Corey Knebel was traded and the all-pig pun name team
Oink.
Hello, fellow Rich People.
We have some big news this week. Curt, who is exactly 33.3% of this newsletter (although, due to his height and handsomeness, one could argue he’s closer to 40%) bought a house this week. You may refer to him from now on as #MortgageCyrt. It’s a pretty big life move.
In other news, the two other members of this newsletter -- Jake and myself, Tom -- spent way too much time googling pig puns. So who really won this week?
Let’s converse.
Celebrating the Twins-Saints merger with an all-time roster of pig puns
~Tom
Unless you’re a Cleveland Baseball Team fan or a subscriber to Trevor Bauer’s YouTube page, the 2020 MLB offseason has been pretty darn quiet. The biggest baseball news in Minnesota has been the St. Paul Saints announcing they were becoming the Triple-A affiliate of the Twins.
We love the Saints on this newsletter for a variety of reasons. For starters, the Saints held the world’s largest food fight in 2018. In the press release announcing the big news this offseason, the Saints snuck a joke in there, saying part-owner Bill Murray was the team psychologist.
St. Paul’s greatest tradition, however, is naming the Saints ball pig -- yes, a pig -- each year. The name usually refers to someone or something in the news that year, with a bit of a twist from a pig pun. In 2019, the pig was dubbed Daenerys Hoggaryen. In 2018, he was named Porknite. You get it.
The ball pig can be seen at CHS Field waddling around all season long. Umpires making his or her first visit to CHS Field even have to give the swine a smooch.
To further celebrate the Twins-Saints merger, we decided to scroll back into Twins history and create a lineup of Twins players if they were the namesake of the Saints ball pig.
Enjoy. Or unsubscribe. We can’t blame you for either choice.
PITCHERS
SP Hoof Bonser
SP Froink Viola
RP Ron Swine
BATTERS
1B Piguel Sano
3B Porky Koskie
CF Denard Spam
DH Josh Willingham (lol)
OF Bacon Buxton
Corey Knebel got traded for a return
~Jake
Times like these make you wonder about alternate realities.
In another world, one with one extra 1 and one less 0 in the network coding, we experienced a COVID-free season and the Milwaukee Brewers won the World Series, catapulting this newsletter into international stardom. OK, maybe that would take a few more changes than one extra 1 in our coding.
Alas, the Brewers are still championship-less, Rich People Conversations is not Sports Illustrated 2.0 and instead of chronicling day 48 of the parade/celebration at Curt’s house, we’re covering the Corey Knebel trade. [Sigh].
The Brewers and Dodgers completed the Knebel deal last week, sending lefthander Leo Crawford back to Milwaukee. Crawford is 23 years old who pitched most recently in Double-A way back in 1999--I mean, 2019. He’s been a perfectly serviceable minor league starter since he was signed back in 2014 by the aforementioned Dodgers.
Now, “perfectly serviceable minor league starter” may sound more promising than deserved. Despite turning in sub-3.00 ERAs the past two seasons, Crawford isn’t what many would call a touted prospect. The Nicaraguan doesn’t appear on either the Dodgers’ top 47 prospects or the Brewers’ top 35 prospects on FanGraphs and, perhaps rudely, doesn’t have a prospect page on Baseball America. That’s primarily because he’s not a “great stuff” guy. In fact, he’s probably not even a good stuff guy. The most recent note on his FanGraphs page is from an August 2019 chat by lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen, who said Crawford has a fastball between 86-90 miles per hour.
Somewhere, Rick Anderson is salivating.
Steve Adams of MLB Trade Rumors reports that some analysts view him as a Brent Suter-type, with a deceptive throwing motion and someone who projects to be a multi-inning reliever.
In Minnesota, we call that Devin Smeltzer.
So, that’s basically best-case scenario: Crawford provides Smeltzer-level production with Suter-level memes.
Still, it’s a large fall from the high hopes of 2017 Knebel, an all-star who led the league in appearances and struck out 14.9 batters per nine innings while saving 39 games. Trade a guy like that at that time and you’re looking at a top 100 prospect, maybe even top 50 if you have a dumb team involved.
It’s been some time since we saw that Knebel, though. Knebel was fine in 2018, missed 2019 with Tommy John surgery and looked shaky in 2020. It’s unfair to expect anything of substance for a reliever coming off Tommy John who just posted a 6.08 ERA with clearly diminished stuff.
That doesn’t mean we have to feel good about it. We all have a sour taste in our mouth because we know how this ends: we just saw Blake Treinen close out game five of the World Series for the Dodgers after the Oakland A’s let him walk for nothing. Treinen was a bullpen god for a year, was super bad one year, joined the Dodgers and was quite good again.
These things happen. That’s horrible analysis and doesn’t make anyone feel good but hey, at least the Brewers got something for him.