d-mac

Doesn't mean they believe in those metrics. All of their outfielders are well regarded defenders by traditional scouting methods of defense.

The previous regime hated drafting college position players for some reason. Hopefully that is not something the new regime avoids.

Exactly, so the you'd imagine the return would be high. It has to be a sellers' market for starting pitching.

Having lived outside of MN for a number of years and then moving back, and a brother that lives in Boston, I'd say most Minnesota sports fans are generally casual and very bandwaggon-y compared to fans even across the border in WI or in Chicago. Furthermore, they don't seem to understand what it takes to make championship winning teams, are impatient, yet don't like change- which is a very difficult environment for any front office to try to navigate.

Ugh, then why keep Santiago?

Soler has nearly 3x the walk rate of Rosario. And then it depends on how much you buy into defensive metrics. The Royals seem to be a bit old school when it comes that, but my impression of them may be wrong.

This is still my opinion.

I obviously haven't figured out how to embed tweets yet. So if anyone cares to school me, that'd be cool.

I think that's all you need to know about Twins' talent evaluation.

It was more of a rhetorical question on my part. I don't mean to be putting words in your mouth.

That's sort of a two part question isn't it? I'd assume the expected future WAR of the top handful of 16-18 year old international players is less than the top 18-22 year old draft eligible players, but by how much more? The second variable is how much is this new system going to depress signing bonuses to foreign players? I would assume by a fair amount.

A 1st round draft pick is worth>>>> than $500k.

Isn't the opportunity to non-tender Santiago the reason we traded away Alex Meyer? Why in the world would any team pay Santiago $8+ mil to a pitcher with a career 4.78 xFIP and hasn't even had a sub 5.00 xFIP since 2014? I doubt he'd get that on the open market. Personally, I think non-tendering him is a no-brainer. The only defensible reason I could see for keeping him around would be if they plan on trading Ervin this offseason and want some extra depth. Even then I'd probably still be against it.

This is the catcher I was hoping they'd target. A bit of an over pay, I thought he'd sign for 3 yrs in the $20-24 mil range. That likely has to do with the Ramos injury making Castro the top catcher in the market. But big picture this not something that is going to hamstring this team. Catcher defense is such a huge low-hanging fruit for this team to improve. Yeah, Castro might be a downgrade offensively over what Suzuki gave us last year, but he's still an average offensive catcher and by sitting him against tough lefties we can minimize his weaknesses. But it's likely a 30+ run swing in run prevention- going from one of the worst framers in the game to one of the best. Not mentioning that Suzuki was a liability in controlling the running game and in my opinion one of the worst game callers out there.

I think Gibson will be the biggest winner here. If I'm not mistaken he typical leads or is among the leaders in most strikes called balls for the last couple of years.

I wouldn't call Jay a miss yet, but I was definitely against that pick when they made it. And Stewart is the definition of a bust. And I'm not super high on Gordon for that matter, I worry that he's going to be a .260/.310/.340 hitter at SS with below average defense. Frankly, I'd put Gonsalves, Jay, and Mejia ahead of him in the prospect rankings. And you're right, if our young core that is already up doesn't improve, or even if we only get two players to establish themselves and the rest bust out, we'd have to blow it up and start over again- there just isn't enough in the system to be a contender.

This is a well researched and in-depth top-prospect feature that Fangraphs is running, they've really expanded their coverage significantly in this area over the last few years. I think this is a pretty fair analysis of the current state of the Twins' minor league system, deep with lots of back-end starters, relievers, and fringy positional players with very little upside on either side of the ball. All things considered, a fairly average system. Which makes it even more paramount that the new FO get some young talent in return for Dozier and Ervin. There isn't a lot to supplement the current core of young positional players with down on the farm.

It was the right move. I think releasing him now was a classy move by the FO. It gives Plouffe more time to search for a good deal as a free agent and opens up an extra space for an additional minor leaguer.

Mike Pelfrey was from Kansas. Wichita State. Yuck.

I'd go Castro on a 2 or 3 year deal, Rajai Davis on a 1 yr contract. Sign a Brett Anderson/Matt Latos type to see if they could bounce back on a 1 yr deal. Plus I'd go after Greg Holland plus one of Cecil, Romo, or Tazawa. I'd flip any of them except Castro at the deadline.

Isn't Nova a QO candidate?

Brian Duensing. Can we still do that?

This is brilliant.

What happened to that college catcher that was supposed to have all that hype?

That is to say nothing of the fundamentally flawed stat that is batting average, which has nearly zero predictive power of its own.