Minnesota Twins Takeaways from an Inactive Trade Deadline

[KirbyDome89]

14 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

Your argument that X won't do Y because it doesn't make sense and is wildly incompetent is not how the world works.  It's the classic is/ought fallacy.  

Your line of reason can be proven wrong by reality in many, many ways.  I'll give a few profound examples from baseball alone: the Oakland Athletics.  The Florida Marlins.  Franchises who have basically decided that their operational philosophies are "Did you thoroughly piss off a baseball loving home sapien today?"  Or the Twins - who decided to pinch pennies after their first time winning a playoff game since sliced bread.  Or the Twins who looked at Bally's and said "What could go wrong?"  Or MLB that thinks regional blackouts are totally fine for, like, several decades.  Or pretty much every MLB team thinking the best way to build future athletes is to feed them McDonalds, live in a shack, and workout with rocks tied to sticks.

Not a god damn one of those things makes any sense.  Or would seem "likely" for an organization to do in any rational world.  And yet.....here we are.  Perhaps the old "don't trade in your own division" isn't some made up thing, but a relic that hasn't died no matter how badly it should.

It (MN being bullied by rival teams) isn't an impossibility, I just see it as highly unlikely given what we know about the Twins and how they handled the offseason and the last 2 deadlines. I'm unsure how/why it would be fallacious to avoid giving the benefit of the doubt to a team that has shown zero desire to spend for a calendar year now.

Did Chicago and Detroit collude to ensure the Twins got nothing at this deadline? At some point, if you can't get anything done with 29 other teams + FAs, you're the problem. Occam's razor right? Is it more likely that two rivals were simultaneously acting in a wildly incompetent manor, possibly colluding, and only chose to act this way with the Twins, or was the hometown team window shopping? 

I said it in another post, we just watched this organization trot Falvey out to ensure the masses that financial constraints had nothing to do with the deadline inactivity. Why anybody should take this organization "leaking," post deadline damage control seriously is beyond me. 

[TheLeviathan]

17 minutes ago, KirbyDome89 said:

It (MN being bullied by rival teams) isn't an impossibility, I just see it as highly unlikely given what we know about the Twins and how they handled the offseason and the last 2 deadlines. I'm unsure how/why it would be fallacious to avoid giving the benefit of the doubt to a team that has shown zero desire to spend for a calendar year now.

Did Chicago and Detroit collude to ensure the Twins got nothing at this deadline? At some point, if you can't get anything done with 29 other teams + FAs, you're the problem. Occam's razor right? Is it more likely that two rivals were simultaneously acting in a wildly incompetent manor, possibly colluding, and only chose to act this way with the Twins, or was the hometown team window shopping? 

I said it in another post, we just watched this organization trot Falvey out to ensure the masses that financial constraints had nothing to do with the deadline inactivity. Why anybody should take this organization "leaking," post deadline damage control seriously is beyond me. 

It can be both though right?  I'm not saying the Twins didn't hold themselves back (ownership at least), but it could be that their own limitations were only further limited by idiocy with some potential trading partners.

At least that's where I'm at: The Twins didn't do enough.  Part of that is definitely because they put draconian restraints on themselves, but part of it is also because many of the most attractive assets that fit their needs were on teams that made it even more difficult by demanding ridiculous trade packages to consumate a deal.  It need not be mutually exclusive.  And I find that the MOST likely scenario.

[KirbyDome89]

1 hour ago, TheLeviathan said:

It can be both though right?  I'm not saying the Twins didn't hold themselves back (ownership at least), but it could be that their own limitations were only further limited by idiocy with some potential trading partners.

At least that's where I'm at: The Twins didn't do enough.  Part of that is definitely because they put draconian restraints on themselves, but part of it is also because many of the most attractive assets that fit their needs were on teams that made it even more difficult by demanding ridiculous trade packages to consumate a deal.  It need not be mutually exclusive.  And I find that the MOST likely scenario.

Of course it can.

I could buy into Detroit or Chicago asking for 80 cents on the dollar from the Twins rather than the 75 they pitched to other clubs, i.e. a throw in or something along those lines. I absolutely don't believe either of those clubs were wasting their own time on deadline day sending ridiculous offers to the Twins. The rivals narrative provides pretty convenient cover, and using a nebulous term like "premium," while floating a top prospect inquiry and doing nothing to better your own team reeks of damage control to me. 

Agreed, ultimately the self imposed limitations are what has continued to hamper this club.