nytwinsfan

A little strange to discuss Kepler's shortcomings and underperformance of expectations without at least mentioning how his Babip. has been exceedingly low year after year despite at least decent LD drive and hard hit rates. Not saying it necessarily means he will break out and improve (there may be other reasons his babip is so routinely low), but it is a very noteworthy fact we should be discussing.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Two words: Patrick Corbin.

Wait, whose pregnant?

Time to promote Brent Rooker? In the past month he is hitting .302/.433/.583 (1.017) with a 19.2 K% and a 19.2 BB%. The Ks have come way down of late, and the BB% up. I say let him finish the rest of the year at Rochester, and if he does well there, have a call up.

I still think Kepler is being undervalued. His defense (by both Fangraphs and Baseball Reference) has been a big positive this year (among qualified RF he's second to Mookie Betts in defensive value on Fangraphs), and he's been worth 1.5 fWAR (second most among Twins hitters now that Escobar is gone) and 1.9 bWAR so far this year. If you look at total fWAR (i.e. including defense and baserunning), Kepler is 13th among qualified RF. That's not too shabby. Also, and I think this is critical, he's always had a surprisingly low BABIP despite a pretty good batted ball profile (lots of medium and hard contact, little soft contact and on the lower side for infield fly balls), but this year it has been ridiculously low at .246 BABIP. That makes him 151st out of 161 qualified hitters. And most of the ones below him on that list are sluggers who hit lots of high fly balls that are caught when they are not HRs. This BABIP has to at least be somewhat bad luck. If he even just had last year's BABIP of .276 (itself still quite low), he'd probably be hitting around a .770-.780 OPS and worth well over 2 WAR at 2/3 of a season. I'm not saying Kepler has lived up to his potential, but I definitely think there is still a good chance he breaks out further. The BB and K rates look great, and his defense has improved a lot. And his numbers against lefties have improved. Once he gets even close to normal luck, he should be a well above average right fielder.

Any update on Graterol's injury? Must not be too severe since I've seen very little discussion of it. Also, any word on how Wander Javier's surgery went?

Since April 18th (one month), Rooker's numbers are .265/.306/.471 (.777). Since 5/7 (last 10 games), his numbers are .273/.313/.523 (.835). Good stuff.

Oh hey, look who is leading the league in fWAR for all pitchers: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2018&month=0&season1=2018&ind=0

Congrats Tom!

Maybe I'm missing something, but why does this article assume that the contract would be limited to Buxton's remaining four years of control? Especially since Bowden's tweet seemed to suggest both sides were looking "long term," which to me suggests more than just the four remaining years of Twins' control. As a player with a high floor, Buxton is a great candidate for an extension. The one real risk for the Twins is injury, which should certainly be factored into the price. But otherwise, the chances of Buxton having lower than a 2 WAR season seem really low to me. I do agree however with the poster above that Buxton is not really very comparable to Betts (who has clearly been the superior player), although I still definitely think Buxton worthy of an extension now.

As alwasy Thrylos, I don't always agree with you, but you always have interesting takes on the prospects, and I epecially appreciate that you are not just regurgitating what other prospect writers say, but actually develop and explain your own views.

The thing about Romero that we haven't seen among any other Twins pitching prospects in a while (forever?) is he combines high K% with high GB/lowHR%. While Berrios had the good K rates, he also gives up a lot of FB, and thus a lot of HR. Even in the minors, his GB rates were always in the low 40s or high 30s. If Romero can strikeout even 8 per 9 innings at the major league level, and also have a GB rate of close to 50%, he's a # 2 starter.

Yeah, injuries might be a legit reason to expect some upside. Hope you are right.

He was great in 2014-2015, decent in 2016 and terrible last year. Unless someone can give me a reason he was awful last year that won't make him awful this year . . .

Odorizzi hasn't been a #2 SP since 2015. He was barely a # 5 last year. The guy's BB rate and HR rates skyrocketed. He had a .227 BABIP last year and that was with a pretty below average batted ball profile. No way that continues. People thinking he is anything more than a back of the rotation piece are fooling themselves. There is a reason they only got Palacios back.

I'm pretty skeptical Odorizzi is anything above a number 5 starter anymore, but for Palacios, sure, why not.

Umm, Felix Jorge K's are wrong for 2017. He had 108, not 158. Very very big difference. If he had a 158 he'd probably be a top 5 Twins prospect.

The front office has been very clear about waiting to spring training to discuss extensions. See, just one example, here: I've read/heard this many other places as well. While it is possible that they may not try that hard to extend Dozier, claiming (as this article does) that they seem to have no intention of bringing Dozier back because they haven't discussed an extension with him yet, when they have explicitly said they will discuss extensions later is . . . strange at best, and blatently misleading at worst.

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/what-statcast-reveals-about-contact-management-as-a-pitcher-skill/ This suggests that xwOBA is not any more predictive than FIP.

Is there any systematic evidence that long term, certain pitchers generate worse contact than others, other than in terms of the crude categofies of GB, LD and FB? In other words, is there any systematic evidence that xwOBA ads anything to FIP (or SIERA which I think already takes into account GB%) other than short-term randomness? I'm open to the possibility, but I haven't seen it. Certainly certain hitters generate better launch angles and exit velocities on FB/LD, but that doesn't necessarily mean that certain pitchers do. That being said, this is an interesting analysis.

Agreed, it is hard to be too sympathetic to the players, but on the other hand the owners have plenty of money and plenty of profits from baseball as well. Plus, even if we don't think it is justified, if the players refuse to sign going into April (which is apparently a possibility) it is going to be a loss for the fans.

According to Jeff Passan, neither Darvish nor most of the other free agents still available are anywhere close to signing with anyone, and there is a lot of tension and frustration, if not anger, among the players about the way this offseason has gone. Definitely give this a read: https://sports.yahoo.com/sources-players-teams-digging-protracted-standoff-despite-lorenzo-cains-80-million-deal-060605804.html

Darvish, easily.