Trov

Twins have a lot of 40 man roster moving to deal with this off-season. They had so many on 60 man that when you look at the FA and most likely denied options, we still have 42 on current 40 man roster, I believe. Meaning we have to DFA 2 right off the bat. Then we need to decide who else gets cut to make room for the new guys coming in that need to be added. Right now we have 51 players on our 40 man, since SWR just got added. We have 8 either FA or likely opt outs, that being Archer, Bundy, Fulmer, Leon, Sanchez, Correa, Sano, and B Hamilton. That leaves 43 on a 40 man, mean 3 get DFA before we talk about others being added. I think fur sure DFA: Cave, Contreras, Smeltzer. That gets us to the 40. Then they have to decide who gets DFA and who gets added. SWR just did so he is a lock now. I agree with Julien and I think Canenterio will too, because a team could take him in rule 5, put him on 60 day for the season, or most of it and stash him in pen for the last few weeks if he ever is ready then they can send him down the next year. Unless we think he is never going to help us at MLB level I think they want to add him. To make room for those 2, I could see Garlick and Enlow get the DFA. Then if there is any other younger guys they want to make sure I think Sands or Stashak are next out. Of course some may not get claimed and may stay. The fact is all these 60 man IL moves really has crunched our roster decisions. Of course I agree SWR would have made the cut anyways and many of the add ons would have if needed as well, so not crazy, just made the moves early.

The biggest issue with him is the 40 man crunch coming up. As it sits even after you remove the FA and assuming we opt out of Sano, we have 42 guys on our 40 man roster right now, plus the few guys that will need to be added to save from rule 5 draft. That will need to be a factor. He is an average player, maybe slightly above, but in a perfect line up is he in the top of it? I would say no. His defense is inflated by the eye test. He looks like he makes great plays, which at times he did, but he missed a lot of plays too that were not errors but others could have made. Not only do we have Miranda, but depending on what we decide to do with FA and SS we have possibly Lewis to slide over, Arraez, not sure Gordon has the arm to play third but sure he could fill in if needed. I am not saying dump him, but I am far from the bring him back for sure stance. It will be a hard decision. Depending on how team feels about Lee it is possible he could come up, they have been very aggressive with him so far.

Did anyone really expect he would opt in? Baring an injury that was going to carry into next year, no way was he going to opt in. The question will be, what will others offer. We were able to sign him because he was not getting offers he expected, for whatever reason. Maybe, he was getting good offers but he was seeking better. Will he continue to hold out hoping for record deal, that may not be there? My biggest concern for him long term is I do not know how well he will age. Right now, and for the next 3 to 5 seasons he will be one of the best SS, maybe not the best, but up there. However, as he ages and most likely needs to move off SS, will his bat transition to 3b, the normal transition, or will he be a below value player then? Could the Twins spend to sign him to a deal he wants, sure. However, they need to assess the risk of those end of contract years, and are you willing to risk having an overpaid player that will need to play because of his pay, but may not be helping us win. If you think you can win a ship over that time of peak years, or you think he will age well, then do it. If not, then move on to plan B.

In terms of the FO, I will agree they did not go out and try to nab a starter like Rondon, or Thor, although we do not know if they sent out feelers and were rejected, we just assume based on reports we never showed interest, but we really do not know how contract talks with those players happened. That being said, Thor was nothing amazing. Many of the other free agent staters in our expected price range did not do anything too amazing. Yes, there was better guys out there, in hindsight, than Bundy and Archer, but we do not know if they would have been as good on the Twins as the team they were on. Rondon was the biggest miss if we could have signed, assuming he would have came here. Outside of that we did not have any huge swings and misses in my opinion. Keep in mind Archer and Bundy were only meant for 1 year deals, and many others got 2 to 3 year deals. In terms of planning for pen, if you look at the top 8 signed pen guys, all but 1 of which was to multi year deals, most did on par with some of our guys. Pen pitchers are hard to predict, just like how everyone was upset with Rogers being traded, he had a terrible year. Yes, who we got was not helpful this year, but Rogers after his first month and half has just been terrible overall. Had we kept him, would you say we should have expected that? In terms of the trades we made to fix the issues, well part was we had injuries to expected guys like Acala, Colome, and Stashak who were all hoping to contribute over the year, but all missed the full year. So yea, we needed to trade away some prospects, but as the 40 man roster crunch was going to lead to some trimming of possible prosects too this is a natural way. The top guy we traded was Steer, at least as of right now, some young pitchers that may pan out down the road, but Steer was the closest to help us. He had an below average debut this year, and was like 4th on our depth chart of infield prospects behind, Lewis, Lee, Martin, and possible Julien. With Gordon emerging as another viable MLB guy, Steer was very dispensable, and would have been traded this offseason most likely anyways.

I will agree with the Miranda take, he showed he could be a bat, but still has much room to grow. If you take out his first few weeks it looks even better, but he is not a superstar yet. In terms of the Gray take, I would say he can be a 1 or 2 on a winning team, but it requires a good pen as well, something we were not great with this year. Gordon I have to fully disagree with the requirement of your number 5 picks having to be stars. First, just looking at his draft, the number 1 and number 2 drafted guys never even made the majors, and the number 6 has done basically nothing. The number 1 pick was by Houston who had back to back number 1 picks that did nothing for them and they still doing just fine. I will agree it does not help when your high first round picks are not all-stars, but they are not required to be for team success. In terms of Gordon himself, he finally was given a real shot at this level, and he produced above replacement level. He really only was given a full chance later in the year. He has only played 70 full games out of the 130 he has played. He started about 100. So he was still not given a full run all season, but still put up a 1.6 WAR, if he was given a full season of playing full games, provided he had similar numbers, he would be around a 3 WAR I would guess, that is not too bad, is it elite no, but it is better than many. Sure, he may not do that over a full year and maybe he did well based on his use, but I expect if he is given a real shot over the next 4 to 5 years he will be good to great. Will he carry the team, doubtful, but I would be more than willing to see him hitting in the bottom half the lineup regularly. Ryan, I think it will come down to how much more he develops at the MLB level. I am hopeful a full spring training where he can work with coaches to really develop a second pitch should help him. If he can develop a second pitch he will be just fine. I agree with Wallner, lets wait and see on him. Sure he has done fine in minors and had a nice little story so far, but I am not counting on him to help much next year, as he will strike out a ton, and once more tape is on him, he will need to adjust quickly.

I agree with the assertion that the core is what led to the downfall. Buck going down as usual, Polonco going down was big, but it did let Gordon show his stuff on everyday basis. Arraez has been ehh, but I wonder if that is more so based on just wearing down, he has played career high in games this year and wonder if his body is just not used to it. Kepler is who he is. His season numbers are on par with his career numbers, except for a little less power, which may be of concern. That being said, I am not ready to move on from Arraez at all. Polonco if we can find a taker I would be willing to move on from him, as we have plenty of possible fill ins. Kepler, I would not dump him but similar I would be willing to move on from him, and if we do not, drop him to bottom third of line up.

One thing people need to remember, is he was a high prospect for a reason. That does not mean he will have success, but many gave up on Nick Gordon in the organization. Many fans wanted him cut or traded coming into the year. They were calling him a bust. He is now 26 and his numbers are very similar a Jose Miranda, who people are all over saying he is amazing, he is 24. Aside from a few more HR for Miranda the numbers are nearly the same. That being said, Martin had a down year, Gordon would have several down years. We talked for years Gordon needed to add to power, and kept repeating levels. Now, Gordon had reasons he never built up the muscle to add to the power, until now, but point is, still a little early for some to give up on Martin. Will he be a superstar, maybe maybe not, but he is 24, and next season will be a big season for him to see where he falls in the pecking order, but since he came back from his wrist injury he is back to what he was doing last year. Hopefully he can an minimum develop some power, but look at Arraez, he was an OBP guy, with little power, but he develop some this year as well. Hopefully AFL, and normal spring training will help Martin develop and can push his way into the lineup. He will have his work cut out, being Lewis should be back, Gordon has shown value, Miranda has shown value, and Lee may have leapfrogged him. However, if he can play CF on defense and can get on base at high clip he will have value when Buck gets hurt next year.

The question is how do you determine MVP. Most will look to say, if we took player x off the team where would they be. The Angels would be terrible either way, as they were terrible this year after their hot start. Yankees most likely would have still competed for title even without Judge. Personally, I would take Ohtani on the team over Judge, but Judge will win the MVP based on what he has done and where his team is. Also, in the second half, if Judge was not playing the Yankees may have played themselves out of the playoffs, despite having a huge lead at one point. In the second half Judge was the only hitter doing much for Yankees on regular basis. Ohtani is crazy good, and his next contract will be crazy to value. I mean he can be a top of rotation arm, which is worth nearly 30 mil a year generally, but then you add in fact he will also hit at near elite level. If he was just the DH he would still look to pull in close to 20 mil a year I bet. His bat would earn him more if he played defense, which I bet he could but team keeps him at DH to protect arm and less possible injuries. Does that mean he will earn close to 50 mil a year? It will be fun to hear the numbers for him. I sure wish the Twins could be in on that, but no way they will.

Lee, Martin, Julien, and Lewis will all be fighting for at-bats at MLB level in next year or two. Similar to when we thought we had a vast amount of corner OF, DH, 1b guys a couple years ago. One reason we were able to trade Steer, who would have been right in that same mix with the 4 mentioned above. Similar to our glut of corner OF guys it will shake out, but hopefully not because of injuries. You can throw Gordon into the mix too after this season he had. I have high hopes for Lee and Lewis as stars, with Martin as a good on-base guy that can steal. Julien may be able to hit, but his limited defense may be his shortfall if he does not overhit.

For the commentors that point to championships as the reason baseball may have more parity than other sports, who seem to have more repeats over short periods of time, that is not what I was getting at. I agree, baseball has a lot of parity in champions, mainly because baseball in a short series is so hard to predict. The 162 game season is a slog, then it all comes down to best of 3, 5, 7, and 7 games, is very hard to say the best team will always win. However, what I was mainly pointing out is the fact we have similarly the same few teams make the playoffs each year. Yes, you have a pop up team here or there but their runs are normally short to 1 or 2 years in a short period. Maybe it is just poor run teams, as Tampa continues to compete for playoff spots over and over despite never having major FA signings, or retaining their big names into their 30's. The Twins have been one of the teams that have made the playoffs a lot over the last 20 years. Overall, there is parity in the A.L. Central I would say over the last 20 years. However, there are a few teams in last 20 years that always seem to be in the playoffs, and several that never even compete. Outside of the Royals 2 years they generally are in the bottom. Baltimore has been near the bottom for most of the last 20 years. There are many other teams that do not make the playoffs, save for a year or two hear and there. Yes, you can point to a year where a team did well out of the normal few, but Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, Braves, and St. Louis, have made playoffs just about every for last 20 years. There are other teams that have had some decent runs for like 5 years, Oakland for instance did have 2 good runs over the last 20 years, or Tampa Bay has done well, but they are normally taking over other teams, not the ones I listed. The parity is between everyone but those top few teams. Now, it is not just money spent as Braves and St. Louis are not always near the top in spending, but clearly they spend well and develop well. Oakland in their stints did it not through spending big bucks of course. I have long stated having the top spending team does not mean winning ships or even for sure making playoffs, look at Angels, Phillies, Padres, right now in having huge contracts but not winning. However, it sure helps when your team misses on a draft pick, or something like that.

First, in terms of the other leagues there is not perfect parity, and in part each has its reason. However, in NFL they are much closer to it, and that is in part to the short careers, high injuries, and the like. Of course when one team has a dominate QB they will be more likely to win, but teams will move from to top to bottom and bottom to top much faster, provided the management is not terrible, than any other sport. In terms of NBA the top players will tend to win out normally, and in a full series the better team will normally win. However, due to shorter contracts, limits on max contracts per team, unless guys are willing to take a pay cut to play with certain guys or in a certain city, players get moved around more. Normally it is the poor managed teams that always fail, ala the Timberwolves for years who drafted badly, but you do get some cities that draw the stars to work together. I do not follow the NHL or how they go about their business. Just because 1 team has had a good run lately does not mean they will always be near the top though. Is TB always a favored championship team and do all the top FA generally go there as well as many of the top international players? I do not know so honestly asking.

Sorry fixed my error.

First, what is parity, and what would it look like? Parity is the general competitive overturn of teams throughout the sport without long term dynasties and long term droughts. Baseball has normally been a sport without much parity for various reasons. I will not get into those reasons, but there has long term been a few teams near the top, and a several teams near the bottom, and normally takes several seasons to make the swap, unless it is a big market team. For me it would look like similar to NFL where little prediction carries all the way through the season. Now, it will be hard to get that, just based on the sport, the season length and all that. However, we still keep seeing the same few teams near the top and outside a few blips here and there, the same teams near the bottom. For whatever reason, when we think some teams will make pushes, mainly Angels, they fail to do so, and when we think a team may be dropping off due to aging players, injuries or other things they still seem to stay near top, again save for like the Red Sox who seem to every other year bounce from contender to near last in division every few years. Do we want parity? I personally like it. I like to see the bottom feeding teams to surprise people and to have teams like the Dodgers and Yankees to actually fall back to the pack. I think it is more entertaining and creates better stories to follow. I mean when teams are out of contention in August fans stop watching. I guess if you do not want to watch a full season it is nice to know that your team is out and move onto a different sport, but I personally like meaningful baseball in September. I like to see the story lines of teams fighting for spots in playoffs. How do we get parity? Well, the MLB plan was to increase the playoff spots, hoping that would create the late season drama, or least they claimed that, but really I think it was to get more money for playoff games. However, the first year with the increased wild card team has only 1 race in all of baseball with still a week and half left to play. That 1 race is the NL wild card between Phillies, Padres, and Brewers. Yes, technically there are still mathematical rases and Braves and Mets are still fighting for division race, but that is basically it. It would take complete collapse for some teams to miss playoffs and others to make it, maybe that will be a story. The MLBPA think you can get parity by having a draft lottery to help eliminate tanking, assuming that now teams will not gut their teams to play to the bottom. However, two teams gutted their teams this year, A's and Reds. Also, the MLBPA think if you lift the tax more teams will sign FA, but look at the Rangers and Tigers, or the Angels for last 2 decades, have made big FA signings only to be near the bottom this year. Yes, some teams that made big signings are fighting for playoffs, like Seattle who is expected to make wild card. However, they were on the verge last year too, so not like they flew from near bottom to near top, they actually won more games last year than they are on pace this year. Rangers tried to jump from bottom to top, but so far only jumped ahead of the tanking A's. Will the anti-tanking draft lead to changes down road, maybe, but I have argued it will not due to the nature of the draft. Is there another way to get parity? Maybe. I could through out some extreme ways, like a redraft of players each year like a fantasy draft, but that would never happen. So something that could happen, but still think players will never go for it, despite their argument they want parity as well. Put in a salary cap, floor, and max contract lengths, and restrictions on moving players similar to NBA rules. I believe this will lead to parity, because it would prevent the big market teams from being able to sign all the top FA, which is not the best way to build a team but helps make up for mistakes in other areas, even prior FA signings. It would prevent teams like the Yankees for trading for guys like Stanton for almost nothing just to get the salary dump. It will allow smaller market teams to compete in FA because they can take on more short term money over 2 to 3 years, but need to be risk adverse from the 7 to 10 year deals. If the max length was say 4 years with a super max like NBA at 5 years, you would see much more smaller market teams making bids for 4 year deals I would think. Also, if the max value was based off a percent of the cap, then there is little a big market team could do. Now, I doubt this will ever happen, and it would not work just like the NBA, but something similar I think would help. I believe until that happens we will just see the same way of small markets building through draft, international signings, and trying to win trades, selling guys off before their value peaks like the Rays do, or similar to what Royals did several years ago, build the team and hold off with an all in push knowing you will get a chance but will have years of rebuild ahead. With the big markets continue to filling missed draft or international signing holes with trades pricy vets and big FA signings, never facing much backlash for a bad signing, unlike a mid or small market team. Do we want a change, I do, but does the league? I think the league does somewhat, because they want ratings still high in September. Do the players? I think they want all the teams spending more money on players, but not for sure parity, just more spending. Do you as a fan want more parity or are you happy with how the game is now? If you want parity, do you think it is possible and how?

Kepler will never go down as a great player, but he will be a good player. He gave us several okay years. His defense gets overlooked because his offense has never come around to what we hoped he would. I expect he will be around next year, unless a team really blows us away with a trade. We have a lot of comp at corner OF, but his defense has high value. Some think the new anti shift rule will help him, it will not in my opinion, but maybe.

The Twins will go as far as Buxton can carry them, which is not a good thing. I like Buck, but to bet your team success on a guy that has never NEVER played a full season. The closest was way back in 2017 he did 140, you could argue that was full season only missing 22 games. Outside of that season he has yet to play more than 92 games, and even in the 60 game 2020 season he played 39. He averages half the season sitting on the IL, or in this case rest instead of IL until he hit the IL. He is great when he can play, and the contract is based on this issue, but we need to have a backup plan for when he gets hurt. When he is out it hurts our defense and our lineup as we do not have a clear backup. Hopefully we can figure that out this offseason.

I remember when he came up he would be on top of the plate and pitcher just assumed he wanted pitches outside, but he really wanted them in and he would paint the 3rd base line over and over. Eventually he got figured out and he never adjusted. All the power to the man for still playing. He is treating independent ball like it is town ball.

Has the pipeline created a dominate starting rotation and bullpen to be one of best in league, no it has not, and if that is what you want as success, then we did fail. We were middle of the road overall staff, and the hope and plan was most likely to get guys in the minors to step up by mid season and push out the Bundy's and Archers. However, so many long injuries tested our depth, and failing of a few. Personally, I think we showed we do have some type of pipeline. No they are not top starting pitchers as of yet, but they have depth of guys that should be able to be competitive in starts, and hopefully have depth when injuries do hit. Will we hit on every pitcher no, no team does. But finding guys like Varland late in drafts and developing is something to be praised.

You can talk about a 5 man rotation, but really you need 7 or 8 guys to count on through the season. The guys that have options, despite being ready will most likely spend plenty of time in AAA while the others will start the year in the rotation. As injuries arise the AAA guys will come up as needed. What we went through like 10 starters this year minimum? I doubt they go out and spend big on any starter, unless there is a 1 or 2 year deal on a top guy available. I also doubt they trade for a starter, unless they are sending a starter away as well, as they do have plenty of possible depth. Are any top end guys, not compared to the likes of verlander, but they are more like good mid-rotation guys. I guess part of question is would you rather have good depth, or more high end? Personally, I would like more depth that can hopefully get you about 6 good innings, but if you lose the top guy and have no one to fill in then you are in even more trouble.

The biggest frustration for me is the lack of situational hitting. I believe this is very much based on the coaching. I am overall someone that embraces the use of analytics, but I do feel you can go overboard and forget that those numbers included players doing situational hitting. Meaning, when a runner is on 3rd and less than 2 outs you score as often as you do because you put the ball in play, or when a runner is on 2nd with no outs you score as often as you do because you can advance the runner. Yes, the other team is trying to prevent this, and I am not advocating for always bunting guys over, but way too often we would fail to get runners to 3rd and fail to get runners home when we could manufacture a run, always playing for the multi-run inning. When you never play to try and just get 1 run in, when you need to get just 1 run in you will not normally do it.

Without all three we would be fighting for near last place and not even had been talking about trying to win division. Ryan has been good, but not great, but hopefully he can build off of this season improve and be a solid starter for next few years. Duran looks like he should be a beast for years to come. Miranda leading our team in RBI at 64 is just terrible. I know RBI is not a big stat anymore, but you still need to drive runs in and when our leader is at 64 when I am pretty sure Jose Ramirez had 64 by early July. I believe Miranda will hit at this level and hopefully for years to come with Twins. I am not sold on him being a superstar though but a solid hitter for us.

I never have felt in baseball that a lottery would fix tanking. However, since it is in affect hopefully we can jump up. The fact is many times the number 1 pick is not better than the number 5 pick, but normally the top 1 to 5 are generally better than those after, but not always.

The first was a 1-2 pitch he was just trying to make sure he put ball in play, because that is only way to get a hit is to put in play. It was a weak hit but not pure luck or anything. The next 2 hits were not "highlights" but were solid line drives. The point of hitting is to put ball in play and get a hit right? The point is he can put ball in play with solid line drives. He is not going to hit 40 plus HR or anything but he is expected to hit and will have some power. Add in fact he switch hits, that is a huge plus too.

Depending on how spring training shakes out, other signings/trades, we could see Lee break with the Twins, who knows. Unless they feel he needs to work more on defense, it sure seems like they feel his bat will play at any level right now. A lot will depend on if Correa stays, or we bring in a different SS, and how Lewis is. Since Lee will not need a 40 man spot until he is ready I would not expect him to break with Twins, but they have shown they are not afraid to bring in the best player no matter the service time, with this FO. Under Terry Ryan, I would say Lee is like 3 years from making the majors because that is when he needs to be added to 40 man roster and getting service time. Then he would get called up like in June.

I would not say our lineup is set at all, either pitching or hitting. They will have money to spend on short term contracts if they want to. The Twins will not look for long term deals, most likely nothing longer than 4 years for anyone in FA. If someone like Contreres, or one of many 1B corner OF or SS will sign a larger per year 3 to 4 year deal, than a longer deal I think they may make a surprising splash. We will have depth, and can trade from that if needed when signing some players but I would love to see a large short term deal. Do not tie yourself to aging FA down the road when other players will need to be paid. I think it may be time to move on from both Polonco and Kepler, DFA or trade for a pen arm if possible, but we have plenty of younger guys that can fill those rolls, if we cannot go out and sign a corner OF guy to replace Kepler, we still should have plenty of depth.

They need to win 3 of 5 to stay in it. That will not put them in control but at least make the remaining 2 weeks important. If we win 4 of 5 we will be right back into the mix, and if some how we sweep everyone will be talking about who we will be playing in postseason, despite still being up only 1 on Cleveland and who knows with Chicago. Either way if we lose the series no matter by how much we need to just concede I would say.