Pablo López’s Injury Changes Everything and It Is Time for the Twins to Trade Joe Ryan

[Twinsrtheworst]

6 minutes ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

What bet?

You stated they will be worse than last year.  I believe they will be better.  I suppose we wager something fun.

[Twinsrtheworst]

2 hours ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

They signed 3 minor league free agents who almost locks to make the opening day roster. This team is a worse team than the one that won 70 games last year and ended 4th in the central.

Willing to back up your doomsday prediction? Didn’t think so.

[LastOnePicked]

4 hours ago, Rod Carews Birthday said:

Games are less interesting to watch.  Young players flounder with less leadership.

No. To me, nothing is worse than watching a mediocre team mope through a meaningless .500 season. I'd so much rather watch a young core learn to gel around the teachings of a manager who preaches success through doing the small things right.

And since when is Joe Ryan a leader in this clubhouse?

[LastOnePicked]

2 hours ago, Fred said:

That will certainly not do much for fan interest in the present and will decrease the value of the ballclub. I'm all for the Pohlads selling. Keep that value as high as possible in the short term.

Fan interest has already cratered. I'd wager that the vast majority of people who attend 1-2 games a year don't even know who Joe Ryan is, or if they do, that he's still a Twin.

Short term value means absolutely nothing for this team. They stink. If the focus isn't on finding and building a future championship core, there won't be one.

[LastOnePicked]

Again, the time to have made these moves was four months ago. Tom Pohlad's flinching in the face of hard decisions has lost this team incredible potential future value. So, in short, they're getting nothing from Lopez (and now likely an injured Ryan) in the present, and nothing - or comparatively little - for them for a future core.

This is how you set a team's fortunes back another full year or two with a simple inability to understand the needs of your organization.

[LastOnePicked]

7 hours ago, LewFordLives said:

By trading Ryan now they are telegraphing to everyone that they are not going to compete this year.

Everything they have done - and haven't done - this offseason telegraphs to everyone that they are not going to compete this year. They were just voted MLB's "Least Improved Team" by Sports Illustrated.

They're not going to compete this year, period. They have no shortstop, no bullpen, no defense and a rotation that is now only one starter deep. Maybe not even one, now that Ryan has been scratched from his first start.

The sooner this organization faces reality, the sooner they can begin to reshape their fortunes. 

[LastOnePicked]

2 hours ago, Maybe Next Year said:

We don’t need more prospects. 

We have almost no elite prospects in the system. Beyond Jenkins, there are very few with real potential.

Two of our competitors - Cleveland and Detroit - are already vastly superior MLB teams with far, far better farm systems as well.

Yes, we need more prospects. Especially since we can't, or won't, sign free agents.

[Coach Wheels]

7 hours ago, SarasotaBill said:

Wait two months and let's see the results. 

Ryan in the rotation eases the bullpen which affects the games he doesn't pitch.

We will know a lot more in two months about the number of young players on the roster as well.

Most likely he will be traded at the deadline when teams have a better idea if they have a chance to win the World Series. 

I'm also ok with waiting but, honestly, waiting has now cost you your best asset for at least a year and his value has decreased immensely.

I've said this earlier, you didn't build this roster to win in 2026 and if someone offers you young prospects for Ryan, especially with Lopez done for 2026, trade Ryan sooner. Start building for 2028 and quit pretending we're competitive now.

[PuckettProtector]

Damn. This aged well. 

[JADBP]

There is a lot to unpack here.  Its a really tough decision and I am sure that Tom will have the final call.  But here some added considerations:

1. If they go the Trade Ryan route, then Tom has to stand up in front of the fans and say, clearly and honestly, "I am sorry, the injury has halved our front line pitching and we now find our path to contention severely hampered.  So, we are changing our plans accordingly..."  That's a tough pill to swallow, but go big might mean going big in a couple of years. 

2. This might be a good time to recognize that the damage that was done by years of poor drafting (Kirilloff, Larnach, Cavaco, Sabato) or trades (Steer, the whole Mahle trade, Rogers, Pressley, Polanco, etc) and FA signings (Correa (FA signing), Correa (FA signing again), Correa (traded)...) or even letting them go for nothing (Rooker).  I can go on and on but the former management left a massive mess and it will take some time to break out of it.  Maybe 2-3 years.  No reason to try to contend while you are cleaning the house.

3.  Ryan's value will only decline from here on in.  If we received, in return, a great 1B or SP prospect and a lotto ticket or two, then we win.  This is the long term vision approach--to say that over the next 5-10 years he will bring a certain level of value to the team.  That value is maximized with a top 1B prospect, or SS or maybe SP.  

4. Ryan has been unhappy since last year.  And we just keep making him unhappier (arb futzing).  Its highly unlikely that he would sign a long term contract with the Twins because he has a brain--he's gonna go to Free Agency and then the Twins are priced out.  So, if they hang on to him, they have him for two years max.

I say trade him before his value craters...sadly, like my fave SP, Pablo.  

[JADBP]

58 minutes ago, LastOnePicked said:

We have almost no elite prospects in the system. Beyond Jenkins, there are very few with real potential.

Two of our competitors - Cleveland and Detroit - are already vastly superior MLB teams with far, far better farm systems as well.

Yes, we need more prospects. Especially since we can't, or won't, sign free agents.

Geez...we did sign Correa...TWICE!

[LastOnePicked]

25 minutes ago, JADBP said:

Geez...we did sign Correa...TWICE!

That was one full Pohlad ago. Time flies when you're not having that much fun.

I mean, more accurately, the Twins bailed Correa out twice. Once with a one-year value rebuild contract, and then again we swooped in with a face-saving deal when all of the big boys saw his medical reports and tore up contract offers.

And apparently that big splash broke the team's finances. So I wouldn't expect to see it happen again anytime soon.

But yes, we did. Those were the days, my friend. From here on out it will just be a stream of reports on how many top free agents the Twins were "in on."

[Rod Carews Birthday]

3 hours ago, LastOnePicked said:

No. To me, nothing is worse than watching a mediocre team mope through a meaningless .500 season. I'd so much rather watch a young core learn to gel around the teachings of a manager who preaches success through doing the small things right.

And since when is Joe Ryan a leader in this clubhouse?

Mediocre is way more fun than terrible.  I’ve been to a few White Sox games in the past couple of years.  It’s ugly.  Here’s the thing. You’ve got to work your way THROUGH mediocre to be good.  I’d rather start there with that as the floor rather than hope we can get back to .500 in a couple years.  

Joe Ryan is a leader in the clubhouse because he’s a high caliber player.  It comes with the territory and it doesn’t matter if we like it, he likes it, or anyone else does.  The best performers in nearly any field are leaders on nearly any team of any kind — sports, business, education, health care, etc. 

[LastOnePicked]

1 hour ago, Rod Carews Birthday said:

Mediocre is way more fun than terrible.  I’ve been to a few White Sox games in the past couple of years.  It’s ugly.  Here’s the thing. You’ve got to work your way THROUGH mediocre to be good.  I’d rather start there with that as the floor rather than hope we can get back to .500 in a couple years.  

It's just a fandom preference then, and that's fine. If you want to watch a middling team that has a decent shot against poor teams and a poor shot against decent teams, then this is your ballclub. That's been the Twins' MO for years now. It hasn't produced a title - or even any serious playoff runs - but that's been the product for quite a while.

And I find that kind of approach completely unacceptable. I'm fully over it. Excellence is a choice. Once that choice is made, the plan becomes clearer.

I'm sure the White Sox of the last few years have been tough to watch. There was certainly a time when the Mariners, Orioles, Rays, Tigers, Royals, Blue Jays and more were tough to watch, too. All of those teams will be much more fun to watch in 2026 than the Twins. There's no EZ-Pass to success for mid-market teams. You draft high, develop well, make timely trades and strike free agency hard when your window opens.

Or you can muddle through very long stretches of middling baseball. If that's your thing, you couldn't possibly have picked a better AL team. 

[Major League Ready]

20 hours ago, Rod Carews Birthday said:

I’m not sure I agree with that analogy.  I would suggest that if you only have the $5, you probably shouldn’t be playing the lottery at all.  

I think it's a fairly adept analogy.   Five bucks isn't getting you anywhere and this team is going nowhere.  So, does it really matter if you have 5 bucks or Joe Ryan if the goal is to get somewhere.   Milwaukee, Tampa, and Cleveland understand trading guys like Peralta and Burnes CAN return players that have an impact and low cost for 7 years.  Assets that produce for 7 years are far more valuable than assets that produce for 1-2 years.  While this is risky. it's the best way to overcome the disadvantage of lower revenue.  If we bother to look at how teams with lower revenue constructed winning rosters, we will quite often find they either drafted extremely well or executed this strategy or most likely a combination of both.

[twinstalker]

This team was never going to win.  The SP might have been good, but it wasn't that good.  I so much wish Minnesotans wouldn't count on best-case scenarios out of a mediocre 50th percentile.

Lopez going down was unfortunate (at best).  That, by the way, was a significant risk and maybe a likely scenario when a pitcher has forearm issues that he's shut down for.  Forearm problems are the precursor to UCL tears.

Trading Joe Ryan is and should be and should have been independent of everything else.  It should only be dependent on the FO knowing what it's doing (questionable) and the return available if they know what they're doing.

[Maybebaby]

On the contrary, why doesn't Tom Pohlad offer a nice "fair" contract to Ryan with some of the cash he tried to sign Valdez with?

[Steve J]

I think, respectfully, this article is falling into the trap of larping the role we play as GMs in electronic games where trades and scouting is unrealistically uncomplicated and virtual fanbases are procedural aggregates instead of living and breathing people.  

We like Joe Ryan.  He's a good reason to pay attention every five days.  While we should always listen to trade offers and be willing to part with good players if the return is right, we shouldn't be looking to tear down what we have simply because the season got harder, at least not in Spring training.  Rooting for a crap team that isn't even trying is depressing and this team needs to build a fanbase worse than it needs to build a roster or a prospect list. 

[LastOnePicked]

3 hours ago, Steve J said:

Rooting for a crap team that isn't even trying is depressing and this team needs to build a fanbase worse than it needs to build a roster or a prospect list. 

Rooting for a crap team that is trying is worse.

This team needs to build a championship caliber roster. Full stop. No .500 season is going to rebuild the fanbase at this point. No Joe Ryan going 12-9 is going to do it, either.

There are only two pathways to that roster for a team in the Twins' position: buy it or build it. And they ain't gonna buy it.