d-mac

This x1000. Jay still has the potential to be a quality starting pitcher. But he likely won't help the Twins until 2018-2019 at the earliest.

I haven't seen this anywhere. Do you have a direct quote? If he did indeed say that, that is huge.

I think the Twins are trying to force him to be something he's not- an extreme groundball pitcher. He's got good secondary pitches, the team needs to let him run a bit with two strikes on a hitter. Use the plus slider and solid changeup to put away hitters, both of those pitches generate a ton of swinging strikes and groundballs for him. No more of this repeatedly throwing two-seamers in two strike counts crap. He doesn't command that pitch well and neither of his fastballs generate swinging strikes. His stuff will lead to a high GB% on its own. No need to force it.

The outlook for Twins pitching is really depressing. Meijia is looking like a potential mid-rotation starter and Gonsalves could be pretty good, but the prospect gurus don't like him all that well. His numbers say otherwise, so we'll see. At this point Stewart is a massive bust and I'm not particularly high on Jorge as his K/9 rates are pretty mediocre. The jury is still out on Jay at this point, he was solid given his transition before his injury. We'll have to wait and see how he recovers. Romero is pitching decently, but at this point he's likely 2 or more years away and I definitely would not give him front of the rotation starter hype yet. At this point his numbers are more mid-rotation variety. I was pretty much on board the Thorpe hype train before his injury, but he'll likely not pitch again until next year. That'll be two full seasons of not pitching. It's pretty difficult to see how he'll bounce back from this. This is why the Twins need to give May and Duffy one more full year of starting to see what they have. They need to trade Dozier for starting pitching. They should have traded Santana at the deadline since he is rapidly approaching 35 and it's unlikely the twins will be contending during his last few productive years.

Stewart is actually pitching worse than Blackburn or Gibson in the minors. Gibson had/has a plus slider and averaged about 8.5 K/9 and Blackburn walked fewer batters.

Typically, if your top ten pick turns out to only be a reliever, it's usually a bust.

Albers 2.0 is the latest obsession in a long line Twins' soft tossing lefthanded AAA pitchers that they seem to have a fetish for.

Wheeler is quite a bit better than Dean. Protecting Dean made zero sense. But the Twins love their soft tossing lefties for some reason. Wheeler would likely be the 6th or 7th man in terms of rotation depth next year. I don't know why you'd risk losing him for nothing.

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Wheeler would need to be added this winter anyways. Why not put him on now and then give him a cup of coffee in Sept? I'm not really following you. Especially since we'd have the same issues with Albers.

But they won't. That's not how the Twins do things.

This is mesmerizing. Where in the heck does that book come from?

Wheeler has all of his options. Why would we remove him? Especially if we are viewing him as potential depth next year.

Grossman just lacks range and his arm is about average for LF. He makes all of the plays he should. DRS hates him. UZR thinks he's bad, RZR rates him as below average, and Inside Edge actually likes him. So I tend to think of him more as a below average, Cuddyer-like defender, not much range, but makes all the plays he should, but without Cuddyer's arm. Which is fine for LF, if we've got a plus defender in CF and an above average RF.

Really, the decision to move Suzuki should have been done independent of market conditions for catchers. He's an impending free agent having a good year on a non-contending team. Those are no-brainer type moves. He wouldn't have brought much in July, but without a doubt more than he'd bring back now, and moving him now would still be better than letting him walk for nothing in the offseason.

Possibly, but he didn't walk much or hit for any power. I would have left him in the GCL for the rest of the year.

I think you are reading far too into this. All I'm saying the return Suzuki would have gotten in July, would be greater than he'll get now in August due to the nature of the waiver system. Not to mention that there is less time left in the season to provide value to the acquiring team.

Any team that claims a player, basically has the selling team as a captive customer. They can offer very little and the seller can either accept it or pull the player off waivers. Lack of competition limits return. It's like Econ 101.

I guess I missed that Ben Rortvedt was promoted to E-town. He wasn't exactly knocking the cover off the ball in the GCL.

Really, the August waiver trading period is for trading players like Milone or Nolasco, and possibly Plouffe because they'd likely pass through waivers. Players like Suzuki, Kintzler, and E Santana would likely be claimed, meaning any return would be very minimal. WHICH IS WHY YOU TRADE THESE PLAYERS IN JULY!

This is likely the only scenario in which we'd get out of Mauer's contract. He isn't going to be traded. Nor claimed on waivers.

Tommy Milone's replacement will be a regional Walmart-like store? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meijer Also, I've never heard of this Pat Licht before, maybe he is recent Twins signing out of Germany to make Kepler feel more at-home.

Raul

Suzuki is a free agent after this year.

Kiriloff might be a bad example, he is not walking, like at all. His BB% in 156 PAs is just 1.9%. BB% and K% tend to stabilize quickly at 100+ PAs, so it's not like there is a SSS issue here anymore. For perspective Eddie Rosario's BB% in E-town was 9.1%, it is a huge red flag, IMO. But yes, overall I think you are correct. I think moreso, the Twins are too agressive with highschool and IFA hitters in AA and AAA and too conservative with college hitters in the low minors. I think it's best to get college position players up to AA as quickly as possible. I think it's imperative for most position players to get in the neighborhood of 500-800 PAs between AA and AAA, unless they dominate with a BB/K north of 0.80.