The Minnesota Twins Didn’t Tear It All Down, At Least Not Yet

[NYCTK]

14 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

Our previous iteration of the bullpen was 4 years of building. Duran came up and dominated right away in 2022. Jax was a reliable middle reliever in 2022-23 and took the leap to the back end in 2024. Sands was mostly bad in 2022-23 and stepped up to a middle reliever last year. 

With tons and tons of others included with a mixed bag of results. Rebuilding the bullpen is going to take at minimum 2-3 years to become a strength again. 

Was the bullpen actually a strength this year? I keep hearing that it was, but I take a look at the numbers and I'm not convinced. 

[jmlease1]

3 minutes ago, Road trip said:

I guarantee you, the '87 Twins were plenty of fun, and they hadn't sniffed a 90 win regular season for over a decade.  You can ask anyone old enough to remember.

Of course you'd rather win 90+.   I suspect we will wait a while for that, new owner or not.

and, of course, by 1990 they were in last place again.

Part of the problem with a full-on rebuild in MLB is it might be less likely to truly work than any other team sport and certainly take longer than any other. In the NFL (a league with much better and smarter revenue sharing) teams turn it around in 1-2 seasons all the time. How often does an MLB team go from being a 60 win team to an 85 win team in a season?

I do think this is closer to a tear down than a re-tooling, unfortunately. They really decimated the bullpen, and if they were re-tooling there's no way they sell off all 5 guys. There's not enough guys in the lineup that have proven they can either stay healthy and/or produce as quality MLB players to say they're only 1-2 guys away from being a quality MLB lineup. Maybe a couple of guys like Martin/Keaschall/Lewis/Lee/Larnach/Roden/Julien change that perception by season's end, but they got a lot of proving to do. (and I like some of those guys. Some of them...less)

The rotation has the potential to be very good next season...if there's not another Pohlad-driven cost-reduction sale executed in the off-season. If Pablo & Joe get sent out, we're 100% in tear-down and rebuild. And you could argue that if either goes, we're in that mode, regardless of what we get back.

[Coach]

Jax. Duran, Varland were all converted starting pitchers.  You hold on to your proven starting pitchers, it's too hard to consistently develop your own, and too expensive to get one from free agency.  Sometimes you get lucky (Lopez, Ryan). It's much easier and less expensive to promote a reliever from within.  Continue using our relievers as trade bait.  We'll be OK.

[Vanimal46]

39 minutes ago, NYCTK said:

Was the bullpen actually a strength this year? I keep hearing that it was, but I take a look at the numbers and I'm not convinced. 

We just traded 5 of them away. So yeah, it was a strength. Some years we could have put our pitchers on the end of the driveway with a Free sign by them and no team would pick them up. 

[NYCTK]

11 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

We just traded 5 of them away. So yeah, it was a strength. Some years we could have put our pitchers on the end of the driveway with a Free sign by them and no team would pick them up. 

I don't get how that follows. 

So just because a roster has players that other teams expect to perform well that means they have performed well? The Twins also traded away 4 offensive players. Does that mean the offense was performing well? 

I look at the bullpen as a whole and I actually see a unit that has been about 20th in every results oriented metric. And while I certainly don't expect that to improve this season, I don't really have concern that the team can't rebuild a bullpen in 2 seasons time that can replicate that "success". 

[KirbyDome89]

1 hour ago, Vanimal46 said:

Our previous iteration of the bullpen was 4 years of building. Duran came up and dominated right away in 2022. Jax was a reliable middle reliever in 2022-23 and took the leap to the back end in 2024. Sands was mostly bad in 2022-23 and stepped up to a middle reliever last year. 

With tons and tons of others included with a mixed bag of results. Rebuilding the bullpen is going to take at minimum 2-3 years to become a strength again. 

You could even argue Sands has taken a step back this year, which further proves how volatile the build can be. 

[Major League Ready]

3 hours ago, jmlease1 said:

It's not a complete teardown, because Ryan, Lopez, Jeffers, and Buxton are still here (not that some of them could have gotten traded easily) but when they included Varland in the bullpen flips it pushed them much closer, and it's exceptionally reasonable to be afraid that further moves to make this team cheap and uncompetitive will be coming in the offseason without a change in ownership.

I have zero faith that the Pohlads won't instruct that Lopez be traded in the offseason, flipped for prospects and salary savings if they keep the team. Jeffers would likely be dumped as well, since he'd have some value and a contract that would pay him somewhere in the $7-9M range in arbitration. At that point Ryan probably goes too since he'd be making $7M and have real value. There's nothing to suggest that the Pohlads wouldn't strip this team down to the studs, pocket the money, and drop the payroll down under $70M.

That's the real concern. That if the team isn't sold, we're not done selling off players. The Pohlads are clearly uninterested in investing any more money in the Twins, and if they keep the team it will only be if they can find a way to make a consistent and significant operating profit on it again. And since they're never going to open the books to anyone, I simply don't care about their claims of $400M in debt that are sitting on it, as I have have no idea how it got there. (I suspect a great deal of it is from either business incompetence or through real estate deals they've involved the franchise in, but we will never know...and I no longer care. Screw them)

 

2026 is absolutely for certain lost.  Lopez / Ryan / Ober are free agents in 2027.  Should they keep Ryan who would bring a massive return because there is an outside chance they could make the playoffs in 2027? 

[IndianaTwin]

I'm fond of oversimplifying. For 2026, looking at guys in the system...

• Rotation: Ryan, Lopez, Ober, SWR, Matthews, Festa, Bradley, Abel, guys in minors.
• Bullpen: Diddly squat. Check that -- almost diddly squat, given that it's full-on audition time for Sands, Topa, Funderburk, Tonkin and a lot of guys I don't have committed to memory, including the "prospects" like Ohl, Prielipp, 
• Lineup: Jeffers (C), __(backup)___ (C), Clemens (1b), Keaschall (2b), Lee (ss), Lewis (3b), Roden (lf), Buxton (cf), Wallner (rf), Larnach (dh), ___Julien?____, ____Martin?____, ___Outman?_____.
• Misc. hitters in the system who have played in the majors: Gasper, Fitzgerald, Kiersey, Bride, Miranda, McCusker.
• Minor leaguers: Rodriguez, Jenkins, Culpepper, Eales, Sabato, Gonzalez, Mendez, Olivar.

--------------------

People are making the assumption that one or more of the starting pitchers will get traded. That only happens if there's no ownership change. If there's an ownership change, there's a very good likelihood it comes with spending. New owners are going to want to make a splash. 

So how much would it cost a new owner to make a splash? Try this for size...

• Second catcher: Operating on the model that Falvey has had a pair of three-year veteran contracts in Castro and Vazquez -- $10M
• Hitter 1: $15M
• Hitter 2: $10M
• Hitter 3: $5M 
  • The hitter list assumes that you have health and productivity from Buxton, Lewis, Lee, either Wallner or Larnach and that at least one of Wallner/Larnach, Roden, Outman takes a step forward. It also assumes that at least one of the rookies (led by Keaschall) makes a contribution.
• Reliever 1: $5M
• Reliever 2: $3M
• Reliever 3: $2M
  • That's based on Falvey's reluctance to bid on relievers. It also assume that there's significant commitment to the convert-a-starter model of the guys already in the system. 

That's $50M in spending. That's a lot. But it's not a lot when the list of guys above the line probably costs about $85-$90M, taking into account arbitration and a lot of pre-arb guys at minimum salary or a bit more. Add $10M if you want to count the commitment to Correa. 

To me, it's not at all unfeasible to see a new owner drop $50M in new money. Or even $60M if they want to make their primary signing be a $20M hitter. 

I'll take the OP's premise that at this point, it's not a teardown.  

[Major League Ready]

1 hour ago, Road trip said:

I hear what you are saying, and yes everyone wants a deep run, but you can't have a deep run without getting in.  And sometimes pretty mediocre teams win it all.  The 2023 Rangers, the 2006 Cardinals... heck even the '87 Twins.  It happens if a team gets hot in October, which is really unpredictable.

I don't really object to a partial tear down.  I'd have tried to keep Varland and one of Jax or Duran though so next year at least had a little hope?  I think attendance is going to be dreadful for a while now.  That doesn't bode well for increasing the payroll, which is going to be necessary to keep the next generation of veterans around.

I hear you and that's reasonable.  However, I hear an awful lot of grumbling (understandably) about this organization's failure to build anything more than a fringe playoff team that never makes a deep run.  While I agree there is something to be said for frequency of making the playoffs, I think pretty much everyone wants more.  The question is are we willing to do what it takes to build something more substantial?  Even with Pablo / Ryan / Ober, this was never going to be among the top contenders.  Those three are very  good but they are not elite.  It would take a very good offense and we did not have the horses.  They made an investment in Correa intending for him to contribute significantly to getting over the top.  He is not that player.  Larnach / Wallner are mediocre.  We have zip at 2B and 1B.  I am not sure what we have at 3B.  It was time to shuffle the deck.

[old nurse]

5 hours ago, Nshore said:

It would be interesting to know exactly where the $400 million+ franchise debt came from under the Pohlads.  Is it because the financing of fielding a Major League team in Minnesota truly doesn't work?  Or is it connected somehow to the Pohlads' other business interests?

Short answer since the long answer got erased by the page reloading. The front office has 329 people listed. None of them are coaches, managers or scouts at any level. The one that needs to be fired is the director of revenue analytics, but I digress. There is a board of directors, Dave St Peters and 4 others that share the same last name. CEO and Director could be very well paid. Average S&P CEO pay is 19 million. Don’t forget, my three sons also have kids who need a paycheck.  Major League Baseball has pretty stringent rules on debt and what they can borrow for. 

[Doctor Gast]

You could probably say that CWS didn't totally tear down; they still have Roberts. It's inevitable that it'll be a total teardown; it's well known that Ryan was up for sale, he thought he was traded. Pablo makes more sense to trade because of his salary. Buxton said he didn't want to be traded, but maybe secretly, Falvey wants to trade him, and after this mess, Buxton has changed his mind. After all this salary slashing, it doesn't make sense to extend Jeffers to a Boras-expensive extension. 

Let's say, for argument's sake, they aren't trading anybody else. You are drinking the Falvey Kool-Aid if you think they'll be competitive next year or many years thereafter, how long? depends on the new owners. If Twins can't compete with their proven players, how can they compete with the hit-or-miss players they picked up? The problem has never been the core. It's been management. As long as they are in place, they'll never come close to reaching their full potential.

[sweetmusicviola16]

3 hours ago, NYCTK said:

I don't agree the Twins got better return, but this board wouldn't have been satisfied with an 18 year old prospect many years away from the bigs. 

My favorite is that fans insisting that the Varland was an intentional Eff You to fans. Yes, I'm sure Falvey and/or ownership really cares about your personal feelings about one specific relief pitcher just because he happens to be born in Minnesota. They were smoking cigars and discussing how best to piss you, specifically, off.

The A's got a better package. I for one would have been a whole lot more pleased with last weeks happenings if we would have gotten that deal. But as for the tear down, rebuild, build, whatever it is it is necessary. We can be a 78-84 win team for the next 5 years or we can suck for a couple and be a 95 win or more team in 3-4 years. That's an easy choice for me. But,as far as I'm concerned Falvey is not the guy to get it done. Lastly, unlike what I continue to hear, the Twins will not be using the Correa savings to sign better players. That's my honest opinion. I also believe Lopez will be moved to shed more payroll and Ryan should be moved to capitalize on his high value.

[KirbyDome89]

1 hour ago, bunsen82 said:

You do realize the Athletics thought Rooker was just roster fodder too right?   

Martin had 1 really nice day.  Adams had 1 really nice outing, other than 1 pitch.  No offense that is better than the alternative.   Yes I am trying to find positives in this.   You also may have someone finally start figuring it out at the MLB level.  

As to the pitchers,  its not so much that its depth.  Some of it is better quality than others,  it either case its a lot to manage on 40 man even if I have stated there is a lot of wood to chop there.  Maybe it becomes trade bait.  Maybe you move some to relief pitchers,  and what that post was all about is, most likely at least 1 more spot opens up for a starting pitcher.   I very well could be wrong.  However,  I would say most still anticipate Ryan being traded in the offseason.   

Johan Santana was a Rule V draft pick too....

Cool, play the actual youngsters. Give the audition time to players that might have a real future with the organization. Don't stack your bullpen with journeymen in their mid 30s and invoke Brent Rooker's name. 

Like I said, if one good game from Martin, or a single decent outing from Adams gets your juices flowing, good on ya. Send whatever that magic is my way. 

If there's a lot of wood to chop then you don't have depth...

[bunsen82]

1 minute ago, KirbyDome89 said:

Johan Santana was a Rule V draft pick too....

Cool, play the actual youngsters. Give the audition time to players that might have a real future with the organization. Don't stack your bullpen with journeymen in their mid 30s and invoke Brent Rooker's name. 

Like I said, if one good game from Martin, or a single decent outing from Adams gets your juices flowing, good on ya. Send whatever that magic is my way. 

If there's a lot of wood to chop then you don't have depth...

How old is Ohl?  How old is Adams?  Looks like we picked up a reliever from KC,  Hatch 30 year old.  This is a painful process.   I expect many more waiver claims of players like Hatch.  

Martin, Julien, Roden, Clemens, potentially Outman are your players that are auditioning for 2026.   Clemens right now has the step up and may be solidifying himself as the future 1st baseman.  You state don't invoke Rookers name with mid 30's relievers.    I am not,  I am comparing the opportunity the 5 have above to figure something out.  In most cases you don't find a player.  Everyone once a while a player like Rooker or Castro finally figures it out and it is a huge addition to the team. You are finding a player or pitcher of the AAAA scrap heap.    

This is a long process,  we have 50 more games.  If you want to be debbie downer be my guest.  You are missing the bigger points to fit your agenda.  My main point on the pitching depth,  more than likely we have 3 open spots available next year as we are only retaining Ober and Lopez,  making the depth more necessary.    I hope we can find a position player,  yes it most likely won't be a player of Rookers ability,  but it will still be good for the team.   If you can't find positivity in that,  you have a long road ahead as a Twins fan.  Its definitely not always rainbows and unicorns.   

[Major League Ready]

My guess where pitching is concerned is they move Ryan and either Lopez/Ober this winter.  That gives them one of Lopez/Ober plus (in order of experience) Bradley / SWR / Festa / Matthews.  That's 5.  Abel probably unseats one of them to start the year or at some point during the year and Rojas will also be ready to go early in 2026.  Prielipp and Raya should be ready at some point in 2026.  That's 8 or 9.  Adams / Morris / Ohl would be additional depth and may or may not ever be SPs.  Of course, some of these guys will end up in the BP.

They are not going to hold great trade assets during a rebuild phase especially players blocking prospects that are definitely ready.  Whoever remains between Lopez / Ober is traded at the deadline.  I would trading those three players add a few good pitching prospects to this already substantial list.  

[RpR]

11 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

They are not going to hold great trade assets during a rebuild phase especially players blocking prospects that are definitely ready. 

You can not "block" some thing that does not exist.

[USAFChief]

1 hour ago, sweetmusicviola16 said:

We can be a 78-84 win team for the next 5 years or we can suck for a couple and be a 95 win or more team in 3-4 years. That's an easy choice for me. 

Sucking for a couple years is no guarantee you're a "95 win or more team" in 3-4.

If only it were that easy.

[sweetmusicviola16]

30 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

My guess where pitching is concerned is they move Ryan and either Lopez/Ober this winter.  That gives them one of Lopez/Ober plus (in order of experience) Bradley / SWR / Festa / Matthews.  That's 5.  Abel probably unseats one of them to start the year or at some point during the year and Rojas will also be ready to go early in 2026.  Prielipp and Raya should be ready at some point in 2026.  That's 8 or 9.  Adams / Morris / Ohl would be additional depth and may or may not ever be SPs.  Of course, some of these guys will end up in the BP.

They are not going to hold great trade assets during a rebuild phase especially players blocking prospects that are definitely ready.  Whoever remains between Lopez / Ober is traded at the deadline.  I would trading those three players add a few good pitching prospects to this already substantial list.  

This is how I also expect the pitching to pan out. I think Ober is the one who will be retained with the hope that he will bounce back to some of his pre 2025 form and have decent value at 2026 trade deadline. Bradley will be high in the rotation order for 2026. They didn't acquire him to sit in AAA. Abel unseats the poorest of Matthews, Festa and SWR. My prediction would be SWR. Who will be a future trade candidate himself even. But once this happens this rotation will take some hard lumps for a couple of seasons until the lineup gets built up. I honestly don't see Jeffers in a Twins uniform in 2026. Or Larnach. My belief is it will get uglier before it gets better. New ownership or not. 

[gbg]

1 hour ago, NYCTK said:

I don't get how that follows. 

So just because a roster has players that other teams expect to perform well that means they have performed well? The Twins also traded away 4 offensive players. Does that mean the offense was performing well? 

I look at the bullpen as a whole and I actually see a unit that has been about 20th in every results oriented metric. And while I certainly don't expect that to improve this season, I don't really have concern that the team can't rebuild a bullpen in 2 seasons time that can replicate that "success". 

Both can be true. As I see it, the Twins had two bullpens: The really good one with Duran, Jax, Varland, Coloumbe and Stewart. Then you had the other one. The one with Funderburk, Wentz, Alcala, Davis, and Jonah Bride.

The first pen was solid, and a definite strength. Then there was the other one, which weighed us down on nights when the first pen wasn't available or we needed some innings to get to it. That hurts the overall metrics.

Of course, we traded away that first one, so heavens help us if we don't score 10 runs a game.

[Major League Ready]

18 minutes ago, RpR said:

You can not "block" some thing that does not exist.

If they kept Lopez / Ryan and Ober, that would leave them with Bradley / SWR / Festa / Matthews and Abel for 2 spots.  All of them have already been promoted to the major league level.  Most of us can grasp that this rebuild will take at least two years, and everyone understands that Lopez/Ryan and Ober will be free agents in 2 years,  Therefore, these prospects would be blocked from gaining major league experience and the effort to rebuild would be derailed.  Congratulations, you have identified a good way to derail a rebuild.   Let's play the guys who will be gone by the time we get done rebuilding.

[sweetmusicviola16]

2 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Sucking for a couple years is no guarantee you're a "95 win or more team" in 3-4.

If only it were that easy.

I agree it will not be easy, but I will stand by that doing the needed stuff to build towards being a great team is much better than staying a 78-84 win team. That imo is truly sucky baseball. But I will leave it at this: Falvey is not the guy to be doing this. He should be dismissed to say it kindly. Or to put it in other words, FIRED. Now would be better than at seasons end. But I'm hopeful that he will be. That won't happen though unless we get the new owner is my guess. If he is still leading the FO in November my optimism will be gone.

[Major League Ready]

7 minutes ago, sweetmusicviola16 said:

This is how I also expect the pitching to pan out. I think Ober is the one who will be retained with the hope that he will bounce back to some of his pre 2025 form and have decent value at 2026 trade deadline. Bradley will be high in the rotation order for 2026. They didn't acquire him to sit in AAA. Abel unseats the poorest of Matthews, Festa and SWR. My prediction would be SWR. Who will be a future trade candidate himself even. But once this happens this rotation will take some hard lumps for a couple of seasons until the lineup gets built up. I honestly don't see Jeffers in a Twins uniform in 2026. Or Larnach. My belief is it will get uglier before it gets better. New ownership or not. 

That's exactly how I see the pitching and Larnach unless Roden completely bombs.  Jeffers, I don't know about just because they have very little for internal options.  Of course, a trade could change that outlook.

[USAFChief]

It's fine to be optimistic. 

It's another to say "Rojas will be ready early in 2026."

Rojas has 5 starts above A ball. Five.

Hes never thrown more than 84 innings in a season and has 41.2 so far this season. 

He's not going to be part of the 2026 rotation. How could he be?

[sweetmusicviola16]

1 minute ago, USAFChief said:

It's fine to be optimistic. 

It's another to say "Rojas will be ready in 2026."

Rojas has 5 starts above A ball. Five.

Hes never thrown more than 84 innings in a season and has 41.2 so far this season. 

He's not going to be part of the 2026 rotation. How could he be?

I would agree with you on Rojas, unless he's Doc Gooden. Which he's probably not since the IP's you cited would say as much.

[RpR]

12 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

If they kept Lopez / Ryan and Ober, that would leave them with Bradley / SWR / Festa / Matthews and Abel for 2 spots.  All of them have already been promoted to the major league level.  Most of us can grasp that this rebuild will take at least two years, and everyone understands that Lopez/Ryan and Ober will be free agents in 2 years,  Therefore, these prospects would be blocked from gaining major league experience and the effort to rebuild would be derailed.  Congratulations, you have identified a good way to derail a rebuild.   Let's play the guys who will be gone by the time we get done rebuilding.

Let's not let unqualified players from AAA screw  up a Major League season.

If they are good enough they will come up, if not, leave them where they are.

[chpettit19]

Luckily for the Twins, the Red Sox fixed Jorge Alcala (or so I've been told repeatedly around here) and he is now available to be brought back. Step 1 of the pen rebuild is just waiting for them to claim! 2026 is back in play, folks! Stop the tear down! We're back!

[Rod Carews Birthday]

6 hours ago, Fire Dan Gladden said:

At this exact moment in time, there is truth to this article. However:
1) Chances of Lopez being traded in offseason - 80%
2) Chances of Ryan being traded in offseason - 85%
3) Chances of FA signing with contract value over $5m this offseason - 20%
4) Chances of salary savings being reinvested in team - negative 42%

If the team sold tomorrow, and a new owner came in ready to spend this offseason, then the Twins would be more on a 1-2 year rebuild track than a 3-5 year rebuild track. If the team is not sold, Ryan and Lopez get moved, than this team is arguably the second worst team in baseball ahead of the Rockies heading into 2026.
 

You are probably correct.  But I absolutely hate your answer. . . . 

[sweetmusicviola16]

4 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

Luckily for the Twins, the Red Sox fixed Jorge Alcala (or so I've been told repeatedly around here) and he is now available to be brought back. Step 1 of the pen rebuild is just waiting for them to claim! 2026 is back in play, folks! Stop the tear down! We're back!

They claimed Brooks Kriske today. So it would only be natural that they pick Alcala back up. Rumor has it they want to bring Pressley back as well.

[Rod Carews Birthday]

6 hours ago, Launch Angle said:

You laid out a lot of great points in this article. As much as I can't stand ownership and to a lesser extent the FO, they aren't significantly worse off right now than before. 

As currently (post trades) constructed, this is a 100 loss team.  That's significantly worse off.  The returns are either clones of guys they already have or prospects we hope might work out, just like we hoped that guys like Larnach, Lee, and Miranda would work out.  

[Rod Carews Birthday]

5 hours ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

I agree with most of what you said, but I laughed at your comment because of this line.

Too much depth? off all the pitchers you listed there is One SWR that at this time would be considered a MLB starter, the rest are still working on it or have never been in the majors. 

Just for Reference (here are their ages, not saying they are too old, but they aren't young either, if we were talking about guys turning 23 and 24 it would look better) My guess out of these 9, most end up in pen.

Matthews - 26 May 22
Festa - 26 March 8
Bradley - 25 March 20
SWR - 25 September 27
Abel - 24 - August 18
Lewis - 25 - October 24
Morris - 24 - September 1
Culpepper - 24 - November 2
Prielipp - 25 - January 10

 

I think you are correct.  They'll have to be.  We can't keep running Davis out there night after night.