Minnesota Sports Forum

bleedspeed177 wrote:Well Willians Astudillo is coming back. I like the guy as an outlier and grinder that is the jack of all trades and master of none.

Gibby has been struggling lately. He is at his high for innings in his career this year.

I'm interested to see Astudillo as a catcher. Garver had a pretty sweet play last night fooling the baserunner into thinking the ball wasn't coming till the last 2nd. Hopefully Astudillo takes advantage of his opportunity.

Gibson threw 194.2 innings in 2015 which was his other very successful season. I'm not worried about Gibson he has been throwing the ball pretty well in general, but had some bad luck and guys have put some good swings on the ball. He hasn't been good every time out this month but in the past he would have gotten crushed and he has given the team enough to give them some sort of chance. It really does seem like he has actually turned things around. I wonder what kind of contract he will get in his final arbitration year.

Stephen Gonsalves struggled for the second straight outing last night, but after watching him, I came away more than ever convinced he will be something special. He doesn't get his fastball much over 92 and doesn't show much of a breaking ball, but he just seems to know how to pitch. I played senior men's baseball in California for several years, and most of the pitchers couldn't throw much harder than 75, but still they were frustrating to hit against because they never gave you anything good to swing at...everything was just a little out of the strike zone, and when they did throw a strike, it was on the black somewhere. That's how Gonsalves pitches, and why he has had so much success in the minors. He has been missing his spots during his first two starts in the majors (including a changeup to Lucroy that stayed up and ended up in the left field seats), but I think that was out of character and due to nerves. Once he begins spotting his fastball like he can and keeping his great changeup down in the zone, I see him as a guy who can be at the top of the rotation. Let's hope he begins to show it in his next start.

longstrangetrip wrote:Stephen Gonsalves struggled for the second straight outing last night, but after watching him, I came away more than ever convinced he will be something special. He doesn't get his fastball much over 92 and doesn't show much of a breaking ball, but he just seems to know how to pitch. I played senior men's baseball in California for several years, and most of the pitchers couldn't throw much harder than 75, but still they were frustrating to hit against because they never gave you anything good to swing at...everything was just a little out of the strike zone, and when they did throw a strike, it was on the black somewhere. That's how Gonsalves pitches, and why he has had so much success in the minors. He has been missing his spots during his first two starts in the majors (including a changeup to Lucroy that stayed up and ended up in the left field seats), but I think that was out of character and due to nerves. Once he begins spotting his fastball like he can and keeping his great changeup down in the zone, I see him as a guy who can be at the top of the rotation. Let's hope he begins to show it in his next start.

Idk if he is really a top of the rotation starter or not but I was actually encouraged by his 2nd outing. Before that Lucroy HR there should have been another out and that would have put him at 3 runs allowed for that game which looks better. He looked like he belonged quite a bit more.

Tyler Austin is doing well with the opportunities he is being given with the Twins. I saw that his dad recently said some snarky stuff about Yakees Bird and Austin's reaction was about as good as you can hope for saying he was embarrassed and that he yelled at his dad to take it down. When we made the deal I asked a friend of mine what we were getting in Austin and he said he liked him and wasn't sure Bird was actually the better player. He wasn't happy about getting Lynn but I told him that Lynn would probably help if they needed starting pitching. Lynn started well but has had a couple of subpar starts. Anyway Austin seems like a worthwhile get plus we got some other pitching prospect. Getting anything of value for Lynn seems like a pretty good deal to me. Austin is exceeding expectations a bit although I'm far from getting carried away. Lol

De Jong with a nice debut. Overall a nicely pitched ball game.

Williams Astudillo with a walkoff HR giving him 3 of the year in less than 40 ABs. All 3 have been no doubters. The Twins could have found a pretty nice player for basically nothing but a roster spot in him.

monsterpile wrote:De Jong with a nice debut. Overall a nicely pitched ball game.

Williams Astudillo with a walkoff HR giving him 3 of the year in less than 40 ABs. All 3 have been no doubters. The Twins could have found a pretty nice player for basically nothing but a roster spot in him.

He's a career .306 hitter in the minors, although he never showed any power until this season. And his defense doesn't seem to be tto bad either. It would be fun to see him make it.

longstrangetrip wrote:

monsterpile wrote:De Jong with a nice debut. Overall a nicely pitched ball game.

Williams Astudillo with a walkoff HR giving him 3 of the year in less than 40 ABs. All 3 have been no doubters. The Twins could have found a pretty nice player for basically nothing but a roster spot in him.

He's a career .306 hitter in the minors, although he never showed any power until this season. And his defense doesn't seem to be tto bad either. It would be fun to see him make it.

Let's remember we are looking at catchers. The bar is pretty low for what you can hope for or want from them as hitters. LST you said he hasn't shown power before this season. That's not quite true.in some of his early seasons he hit plenty of doubles. Just last year in 2017 in his first action at AAA (reached AA just the previous season) in 120 ABs (small sample size he much have been hurt or something) he had 14 doubles and 4 HRs while racking up a .928 OPS. Multiply those stats to just 480 ABs and that's 56 doubles and 16 HRs. So there was some power even last year. Maybe he is kind of a late bloomer where his approach also includes a bit more power which isn't exactly unusual for a guy this age. Look at a guy like Cave. Catchers don't always get a lot of ABs in the mi it's but it's weird he didn't get more opportunities. Is Astudillo a bad defensive catcher (or was he before in the minors) or been injured a bunch or just strange with his approach it wasn't really appreciated? Maybe he won't turn out to be anything other than a decent oddity both in the way he plays and physically and therefore fun to have around but doesn't really carve out a meaningful career. It's pretty easy to hope for good things though.

How do I become a member of the official "Williams Astudillo Fan Club"?

I like the story and now he is playing to back it up. I think we might be set at catcher with him and Garver.

bleedspeed177 wrote:How do I become a member of the official "Williams Astudillo Fan Club"?

I like the story and now he is playing to back it up. I think we might be set at catcher with him and Garver.

Yeah, I'm in the fan club too. We need to find out a little more about how he is considered defensively though. And remember, Jason Castro is signed through next year and is expected to be fully recovered by spring training. We know the Twins love his defense and he had double digit HRs 5 years in a row prior to 2018, so I would expect him to be the frontrunner for starting catcher.

I was figuring we could move on from Castro, but love that Willy seems like a swiss army knife type player. Other than first where can't he play?

bleedspeed177 wrote:I was figuring we could move on from Castro, but love that Willy seems like a swiss army knife type player. Other than first where can't he play?

Astudillo has a nifty fan base already with his no strikeout no walk approach in the minors. Lol

As for Castro I think the front office has placed a high priority on having a vet catcher on the squad and to some extent that's hard to argue with. What I have heard is that even with how Garver has progressed he will probably split catching duties with Castro (assuming Garber plays well next season). Castro is a pretty good starting catcher so if Garver continues to play well next year that will become a strength like it was in 2017 which was pretty significant.

As for Astudillo yeah there will be ways to get him on the field if he can hit. This team has seemed to be plenty interested in having 3 guys that can catch on the MLB roster in the past. If they are having a hard time getting playing time for Castro Garver and Astudillo and they are all deserving...it's a terrific problem to have.