Trov

I am never concerned about rankings for prospects because for most part all they are is projections and they mean nothing. Many do not end up panning out. Some come out of no where, but many never do what projected. Cleveland is known to producing pitching, but their position players have struggled to make impact at MLB level. All having top farm system in projection means is people think they have good players coming, but many factors impact how they transition. Remember when Sano was a top ranked guy? How did that work out for him?

Berrios has average 5.375 innings per start. I would argue he does not give his team 7 good innings for the most part, being he does not average even 6. He also has a negative WAR this year, meaning in general any replacement level guy would have been better. You use Ryan as a comparison, who also average 5.35 innings, so nearly the same average, just had 4 less games in part due to COVID. He has been good for a 1 WAR so far this year. So he may only give the team 5 to 6 innings even when he is going good, not his call to come out of games, but his innings overall have been of better quality. Berrios when good has given 7 plus innings 6 times, or 25% of his starts. He has pitched 6 or 6 and partial in 6 more games. So half his games he pitches 6 or more innings. Of which all were quality starts. However, when he has not given a quality start, in half his outings, the other half has been pretty bad. He had a couple of near quality starts that the team won, but for most part half his games the teams has had to score a ton of runs because he has given up more than a run per inning pitched. I would say that is a far cry from 7 good innings for most part. Ryan has 7 out of his 20 starts meet the quality start term, but he has many that he pitched into 6th and was pulled, and only 1 of Ryan's starts this year did he allow more than 1 run per inning, a huge clunker of 10 runs in 4.2 innings. He has had a few not good giving up 1 run per inning or close to it, but for most part he has kept games close giving 5 to 6 innings. If Rocco let him go he maybe could have got a few more innings, but he is always quick to pull guys. Maybe if Rocco does not Ryan get blown up and looks more like a Berrios line has, or maybe not. Many of Berrios blow ups have been in just a couple of innings as well.

I personally feel their biggest issue with runners on base is lack of a plan at the plate for most of them. Buxton is one of the worst on our team with runners in scoring position. Despite pitchers having a different approach to him when runners on, he does not change his approach. His OPS with RISP is .625 with a OPS+ of 68. His overall is OPS i .830 with OPS+ of 130. He is hitting a lot of HR, but just not when runners are on. He has 11 HR with runners on, meaning he has 17 solo shots. He is just not driving in runs when he has the chance. I do not know if it is how pitchers pitch him when runners on, or he trying to do too much, but he is supposed to be the leader of the offense, but he is the biggest issue of driving in runs when RISP. Of the 11 with runners on, only 3 was with RISP. I agree someone needs to step up on offense and help carry the team. I know fans do not like the RBI stat anymore, but the fact is our leader has only 55. The only way you win is by driving in runs, so there still should be some value. If Buxton hit like he did with RISP all the time, we would be calling for him to be benched, or at least not DH every game he is not in CF. However, if he hit with RISP like he did without, he would be right up with Judge for MVP talks, driving in a ton of runs, and scoring even more.

I think it is a little early to call Lee a for sure steal, I mean it was not like he fell to end of first, like Trout did, and it is still very SSS. Also, there is only 1 player taken ahead of him in similar situation, that being a college SS/3B. At pick 6 was Jacob Berry, the rest of the players were pitchers or high school, so will be a long time to know if we got the better of the players. Berry is not off to good start like Lee, but again time will tell. That being said, I am happy with what I am seeing of Lee, and I expect his bat to move him quickly through system

Of course he can be better. I also think he will be better. I always like Berrios, but he never got over that hump and he was the default ace for us despite being an ace. He was always good, and in some games great. However, he has had poor starts, or in many cases just one poor inning that blows up quickly. Many times too quick to get a pitcher ready to come in and it gets out of hand quickly. This was not just for the Twins but has been even worse for the Jays this year. I want to be clear I am not Jose bashing, because he was very good for us, and above average pitcher. He just never became that dominate ace type that we knew every time out was a good chance to win. He normally was either great for the game or terrible, rarely in between, and as stated sometimes would turn very quickly. Only time will tell if SWR will be better than Berrios, and I guess more of the question is are you asking during the length of Berrios contract with Jays, or overall career? If we are talking over length of time of contract, so far SWR will not even need to pitch to have a higher WAR. If we are talking over full career he will only need a couple of great seasons to top the 10 WAR that Berrios is near. I feel fans thought more of Berrios than what he truly was.

Teams move up and down the list as players get called up or drafted. The biggest concerns come when you want to make trades that players are not highly thought of. I mean look at last year we traded for Martin and SWR. Some said we got great deal, but now, we are talking about how Martin is possibly a bust. Heading into 2020 Miranda was not on anyone's radar as a top prospect, but then he clicked in 2021 after minors got back and now talking about possible rookie of year. Prospects will rise and fall, but until they prove it in MLB all prospect ranks are good for is what other teams may think of certain players. It is possible every one of the guys we traded away in the last year do not pan out for the teams we went them to. The biggest concern is if year in year out you are in lower range but to drop after making a ton of trades is not surprising.

If you want to use even HOF player Pujols, how long do you want to extend Miranda? He is 24 now, we have him until he is 30 without buying FA years. So we offer say 100 over 10, which if he is betting on himself he would turn down in a heart beat because that would keep him until 34 and would never get a major contract after that. The fact he is 24 now makes it hard to project what he would be willing to take and what his arb years would be. I am guessing he will not want to buy out too much FA years without a big overpay on his early years. The reason I say this is Albert after age 30 started to drop in production. He was still hitting HR at a reasonable rate, but his defense fell, and his OPS dropped at 31, then more 32, then more 33, where it stayed stable around .780 for a few years, then low .700 or below where he was getting way overpaid. Now, if you think he will have the production of his age 25 to 35, and you think he would accept 10 year 100 mil, you would take that in a heartbeat. However, it is big gamble for both, because if he does put up Albert numbers, then he would be very underpaid, but if he falls flat then we are paying a lot for a poor player. I doubt either side reaches that many years of FA. I think only reason either side does deal is to know cost control, but I still feel we are ahead of us on a rookie that was never considered a top prospect until his breakout last year.

I am not a fan of signing guys that are rookies to long term deals. Maybe after year 2 I would be open to it. Not saying I expect a huge drop off, but this has burned some teams, and many times rookies have big seasons then league adjusts, or player tries to adjust and regresses. Not saying they are same player, but one example is Badoo for Detroit. Many fans here hated he was left in rule 5 to go to Tigers, and he had up and down rookie year, but many thought he would be even better this year, but he has been not even playable at MLB level. Now, Miranda has not regressed after his initial terrible start and short demotion. Something clicked and he has been good for months, without much regression. So hopefully he continues it for years, but I am not ready to just say he is a superstar for years to invest large amounts of money.

Just think he is still not in his prime. What is amazing for me is how quickly he adjusts to how teams have adjusted to him. He will go on a short skid and then boom I will start hitting the ball somewhere else. He will foul pitches off until he gets his he wants. This is not something most can do. He is a joy to watch.

I am pretty sure you can say this about just about every team. Not sure where Twins rank in innings per start, but league wide teams are asking less of their starters. I do feel Twins are on the little more extreme, but even our top starters average only 5 innings per start, not just Archer and Bundy. I also believe most teams will give their vets longer leashes based on prior track record. If you cut a guy after one or two bad games, you will never have people to put out there. I feel your article is a little off when it comes to Pagan, as he has not been in high leverage situation since the trade deadline, except for extra inning game where all the other guys where used already. They are not throwing Pagan out there in late innings but using him in lower leverage early outings, like yesterday when we needed more innings from pen. I just want to point out Rogers who, had amazing first 20 games, but since has been not very good, following your argument he should be cut and a FA now, and no team should look to use him, but he will continue to get chances because he has shown success in past, even early in this season. As it pertains to signing pen guys, they are more of a crap shoot than any other position. As pointed out Rogers was amazing over 20 games, and if he was a FA signing people would have said amazing signing, but now he is doing poorly, so he would be a bad signing. Look at Thielbar, early in year he had 2 terrible outings, and had about 2 or 3 bad outings since, but overall he has been pretty good. I am just pointing out that it is hard to judge how a pen is doing unless you look across the whole body of work, and they can have good and bad runs, so hard to judge them at any given time.

The issue I see is that even if Bundy or Archer is doing fine, Rocco pulls them after 4 or 5 innings based on how many times through order, or what the game score is. He pulls them for our better pen pitchers in fear they will blow the lead quickly. This is not just for them though. Bundy is around 5 innings per start, Archer around 4. But Ryan and Gray are both averaging basically 5 as well. Yes, Rocco will let them go 6 sometimes, but really, everyone has a "short" leash in Rocco world.

Judge may leave the Yankees. It may depend on how willing Yankees are to be over the tax. He turned down a big deal already. I have not looked into the payroll of Yankees for next few years, but they do have some big contracts already in Stanton, Cole, Donaldson. They still need to fill their rotation out with trading Montgomery, and Tallion being FA, Servino on IL. There may be a club willing to pay Judge more than what Yankees are willing to just because of tax level and other areas to fill in next year or two.

SWR since coming back from IL has been like he was at start of year. He started off 4 great games, to then have some ehhh games, then on IL, only to come back with 4 good games again. Not great, but he is showing maybe the bad games were in part injury related. Brooks Lee early numbers sure look like he will hit. He should break camp at AA next year and from there if he hits and there is a need he could be someone to force his way into lineup. I am not expecting he debuts next year, but if injuries arise and he shows his bat is MLB ready why not.

First, he did not blow a save over the weekend, he did take the loss in his second inning of extra innings because Lopez blew the save putting it to extra innings. He has blown a lot of saves, and giving up way too many HR to pitch in high leverage situations right now. However, he still has good stuff overall and I would not look to DFA him, just keep his high leverage situations to a minimum. You point out WPA, and the guy we traded away has a lower WPA with a -0.9 to Pagan is -0.7. Lopez our new closer has -0.5 for us so far, very small sample with us, but he has blown 2 saves for us in 4 chances. I like the WPA stat because it takes leverage into account. Pagan has been taken out of high leverage for awhile now, but over the weekend he had to go out in the extra innings for 2 innings because we burned through our high leverage guys that blew the save.

For most part I would agree, but I am sure if we were asked last year if we would sign Correa to a deal everyone would say no way no how. Yes, last year was an interesting off-season that most likely led to the deal, but Correa was not given the contract he wanted, so he signed the "pillow deal". Judge turned down big deal to bet on himself, but will people pay what he is asking? I do not believe any will be signed by Twins, but we did shock everyone with the Correa deal.

First, sorry for the misspelling. Second, my post was not an attack on Rodgers at all, but pointing out even those that are considered good, have stints of poor play. I have for years talk about in relief pitchers you can try to argue luck all you want, but at some point you need to look at results. I mean Duran gave up a HR in LA that according to broadcast would have been a HR only in that park, that in any other park would have been an out on the track or in front of track. At Target Field most likely not even on the track. Was that bad luck because he was in a stadium that was smaller in that spot than every other ballpark? FIP would say no, he gave up a HR and luck had nothing to do with it, even if every other ball park it is an out. Also, for Rogers, to my knowledge FIP does not account for HBP, at least the formula I have seen it does not, he has hit 8 guys this year. Rogers may have elite stuff per the numbers you site, but he still has blown 7 saves in 35 chances, and it has been 7 blown out of his last 18 chances. I am not discounting he had a dominate first 2 months, but since then he lost closer job and has been good for a total -.9 wins probability added on the season, which reflects his high leverage outings. If you look at his career, where you would argue he is getting unlucky, he has totaled -2.3 WPA, since end of 2019. He did have positive 0.7 2021. His FIP and ERA got out of whack in 2020. Again, the purpose of my post was not to attack Rogers, I had issues with him blowing saves, holds, and losing games when tied in 2020, and people said he was getting bad luck, pitching back to back days and many other excuses. Point was, he has bad stretches, and he has had a bad stretch since June really. He is not the worst in the league and would be more than happy to pitch with Twins over Pagan, but for whatever reason he is not doing well as of late. Maybe luck, maybe not. He is giving up a hard hit rate of 40.3% this year, which is only a little above his career average of 38.7% and line drives are actually below his career average. Maybe he is just having a long run of bad luck, but he is not getting outs with enough regularity. Maybe he bounces back, I am not saying he is cooked. I am pointing out that if his season had flipped his start to now, our view of him would be very different. All pen guys are subject to SSS and what have you done lately. Maybe they get longer leash if it appears to be more luck than anything else, but results are all that really matters.

Coming into the season we thought we had a closer, or some did, in Taylor Rodgers. The Twins pulled of the day 1 trade flipping him for Pagan and Paddock basically. Others were involved but they were all current MLB players changing right before season started. At first, both Rodgers and Pagan had success, but Pagan was getting by with giving up a ton of walks and some hard contact. There was many fans upset because Rodgers through 20 gams was nothing short of amazing. Giving up a run, striking out about a runner per inning, and walking only 4, but hitting 3 batters as well. He was still 17 of 17 in saves. Meanwhile, Pagan started to struggle, Paddock got put on IL with Tommy John. The trade was beginning to look very bad for the Twins, despite still years of control. Also, other pen pitchers for Twins were doing poorly like Tyler Duffey. It was clear we needed a trade and looked like we should be regretting our early trade. However, since that first 20 games for Rodgers he has been pretty bad, and by WAR worse than Duffey, but most likely in part because he is in higher leverage situations too. Since the first 20 games Rodgers has jumped from a 0.44 ERA to a 5.00. He has converted 11 more saves, but blew 7 saves, not a very good conversion rate. His FIP has not not jumped in line with his ERA, so some would say he is getting unlucky, but he has been similar in past seasons having ERA much higher than FIP since 2019 season. That is a long streak of bad luck, and fact is he is giving up runs as a late inning guy. He got demoted from closer, and traded for a expected upgraded, in Josh Hader. On the Twins front we cut Duffey and traded for Michael Fulmer and Jorge Lopez. Both were upgrades to what we had, but Lopez has blown 2 saves so far, and Fulmer took loss against Dodgers. Pagan got lucky the other day against Angels for 1 inning, but then quickly gave up the walk of HR. The point I am making is we cannot ever predict how a pen will do. Maybe we win a game or two more if we had not traded Rodgers, but assuming he progressed same way with Twins we would be calling for him to be cut as well. Maybe we do not make the trade for Lopez, maybe that would have been a good thing. I have long said you can never expect a pen guy to be dominate all the time. They will all have bad stretches, you just hope it does not cost you games. I am not addressing the move of Rodgers at all, so please lets not rehash those comments. I am just saying you never know what the pen guy will do until they get out there and to expect they will bounce back or regress is not something you should expect.

Julien may get moved up to AAA after AA season is over. With this close to end of season organizations tend to look to not make too many moves unless they have to. I would agree he is ready to move up at the plate, but as he would not be making the MLB this year does it make much of a difference today, next month, or next year to be in AAA? In terms of defense he has played all year at 2b or dh, only 18 games in LF last year. From everything I read on him is his defense is what will keep him from being regular starter, unless his bat is super elite he may be settling into 1b/DH. They may look back to LF if there is a spot there in future, but that could be addressed more in off-season. Although his defense at 2b on paper does not look to be terrible this year so maybe he has made improvements. Polonco is close to end of his contract so 2nd base is not as locked up as it may seem. Overall, I am sure it will work itself out.

One thing the data does not have is games not played by Buxton and games played as DH, limiting his value. Buxton has only played 54 games in CF, with only 48 started, and 32 games at DH, 31 he started. So he has not been on the IL, but he sure has been impacted by his injury in lack of games in CF and possibly reduction in output. He has put up big power numbers, but his is not putting up the numbers he did last year. Looks like last year might have been the outlier year of his career in his contract year. Hopefully next year can at least stay in CF most of the time.

All three are easy calls. Bundy would be a little harder if we did not have a lot of possible depth and he was more consistent. Sano is out and so is Bundy. Gray easy pick up.

This was the ultimate team loss. We left so many on base that if we could have got 1 hit in many cases we could have broke game open. Beyond that there was some terrible at bats watching some guys swing at ball four near their eyes. Then late in the game we had some good defense but some bad defense as well. I mainly do not understand why Gordon was not much closer to the line. The left hand hitter looked like a slap hitter to me, and you add in fact that Lopez throws heat. No way was he going to pull the ball in the air to right. Everyone should have been swung way over, but for some reason Gordon was way off the line making him needing to dive. Still if we get one hit with runners in scoring position we win the game and not put in that position.

I wonder where Julien on national prospect rankings after this year. He was never highly touted but has done nothing but hit and shown good eye at plate walking nearly as much as striking out. His numbers are slightly better this year than last year overall too. I think what is hurting his prospect ranking is one he was never high on people lists, but two his lack of defense. I is at 2nd right now and appears to not be too solid there even. He is looking like possible low defense high offense 2nd base or shift to 1B. He has DH 14 times at AA. His bat will get him to MLB it looks like, but his lack of defense may limit his impact. However, if he can hit like he has at the MLB level, they will find a spot for him. May make debut next year.

Interesting take on prospect rankings. You talk about CES as a guy that gave hope, assuming because his offense numbers, and attack Noah Miller, because his offense numbers not as good. What I draw from your determination on prospects is you only care what their offense output is and do not care about anything else that will go into it. Like age, defensive position, how well they can play defense, projection based on. I bet going back to 2019 you most likely said Jose Miranda was not a prospect and had no hope of being anything, being his slash numbers were basically the same as Noah Miller. Miranda was not high on rankings, but he developed. Much of prospect ranking is projection, not where they are right now. CES is not highly ranked by national rankings. In part, he is older so less projection there, and many worry when he faces better pitching he will strike out at way to high of rate. I personally have not watched, unlike the scouts that actually rank him, not sure if you have. However, the book on him is he will chase too much, and many expect when he faces better pitching that will have less mistakes he will not do as well. Maybe he proves them wrong. Prospect ranks are subjective and many times people get them wrong. However, to say Miller is destined for utility guy at best when he is only 19 in A ball right now may be a little premature as well. Maybe you are right, but only time will tell. Personally though, I was not big on CES because he has no defense and I have seen too many college bats tear up lower minors only to never make majors because in AAA they face good pitching and their holes are exposed. Maybe they get a cup of coffee or something at majors but again holes get exposed.

I would say Canterino worries me the most. Not because it is TJ, as many guys recover from it, but he has had many arm issues and Rice guys have history of that. Maybe he comes back and does just fine, but he will start getting passed up on depth charts and will need to prove himself much faster before he starts getting bounced around the league on waiver claims. Lewis will be given every chance to show he is back, and as long as he can hit there will be a place for him. Rodriguez is still very young and will be given plenty of time to recover too. Also he will be known for the bat as well and at minimum there is the DH roll he can find if he can keep swinging.

I remember when he was drafted the big flag was he came from Rice, and they are known to burn their pitchers. Guess he is just another Rice pitcher that will continue to have issues in pros. I do not know why any pitcher would go to Rice knowing their history.