A Roundabout Explainer on a top 150 Pick for Mitch Garver. Or: after trading Nelson Cruz to the Rays last year, it makes a bunch of sense for the Twins to try to be a bit more like the Rays this year.
One can only take on so much risk in a draft, but I am getting the feeling that this year I will spend a lot of my “risk capital” in drafts on Mitch Garver.
But first, have you looked at the Minnesota Twins’ projected lineup? (let’s not even start on their pitching rotation…) They don’t have a shortstop. RosterResource over at Fangraphs has to put something in there, so they pencil in Jorge Polanco. If Jorge Polanco starts more than 20 games at shortstop for the Twins in 2022, they will have done an about-face on their plans for the player, or several things will have gone very wrong for the team this year (maybe both). This is not meant to be a post that picks nits regarding RosterResource – who is one supposed to put at SS, Nick Gordon? Um, no (the Twins showed no signs of considering Gordon as more than a utility option).
But in a roundabout way, taking note of their shortstop situation brings me to the broader issue for the Twins: how does one even attempt to project playing time for any of their non-Byron Buxton, non-Polanco position players? It is not an enviable task, especially in light of the other major new complication to the Twins lineup: the lack of Nelson Cruz, whose absence frees up the DH spot for… well, for whom? Ideally, not just one or two players. The details of the “why” to that would be a whole other post, but I am damn sure that the Twins don’t want Josh Donaldson and Miguel Sano taking up 120 or more DH starts (or even 100). Time will tell, but it is an assumption I am going with.
So, with that introduction, I am going to take some idealized playing time guesses (not real, or meant to be projections, but my best guess of what I would desire if I were running the Twins).
First, dispensing with the shortstop situation: The Twins will sign someone (not Carlos Correa, of course, but maybe Jose Iglesias) (or trade for someone – Nick Ahmed, if Arizona eats most of the money?). If they don’t, it will be a shock, and if so, from a fantasy perspective, the main impact will just be its possibly leading to marginally more plate appearances for all of the Twins’ primary players (and 2023 SS eligibility for Polanco), and some additional SBs for Gordon in deep leagues. I am fantasy drafting with total certainty on this… unless we reach mid-March and the Twins still have not picked up a full-time SS from outside their system.
So, here we go, position-by-position, in order of my certainty/desire (barring injury, which is a big caveat for any team, but especially for the Twins with Buxton, Donaldson, and Garver all having extensive injury histories, and the 24-year-old Luis Arraez seemingly having the knees of an aging catcher). Obviously, this is all just semi-educated guesswork, as an exercise to show how things could ideally work out for the Twins:
- Center field: Byron Buxton for 150 starts. Others: 12 starts.
- 2B: Jorge Polanco for 135 starts. Luis Arraez for 15. Jose Miranda for 12.
- Catcher: 60/40 split for Mitch Garver and Ryan Jeffers (98 starts for Garver and 64 for Jeffers).
- SS: TBD for 130 starts. In 2020 Andrelton Simmons played in 131 games and started 126. Polanco for 5. Gordon for 27.
- RF: Max Kepler for 130 starts (assuming he is not traded; and he may be the Twin most likely to be traded). Alex Kiriloff for 25. Others: 7.
- LF: Luis Arraez for 84 starts. Alex Kiriloff for 72. Others: 6.
- 3B: Josh Donaldson for 100 starts. Jose Miranda for 47. Luis Arraez for 15.
- 1B: Miguel Sano for 95 starts. Alex Kiriloff for 22. Jose Miranda for 45.
- DH: Josh Donaldson and Miguel Sano for 35 starts. Mitch Garver for 26 starts. Jose Miranda and Alex Kiriloff for 20 starts. Polanco and Arraez for 10. Others: 6.
So, that leads to:
- 150 starts: Byron Buxton and Jorge Polanco
- 139 starts: Alex Kiriloff
- 135 Starts: Josh Donaldson
- 130 starts: TBD shortstop, Max Kepler, Miguel Sano
- 124 Starts: Mitch Garver, Luis Arraez, Jose Miranda
- 64 starts: Ryan Jeffers
- 27 starts: Nick Gordon
- 31 Starts: others.
To repeat: this is idealized spit balling; even if the Twins are theoretically mapping out something like this, the playing time (and starts at each position) will likely end up pretty different from this, and the number of starts for “others” will almost certainly be far greater due to various injuries or under performance. The exact particulars of my guesswork don’t matter; what matters is how I see the Twins ideally wanting the overall playing time to work out, and how that impacts how I look at projections.
What this back of the envelope exercise further shows is that the Twin have some decent hitting personnel, and that projecting their playing time is probably more art than science. The systems / individuals that do actual projections have their work cut out for them regarding the Twins…
Jose Miranda hasn’t stepped a foot into MLB, but he sure looks like he can hit, and if he does hit then the Twins will get him playing time that beats his current projections.
Buxton is generally only projected for about 450-500 PAs, but if healthy the Twins would love to get him 650 PAs. If Buxton gets 150 starts and 650 PAs, he is a first-round talent in roto leagues. Over the past month his ADP in NFBC Draft Champions leagues is about 60. Too high or too low? In a Draft Champions, one should be able to get enough depth at OF to fill in if Buxton goes on the injured list at some point, so the snake draft turn at Round 4 / Round 5 is sensible, but I could totally see him going a round or more earlier… (he went at pick 47 in a DC draft I am in, and his minimum pick over the past month is 44; his maximum pick during that span was at 89 – I wish I had been in that draft).
Donaldson is 36 years old and has a balky calf. Can a mixture of days off and DH duty keep him mostly healthy and get him to 550+ PAs? (Projection systems all seem to judge “yes” on that one.)
Speaking of Donaldson, he and Mitch Garver have had basically similar value on a per at bat basis over the past three years. Even including Garver’s epically bad 2020 his three-year WRC+ is 135 versus 128 for Donaldson, but seemingly very few people in the fantasy industry have addressed the concept of Garver getting a significant chunk of the DH at bats in 2022 (Justin Mason has addressed it at least twice, once on the Sleeper and the Bust podcast and once in his ADP Market Report). Yes, Garver is probably even more of an injury risk, but the Twins should try to get Garver as many PAs as he can reasonably get.
The yearly Miguel Sano pessimism (realism?) is evident online, but did you know that Miguel Sano had an .851 OPS over his last 80 games in 2021? He is a bargain for the Twins (and one’s fantasy team: his past-month DC ADP is 268) if he comes close to that production over 162 games. Etc.
Nobody reasonable would project the Twins playing time as I did above. But my guesses at what I think the Twins should try to do is a primary factor in my fantasy season preparation, more primary than any single projection system, and just as important to me as projections in general. That is a goofier way of stating: “the hardest part of projections is playing time.” With certain players, projections really have very little value in and of themselves – a player’s value is often much more about upside versus risk rather than strict projections.
Which brings me back to circling back to Mitch Garver. He, if healthy all year, could be a top 100 player (and is especially worth the risk of a top 10 round pick in any deep draft and hold format). Yes, he was horrible in 2020. He has been hurt. A lot. He is already 31 years old. He was very good in 2021 but he did strike out a bit last year despite his overall impressive numbers. I get all that, and I get that projection systems need to bake all that history and risk in. But he is a catcher with a career 122 WRC+ and a .238 isolated slugging percentage (setting a minimum of 1000 PAs, his WRC+ is 55th among all hitters since 2017). Going back to his debut, he is a better hitter than Salvador Perez (and it isn’t particularly close). If we limit things to 2019-2021, there is a clear top four at the catcher position based on WRC+ (Will Smith and Garver at 135, Perez at 134, and Yasmani Grandal at 132, with a chasm between them and the next group starting at 115 WRC+). Perez is a beast, and will play every day, so I am not arguing that Garver is a better fantasy option in the year 2022. And I would also rather have Grandal and especially Smith over Garver, but Garver is really, really good, and it would not shock me if he were the best catcher in fantasy on a per game basis this year.
Garver’s value may be a lot lower in a FAAB league (due to his risk), but in a Draft Champions, shoot for Garver’s upside (not his projections) and get him as early as you need to, and also do a slight “over draft” (if that is even a thing) on Ryan Jeffers to mitigate your risk. I picked Garver at 158 in my current DC. His minimum pick in the past month is 180, and I feel perfectly great getting him where I did. The picks after me were a bunch of good but risky starting pitchers, guesswork on second tier closers, third tier outfielders, and Keibert Ruiz. I also got Jeffers at pick 413, and if I had to do that over I would have grabbed him a round or two sooner (his past-month min pick is 389).
Back to the title of this post: With the DH position freed up, I think the Twins will “Rays it up” and play matchups and get guys rest when they need it. The precise way they do it isn’t that predictable and will depend on health and performance factors, but I believe that their getting Mitch Garver as many PAs as he can reasonably handle will be a big part of their plan in 2022.
Jay Stellmach's Fantasy Baseball Musings 