#AskBW (2.7.23): Closers, Famous Richards, Joe Mauer's HoF Chances & More
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#AskBW (2.7.23): Closers, Famous Richards, Joe Mauer's HoF Chances & More
You asked questions; I answered them
Welcome back to another edition of Q&A at Access Twins called “#AskBW.”
If you’d like to be involved, there are a few ways you can do so:
Tweet @brandon_warne or @accesstwins with the hashtag #askBW
if Twitter isn’t your thing, send an email to brandon.r.warne@gmail.com with the subject “Monday Mailbag/Friday Files”
Watch for sporadic Facebook posts asking for questions
Should be pretty easy, right? Let’s talk to it:
I think Rocco Baldelli is still going to prefer him in the ambiguous fireman role where he’ll face guys like Jose Ramirez whether they’re due up in the seventh, eighth or ninth innings.
Where that got people hot and bothered — and in this case, I can see it — is that sometimes a pitcher will face a guy in the seventh and he’ll again come up in the ninth.
And while I get that, you still have to get them out to preserve the lead in the seventh before you can even consider the potential of a lead in the ninth — so I endorse this strategy.
It also helps that Jorge Lopez, who was an AL All-Star last year, has an electric arm and plenty of reason to believe he can bounce back in what I assume will be a traditional-ish closer role. There might be times where the Twins could, for instance, go to someone like Caleb Thielbar or Griffin Jax, but for the most part I kind of like the idea that your best reliever is a fireman and your second best — in this case, Lopez — works the back ends of games.
I am also a firm believer that some combination of Jhoan Duran, Lopez, Jax, Thielbar, Jorge Alcala and some combination of Emilio Pagan/Trevor Megill/others can be a damn fine bullpen.
I guess we’ll have to see. It sure couldn’t hurt to bring Michael Fulmer back.
I sure can:
It’ll be worth monitoring how new athletic trainer Nick Paparesta addresses this gigantic elephant in the room, but my first suspicion is the Twins will DH Byron Buxton quite frequently now that they have a very, very good backup option in center in Michael A. Taylor.
It would be a gigantic boon to have Buxton play 100-plus games for just the second time in his career, but at the very least the Twins will be less apt to be caught with their pants down if he goes down with an injury.
Starting Taylor against lefties more often than righties would be a winning strategy — assuming Buxton’s health — but he won’t embarrass himself out there if he’s forced into longer-term action. He did, after all, win a Gold Glove award.
So my good man Brandon here — sweet initials by the way — clarified that he meant starting player. In that event, it’s almost too easy to suggest it’s Max Kepler, right?
So let’s say…Jorge Polanco. He’s still young enough, good enough and cheap enough to bring back a really nice return — and I wouldn’t sleep on the idea that the Twins could still need to add a starter later in the season if one of the existing guys has to deal with an injury.
I kind of see him as the infield version of Taylor. He’s not a bad little player — I don’t mean that to sound demeaning, but rather that fans probably won’t have incredible expectations for him — but I think it would be downright shocking for him to come anywhere near the 145 games and 583 plate appearances he took last season for a 100-loss Reds club.
Farmer’s highlight reel probably won’t wow anyone, but it’s indicative of a guy who can definitely play:
I do hate to say it, but I’m curious to see where he winds up. He should really play for the Rockies. He’d probably hit about 45 homers there while being worth about 1.5 WAR.
I know Eddie asks this in jest, but a lot of people certainly think this way. I think as the rotation stabilizes this season based on the quality of pitchers the team has added, we’ll see a lot more guys pitching into the sixth and seventh innings moving forward.
As weird as it sounds, some of the third-time-through-the-order splits actually, believe it or not, favor pitching someone as shaky as Pagan (.776 OPS against) rather than letting the starter continue (.825 OPS).
In fact, the second time Twins starters faced hitters last season resulted in almost an identical OPS as facing Pagan did (.774).
Do I think that he should? Most definitely.
But will he? That is something I’m far less certain about.
From this story last year, here are all of the all-time first-ballot catchers in the Hall of Fame:
Ivan Rodriguez (class of 2017)
Johnny Bench (class of 1989)
As big of an advocate of Mauer as I am, I’m just not sure he reaches those benchmarks. With that said, he was the finest catcher of the era, and the end of his career behind the plate due to post-concussion symptoms really shouldn’t — in my opinion — be held against him.
I won’t be surprised if he is a first-ballot guy, but I’d be more surprised if he is.
At this point, I think they just wait it out and put someone like Chris Paddack on the 60-day IL. Right now, it’s really hard to find someone on the 40 to dump. Another possibility for the 60-day is Matt Canterino, though it’s unclear where he is in terms of being able to help the big club health-wise.
I’ll say Trevor Larnach. Through his first 51 games last season, Larnach had a slash of .299/.375/.515 and was playing more than capable defense in the outfield (way more, honestly).
Then he hit the skids in June while dealing with a core muscle injury, and hit just .127/.191/.238 the rest of the way (19 games/68 plate appearances) which brought his numbers down considerably.
Do I think the path to playing time for him? Not really, though Alex Kirilloff at first base would help, but you said “we aren’t thinking of” and I wanted to go further off the radar than, say, Joe Ryan.
I could go either way here. I think the Twins want clarity on how well Jose Miranda can play third base, and it’s not as though the series of moves the Twins made in that spot made the team worse. They’ll have better first base production to start the year than Sano gave them, and the part that nobody criticizing the Urshela move seem to notice is that the decision to tender him or not had to be made by a specific date.
Now with that said, could the Twins have tendered him and traded him? Probably. But if they’d made up their mind that they were going in another direction, they basically made the trade when they needed to.
Everything else, at least to me, seems like trying to judge the offseason in hindsight.
I think the Twins genuinely feel like he’s healthy, but wrists are tricky. One false move and he could be right back where he started. So with that said, I think they’re going to be cautious as much as possible, and as of right now I still think they might add another position player so whatever he gives them can be considered a plus rather than seeing it negatively if he needs more time.