The Twins Don't Need a Full Rebuild. They Need a Direction.

[ewen21]

11 minutes ago, rv78 said:

Watching another failed season only proves to me they don't know what they are doing, or they do and just don't care as long as the fans keep supporting their failed product on the field.

This is why Buxton wants to be a Twin for life in my mind.  He knows the expectations are almost non-existent for him.  He's who has been chosen to be "the face of the franchise" and this is largely due to a large section of the fanbase.  It almost seems as though since Target Field has opened the Twins and a great number of fans are content with Buxton even though he appears in roughly 60% of the games each season.  If this is the player you want to make for your "face of the franchise" then good luck with building a team.

 

Rant over!

[HeresWaldo]

26 minutes ago, ashbury said:

I'm not a Zebby woofer, but this is a really unfair take.

He's had 22 starts this season.  b-r.com provides a version of Bill James's old "game score" that provides a quick-and-dirty guide to how a starting pitcher did in a game.  Sorting Matthews's starts by this tool, he had 13 starts that are solidly above average.  You can look at the game logs of them below.  You'll see that the Twins won 9 and lost 4 of those games - the losses were 2-1, 2-0, 3-1 and 2-1 - his team's offense let him down completely in those 4 well-pitched losses. 

In the other 9 games, at the bottom of the list in the display, the team managed to go 3-6 because the offense bailed him out three times.  When Zebby is bad, he can be REALLY bad.  But the three absolute worst games look very odd in the one-line summary, as if the manager was hanging him out to dry.  I don't actually think there was malicious intent - in those games, the Twins offense was contributing little (4 runs total by the end of those 3 games) so the braintrust in the dugout may have judged that the game was not likely to be won so the starter might as well eat some more innings if he can (if so, this blew up in their faces all three times), and/or the bullpen was stressed so they didn't want to turn the game over to them any sooner than necessary in a lost cause (5+ innings of shutout relief wouldn't have salvaged these games).  Sometimes a pitcher "wears one" for the team, and I see three such games that dragged his ERA down more than if the manager had come and got him like might be expected on those days his team wasn't hitting.

All in all, he's had more good games than bad, 13-9, That's not easy to do at the major league level, and you certainly don't do it with no talent.  His team has gone 12-10 in his starts, representing a little bad luck, and his official W-L record of 9-10 is even less lucky.  

Again, I'm not apologizing for Zebby - I' m trying to make sense of his season.

In my view, if the coaching staff can unlock something more - something new he can do when a game starts to go bad for him - there's cause for optimism.  If not, then he remains a .500 pitcher, which is not "terrible."

I like averages, but sometimes it pays to look deeper at the underlying data.

 

Thanks, I appreciate the thoughtful response.

You're welcome to use the stats you prefer, but be aware that Bill James himself referred to Game Score as "a kind of garbage stat that I present not because it helps us understand anything in particular but because it is fun to play around with." The thing to keep in mind about Game Score is that it's heavily driven by the number of hits allowed, which means it's driven by the defense behind the pitcher on any given day. Zebby has a .269 BABIP this season, so it makes sense that Game Score would like him, since the defense behind him has generally been good.

If we look at stats known to be predictive of future performance, like K%, K-BB%, and FIP, he's been a solidly below-average starter this season. These poor overall results make sense because we know that in addition to his low strikeout rate he is allowing extremely high average exit velocity on contact. Per Baseball Savant, he's in the 6th percentile in average exit velocity, which would generally mean a high BABIP, not the abnormally low BABIP he's actually allowed. This suggests he's been quite lucky on balls in play, which is what makes the poor topline results so discouraging to me.

I'm by no means saying this makes him a guaranteed failure going forward. Baseball development isn't linear, and it's certainly possible he takes a step forward this offseason or could be converted into a great reliever even if he continues to struggle as a starter. All I'm saying is that his numbers this year haven't been great, and the predictive stats support those poor results, so as far as I can tell, there's no strong reason to bet on him being good next year as a starter.

[LastOnePicked]

2 hours ago, bean5302 said:

Yeah, he's doing a terrible job cleaning the bathrooms in Target Field, too.

Now I know you're joking around. The idea that Tom Pohlad has ever cleaned a bathroom anywhere is beyond ridiculous.

Beyond that, I think I missed your point, Bean. What was it?

[ashbury]

19 minutes ago, HeresWaldo said:

Thanks, I appreciate the thoughtful response.

You're welcome to use the stats you prefer, but be aware that Bill James himself referred to Game Score as "a kind of garbage stat 

Forget the Bill James angle; it's just a convenient starting point for analysis by separating bad games from good games.  Look at the game logs.  Those 13 games at the top of the list are very competent major league outings.  

You're still looking at averages.  Every number/stat you mentioned is an average. That's a mistake when the data is irregular.

Look at the GAMES.

[bean5302]

3 minutes ago, LastOnePicked said:

Now I know you're joking around. The idea that Tom Pohlad has ever cleaned a bathroom anywhere is beyond ridiculous.

Beyond that, I think I missed your point, Bean. What was it?

My point is Tom Pohlad has his own responsibilities, but choosing which players are on the roster isn't one of them unless his direct comments in regard to making roster decisions are to be ignored.

Pohlad may not have provided an expansive budget the moment he walked into the job; however, the front office is free to use that budget any way they see fit. While Tom Pohlad may have set the expectation the team would compete, that did not preclude trading Ryan and or Lopez if the front office could justify the moves through free agent signings and trading for other assets.

[Cory Engelhardt]

1 hour ago, ewen21 said:

Thanks for your response.  

I mean, there is a lot more to do. But it's not been NOTHING. That's all I meant.

I would hope they do more, trade for players that can be part of the core. That SHOULD be the goal no?

[HeresWaldo]

39 minutes ago, ashbury said:

Forget the Bill James angle; it's just a convenient starting point for analysis by separating bad games from good games.  Look at the game logs.  Those 13 games at the top of the list are very competent major league outings.  

You're still looking at averages.  Every number/stat you mentioned is an average. That's a mistake when the data is irregular.

Look at the GAMES.

Okay let's do that. These starts represent 84 innings pitched, during which he struck out 70 guys for a 7.5 K/9 or 21.5 K%, both of which are solidly below league average. The ERA and FIP in these starts are unsurprisingly quite good since we're limiting ourselves to only starts where we already knew the results were good - 2.14 ERA/3.42 FIP - but this is overwhelmingly driven by the extremely lucky .239 BABIP and 0.86 HR/9 rates. So yeah, if we filter down to the starts where the guy with a 6th percentile barrel rate and 6th percentile exit velocity against doesn't give up homers and the defense is good behind him, he looks good. If these were starts where he was regularly punching out 10+ I'd totally agree with you, but even in this extremely overly filtered data set he's pretty clearly getting lucky.

Now, if what you're saying is I'm still missing the point because these are still averages I'm using and the results in those game were good, that's fine, as long as we're clear that those individual game results are not at all predictive of future performance. 

[TheLeviathan]

4 hours ago, SE23 said:

Add:

Luiz Arraez

Yandy Diaz

Carson Kelly

1 starting pitcher (FA or trade)

1 relief pitcher (FA or trade)

 

We need a "Drunk Takes" thread.  I nominate this one as a starter.

[Glorybound]

4 hours ago, Cory Engelhardt said:

Bradley, Ryan, Lopez, Abel, Tait, Clemens, Hoffman, 

Non of that group was acquired during the last two off seasons.

[LastOnePicked]

1 hour ago, bean5302 said:

My point is Tom Pohlad has his own responsibilities, but choosing which players are on the roster isn't one of them unless his direct comments in regard to making roster decisions are to be ignored.

"We owe the fan base something. We owe our veteran and star players something. And we owe this organization something. And that something is hope." - Tom Pohlad, Dec. 2025

This seems like a pretty clear statement of direction that came directly from ownership. We fans have no true insider access, but the little glimpses we get can sometimes give us a decent idea.

That's the idea I got, at least. Tom Pohlad realized that completing the rebuild would be bad PR, and he chose to gamble. I thought it was a foolish gamble then and I still think so now. I have no idea what ownership is thinking about 2027 - we'll all have to wait and see.

 

[Cory Engelhardt]

1 hour ago, Glorybound said:

Non of that group was acquired during the last two off seasons.

I agree. They didn’t do enough. I hope they have better offseasons ongoing

[Hunter4848]

9 hours ago, Coach said:

I really hate repeating what I had previously written: Cody Clemens should be the first choice within the Twin's organization.  He's under control through 2029, made a base salary of $800K this year, as of the end of May he led all of MLB in Runs Saved at 1B, he's a ballplayer, a good club house guy, and hit for power.

The Twins fandom's obsession with mediocre vetran players needs to be studied  

[Riverbrian]

Declaring that they would go for it while sitting in the midst of a bullpen that would need to be nearly ENTIRELY rebuilt was always questionable in my mind.

IMO... Last off-season would have been perfect to continue what was started when the bullpen was torn down. 

Going forward. They will have to re whatever by 2028.  Have to... will be forced to... re whatever unless the CBA changes.

We haven't produced enough young talent to avoid being forced to re whatever. 

They can either use the starting pitching to be competitive in 2027. Or... they can choose to trade starting pitching this off-season and start the re whatever this off-season.

If they choose to keep the starting pitching and go for it in 2027. It's a reasonable thought because the rotation should be decent. 

However... it's the end of a window. There is a wall the following off-season that can't be avoided. They will have almost no choice but to re whatever. And we will enter that forced re-whatever off-season... with the minimum amount of choices because... we didn't have the foresight to trade for additional players to help soften the abrupt transition that's coming. 

Not trading Ryan this past off-season was a huge risk. The trade value lost would have to be enough to make anyone cry. 

[TL]

8 hours ago, HeresWaldo said:

Thanks, I appreciate the thoughtful response.

You're welcome to use the stats you prefer, but be aware that Bill James himself referred to Game Score as "a kind of garbage stat that I present not because it helps us understand anything in particular but because it is fun to play around with." The thing to keep in mind about Game Score is that it's heavily driven by the number of hits allowed, which means it's driven by the defense behind the pitcher on any given day. Zebby has a .269 BABIP this season, so it makes sense that Game Score would like him, since the defense behind him has generally been good.

If we look at stats known to be predictive of future performance, like K%, K-BB%, and FIP, he's been a solidly below-average starter this season. These poor overall results make sense because we know that in addition to his low strikeout rate he is allowing extremely high average exit velocity on contact. Per Baseball Savant, he's in the 6th percentile in average exit velocity, which would generally mean a high BABIP, not the abnormally low BABIP he's actually allowed. This suggests he's been quite lucky on balls in play, which is what makes the poor topline results so discouraging to me.

I'm by no means saying this makes him a guaranteed failure going forward. Baseball development isn't linear, and it's certainly possible he takes a step forward this offseason or could be converted into a great reliever even if he continues to struggle as a starter. All I'm saying is that his numbers this year haven't been great, and the predictive stats support those poor results, so as far as I can tell, there's no strong reason to bet on him being good next year as a starter.

👏 well reasoned posts on both sides. Bravo. I want to believe in Zebby but he’s such an enigma. 

[DJL44]

10 hours ago, bean5302 said:

Why there should be some concerns about Lopez.

K rate is rapidly declining which, in combination with his waning ability to generate ground balls means his xFIP is increasing. Furthermore, his xERA is skyrocketing because he's being hit harder and squarer than he was.

On top of that, he's now going to be age 31 coming off a major elbow surgery, and 2025 was a season where he had a shoulder muscle strain along with missed time for a hamstring and then the forearm issue that ended his season 2025.

Lopez looks like a pitcher who is in significant decline both in terms of stuff and health. 

The hope is those are related and once the health issue is treated the stuff bounces back.

[DJL44]

9 hours ago, ashbury said:

I'm not a Zebby woofer, but this is a really unfair take.

All in all, he's had more good games than bad, 13-9, That's not easy to do at the major league level, and you certainly don't do it with no talent.  His team has gone 12-10 in his starts, representing a little bad luck, and his official W-L record of 9-10 is even less lucky.  

That sounds like most MLB 4th starters. 

[TNtwins85]

14 hours ago, MeleMouth said:

You can't just name young players whose names you're familiar with and say "we're good, we don't need to rebuild." To win, a team needs at least four or five very good (at least 4 WAR) players and several good players (2.5 to 4 WAR). It's questionable whether the Twins have even four or five players with the potential to become very good.

If you think they do four or five players with the potential to become very good, then you're also counting on all of them to reach that level, even though odds are long that even one or two promising players ever reaches stardom and even fewer sustain it. You can look no farther than the last ten years of Twins prospects to see how unlikely stardom, much less sustained stardom, is.

When you start by listing Brooks Lee as part of the foundation, you've definitely set your target at well below stardom. If you think Lee, Prielipp, Bradley, and Keaschall will sustain 4 WAR seasons, much less any one of them achieve that level, you're actually betraying how weak the future is for the Twins.

Finally, the "If Minnesota wants to win next season. . ." strategy paragraph sounds almost identical to the strategy for this year. As they say, hope is not a strategy.

Every year, after digesting the failure of the previous year, the optimistic drumbeat of "we don't need to rebuild" starts happening like a compulsion, and the end of the following season always shows how wrong that belief was. Well, it looks like here we go again.

 

This is true only if your definition of a winning team is comparable to the ‘98 Yankees. If you have 4-5 guys with a 4 WAR or higher and another 4-5 guys with 2.5-4 WAR you’re talking about a 95-105 win team unless the rest of the roster is all replacement level. If you’re looking for that as the bar to contention then it may be time to become a dodgers fan.

[ewen21]

50 minutes ago, Riverbrian said:

Declaring that they would go for it while sitting in the midst of a bullpen that would need to be nearly ENTIRELY rebuilt

Your concern was the bullpen?  That is actually the third most important thing to look at behind their starting staff and lineup.  If you mention the bullpen first when the starting staff and lineup (the meat of the team) is not deep enough or good enough to do anything even if they backed into the playoffs.

[HarmonK03]

7 hours ago, LastOnePicked said:

"We owe the fan base something. We owe our veteran and star players something. And we owe this organization something. And that something is hope." - Tom Pohlad, Dec. 2025

This seems like a pretty clear statement of direction that came directly from ownership. We fans have no true insider access, but the little glimpses we get can sometimes give us a decent idea.

That's the idea I got, at least. Tom Pohlad realized that completing the rebuild would be bad PR, and he chose to gamble. I thought it was a foolish gamble then and I still think so now. I have no idea what ownership is thinking about 2027 - we'll all have to wait and see.

 

What rebuild did they start, Falvey was doing what he has always done.  He got rid of expiring contracts and traded away relievers at the trade deadline.  This is what he had done throughout his tenure but all of a sudden he is rebuilding because this is what we want to see.  He signed a couple of league average at best free agents in the offseason to compete in a weak division.

[Russ]

I don't think Zoll and Shelton are the right people leading the way.

[MeleMouth]

14 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

Joe Ryan does not intend to sign with the Twins.  He will not be a "centerpiece" of anything we do past next year.  Buxton continues to get older.

The direction is to invest in a bright future.  Which, in practical terms, means subtracting from the present to amplify those odds and horde as many upside plays as possible to achieve it.  Call it what you want - rebuild, retool, whatever.  That's the direction.

Let's just be clear one more time how royally we effed up this direction at the deadline - we missed out on assets for Ryan and Jeffers (and possibly Larnach and others) in order to pursue a playoff spot.  We now sit in the 9th best lottery position, tied with a bunch of teams that will slot somewhere between 5 and 10.  So, for perspective, we are much closer to another top 5 pick in the draft than we are the playoffs.  Despite stupidly buying at the deadline and losing asset value.

We had a direction - add assets.  We should've continued that and instead we did the dumbest thing possible.  Twins Way.

In 2025, Freddy Peralta was a better pitcher than Joe Ryan. The Brewers entered 2026 with a much more competitive team than the Twins, but traded Peralta, while the Twins hung onto Ryan.

[MeleMouth]

34 minutes ago, TNtwins85 said:

This is true only if your definition of a winning team is comparable to the ‘98 Yankees. If you have 4-5 guys with a 4 WAR or higher and another 4-5 guys with 2.5-4 WAR you’re talking about a 95-105 win team unless the rest of the roster is all replacement level. If you’re looking for that as the bar to contention then it may be time to become a dodgers fan.

They're not all going to reach their potential in the same year, but you need about that many players with that potential. Otherwise, there are few teams other than the '98 Yankees who reached the World Series with a collection of 1.5 - 2.5 WAR players without having a couple of big stars. On the current roster of the 2027 Twins, only a few players could reach 4 WAR next year and It's unlikely anyone will be much more than 4 WAR.