OPS+) when his babip was closer to normal from September thru the end of the year. He really only had one hot month in August and the rest were meh even as he was getting pretty lucky in balls in play (season babip .340 vs AL .290). If he starts hitting into bad luck he might slide back towards his 2021 numbers where he only managed a 79 OPS+ while his babip was merely .310 vs the AL .291. Second the meat: I like Nick Gordon: he plays an energetic, fun, fast style of baseball, he's a good interview, he seems to really be enjoying himself out there and the world needs more guys like him. But in his career he's had injury problems, he's been over-matched defensively, he doesn't steal bases well despite his speed, his other base-running numbers aren't great and he doesn't walk. He's got value, but no one should pretend we don't have better options in the outfield corners. Splitting them IF and OF except in unusual circumstances sounds great. Farmer can PH against lefties and can catch when Vazquez is DH, and Nick can step in against righties and maybe pinch run. Lots of fun, but both bench players.

Sonny Grey is a pretty good pitcher. He's never going to be the best guy in the league, but you're never going to be bummed out that he's starting for you. He'll be clearly above average and keep you in most games. However Sonny Grey has always had a problem with little injuries. He's only made 30+ starts in a seasons three times, and last year he missed time with hamstring problems and covid, and recovery from those reduced his effectiveness at times. It's to be expected. But when he pitches he's better than most. He's not an ace, but by modern definitions almost no one is. It's just too hard to throw as hard as you have to and to avoid injury while trying to stay ahead of hitters that are watching their last at bats between innings. I can barely imagine anyone doing this anymore.

He's likely a back end rotation guy who will get chances to start. That's more than a Winder or Sands can count on, so good for him and good for the Twins. It's a valuable thing to have a #4 that aspires to be a #3. As mentioned above, these guys cost real money, and not having them means Aaron Sanchez starts getting more innings - good for him but not good for the team.

I wanted Steve Fraley to be real. I still want him to become a recurring Randballs character, maybe a Raymond Chandler-esque, film noir kind of guy that wears a lot of bright colors to throw folks off. Also, Stu, there's room for a weekly ChatGPT feature where Google The Machine writes something for consideration. EDIT: Google is behind and has introduced Bard to catch up. Mea culpa.

His 2023 performance might make or break the Twins' season, but he's not in any danger. He's very good, fairly paid, he's one of the only proven power hitter on the roster, his recent dips in performance directly tie to injuries and there have been no reports that there's been any setback in recovering from them. Every team loves having guys like this around. The fact that the Twins over-played him while he was hurt last year is not on him, as the playoffs drifted out of reach well before the end of the year and they kept playing him despite his injury. His job is to work his therapy, meet the new guys, knock the rust off and be ready for March. There's no reason for him to be worrying about anything else.

Um, MLB contracts already are both guaranteed and have clauses restricting unsafe behavior. NFL contracts are not guaranteed and guys get them broken off all the time for reasons outside their control. There's nothing about NFL contracts that any MLB player should want any part of. Regardless, I'm glad Carlos is taking time off to be with his family (and coincidentally reducing the risk he blows up his ankle.)

If our starting rotation is Grey - Lopez - Mahle - Ryan - Maeda we've got good depth, and strides have been taken with Gallo and Taylor to fix the OF depth and Farmer to add infield flexibility to prevent a repetition of 2022's vulnerability to injury. We should never field a team as bad as last August's. When we roll into DET or KC or PIT or WAS or even CIN it's clear we won't be the underdogs very often even if we do suffer some injuries.

They open on the road and the first game at Target Field is the seventh overall. I expect the rotation to be based at least as much on performance as contract and curb appeal, so we won't know for a month. I wouldn't even guess at this point.

"flounder"

I love it because the games are played with such joy. The repressed American game just doesn't compare with the way it's played in Latin America and Japan. And in the WBC the pros are trash talking and having fun in ways I just find inspiring: it's a fun game and it's good to see people enjoying it.

Maeda is getting the first crack at being a Bundy/Archer starter and Ober is going to pitch in St Paul to develop and be ready when someone gets hurt. If that happens in March then he'll break camp with the big league team and if it doesn't he'll get a regular shift in St Paul. In 2024 I think Grey and Maeda are gone and Lopez, Mahle and Paddack are headlining with Ryan, and the kids who grow this year will get the #5-6 spots. I think Ober and Varland are leading that race today, but others are going to move up by next winter. This is going to be a fun year.

Gallo is useful because we don't have many proven OF right now and he's pretty good with a glove and plays every day. And even in his worst year he produced a 79 OPS+, which is bad but better than the replacements we trotted out before he got here. Sano is a DH and poor 1B, can't stay healthy, and mostly only hits in streaks so he's not very suited for a PH role. He needs to play a lot so there are enough ABs to hold a few hot streaks, but then you have Gallo without the D in the lineup every day. Blergh.

Moore isn't better because he finally got a shot at relieving. He did get a good shot at relieving in 2018 after they pulled him from the rotation. The second two thirds of the season he was in the pen and was almost three runs/gm better than as a starter, yielding only a .252 batting avg in 27 appearances. Alas, the improvement was from an 8.02 ERA down to 5.36 as he gave up 11 HR and 15 BB in 47 innings. It was not great. To build on that he threw 10 innings in 2019, missing 2020 completely, and then was terrible as both a starter and a reliever in 2021. 2022 was completely different, quite excellent. But the fact that pulled all this together at the age of 33 by throwing harder and improving his spin without any other underlying explanation is not reassuring. There are six forecasts for him at Fangraphs and the best one is thinking 3.99 ERA with a 4.22 FIP. Maybe he'll be better than that, but maybe he won't. The established level of performance is not anything close to 2022, so I guess I need to hear a good story about how he's going to sustain this 2mph gain as he gets older. The best I found so far comes from Pinstripe Alley last month:

I think part of the reason the Al Central teams see such a switch is how bad we were last year. We looked bad and they play us less, but I expect us to be improved not only by roster changes and natural player growth but also in improved health. So fewer games against us makes the Guardians' schedule even easier than that analysis indicates. We'll see. It's going to be a much better year to watch baseball in MN than 2022.

If you're going far out like catcher conversions then I might start with a Julien type rather than a guy with serious wheels. The individual player's buy-in is going to matter most in this sort of move, much more than if his brother catches. But in the larger sense you're right: I'd be asking a lot more of these infielders that are hella blocked if they'd consider donning the tools of ignorance. Can't hurt.