From Pretender to Contender: Lessons the Twins Can Take From Recent AL Central Comebacks

So you're saying if you don't sell off half the team, your team might be good every once in a while?????

The comeback for Cleveland is that the Tigers are having an epic collapse. The collapse allowed Cleveland back into it.  

Both the '24 DET team & the '25 CLE team have relied heavily on the young players that they developed & stayed with. MN have trouble developing & usually don't stay with young promising players & let them improve, they like to go with temporary outside veteran players. 

For MN to stay steadfast until the end, they have to see their fragile areas & bolster them so they don't falter & collapse. When they lack support, there can not be any comeback. The last 2 years, we looked good on paper. Our rotation depth of Lopez, Ryan, Ober, Paddack, SWR, Zebby, Festa & MiLB prospects we looked analytically, pretty good. But if you looked under the hood to begin the season, one by one, you could see cracks. IMO, the only one that I really trusted was Lopez, and he was the 1st real casualty. Once he went down, our rotation unraveled. The last 2 years, I've advocated for at least 1 veteran inning-eater.

Just to throw out there, today I listened to a STL podcast with Kyle Gibson. He advocates the same as I that he'd like to break in young pitchers into MLB in the BP., They get their feet wet, conserve their arms, help save the rotation & not waste their bullets in AAA. That's how Johan Santana got started.

Another fragile area the last 2 years was INF, Correa, Lewis & Lee always hurt, plus healthy Julien, a liability at 2B. Julien should have been sent down & Martin should have been established at 2B. IMO, these 2 minor differences could have kept the Twins from collapsing & should have been in the postseason both years, But the way it stood there was no rebounding, only continued collapsing. Even w/o the devastating sell-off.

The Twins are a firm #5 in the ALC in talent as this moment in time. Falvey gave an interview suggesting the roster looks good and improvement is expected. If the Twins roll with their current roster, expect a fifth place finish in 2026. A few changes and the Twins could compete for third or fourth place.

Maybe we can take a step back from our Twins love and say...IDK...In this era of MLB you may need multiple high price players to sustain a winning? Who's a star player or high dollar player on the Tigers (None right now) or Guardians (Jose Rameriez, actually he's on a cheap contract) Just doing a little fishing a here, but in the last few seasons only the Diamond backs and the Guardians have bucked that statement...Are the league average payroll teams getting edged out of the playoffs? Seems like the last few seasons they have. but that is IMO

15 hours ago, weitz41 said:

Maybe we can take a step back from our Twins love and say...IDK...In this era of MLB you may need multiple high price players to sustain a winning? Who's a star player or high dollar player on the Tigers (None right now) or Guardians (Jose Rameriez, actually he's on a cheap contract) Just doing a little fishing a here, but in the last few seasons only the Diamond backs and the Guardians have bucked that statement...Are the league average payroll teams getting edged out of the playoffs? Seems like the last few seasons they have. but that is IMO

Money is always a factor to some extent, but it seems much less so in baseball than in general life. Looking over the playoff teams on the last day of the season, we can identify Detroit, Cleveland, Seattle, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati as teams with league average payrolls. While it is not reasonable to disregard the importance of money, identifying talent via international signings, trades, and other acquisitions remain important as does the development of the minor leagues. The Twins could benefit from improved development among other means available towards improving their roster.

In both Detroit in 2024 and Cleveland this year, it took collapses of the leading team for them to come back.  Additionally, it was hot pitching for the most part. For the Cleveland this year, outside of 2 players their offense is average.  Only Ramerize and Kwan had higher than a 2 bWAR. They had 1 good starting pitcher overall, Gavin Williams, but their pen was above average, and they won a lot of low scoring close games. 

The Twins starting pitching started to erode away, with having injuries, eventual ineffective starters and pens.  Our offense was boom or bust normally and could not find way to get runs in when needed. Cleveland did better hitting in high leverage situations, than the Twins who were about the same.  Twins offense was slightly better than Cleveland overall. 

If the Twins did not sell could they have made a push, maybe.  Would the players that came in to replace those traded done better or worse, who knows, different situations.  There is not much to clean from hot runs and huge collapses other than there is a reason they play 162.