2wins87

1 year sounds very aggressive. Maybe the Marlins would have continued pushing him aggressively, but he only had the second half at A+ and struggled a bit to adjust. I think he still has two seasons before needing to go on the 40 man, so another half a year in A+, about a year in AA, and half a year in AAA before maybe being ready for an opening day spot in 2025 seems like a typical timeline. Late 2024 wouldn't be shocking, but also mid 2025 wouldn't be too slow IMO. Basically, still a lot of time to see how he develops I think.

I agree that the lack of defensive accounting is an issue for WPA, but it doesn't systematically over value pitchers. Everything is measured from average. If a pitcher gets above average defensive plays behind him he will probably be overrated by WPA, but in the aggregate things even out. For an individual outing, WPA vs performance can vary widely based on the luck of situations, sure. Given enough outings everything that is just luck should cancel out. That's kind of the whole idea behind WAR. We don't need to add up every little contribution to understand a player's overall contribution, we can use aggregate stats instead, and come up with a more stable estimate of true talent that way too. Over a long enough period, Wins above average and WPA should theoretically measure the same thing. WPA is noisy, so I don't even think that a full career is necessarily long enough to say it is completely "accurate", but it should be long enough to eliminate most of the noise. Every stat is a storytelling stat at the level of an individual event. But they become statistics when the events are repeated over and over. WAR does address the degree of difficulty of starting too. Both at Fangraphs and BR the replacement level ERA is higher for starters than for relievers. So before any leverage adjustment, starters are valued higher on a per inning basis for the same performance. And no, of course leverage doesn't tell you anything about the performance of a pitcher, but it does, almost by definition, tell you how much of an effect that performance is likely to have on the outcome of a game.

Going to miss Arraez for sure, but definitely think they got a good return with Lopez + these two. A little hard for me to get a great read on Salas at first. His overall batting lines haven't always been that great, but he's always been facing much older competition. The K rate is solid though and he's already shown some power, with more likely to come. Could take a bit longer as a switch hitter to really reach his potential. He will probably grow on me as I get more familiar; I trust the evaluators on his potential for now. Chourio looks like more than a throw in to me. You can't scout the stat lines too much in the DSL but he had an excellent K rate, which I do think is meaningful, and a good walk rate too. He was also among the youngest in last year's international class.

I think at the back end yes. If I counted correctly he was the 10th listed as SS on their midseason top 100. Not sure he'll pass anyone up but I don't really see him falling either.

Julien is 7th on MLB's 2B prospects. I'm guessing based on typical lists that this would put him right on the border of the top 100. He's highlighted for being the "highest riser" and "humblest beginnings". There is also an updated prospect video for him.

What makes WPA garbage? It is a lot more sophisticated than game winning RBIs. Why do you think leverage adjustments overrate relievers? It already takes into account chaining. The biggest single season adjustment I've seen is about 1 win, and typically it's only a few tenths. It's usually not a very big adjustment.

It's true that Duran's splitter was his least effective pitch last year with a .353 wOBA against. That's not terrible but he dominated more with his FB and curve/slider. My guess is that the splinker was tougher against minor leaguers because it was so unique, but maybe isn't quite so unique to major league hitters. My understanding is that it was the result of the Twins attempting help him develop a splitter to use against lefties as a starter. It never quite developed the shape of a splitter and he throws it so hard, hence it became a unique hybrid "splinker". While it is still pretty unique, there are plenty of major league pitchers with mid-90s sinkers (Jorge Lopez for example), so maybe it is not unique enough for major leaguers. Since the difference in velocity from his fastball isn't huge, it doesn't quite function like a changeup, and MLB hitters seemed to have found it easier to hit than his fastball, probably in particular when he left it up in the zone. I remember in particular probably his single worst outing when the Orioles hit two HR off of the splinker, both I think middle-in. location wise. Hopefully he can improve on it this year, I think first and foremost with location, keeping it down where it's harder to do a lot of damage. I also think it might work better for him if he finds a way to actually throw it a bit slower, making it harder for hitters to adjust their timing between his FB and splitter, and also giving the pitch a bit more drop. As far as pitching more innings, even if he is less effective pitching more volume, as long as he is still more effective than the guys that would take those innings, that is still adding value. There are of course other considerations, i.e. keeping him healthy as well. There are also calls for him to go back to starting which would give him tons more volume, but starting is a whole different animal, and his lack of a true changeup makes me skeptical that it would work out as well as we might think. Something of a side note that has been on my mind: I think the value of a truly dominant reliever isn't always fully appreciated anyway. WAR calculations try to adjust for leverage, but I'm not convinced that they do enough. BR, for example, has the leverage adjustment WAAadj. According to them Duran's WAAadj was 0.4, his WAA (wins above average) was 1.8, and his WAR was 2.8. However, his WPA was 4.6. To get a different measure of his value to the Twins last year, my quick adjustment is to subtract WAA and WAAadj from WAR, and then add WPA, so 2.8 - 1.8 - 0.4 + 4.6 = 5.2 wins above replacement. Way above any of their starters and up there with Carlos Correa. WPA is very noisy and not very predictive from year to year, I wouldn't expect Duran's WPA to continue to be that much higher than his WAAadj. Still, if you check the most dominant relievers, most tend to have higher WPAs than WAA+WAAadj for their careers, which to me suggests that the leverage adjustment does not actually capture the true value of a dominant reliever in the highest leverage situations. Mariano Rivera for example has a 32.5 WAA and 10.1 WAAadj for his career--42.6 total. His WPA for his career is 56.6, so 14 wins better, increasing his career WAR to around 70, passing a bunch of HOF starters. While Rivera was good enough as a reliever that his WAR actually does compare favorably to many starters, I think the adjustment using WPA feels more true to just how good he actually was.

I'm hoping we see a bit more power this year but I'm very excited about Lee. I like that the promotion path they took also got him into two minor league playoff runs (where he went 12 for 30 with 3 2B and only 2 Ks, btw). I was looking at the other top 10 picks from last year's draft the other day, and I don't think anyone is worried yet based on performance, but the Twins have to be thrilled with how well he's hit at every level, all the way up to AA.

This has basically been my view lately too. The issue is more at the bench/depth level where Farmer and Celestino are the only two healthy RH hitters on the 40 man that aren't projected starters right now. At some point Lewis will come back and Garlick passing through waivers helps as he can easily be added back to the 40 man when needed. I think early in the season a lineup stacked against southpaws might still have 3 LH hitters. I don't think this is a disaster though. If Gallo returns to form he should be almost as good against lefties as righties. And maybe they won't have the optimal lineup, but I don't think a couple of bad matchups at the bottom of the lineup will matter that often if the top of the lineup does what they should.

I can't claim to really know any more than you just what I've read/heard over the years. But I suspect that the idea that a team has a strategy to spend X amount of money on X guys and Y amount of money on Y other guys, and that leads to some collection of players is probably almost the opposite of how the process works. Since it is a signing period and not a draft, I have to assume there is a sort of auction period between the trainers, scouts, and clubs that we aren't privy to since there isn't any public information at that stage. A team could take a stance that they won't go above say, $1 million for any player, and that would probably lead to a slightly different looking class. I think mostly though, it's just that scouts and trainers have relationships, teams get interested in a certain group of players through their scouts, they manage their pool, and when they have more interest in a particular player (and pool space) than other clubs, they come to an agreement by having the highest bid. As you say, a lot of that happens years before the actual signing. Is this the fangraphs article you refer to? It seems like under the current pool system some teams are over committing and reneging on deals late, so there is probably some opportunity for teams to swoop in on deals for these players late. I remember several years under the previous system where large market teams were deciding to go on international spending sprees every few years, so there might have been the opposite dynamic for a few years where teams were swooping in late with increased offers after they decided to spend. Mostly I think it's a long complicated process that relies partly on personal relationships between scouts and trainers, and where scouts also often have a significant amount of independence negotiating. I don't think most teams are really operating much differently strategically, it just ends up differently for them depending on the players in which they have the most relative interest in any given class.

I never really assumed he'd be available on a minor league deal. I haven't looked into what teams still have a need, but I still think some team will be willing to take a flyer on a 1 year MLB deal for relatively little money.

I tend to agree. I think people like an underdog, so they played on that reputation for a while. They certainly have more spending constraints than other teams, so they are going to have to have a different strategy for successful team building. Still, I don't think their strategy makes them a likeable team. Even if you don't view it as a labor vs capital thing, most of their best (and often most likeable) players only last on the team for a few years. This probably doesn't help with maintaining a fan base. And of course a multi-billion dollar entity acting cheap tends to be pretty unlikeable as well. I will admit that part of my dislike is probably a bit of jealousy on my part for how successful they've been recently despite their limited resources. At the same time, I'm a little over their whole underdog schtick, and I don't really think they are a particularly likeable organization in other ways.

He always had the changeup, but the fastball was more like 90 or 91 when he was in the low minors vs 93+ today, so that's part of why he wasn't pushed fast early on.

The thing with a really good changeup is that it can be nearly impossible to distinguish from a fastball out of the hand so hitters may always be guessing fastball or changeup. Probably an ERA/peripherals around 2.00 is still the result of some significant luck, but I don't see why his pitches can't continue to work as long as he can command them reasonably well.

There aren't any really close statistical comps in A ball since 2006 (based on ISO > .200 and BB% > 20%): All of the guys I came up with were older and no one really quite had the kind of walk rate that ERod did. Several of these guys are also just a couple levels ahead of him right now so there aren't many full careers to look at. I don't know how meaningful these kind of comps are at such a low level anyway so I usually only tend to do this for upper minors performance. Honestly the first guy that comes to mind that we are all familiar with is Edouard Julien who had pretty similar K/BB rates in A ball. It's continued to work for him so far. I think there is still a lot of variance for ERod. I think it's a given that he'll continue to hit for power but I'm not sure that strikeouts wont become a major problem at higher levels

Well, it definitely hasn't been trades but Thielbar is the reliever who's accumulated the most WAR over the past two years and he was a career reliever coming back from near retirement. Moran was also excellent last year, so I'd like to see him start the year as a middle relief guy and have a chance to move up in the heirarchy if he can continue to pitch well and keep the walks under control. Megill I'm less convinced of but he's a pretty prototypical back of the bullpen guy with potential to put it all together and be better. I am fully on the "Pagan is just not as good as the FO believes he is" team, but we seem to be stuck with him for the time being so hopefully he either proves me wrong or they are willing to keep him at the bottom of the bullpen heirarchy and ditch him if he still can't put it together. Varland and SWR so far haven't shown any signs that they can't be starters, so I'd definitely keep them in that role for now, starting the season in AAA. They will certainly be needed in the majors before too long. Winder is the most interesting case to me. They need to decide whether he has any future as a starter, and if he still does then getting stretched out at AAA and being ready to step into the rotation when needed still seems like a fine plan. If they decide that he will be a reliever then he'd probably be the first one I'd want to try to work into the MLB bullpen. Henriquez and Balazovic could probably still both use some time proving themselves in AAA. On paper, the bullpen looks like it could be good but I'd probably try to add one more reliable looking arm. Fullmer would be fine. I think Chafin would be great as I think another lefty would probably be better than a righty, but I suspect the FO will not like his multi-year price.

Do we know that these are simple vesting options or is it a vesting player option? If he ends up proving to be pretty healthy and productive through his age 33 season I could still see him getting much more than $70 million in the FA market. I'd be a little surprised if Correa and Boras wouldn't at least want the option to potentially leverage that later on.

Yeah, the question left unanswered isn't whether it would be a good fit for the Twins or Sale, but whether it would make any sense for the Sox. They don't project to be anywhere near the luxury tax threshold and aren't overflowing with starters with more upside. I don't see why they would agree to a deal where Sale has significantly negative value. If they got an offer where they also got something of value in return maybe, but that would be a terrible deal for any other team. So I don't see why they wouldn't just eat the cost and hope he can bounce back rather than giving him up for nothing just to save the money.

I think the current pipeline will tend to be more underrated on national lists. I think Winder had a bit of representation on top 100 coming into this season, though he had a bit more MLB struggles than you'd hope for so far. Ober and Varland were also drafted and developed in house but never sniffed the top 100. Ober has certainly performed like a former low end top 100 prospect should, and Varland also looks like he could in his short stint. Currently I see Festa and Headrick as guys who could make similar jumps before even getting any national attention. I also liked Povich about as much as Festa when he was traded away. They also quickly traded away the highest pick they've made on a pitcher, which doesn't help. If the pitching pipeline is an issue I think it's more about drafting strategy than identification or development. They mostly just haven't taken pitchers in the first two rounds, focussing instead on high impact bats. The guys that I have mentioned have developed far better than expected just based on draft pedigree, and they do seem to be developing those types of picks better than the previous regime so far. The problem, of course, is that if they draft all of their pitching on days 2 and 3 they may have a good success developing mid rotation and bullpen guys while still being unable to develop that top of the rotation arm. To me the answer is obvious, they ought to be extra aggressive to bring in top of the rotation arms in free agency. Instead they've probably been more timid with free agent starters than in any other area.

Fangraphs currently has Sonny Gray projected for 2.2 wins and Rodon at 4.5 so I don't think it is a small difference. Even if you think the inning projection is too light for Gray there is a pretty big difference. Gray is a #2 who is de facto #1. Against which playoff team would you have liked him matched up against their #1 guy? That's my main point on having a #1. I like the young guys too, so for someone like Eovaldi I wouldn't really see the point. I think they will always be underwhelming in the playoffs until they find some way to get a #1 at some point. Even as much as I like their pitching development, I don't see it happening when their base talent level is college pitchers taken on day 2/3 of the draft. I'm a bit at a loss but I'm not going to continue putting more negative energy into it at this point.

I would make a distinction between Ace and #1 and say they don't have to get to Ace level. I agree it's still tough to get them in free agency. This year #1s were probably just DeGrom, Rodon, and Verlander. The previous year probably just Scherzer, Rodon, Gausman, and Ray. So it's never going to be easy and always a risk, but I still think they should be more willing to take the risk when they've built the payroll flexibility and there is an opportunity for a guy they really like. I would have been fine with the Rodon deal. Maybe the more realistic scenario will be a trade with a big extension, but I feel like the whole point of payroll flexibility is the ability to make a risky deal. I also don't think we should take risk to be the same as a foregone conclusion of decline either. Look at the Scherzer deal with the Nationals. It looked like a pretty big risk at the time, and ended up being probably one of the best FA signings of all time. He was lights out for 5 years and led them to a WS championship. He did have injuries in the final two years but by that point the contract was already well worth the price, deferred money and all.

This is the general blueprint for a mid market team. It does seem to me that they have extension talks with basically all of their young regulars. They got extensions with the ones that were willing to take the team friendly deals, but haven't signed any of more questionable value. So I think it's been more about the players deciding that the deals met their risk-tolerance levels than the team deciding who they absolutely needed to keep. I'm sure they worked longer and harder on the Buxton deal than others, but in the end Buxton was willing to take a pretty team friendly deal. We probably could have pretty easily seen him walk or be traded had he held the line closer to market rate like Berrios. Anyway, the FO has been pretty good at that part of their job which led to the payroll flexibility they had to pursue Correa this offseason. I don't agree that a mid-market team can't ever compete with the big market teams. They didn't literally run out of budget space for Correa, they ran out of space in whatever risk-reward model they had for him. I'll defend the front office in many respects, but there is a bit of a pattern here. This is more about pitching side, but whatever the team's risk-tolerance level is on FA deals is, it seems like it must be well below that of other teams. Their final offers on their top targets always seem to come up short, especially when it comes to the years guarantee. Pitchers are riskier bets, so it makes some logical sense, but the types of guys where the risk has met the contract demands are the likes of Bundy, Archer, Shoemaker, and Happ. There's just no upside. You can certainly look at it as discipline, but if they can't ever land the high impact guys when they've made the payroll space, then instead of applauding their discipline they should probably be asking themselves if they've set their risk-tolerance level unrealistically low. It's tough for me because it seems obvious that a #1 starter has been the most consistent hole in the roster. The offense has generally been at least solid over the last few years, and they've done a good job of trading and development to get plenty of cost controlled #2-#4 types now. I just don't see where the #1 guy comes from if they don't at some point change their strategy.

The idea of the Twins taking on salary to avoid giving up prospects (or even add some) for a bounce-back candidate like Sale makes sense. The particulars of a trade for Sale seem very difficult though. The Red Sox don't really even really have a full rotation right now. They are probably hoping Sale will be their #1. It's hard to imagine the FO in Boston actually doing a full tear-down, so the money isn't really the main issue for them either. Maybe there is some 3-team deal out there where the Twins get Sale and some decent prospects, but a trade where we get a guy with negative value and give away prospects would be grounds for immediate termination for Falvey and Levine.

This is article is a little dispiriting. Trading for Carrasco would be fine. They have plenty of budget for his salary and it would cost zero prospect capital, so it would essentially be like signing him to a 1 year deal as a free agent, something this FO would love to do with every pitcher if they could. What would he actually get as a FA though? Two years? Baez is kind of similar to Swanson in that they would be good fits for a team with a hole at SS with absolutely no prospects potentially ready to take over soon. Neither are really on the level of Correa though who is good enough to push a good prospect off the position or possibly into a trade. This is where I think overpaying for Correa would have made sense while overpaying for Swanson really doesn't. Baez wouldn't have to be locked up as long, but in the same vein, it seems like a mistake in logic and roster construction to fill a position with a solid regular on a long term deal just because you missed on your star franchise player there. The middle infield depth in the farm system is pretty good. Lewis should be ready by midseason, and Brooks Lee could absolutely be ready by opening day next year. Rodon is currently the only guy I see where a significant overpay still makes sense. He projects to be a #1 guy for at least a couple of years. I think I am actually on the optimistic side when it comes to grading the team's pitcher development system, but they really only have a bunch of #2-#4 guys so I think it makes a ton of sense to supplement their development of cheap middle of the rotation guys with a true #1 that might cost a bit more than you'd like. I recognize the risk with Rodon, but they've built the payroll flexibility to take a risk and there just isn't any of the potential impact left anywhere else.

Honestly this could probably just be the entirety of the article. It seems so unlikely that I don't really even see the point in discussing the merits of Crawford as a player.