d-mac

Rice pitchers scare me. They get abused and end up with TJ and/or shoulder surgery.

Probably pushing 500k's.

Generally, reaching is not a good thing in a draft. Hard to argue that either of these players were BPA.

Wallner struck out 17-18% in a 3rd tier college conference. Ooof. For comparison, Rooker had a marginally higher K rate in the top college conference, and hit for more power his junior season.

Woof. We'll see how round three goes. So far not liking the strategy here. Reaches at both picks so far.

Agree. I thought Stott should have been the pick there. Stott had nearly identical junior year numbers to Mitch Garver. Both played in the same college conference. Plus by the sound of it, Stott sounds like a plus defender at SS.

I hope the Twins have a plan for the rest of the draft. Seems like a huge reach. Probably won't stick at SS and there are questions about his hit tool. Give me a plus hit tool over plus power tool any day.

The problem is ownership waited too long to can the Terry Ryan brain trust. After 2012 (1 year grace period to see if 2011 was an aberration), the team and front office should have been blown up. But instead they dinked around for three years and never launched a wholesale rebuild. They acquired some high upside assets, but player development was broken and the minors lacked depth beyond the handful of high potential prospects. Several years were wasted, stuck between never wanting a complete rebuild but not having the talent and depth to compete. The new guys took over stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the on field product. The assets they inherited never quite developed as projected due to said broken development program. However those assets still have upside, so they can't just sell them as they'd be selling low. Conversely, they can't just throw money and minor league assets at contending because today that's just too steep of a hill to climb. Instead, the only real path forward is to continue to thread the needle between rebuilding and contending, treading water until "their guys" are ready to contribute.

Is there a trade or something happening? I'm just not sure we needed this. Low risk, but do we really need that many utility infielders?

This is ok. Just not sure if there is space for both Cron and Austin on the roster.

I'm a little surprised the Twins dumped Drake. He seemed as good a bet as any to be a serviceable reliever in next year's pen

I just assume anyone named Rocco are this guy:

Can't say I know much about Baldelli, other than he was a great player in MVP 2005. Great speed, defense, and some power. But hey, if Plouffe thinks he'll be a good fit, I'll take his word for it.

Lol I was just going to say the same thing.

16 years ago, different dude running the show now.

MVP 2005

This is where I'm at too. Just cut him loose.

Stewart is the second coming of Nick Blackburn. Only with better fastball.

You mean drafting relievers with the hope to turn them in to starters didn't work out? No way! Nobody could have ever guessed!

I never understood the hype about Diaz. He's never produced.

The best return of all the trades so far looks like the one for Pressly. A bit of stretch on value by Houston, IMO. Either that or we didn't know what we had. Anyway, the Twins were clearly blown away enough to move Pressly. Doubt they move anyone else with team control for next year. The rest of these trades have just been to offload impending free agents and we got back about what I'd expect for all three.

Gotta think the FO thought the return was too good to turn down for Pressly, a controllable asset. As mentioned above, gotta believe if Gibby gets moved then that tells you how the front office thinks about next year. But I'd also add that that means they probably aren't putting too much stock into Buxton and Sano ever become decent players.

His batted ball profile has never been very good. Over his career only 16.7% of his balls in play are liners and more than 10% of fly balls are of the infield variety. He is setting career worsts in both categories this year. Frankly, he needs to re-tool his swing. He needs to generate more loft.

Fair assessment. But I think people are overselling the pitching improvement significantly. Odorizzi and Lynn have xFIPs in the mid-to high fours and even Romero's is like 4.14. Bullpen has been improved substantially, but we'll see how long that can continue with Molitor's misuse of Presley, Reed, and Hildy.

The cubs up to this point have been very lucky. Their xFIP is actually worse than the Twins. They can't sustain that outperformance for an entire season.