nicksaviking

Ok, it was half a joke last time, (less than half) but two Big Ten pitchers? Seriously, I've been looking back, who is the last decent Big Ten pitcher to get drafted and stick as a starter? I'm back to 2006 in my search and haven't found anyone yet.

The A's appeared to have an agreement with Kyler Murray. Maybe they do have something worked out, but Pittsburgh had about a four year window where they looked like they knew what they were doing and could build a sustainable small market team, like the Rays and A's. However, they've looked utterly lost and confused for most of the last half decade since that time and make mind boggling poor decisions. So I don't have a ton of faith they have a good handle on this situation.

I thought the only universal truth in baseball was never draft a Big 10 pitcher.

No I want trades. I just want more of them. I don't typically hold the team's feet to the fire unless it's clear from the start it was a dumb idea (Seriously, Matt Capps?!? He can't strike out his grandma). I think the team can improve more with trades than free agents in fact. Except for the few folks around here who think the Twins might some day shop in the Harper/Machado aisle, the free agents affordable to the Twins, were almost certainly also affordable to the team that let them walk. In pretty much every case, these guys have multiple red flags. Make trades. Give up something that hurts enough to get another team to give you players who are good/controllable/fill a position of need. And make a habit of doing it. Our prospects aren't likely any more magical than other teams prospects and in need of being hoarded. And our vets aren't likely any more essential to team building than other teams vets.

I'm not surprised the Twins are on the losing end; when they were "sellers" they made more trades than when they were "buyers" so obviously the guys they get back aren't going to produce anything yet. But the trade deadline always seems important during the season because we are focused on baseball. But it's hardly the best time to make trades and everyone always tends to overestimate how many quality MLB players actually are available and reasonably get-able in July anyway. I'm more disappointed that the team isn't wheeling and dealing regularly during the offseason. Kudos on the Maeda and Odorizzi trades, but seeing as they've had success in winter moves, why aren't they doing more? What's the point in stockpiling all of these corner bats if you aren't going to flip them regularly?

I don't know. I think the Twins are going to have to eat more salary than they'd be willing to eat to actually get any value back. If he's a net negative due to clubhouse presence (which I don't think we've actually seen anything credible to support), sure move him. Otherwise, he's probably the kind of player who gains value as he sheds contract. I've felt for the last year that the front office built this team to jack a ton of HR, then the team face-planted when the league de-juiced the ball. Because of this I've been arguing to completely restructure the offensive identity of this team. However, now that the league has de-stickied the balls, it would be just like the fortunes of this club to tear apart the Bomba Squad only to see that that was exactly what wins championships in the version of baseball that is played in 2022. I'm not sure how the team should proceed, but I think I'm more of the mind to only sell off the bats that are rentals or redundant, and let the team do as they may with the bullpen asset(s). We'll probably have a better grasp of what this team (and all teams) will look like next year based off of how they react to the changes in the 2nd half of this year. I thought they were due for a rebuild, but with the game becoming more offensive friendly, maybe not.

Just taking a look at things, I'm softening my criticism, but just slightly. The bat-heavy drafting has been criticized, but looking at the drafts since 2017, it looks like Griffin Canning was the only real usable rotation piece they actually had a chance at drafting, and he's pitched like maybe a #4. That's not to say other pitchers won't pan out, just that it's unlikely any would be helping the team right now. Also, it looked like they inherited a windfall of pitching prospect talent in Romero, Gonsalves, Graterol and Stewart. They unpopularly, but in the end wisely, pulled the plug on three of those guys early. Still, other clubs have found a way to build a sustainable and young rotation in that time, and that's exactly what they were hired to do.

Yeah, the pitching was the biggest issue when Falvey was hired. To his credit, he did right the ship for awhile there, but those were all stop-gap kind of moves. Trading for or signing two to three free agent starters a year is and always should be a band aid approach until you have developed your own pitchers to fill out most of the rotation. If folks want to blame last year's lost season on some of this, that's fine, but somehow no new homegrown useable talent has found it's way into the rotation in the five years since the new front office took over? That's the opposite of what they were hired to do, and frankly that would have sounded crazy to all of us five years ago.

If a tree showboats a HR in the woods, but nobody is around to see it, was it actually really unlikeable?

Thanks for the encouragement. This team really needs to find a better way to start getting these guys to the majors though. The club has had two starting pitching prospects in the last decade, Berrios and Gibson, who have done anything resembling a contribution to the club. That's far from acceptable. This 'slow-and-steady' approach they use with most starters has not worked. The club is going nowhere, once healthy toss the top guys into the fire and see which ones have the stuff and the nerve to stick. The club is going nowhere, these guys do NOT need to be polished, ready-to-roll pitchers. I count at least 24 players drafted in 2018 already in the majors, including Larnach and Jeffers. Regardless of who's in charge, this team always handles pitchers more delicately; too delicately from my view. It's not working so I don't see any reason not to switch things up.

For me, his healthy track record pushes the scale toward overpaying and keeping him. Most free agent pitchers come with injury concerns; it's really hard to find quality arms that are healthy. He's close enough to an ACE and he's consistent. If he played for another team and was a free agent, everyone would be begging the Twins to sign him.

Hard to believe these guys are worse than the staffs of the early 1980's, mid to late 1990's or the 2012-14 clubs. But I suppose those clubs were mostly made up of no-name waiver-wire finds and cheap fringy prospects who may have lacked name recognition and MLB level skill, but probably had a bit more desperation in their game which probably adds something. The current rotation is made up of league-wide known commodities. Whether these guys are worse than their predecessors is probably less important than the fact that these guys were expected to be good while the other famously bad pitching staffs were expected to be awful before the season even started.

Funny, the best pitcher of the nine on the BP pitching chart threw the fewest pitches. And half as many as the #8 pitcher. What a whacky coincidence!

MLB needs to buy back the rights to their product, clean it up, nurse it back to health and then showcase it affordably and to the masses on any and every platform they can. I mean, that's what they should do if the owners want the game to be around for more than another decade. If they'd rather make as much money as they possibly can for the next few years until the game is dead, I guess they should just keep turning a blind eye. Casual baseball fans are not going to pay more than a nominal fee to watch baseball on TV. When only the diehard fans watch your sport, you become lacrosse.

Yeah, I couldn’t figure out the reason for that extension. Dobnak looked like a Scott Diamond, not a diamond in the rough.

Where do you procure your dead hedgehogs? Asking for a friend.

Just to be clear, the broken record is most extra inning losses in a row right?

I don't really care about defense with the offense this bad. Rooker has been very good at every level and was good in his call up last year too. I'm not sure where the dismissal is coming from after only 8 games this year. But really, I just want the young guys up to see if the incumbents will fight back and try to make a stake for their jobs. It's been since 2019 now since those three batters who got extensions have looked like they deserved them.

I'm ready for Larnach, Rooker and a healthy Kirilloff to replace Cave, Kepler and Sano. The fact that two of the vets got extensions doesn't much bother me; maybe bench time in favor of the rookies will motivate them.

Low expectations might be what Gordon needs. If the team continues to struggle hopefully they give us the silver lining of giving us a look at any and every logical guy with a prospect pulse.

I'd really like to know how the players are worked with. I'd think that certainly the younger guys get lots of hands-on time with the coaches and instructors. What about the more veteran guys though? Do they need to ask for assistance? Do they need to ask NOT to have assistance? I just remember that Joe Mauer liked to be left alone and the team seemed to abide by that. At this time though, I'm mostly thinking of Kepler and Polanco who have been around awhile now. Is someone working with them? Or are they at a point where they get to make their own choices and if they want to work out their issues on their own then the team is OK with that? Because these were supposed to be the two guys at the top of the lineup and right now, Miguel Sano, who isn't looking great, is taking at bats that look 200% more competent than the two guys who's best skill was supposed to be taking professional at bats. If Polanco and Kepler were OPSing .775+ like they are capable of, I don't think this offense would look half as brutal.

Yeah, 2013 and 2015 appear to have been bad years to have high draft picks. A few good players pop up at the end of the first round those years, but overall, those were bad classes. They totally duffed it in 2014 though. Lots of people had them picking Aaron Nola, there were folks here asking for Trea Turner. Wish I could claim I was one of them but I had my eye on the upside arms that year. I wanted Sean Newcomb, Touki Toussaint or oops, Grant Holmes. I thought Nola was a soft-tosser who'd be a high-contact arm like the Twins always fell in love with so I wanted nothing to do with him!

The Twins offense was built to play like the 2019 club, then MLB went and de-juiced the ball. That was a bit of a bad break. But the juiced ball probably shouldn't explain why the team had a K rate of 20% in 2019 but has now consistently been 25% the last two years. My guess is the club is missing James Rowson and Derek Shelton more than they thought they would.

I fail to see why the team can’t both have a concern for public safety and also support serious human rights issues at the same time. Why do they have to be chastised if there are multiple factors at play?