Trov

First off, I loved Radke and he was underrated by national people in my opinion. He did not put up the flashy numbers but he was good at what he did. I was simply saying he was not regarded as a top guy by many. Also, he was drafted and debuted well before the 2000's which was part of my other point.

Thanks for putting in the work. I fully agree with the point you are making. Fans get upset we are not marching out top talent year and year out from draft and signings, but they are not looking at how other teams are doing. If you are making the best out of the crap you have, you are doing actually well. If you got the best pitcher out of a group, then even if they are not great, you still did better than everyone else in the same circumstances.

I am not defending what Puckett was accused of, and would not be upset if his statue was removed for those things. However, the issues with Puckett did not come out during his playing career like Bauer did. I would remind you Puckett had a trial and was acquitted of what he was charged with.

Lindor was traded in offseason because they knew they would not sign him. Clevinger was traded during 2020 season where his FIP at the time was a 5.66, so the worst FIP on his team by far at the time. Most like would not have started a playoff game that year. In 2019, Bauer may not have been the number 1 at the time of trade, but he was the number 1 going into the season, as he had the best overall numbers in 2018. He was around 2nd or 3rd in 2019 at the time he was traded. He would have been an expected playoff starter. He also had another year of control so could have been traded in off season. Also, Kluber did not pitch in 2019, so not sure why you say Cleveland had him as he did not throw a pitch. Who cares how many Cy Young's he won in past if he did not pitch the year Bauer was traded? Finally, as I said Bauer was always in the press, in the manager dog house for doing things like throwing a ball into stands when pulled from the game. Making other comments about all kinds of things. The trade of Lindor and Clevinger are not the same, as one was off-season, and the other was the worst starter on the team at the time of trade.

It is a big no for me Dog. I am all for second chances in life, but he has always been someone that rub people the wrong way. What he was accused of is terrible, and he will do it again most likely, and it was likely not the first and only time, assuming he did what accused of. He is not someone teammates have ever liked, I mean a playoff team traded him away when he was supposed to be their number 1. There is more than just they needed a bat, and had pitching depth. It was we do not want this guy around anymore.

Okay, you were making so decent points until you got to your last paragraph about the 2000's pitching pipeline. First, Radke was never regarded as a top prospect, top guy, even when Twins were winning, and when he was our number 1, many said he would be a 3 on at top playoff team at best. Liriano, we traded for, so we did not draft and develop, he was in our system 1 year before making debut, and he was a flash in a pan situation, never lived up to hype. Garza was okay for us, but we traded away and was better away from us. Milton we traded for, never pitched in minors, and was not anything amazing never had ERA below 4, Silva we also traded for, no minor league games with us, and he was a 4 or 5 starter at best as well. Slowey, had 1 okay year with us, other than that another 4 or 5 starter at best. Baker was another okay middle of rotation guy. You attack all our current guys Ryan, Ober, Varland, SWR, for not being Santana basically, but back it up by touting guys that were at the same level or worse. You say they may be as good as Blackburn or worse, but Milton, Silva, Slowly, Baker, ect, are all very much in the same boat. I am not saying this group will be amazing, but how can you say the "pipeline" from 2000's was anything great? Radke was before 2000's and Santana was only success, again not signed by us originally, but we did teach him the change up. Outside of that we had almost no draft success or early trade successes and the names you list are no where near top guys, which was always our problem.

It really does not look much different than what we ran out there last year, minus CC. If guys that were hurt can play this year, I would say it is actually an upgrade to what we did last year.

I am open to bringing in Lopez for the right price, but it is not like he is the best pitcher in baseball and may not be the best on the roster if we did trade for him. He also has only 1 time pitched a full year, last year. Before last year he pitched 20 and 21 games in full seasons, 2020 he pitched 11 games. His numbers are good, but not great. In my opinion, if you are looking to bring in a starter, they need to be clearly better than the top guys we have, else you are just pushing back other guys that we should give a shot to.

People just pay attention to the money being paid and not the money taken home when they see the numbers. Some players will look at those things, how taxes factor in, one reason many people say Texas teams have advantages because no state taxes. It would not be responsible for someone to not factor those things in. However, it is also possible that having the record contracts regardless of where it is has importance. I do agree if you factor in all the aspects Correa left actual money on the table to leave for other offers.

I do not blame the Twins for not upping the offer after what played out. I do not trust a thing Borras ever has to say. He has always tried to downplay injuries for his clients in the media. He will always say the medical concern should be no concern. Only to then have major injury pop up for his client. I am not saying Correa will suddenly have some career ending injury, but if true the Twins wanted to see what the issue the Giants had was, I see no issue there. I work with people making deals all the time, and I believe in transparency in deals, never hiding information. That is just me.

Baseball has always prided themselves on their HOF on being so exclusive. Unlike other sports that tend to have many players each year, I think football has like 5 or 6 and basketball always have a few. Where baseball will have years no one gets in. The way they get in is by vote of baseball writers. They get all people on the ballot and can vote at most for 10, but do not need to vote for 1. What I find crazy is when some of the guys that are on the boarder, but miss out, and then some voters will give a vote to guys that have no reason getting a vote. Some voters put too much into character clause, but yet Ty Cobb is still in, but Curt Schilling gets dinged because of his politics. Some guys who retired due to injury, Puckett and Koufax, get benefit of doubt they would have put up normal HOF numbers, but guys like Santana who tried to play through injuries and had poor end of career get dinged. Really, if you compare Santana and Koufax their numbers very similar. Santana has higher career WAR in less games pitched. The difference is Koufax retired at peak 5 year stretch, Santana tried to come back from injury and looked bad his last year. I have huge issues with HOF for things like this. Had Santana retired after his age 31 season would he have got benefit like Koufax did? If Koufax, who was best pitcher for 5 years, similar to Santana who was one of best for 5 or 6 seasons, had pitched beyond his injury trying to come back, does he miss HOF? Puckett gets in to HOF because he was one of best of his time, had to retire due to health. Mauer, who has put up very similar numbers, if not better than Puckett, and at catcher most of his career, should be a shoe in for HOF, but he had several years by end of career that people will look at and go against him. It was mostly health related issues, but voters will not care.

The deal with the Mets still pending their physical. This was a crazy situation. The day that SF was set to announcing the signing it gets postponed, only to have over the night Mets swoop in. It makes me wonder how everything went. Did Borras reach out to Mets, did Mets reach out to him? Did Borras reach out to Twins, did Twins try to reach out? Personally, knowing what is talked about Borras, he most likely reached out to Mets and not the Twins. Borras has dealt with injured guys before and he always downplays things. I am surprised SF found something that Twins would not have known about, and they were willing to give 10 years. The Twins if offered a chance could have matched the Mets number for sure, the question is where they given that chance and declined. I for one would not have been happy to see Twins swoop in like Mets did, unless the Giants gave the okay. Maybe they did give the okay. I am sure more will come out in next day or two.

I get the study, but as you point out Arraez is an outlier, and shows bit of the flaw in the exit velo versus overall output. A guy like Arraez may not crush the ball, but he generally hits line drives, which in my opinion, is better metric as to what kind of a hitter they will be. If a hitter can hit line drives, one it will generally be hard enough to get hits. Now, the harder you hit them the more likely they will be for extra bases, which is where the wRC really measures success. The main issue I have, is guys like Sano and Gallo have high hard hit rates, but also strike out at crazy high rates as well. I do not care about strike outs in certain situations, as there is no difference in a K when no one is on base versus a weak fly or ground out. However, there are times where strike outs are just killers.

Gallo will not be DH much, his glove has too much value. The signing of Gallo does allow to open up some more trade options for Twins. The headline says too many Outfielders, but do we really have too many? I mean how many have we burned through the last couple of years? Sure they are on our roster, but 3 of them have been on the injured list several times, for long periods. Others have spent stints on it from time to time over the last couple of years. So unless the often injured guys actually stay healthy, which no reason to suspect that will happen, we will need like 7 OF through the full year.

If Gallo can play elite defense, and as long as his HR are timely, then I will take it. It increases the chance Kepler gets dealt, or it may be he will more so be used in RF and slide Kepler to CF when Buxton gets hurt. I think there may be some hope with the anti shift rules Gallo may increase BABIP, which I doubt will happen.

I personally expect him to do better than last year, if he is given a real shot. If you look at his history at every level of minors, he would take a long time to adjust to the league, but when he did he kept showing why he was regarded as a top prospect. Each time he moved up he would struggle, and people would say, yup he is a bust. Then the next year he would be back on path. Not only did he miss time for COVID, he missed time because he had other medical issues, that he reports he now can actually put on muscle, something he was having issues with. As long as the team does not bury him on depth chart, I expect him to be better than last year.

Why would we help out Detroit by taking a terrible contract off their hands to hopefully help for 1 maybe 2 years? I would not give up any prospect of value to take on Baez. Hell, I would demand we get a prospect to take that contract off their hands.

I get the point of the article, but what if we would have went with so Bogarts, then Correa signs for close to what we were willing to offer, then the argument would be they acted too soon. There is no right way or wrong way to act in these situations. Also, I do not know if Swanson gets above a 3 WAR, he did it 1 time in his career, last year. I do not expect any player to match their outlier year, even more so in a contract year.

I love how fans like to spend other people's money. None of us know the books, or what the owners allow the FO to spend. We made a competitive offer of per year amount, but were not willing to sign him until he was 41. He will actually be 42 when the contract ends, but just turned 42. It is easy for fans to say offer him 10 at 350. This would mean for about 4 to 6 years was have SS on lock. 4 to 6 years of him at 3b. This would cause us to trade more prospects, because he would be blocking some of them. By the end of the deal we would be paying 35 mil to a guy that is most likely not even playing above replacement level, maybe he still would be, but doubtful at 35 plus he is really putting up too much WAR even at 3b. Now, would the 7 mil by that time make much of a difference most likely not. I am not defending the choice not to up the offer, if they were given that option, it is possible the offer to Correa was a take it or leave it offer where he could not bounce it off the Twins, we do not know how the talks actually went. For all we know, we made our offer, then Giants called up said we will give you this offer, but you need to accept it right now, no calling any other teams or it is off the table. It is possible the Twins did not even know the Giants offer until too late. I bet many here that want the Twins to go into the luxury tax level like the Padres would be just as mad when the players are not earning the money we throw at them if it ends up like a Hosmer deal, or how many were mad at Joe's contract near the end.

I would have no issue with bringing in Swanson, as long as we do not overspend on him simply because we feel like we need something. He has been above average SS his whole career, but not elite until his contract year. This normally does not play out well if we gave him a super long deal. Give him a 5 to 7 year deal max. Do not expect him to carry the offense. Maybe he repeats what he did first time ever, but generally he has been a below average offensive player. Do not look at his one outlier year and think he will repeat it for years to come.

Based on the reported offer, I believe we made a fair competitive offer. Could we have jumped to 10 and 300, most likely, but doubt that would have got it done. This was likely to be Correa's last contract, because at 10 years he would have been 38 at end of it. Maybe he would have been playing at level to get a 1 year deal for something, but odds are not good on that. So those extra 3 years he was not going to earn an extra 50 mil if he signed just a 10 year 300 mil. Personally, I am glad we did not try to match the length because only a very few position players have ever been replacement level into late 30's. He will most likely transition to 3b in 3 to 5 years. Will he be elite hitter and good enough defender in his late 30's early 40's to stay in field, doubtful. So he most likely shifts to DH. I do not wish him any ill will, but if we would have matched, assuming that would have got him to stay here, we would have been not happy with his production the last 5 years if not more. Larger market teams can take on that bad money easier than a mid-market like Twins. Will we pay big for Swanson, maybe, not sure we should at this point. I mean, we have several guys that could eventually step in. Do we think Swanson is that much better on defense than what hopeufully Lewis brings? Swanson is not a top offensive guy. He is coming off his best offensive season, in a contract year, something that is not uncommon. It is by far his best season ever, can we really expect he sustain it for the length he is most likely seeking? I doubt the Twins take on a bad deal just to say well we spent, they do not seem like that kind of FO. Do we spend big on Rodon? I doubt we give him the length he wants, but if he does not get that length we may spend bigger per year over shorter term, but if a team offers him the 7 or more years he has been seeking, no way do we go that long. The length of some of these contracts are getting crazy, but the reason for it is to manipulate the tax number. Teams are adding several years on to deals to get the average value down, and are actually front loading the deals in terms of how they are paying it out. The big market teams are offering many years past prime to draw out that money expecting the tax number to increase by end of contract.

Does the people the measure pitch framing, also compare the catcher and pitcher to same pitcher but different catchers? Meaning, did the comparison look at Vazquez and the pitchers he caught, and compare how other catchers did with same pitchers? I have to think sometimes it is the pitcher that helps cost the pitch framing at times too, I could be wrong, but that to think it plays some roll.

I think Arraez has not peaked, and could get better. He even could get more power, without hurting his approach of getting on base. First, it is selective power, meaning based on count, based on situation, pitcher, and situation in game, you can look to swing for more power, but go to normal approach when swinging harder is not needed or really get you much. For example, runner on 3rd less than 2 outs late in game and tied, making sure you get ball in play to drive in run is important. However, if runner is on first, 2 outs down 1 or 2 runs, trying to hit a HR or extra base hit is more important, and risking a strikeout is not a big deal.

I take little weight in the history of 5th overall picks, and what it may mean for Twins. There are many players taken after the 5th pick that have been great, turns out the team that picked that year were wrong, it happens a lot. We just need to hopefully guess right. In 92, Derek Jeter went 6th overall, none above him were all that great, Phil Nevin 1st and Jeffery Hammond 4th were all-stars, and some guy named Chad Mottola went 5th. Jeter was first high schooler off the board too. The MLB draft is mostly a crap shoot of trying to figure out if the kid is peaked, or will grow.

No way do Twins give him the 7 years he is seeking. I doubt they ever will, but he would be a huge risk to do so.