It's Time for Derek Falvey To Actually Stand Up For His Decisions, or Go Away

[LastOnePicked]

53 minutes ago, yeahyabetcha said:

If this sell off helps  the sale of team isn’t that what you all wanted??  

I struggle to understand how trading away effective, team-controlled relievers who have - and probably will - outperform their contracts helps facilitate a sale. It's like buying a business known for it's very effective, low-cost staff and then having the previous owner fire them all before the sale is final. This benefits your new business how exactly?

These moves convinced me this team isn't going to be sold.  

[LastOnePicked]

12 minutes ago, Nashvilletwin said:

So, hate to be the predictor of bad news, but the Pohlads may very well pull the sale until after the new CBA is done.

Nailed it. I don't think there's any other logical conclusion.

[NYCTK]

1 hour ago, Glorybound said:

why the last second deal that netted you very little?

This just is a misunderstanding of what they got in return. 

You can be disappointed they murdered their bullpen, I get that, but the returns they got on the last minute deals were pretty good, fair returns. 

Taj and Kendry are good pieces. Roden is a fine OF. That's a good return for bullpen arms. But be prepared to see Griffin Jax be used as a starter in Tampa and really become a valuable player.

[SarasotaBill]

Living close to the Tampa Bay Rays I get to see this strategy every year. 

A few points:

1. Not counting this year and Covid shortened season, the Twins have averaged 83 wins during Falvey vs the previous six seasons of 68 wins. So he's done a good job making the twins competitive.

2. Dumping Correa was to save money for Pohlad but also frees up cash in the next three years.

3. Maximizing the value of relievers is to trade them at the trading deadline when playoff teams are going all-in.  

4. Twins under Falvey have a track record of converting failed major league starters into good relievers (Duran, Jax, Varland). The Twins now have a long list of top end pitching prospects: Matthews, Festa, Rojas, Bradley, Prielipp, Abel, Hill, Quick, Culpepper, Soto, Raya, Gallagher, Morris, Klein. Some will be starters, some will become relievers, and some will fail but they have a long bench.   

5. The strategy is to align with the next wave (Jenkins, Gonzalez, Rodriguez, Keashall, Culpepper). Like it or not, small or mid-market teams have to pick their shots vs the Dodgers and other large market teams.

6. The next owners will influence if Buxton, Lopez, Ryan, Lewis, and Jeffers get traded. Most likely will get traded in the next two years (definitely any Boras player) since they won't align with 2027-2031 time frame. 

7. My son is a Rays fan and he hates trading Bradley. On the other hand, I'm always nervous about trading with the Rays. I think the Varland trade happened at the end of the deadline because the Blue Jays buckled to Falvey's price. Varland costs nothing for the next few years and fits in the next wave so Falvey had leverage with the Blue Jays. 

[Muppet]

I’m not sad. This team was awful. They sold high on the only two good players they traded, Varland and Duran. Hopefully they got something good in return. No way this team competes for anything next year except for last place with the White Sox. 

Relief pitchers are notoriously finicky. Duran might end up a hall of famer or might end up throwing his arm out next year. Jax was losing it in the end, Columbe was good but only pitched when a left handed was up, Stewart is on the way down, Varland was promising, but who knows… so was Tyler Rogers, but he stunk when he left too.

The pitching on this team was good, but nowhere near enough to compete. They traded away their strength for the future. And I’m glad they did. Their AAA squad also sucks. 

If there is a next owner, they’ll get to buy all the pieces they want next year unhampered by 3 years of no trade clauses. Then Falvey will get fired anyway.

As terrible as this team has been it’s amazing people are so upset they broke it up. The twins kept their only good players. Buxton, Lopez, and Ryan. Go from there. Onward. They might not compete next year, but they have a better chance than they did this year. 
 

If this is too much, I’d suggest finding a new team to follow. I’d suggest the Mariners… pretty good team, perennial underdogs, and they’ve never made the WS. Go Ms. I’ll stick with the twins. 

 

[Eris]

Falvey deserves to be held accountable more for putting this team together than for blowing it up.  The Twins had put a team on the field that for whatever reason was not delivering.  As a fan, I have never been so disappointed in a team.  I was led to hope after the 2023 season that I might live to see another WS before I die.  It doesn't look promising.    The main issue left unaddressed is that the replacement level killers remain (see previous TD article on this topic The Twins’ Replacement-Level Killers Killed the 2025 Season - Twins Daily Front Page News - Twins Daily).  This is primarily because position players generally don't have as much value at the trade deadline as a relief pitcher because every team needs to reinforce their bullpen for the playoffs).  Therefore, selling pitching is the most effective way to build value at the trade deadline.  A number of trades (Duran, Jax, Stewart) seem to have fallen short on capturing the excess value of the July 31 trade deadline.  

To have competitive team, the position players need to produce in something about or > 25 fWAR.  The math is quite difficult for the Twins this year and I am not certain the current roster will be better next year.  Please tell me that Wallner, Larnach, Lewis, and Ryan will be better next year.  At the trade deadline, the Twins had 2 players (Buxton and Bader) with > 2 fWAR and 4 players between 1 and 2 fWAR and a team fWAR of 10.3.  The Tigers in contrast, have 4 players at > 2 fWAR and 5 players between 1-2 fWAR and team fWAR of 17.4.

I am summarizing below what I have written earlier on the threads, so if you have already read this, feel free to skip the remainder of the message.

Carlos Correa was only producing at about 1/2 of his expected contract.  I am not certain what has all transpired to result in this.  To me the most insightful note on this came from Phil Miller and reposted to TD by several.  It is hard to comprehend the good clubhouse presence/image of Carlos Correa and being an on the field general manager with the data, which is that the Twins had a better outcome when Correa wasn't in the lineup.  Wow!  I would never have guessed this and I wish TD writers who were more capable that I would explore this in great detail as it might help us understand why this current team has so underperformed.  Our team was actually better when our on-the-field leader was not on the field.  OMG!!  No wonder Twins fans have been so royally disappointed.  (Note that the differences in the data are small and likely within the standard deviations, but the best we can say about Correa's tenure with the Twins is that the Twins did not do better than when he was in the lineup).  Most of us would be fired from our day jobs in a couple of weeks if our teams performed better when we were not around.

I am expecting more changes.  Larnach, Wallner, and possibly Lewis may all need to go (read replacement level killers linked above)--maybe Wallner would work out at 1B.  Falvey deserves to be held accountable for putting this team together in the first place.   Blowing it up was only a natural outcome of the failure to build a decent team.   To paraphrase one of my favorite quotes on the topic from a fellow TD, the Twins have put together a team where 5 or 6 players best position is DH--they are slow, they don't play good defense, and they can't hit consistently.  What is left?  Falvey should be fired for this.

 

 

 

[USAFChief]

I agree with all of this, Nick, except...

The primary issue with Falvey isn't the nauseating empty corporate gibberish, avoiding anything resembling actual questions, talking only to corporate shills, or any of the other annoying aspects.

The primary problem is his job performance. Other than oversee a miraculous 2019 regular season (mostly with players he had no part in acquiring or developing), what has he accomplished? And BTW...this genius somehow managed to put that 2019 team in the position of starting Randy Dobnak in a postseason game.

2020's 60 game "season" really doesn't count in my estimation. 

Since then they're under. 500 and have made the postseason once. 

They're 0 for a million in turning position players into above average every day position players, with no real reason to believe that's gonna change any time soon. They've developed Bailey Ober and a couple relievers. 

One simple question gets to the heart of this:

Who was it that was in charge of building this team that required gutting?

[USAFChief]

11 minutes ago, NYCTK said:

 

Taj and Kendry are good pieces. Roden is a fine OF. That's a good return for bullpen arms. But be prepared to see Griffin Jax be used as a starter in Tampa and really become a valuable player.

"Taj" has 67 .major league starts and to date is a dismal failure. 

 

[Glorybound]

19 minutes ago, LastOnePicked said:

I struggle to understand how trading away effective, team-controlled relievers who have - and probably will - outperform their contracts helps facilitate a sale. It's like buying a business known for it's very effective, low-cost staff and then having the previous owner fire them all before the sale is final. This benefits your new business how exactly?

These moves convinced me this team isn't going to be sold.  

My fears exactly. The owners actually think they can rebuild a competitive team by midpoint next season. Instead they have a team that will structure to stay ahead of the Whitesox.

[NYCTK]

1 hour ago, mike8791 said:

In the end, does it really matter whether Falvey was honest with the fans?

It does make me chuckle the way people parse manager or front office comments. 

The right sizing one, obviously worthy of scorn because it actually meant something. But corporate speak? Who cares. That email "he" sent out? Anyone getting mad about it is mad for the wrong reasons. He didn't even write it. Their comms team did and he signed off on it. 

 

1 hour ago, In My La Z boy said:

For me it's not what he says, it's how he says what he says. My old man lived in Ft Myers and went to every spring practice and game in the late 90's. Terry Ryan used to come down and sit with him and his old man friends and just hang out and talk baseball. I don't imagine Derek Falvey does anything such thing as this. 

This is nice and all, but I don't care if my teams GM is friendly with some old guys in a training facility. He can be the world's biggest *******, and coldness might actually help in the job, I don't care. 

Falvey sucks because he did a terrible job building a major league organization, top to bottom, not because you can't imagine him shooting the **** with 70 year-old spectators. 

[terrydactyls]

1 hour ago, mike8791 said:

In the end, does it really matter whether Falvey was honest with the fans? 

In a word:  YES

[NYCTK]

2 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

"Taj" has 67 .major league starts and to date is a dismal failure. 

 

"OK" 

 

[USAFChief]

3 minutes ago, NYCTK said:

"OK" 

 

Explain to me how that's not true.

 

[NYCTK]

15 minutes ago, Eris said:

Most of us would be fired from our day jobs in a couple of weeks if our teams performed better when we were not around.

Don't tell my boss. 

[NYCTK]

50 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Explain to me how that's not true.

 

I wouldn't say dismal. 4.70 ERA is not* what you hope to see, disappointing, but dismal? I'm very optimistic about him. Not as high as Joe Ryan, but higher than Ober or anyone else. He's comfortably the third best starter next season imo (barring further sell off). 

But I'm mostly poking fun at you putting Taj in quotes. That's why I put a short response in quotes. 

BTW you beat me to the comment about not caring about Falvey. We're on the same wavelength there. 

[Nashvilletwin]

31 minutes ago, LastOnePicked said:

Nailed it. I don't think there's any other logical conclusion.

People, including our fellow TDers, don’t want to hear it or contemplate it, but this outcome is a definite possibility.

The best way to create value for this franchise post the Thursday trade deadline massacre is to:

1) wait for the new (small to mid market team friendly) CBA to be completed after a lockout in ‘27.

2) build a new cheap controllable core suitable to be sold to the Twins faithful as well as a new buyer (coming out of a lockout year);

3) develop a more attractive TV cash generating solution (which might be part of the goodies given to the small - mid market teams in conjunction with the CBA; and

4) keep payroll low thru ‘26.

This very well could be the Pohlad’s new plan of action.

[sweetmusicviola16]

Falvey needs to be gone. His way failed. He's had 9 seasons to reach the upper levels and he has failed. Get him out of here. My take on the Correa trade is also that he was given away. Yet we will still be on the hook for over 30 mil. Anyone who thinks that the "savings' will be reinvested while we still owe him money is not living in reality. I have never been a CC fan. But imo trading him for nothing while still being responsible for paying him was a poor move. He will be replaced by minimum paid players who will produce that way while we lose a player who at least has the potential to play at top level. For those celebrating this trade it will not be a win. And this view is coming from one of the least favorite fans of CC. But Falvey and Rocco can't be gone soon enough for me.

[chinmusic]

1 hour ago, yeahyabetcha said:

If this sell off helps  the sale of team isn’t that what you all wanted??  

Surely , a sale could have been achieved without the decimation of a franchise.

Historically, I doubt that any change of ownership has been this demoralizing.

[The Great Hambino]

48 minutes ago, Nashvilletwin said:

100% agree that this was dictated by ownership.  Why?  Here are a couple of hot takes/bold predictions.

1. The sale process is going very poorly.  Ownership is not getting near the price they want.  These moves are not going to help in the near term.

2. Ownership thinks the price will go up after the lockout in ‘27 when the small/mid market teams go to the mat to effect a hard salary cap. Also, that gives them time to figure out the tv side of things and help future cash flow.

3. The Pohlads are thus keeping the team until after the lockout.

4. Consequently, the strategy going forward is to reduce payroll while building a new promising young core to build fan interest post the lockout and to raise the price.

5. ‘26 will be all about building and positioning for that core while keeping payroll down.  ‘27 will be a no baseball season for the most part. Thus, Lopez and Ryan are moved in the off-season.  Jeffers very likely as well as the team looks to transition to cheap young catchers in ‘28.  Buxton stays unless he demands a trade.  Too early to tell on Lewis.

So, hate to be the predictor of bad news, but the Pohlads may very well pull the sale until after the new CBA is done.

I need a "dislike but agree" button

[sweetmusicviola16]

16 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

"Taj" has 67 .major league starts and to date is a dismal failure. 

 

He's a number 5 SP. Just what this team needs. lol

[Riverbrian]

1 hour ago, yeahyabetcha said:

If this sell off helps  the sale of team isn’t that what you all wanted??  

I don't necessarily agree that this helped the sale of the team but you raise a real good point in one simple question. Many are angry and accusing Falvey of doing this in a money grab at owneships behest to help facilitate a deal that you are all praying will happen.

Well... What do you want Twins faithful? A sale of the team... You want the Pohlads out but then accuse them of doing something (granted a loud gesture) in order to make the sale more possible. How many ways do you want it. 

The bitching if off the charts. Many people typed Sell Sell Sell. Well they sold... many asked for it. I'd say the majority on this website were asking for it. Is the anger now because they sold sold sold sold sold which is 5 solds when you asked for only 3 sells. 

Was anyone expecting them to do exactly what you requested when you requested it?  

[yeahyabetcha]

1 minute ago, chinmusic said:

Surely , a sale could have been achieved without the decimation of a franchise.

Historically, I doubt that any change of ownership has been this demoralizing.

The team that was sold off was performing at a sub 500 clip.  TD was clamoring that all the expiring contracts be moved.  That was what happened.  
 

They got out of the Correa contract, do you disagree with that move?

[sthpstm]

Any chance that the Twins looked at a lockout and potential lost 2027 season and to some degree see players controlled through 2027 and only being controlled, possibly/probably, through 2026 so sell what you can while you can?

Having read Nashville Twins post, I'd now like to delete this, haha.

[GNess]

I have been a loyal Twins fan since 1966.and on balance enjoyed the experience despite the paucity of peaks (.87, 91) and too many valleys to note here. But a common theme has been ownership that rarely if ever demonstrates a true commitment to winning and excellence.

Talk of 3-5 year re-builds rather than 1-2 year re-tools are just noise. Teams like the Twins often justify these self-inflicted valleys for baseball reasons and a stronger future, but in reality it's almost always driven by financial desires/directives about money. 

I have reached a place as a fan that I accept that reality, but I sure as heck don't have to pretend to like it.

[MGX]

There were some trades that didn't seem to fit. With that said one of the trades that people seemingly dislike is the the Jax for Bradley trade. IMO that is a win for the Twins.

If you can trade a 30 yr old reliever (don't get me wrong I liked Jax) for a 24 yr old SP who has already in his young career has 100+ IP in each of the last 3 seasons for a total of 354 IP & has been a solid SP at the MLB level, that is a win. There is still every reason to believe he can be even better, but even the results he's produced to this point is more than fair value for Jax IMO.

 

[LastOnePicked]

31 minutes ago, Nashvilletwin said:

People, including our fellow TDers, don’t want to hear it or contemplate it, but this outcome is a definite possibility.

The best way to create value for this franchise post the Thursday trade deadline massacre is to:

1) wait for the new (small to mid market team friendly) CBA to be completed after a lockout in ‘27.

2) build a new cheap controllable core suitable to be sold to the Twins faithful as well as a new buyer (coming out of a lockout year);

3) develop a more attractive TV cash generating solution (which might be part of the goodies given to the small - mid market teams in conjunction with the CBA; and

4) keep payroll low thru ‘26.

This very well could be the Pohlad’s new plan of action.

I'm gonna click "Like" for your thoughtful breakdown of the plan. Not because I like the plan.

[DJL44]

2 hours ago, LewFordLives said:

I don't follow the minors that closely, so I can't tell you if Kendry Rojas is the second coming or not. However, why would you completely handicap your bullpen like that? The bullpen went from a position of strength to a glaring weakness. I watched the early 80's Twins and saw how ugly it can be without a decent bullpen.

One, they are rewarded for losing the rest of this season.

Two, they’re pretty confident they have enough pitching in the minors to put together another bullpen. That’s where Morris and Culpepper and Raya and Prielipp are most likely to contribute.

[TwinsDr2021]

1 hour ago, rv78 said:

Twins got 2 legit starters in Bradley and Rojas.

Didn't the one with experience get sent right to AAA and the other one never has pitched more than 84 innings and has one horrible AAA game. That is what people are considering legit these days? 

Bradley is only 24 and has made 67 starts which is great his .9 career WAR and 4.7 ERA not so great. but I believe he can be a decent starter, but legit at this time may be a stretch. 

[NYCTK]

19 minutes ago, GNess said:

Teams like the Twins often justify these self-inflicted valleys for baseball reasons and a stronger future, but in reality it's almost always driven by financial desires/directives about money. 

I just don't buy the prevailing idea now that these weren't baseball decisions. 

As many have pointed out, if it was financially driven then trading Varland makes no sense. That was a baseball decision. You don't have to agree with it, but there is solid roster construction baseball driven reasoning behind it. 

Same with Correa. That while working out financially, is a baseball decision. For whatever reason his tenure just didn't work out. He was a pretty good player with the Twins, but starting to look like a liability, both financially and on the field. Could he have stuck around and been a veteran presence like see with Baez in Detroit? Maybe. But we also know he was campaigning to take Royces position in the background because even he knew he wasn't going to be a very good SS going forward. He might still be a 115 OPS+ guy for the remainder of his contract but as a 3B that runs poorly, is that really that valuable for a team doing a reset? 

[Riverbrian]

1 hour ago, Nashvilletwin said:

Provus was a complete coward and corporate shill on the telecast last night.  Falvey stated quite clearly that the team had way underperformed this  season.  But Cory didn’t ask why or what role, responsibility or culpability Rocco had in that underperformance. What a complete waste of an opportunity and just shows what a bunch of propagandists for the Pohlad/Falvey/Rocco regime the entire broadcast team are.

Does any reporter have the courage to ask that question? Will Falvey ever have to address it? Why does Rocco get a free pass?

Btw, Falvey is a complete bull@&$&@er.  What a bunch a dribble he talks. He should be down at Walser selling used cars.  

You are making me chuckle a bit when I'm trying to drink coffee. Your anger over it all is probably a little over the top if it is spilling onto Corey Provus. 

Did you really expect Corey Provus to counterpoint Falvey (His Boss) into the ground in front of everyone? It doesn't work that way. 

Propagandists? Of course they are. We all are.