If you combined the ZiPS projections of the Minnesota Twins and the Cleveland Guardians, you'd have a 52-man roster, and that's not allowed anywhere.
But if you were a little less literal about that sentence and mixed the Minnesota lineup with the Cleveland pitching staff, you might have a team that outpaces the White Sox.
Fortunately, the on-paper version of the Twins is as lacking in pitching as Twins writer Aaron Gleeman has foretold. There's a reason he's been railing about the Twins' unwillingness to reinforce the rotation with any kind of significant spending, and you can see it when looking at the talent currently on hand.
The Twins aren't bereft of pitching. The White Sox saw tough games from Bailey Ober, Joe Ryan's high-spin fastball approach could give them similar fits, and Simeon Woods Richardson might be able to barge into the mix at some point in 2022. The question is whether that young pitching will materialize and coalesce in time to support a position-player mix that's potentially dangerous, but fragile at a few key places.
The Twins still could add an arm from the outside, but the simplest money-only solutions like Robbie Ray and Kevin Gausman are off the board. Other upgrades will require a finer threading of the needle.
It's hard to count the Twins out because of all the regression that's possible from last year's disaster, but they're also courting a situation where the roster never comes together. A division-winning Twins team isn't that far in the recent past, but Dan Hayes' impressions of last year's team via James Fegan are even nearer in the rear-view mirror, and maybe not enough of the principals have changed.
Something I appreciate about my relationship with The Athletic’s Twins writer Dan Hayes is that we take each other’s input so seriously, despite having diametrically opposed approaches. So in early April, while I firmly believed that two weeks of bad bullpen results and fluky defensive misplays were unrepresentative of the Twins’ true talent (or some similarly brainy gobbledygook), I took Hayes seriously when he repeatedly conveyed in a series of text messages that “THE VIBES ARE BAD.”
PERTINENT: White Sox 2022 ZiPS projections reinforce notions about needs
* * * * * * * * *
Over in Cleveland, Guardians owner Paul Dolan is in talks with billionaire David Blitzer for a significant minority ownership stake in the team.
Blitzer, 52, is a minority owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Devils, several European professional soccer teams and the Scanton Wilkes/Barre Railriders, the Yankees’ top farm club. Blitzer is estimated to be worth $1.16 billion.
Dolan has been looking for a minority owner since John Sherman put his shares of the team in escrow to buy the Kansas City Royals in November of 2019. Last season Cleveland had the second smallest opening-day payroll in the big leagues at $50 million. In 2017, a year after Cleveland reached Game 7 of the World Series, the payroll was $137 million.
That represents at least some documented significance in the wallet of the minority partner, although $137 million isn't that impressive of a peak. We also don't yet know the power of the Sherman bank because the Royals have been rebuilding the last couple of years, and while they're in a position to take a shot, it seems like Dayton Moore is more content to let an intriguing group of prospects and young pitchers figure it out for one more year.
A White Sox fan can't make fun of the division's other payrolls too much because $137 million also represents a high-water mark for Jerry Reinsdorf, although they should finally blow past that mark this year. The question is how regularly they'll be willing to spend past $150 million. After consecutive postseason appearances for the first time in franchise history, the hands holding the White Sox's pursestrings should find them a little easier to let go.
* * * * * * * * *
For Detroit, an exciting winter was interrupted by tragedy, as first base coach Kimera Bartee died suddenly on Tuesday while visiting his relatives in Omaha. His father said the cause of death was a brain tumor that had gone undetected.
Jerry Bartee told The World-Herald on Tuesday night that medical examiners determined Kimera had a large brain tumor that cut off the flow of fluid to the brain, causing Kimera to lose consciousness around 3 a.m. Tuesday. Kimera had been in Omaha since Sunday and did not complain of any symptoms, such as headaches.
Bartee had joined A.J. Hinch's staff during the 2021 season, jumping in after the team's original first-base coach, Chip Hale, took a job managing the University of Arizona. The Tigers interviewed other candidates, but ultimately preferred sticking with Bartee.
(Photo by Runner1928)
