Cap'n Piranha

I don't believe for a second that players can inadvertently test positive for a banned substance. I guarantee you every team has an established number that they provide to every single player to offer advice. I'm sure the team informs them that the doctor or pharmacist on the other end of the line will not disclose the questions being asked to the team. All a player has to do is call this number, send a picture of what they're wondering about taking, and the official fielding the call/text will advise them yes or no. If the official isn't sure, then they tell the player to hold off while they contact MLB to verify. Any player who can't wait even a couple of days to get the thumbs up is just acting stupidly, and deserves every bit of scorn and punishment they receive.

Taken to an extreme yes, it can end up there. It's why I specifically pointed out that I had no problem with Rocco using Jax, Duran, and Lopez last night; it was a two-run game, and you needed a win. However, when Rocco used both Duran AND Lopez with a 4-run lead last Friday, that's where I have an issue. Both of them were pretty shaky on Saturday (they combined for a 2.5 WHIP and 13.50 ERA on Saturday, and were then unavailable Sunday), and I think you have to attribute at least some of that to pitching on back to back days. I would have much preferred Rocco used only one of Duran or Lopez, and had either Jax, Theilbar, or even Megill get the other 3 outs (if you can't rely on a guy to keep his ERA under 18 in 95% of their appearances, they should not be on the roster). If your relievers' effectiveness is diminished when they don't get rest, you have to get them at least 1 days rest. That means if you're going to empty the bullpen on a Monday, the options will be limited on a Tuesday, so Rocco needs to be very sure he is thinking that through. Last night made sense to empty the pen. Last Friday? Not so much in my opinion.

That's where you and I differ; I would much prefer the pitching chart with Pagan not on it.

Available and effective are not necessarily the same thing. I haven't crunched the numbers on specifically Duran or Lopez, but when I did that in the past for Taylor Rogers, it was clear as day that pitching on 0 days rest resulted in Rogers being pretty bad. Anecdotally, that holds for Lopez this past weekend.

Yet again Rocco has to use essentially every good bullpen option to nail down the win (not blaming him for that in this particular instance, just observing). It bit the Twins hard on Saturday and Sunday last; here's hoping the Twins bats can make the unavailability of the bullpen aces irrelevant tomorrow.

I think it should be pretty easy to find the 2023 version of Dylan Bundy, and pay him less than $10M. Given that, I don’t think it makes sense to pay $11M to actual Dylan Bundy.

This is what happens when you have a use all the ammo strategy; the Twins used all three of their best relievers Friday, some of them while up by 3 or 4 runs, and predictably, saw those relievers perform worse when asked to go back-to-back. Rocco has to figure out a way to keep more options available on a day-to-day basis, and Falvine has to figure out a way to get more quality options, or more multi-inning options.

Should be pretty easy to portion those out to other organizations who aren't spending as much.

It feels like to me that the relationship between owners and players is so fractured that the only way forward is for the owners to cede salary decisions to the MLBPA. Agree on a revenue split (I personally think that 50/50 of all baseball-related revenues is appropriate), and then let the MLBPA distribute that money as it sees fit. To ensure super teams don't get built up, restrict the number of player-years a team can have on players older than 27, which is the age at which every player is able to obtain full free agency. So for example, if the Twins have 11` players on their roster older than 27 with a total of 40 years under contract, and the limit is 45 player-years, the Twins can give one 5 year contract to a player over 27, or five 1 year contracts, or some combination.

I like some of these ideas--instead of forcing teams to pay a luxury tax, reduce the size of their 40 man roster; say for every $10M a team spends over the cap, they lose one spot on their 40 man. Further, have that be the case year round; if the Dodgers want to spend $70M over the cap, that's fine, but their 40 man roster is now a 33 man roster.

The Dodgers have indeed been exceptional at developing talent. As have the Rays. Unlike the Rays, the Dodgers retain all of their proven MLB talent on big-money contracts, unless they use it to acquire even better proven MLB talent. Doing this also allows them to use their farm system to acquire even more proven MLB talent (Betts, Darvish, Turner, and Scherzer for example) because the Dodgers don't need their prospects to remain competitive.

Can a team be honestly characterized as a playoff contender when they use Emilio Pagan and Tyler Duffey in close games? I vote no. I have no idea why the Twins didn’t try and cover the 6th through 8th with a combo of Megill and Jax, then turn it over to Lopez in the 9th.

That's pretty meaningless in my opinion. All we can really tell from that is Hayes has no sources that have told him the Twins are done.

And according to MLBTR, the Padres are paying most of his salary. If true, this makes no sense to me, unless they literally just don't want Hosmer on the team under any circumstances.

The Padres have essentially boxed themselves into a contention window of 2022-2024; they already have a $99M payroll in 2025 BEFORE paying Soto, Darvish, Snell, Hader, and/or Manaea (or replacements). If I'm Falvine, I'm not trying to help them with a salary dump as much as I'm trying to help them accumulate talent now in return for strong prospect returns. That said, if the Padres really do want to dump Hosmer's salary, I'd be happy to do that, but like Nick said, for a top 100 caliber prospect at minimum.

In what universe has Buxton been healthy all year? Unless a player plays 150+ games, they should not be considered to have been healthy all year, imo.

I tend to agree with this. I would be ecstatic is two years from now we had Arraez and Martin as .320 AVG/.400 OBP guys batting 9/1 or 1/2 in front of Buxton, Miranda, Kiriloff, Wallner, etc. I have no idea if the Twins pushing him to hit for power is the issue; if it is, knock it off, and let it develop (as it seems to be doing for Arraez), or not. In that scenario, the worst case scenario is that Martin is "just" an elite OBP/speed tablesetter. That's worth 3-4 WAR a year easy.

Increasingly, he doesn't even look like a slap hitter, as his plate value derives from his OBP which is being held up by his walks. For a guy with supposedly the best bat in the 2020 draft, he is conspicuously not particularly good at actually hitting.

I've lost all confidence in Austin Martin at this point in time. I'd have him below Lewis, Lee, Prielipp, Rodriguez, Steer, Wallner, CES, and Julien for sure; CES and Julien are controversial to some, but they are both younger than Martin (CES by about 8 months, Julien by a few weeks), and performing notably better than Martin at the same level. CES has a very small sample size at AA, but his A+ numbers this year were so far superior to Martin's that I'm inclined that way. I'd be open to hearing arguments on SWR, Varland, Raya, and Hajjar as well. I just can't call a 23 year old who is not performing in AA (in his second year at AA to boot) a top prospect. For Martin to regain his prospect status in my eyes, he needs to get massively better, jump up to the MLB level while maintaining his production, or get younger. I'm not confident in any of those things happening (some more so than others), so I put Martin outside the top 10, and if there is a team at the deadline who still values him as the 5th overall pick in 2020, I trade him in a heartbeat.

Definitely would not do that trade for Montas. Berrios had a much longer track record than Montas at this time last year, with the same amount of remaining control, and did not require that level of package to get from a team that ostensibly was going to try and compete the following year. 18 seasons of team control in exchange for 1.5 seasons seems like not a great deal, especially considering the bullpen is much more of an issue than the rotation.

1--Get rid of the every team gets a rep requirement. No one is watching to see if the guy from their team pinch hits in the 8th inning, or throws one inning in the 5th. 2--Rosters are selected by a panel of national writers. Each writer is required to submit their slate before the panel convenes to select the roster. Concurrently, the BBWA membership submits their slate (writers will not be allowed to include players on the team they primarily cover); writers on the panel who fall below a certain threshold in terms of agreement with the BBWA roster are removed from the panel to ensure legitimacy 3--All players selected give up 5 game checks to a pool, which is matched by MLB. The winning team splits 75% of the pot, the losing team 25%. All players with less than 4 years of service team get 1 extra year if service time for being on the winning team, and half a year for being on the losing team (to compensate them for the fact that 5 game checks is a bigger deal to them. To prevent teams from keeping players down so they won't be on the all-star team, for every player with less than 4 years of service time who makes the All-Star roster, the team he plays for gets a comp round A pick in the next year's draft). Players who are selected for the game, but opt out must surrender 8 game checks or be on the IL for at least the first 5 games after the All-Star game. 4--Starting pitchers go for 2 innings--after that, each pitcher goes one inning, and is selected by fans for innings 3-7 (a vote is held during each team's half inning in the field, with the vote ending with the third out. The winner of that vote will be the next pitcher, and will come out exactly one inning later (example, the AL is in the field for the bottom of the 2nd; fans will vote on which NL pitcher they want to see next. The pitcher with the most votes when the bottom of the second ends will appear in the top of the 4th, giving that pitcher a full inning to get warmed up). 5--Position players are eligible to re-enter the game starting in the 8th inning for one at bat. This way the best players in the game will be hitting when the game matters. 6--Starting in the 11th inning, if the game is tied at the end of a half inning, the team that just finished batting loses. This means the away team must score in the top of the 11th, or they lose. If the away team does score, the home team must outscore them in the bottom of the 11th, or they lose.

While Wallner definitely has reduced his k rate since April (he was at about 50% in April), he has settled in at right around 33% in May, June, and MTD July. That's certainly better, but he is definitely still strikeout-prone, and that doesn't seem likely to reduce as he advances levels. That said, I agree that strikeouts are not terrible (within reason). As another poster pointed out, in most cases a strikeout is no worse than a weak grounder or pop out, and in many cases, might actually be preferable to putting a ball in play (no groundball double plays, no lead runners getting thrown out, no tagging runners being gunned down at the plate). I'd prefer he strike out less, but I'll gladly take a 33% strikeout rate if it's accompanied by a .900-1.000 OPS.

This year is really starting to remind me of 2015--the team comes out and overachieves early on, leading to a surprise division lead. As the season goes on, the team takes on more water, falls back, and ultimately misses the playoffs.

k/9 is simply a way to allow accurate comparison of past performance between multiple pitchers. Nothing more, nothing less. It is not a projection of how many strikeouts a pitcher would get in a hypothetical complete game, it simply allows you to compare a pitcher who's pitched 180 innings to one who's pitched 120. In that regard, as the other poster pointed out, it is exactly the same as k/inning, so you professing admiration for one, and derision for the other, is fascinating.

I don't think this is unique to Twins fans though--this is what happens when you have a bunch of people who are very invested in a team. They're going to see a lot of things, and they're going to talk about what they see. If those people tend to be pessimists in general, it's likely they'll focus on the negative.