High Floor: The Twins Have the AL’s Fourth Best Roster as the Offseason Begins

LOL!

And the AL's 15th best Owner/FrontOffice/Manager/CoachingStaff.

Seems reasonable for me, especially before free agency opens. You correctly note that the Twins are not losing much value in free agency. (Sorry Max Kepler fans) The top of the rotation sure looks good to me with Lopez, Ober, and Ryan and the lineup has strength in players like Correa, Buxton, Wallner, and Jeffers to go along with prospect/young players like Miranda, Lee, Julien, etc. The front office has been good about getting better depth and raising that floor by working hard to give as few ABs or IP to bad players. If we don't deal any of the big contracts, the floor should be high.

It's part of why the self-imposed payroll restrictions to ensure that ownership makes an operating profit in addition to their substantial increases in franchise value are so goddamn frustrating. This team isn't far off, and if we'd had that additional $20-30M in payroll last season there's a real chance we could have prevented the collapse down the stretch (think about where we would have been with a real impact RH OF bat instead of Margot and a LH reliever!) or positioned ourselves where we could have ridden it out.

I still like where this team stands. No one in our rotation is going to be even 30. We have a legion of young starters coming in behind; we've rarely had their level of quality and upside and never had their numbers. We have some strong relievers to anchor the back of the bullpen. We have a lineup that should be able to hit if it can stay even a little bit healthy, and we have some prospects rising in the minors that will be able to add, fill-in, and ultimately replace guys.

The biggest drag on this team is ownership, payroll, and health. 

We do have holes on this roster though. I believe we need a starting first baseman. A starting pitcher who can slot in above Festa, allowing him to start in AAA and be the first line of defense for injury in the rotation. We need a good lefty reliever. A RH OF would be nice, although I think we could get by with some combination of Keirsey, Castro, Martin or Mccusker. It will be very disappointing if the Twins stand pat and basically bow out of the off-season just like they did at the trade deadline. Falvey needs to find a way to improve this team, as the AL Central is no longer a weak division.

Give me the Cleveland team over this "roster" every day of the week, and twice on Sunday!

Never thought that would need to be said on a Twins fan site, but here we are...

The big keys for this team is health and development.  
We need Julien, Lee, Walner, and Miranda to hit the ground running.  
 

we need continued health for the rotation and Buxton and Lewis, Lee and Correa 

the above health and development would fix most of the holes on the team.  We even have Keaschall on the way and ERod at some point next season.  

Outside of a decision on Santana and a backup CF and maybe a reliever I hope the Twins stand pat this offseason unless they decide to trade IF prospects for an established 3B I don’t see the need to do anything.  

In a vacuum the roster looks fine. Meanwhile the pitchers are spending their time praying for gloves that scoop up ground balls and catch fly balls at an acceptable MLB level. 

WAR doesn't tell the whole story but it's the best thing we have to evaluate players. We had a very good core last offseason that thrilled us in the postseason, the main focus should have been to keep the talent & chemistry intact. The only meaningful loss was Sonny Gray. That means entering into the trade market with a boatload of prospects to land a top-end SP to fill that hole. We would enter into '24 with a great rotation with expected young SPs Ryan & Ober to take a step forward. Our biggest hole was SP, we needed at least a mid-rotation inning eater, to help take the burden off SP wannabe- Varland, recent TJ- Paddack, a bunch of rookies & the BP. That didn't happen.

For a postseason-inspired team, you need to fill the real holes, add to the core not subtract, give deserving in-house players a chance to prove themselves. FO spent all of their allotted money on frivolous salaries that did nothing to help the club. That plus not filling our real hole at SP & disturbing the chemistry, I had very little expectation with the Twins entering into '24, even though we had a wonderful core.

Again for a postseason-inspired team, you need to get better & better. Although we still have a good core & better w/o Margot, we are worse than last year, Because we didn't allow well-deserving in-house players to develop into their potential (last year was lost) & still have a hole left by Gray.                         (to be continued)

“Minnesota enters the offseason with no clear holes…”

Except 1B, 2B, 3B, RF and arguably Catcher. It could be argued that having a known starter at SS and CF that are both most like half time players brings those positions into question too. I understand the rose colored glasses are required on this forum, but blinders???

2 hours ago, Bodie said:

Give me the Cleveland team over this "roster" every day of the week, and twice on Sunday!

 

Never thought that would need to be said on a Twins fan site, but here we are...

Roster-wise I'd take ours over theirs. But how they are developed & managed is a different story. CLE has better player development & evaluations. They successfully teach their players how to play baseball not HR derby. Better evaluations, they know the value of the players they pick up(how many players do they pick up are hurt or are terrible?), they give opportunities to their own young players to get better & grow with the team.  They can also better evaluate where their problem areas are & deal with it. If something is wrong they can quickly see & fix it, instead of being blind & doubling down.

Two things.  1) This might be the case right up until Joey's mandated cost cutting means they have to trade Correa.  2) It explains why they brought in new hitting coaches to provide a better offensive approach b/c the production sure didn't match up with this kind of ranking

Even though we have a worse core than we had last season, we still have a very good core. A core like last season has only one main hole . This season they have to do a lot better job of recognizing where the priorities are. Last season they felt that the priority was back of the BP so they loaded up the back of the BP (none of them worked out), they figured that they had a hole at subbing Buxton & couldn't trust Keirsey so they picked up Margot a player LAD wanted to unload. Instead of making us stronger they made us weaker. They figured that Julien could take Polanco place at 2B & dumped Polanco , again made us weaker & disturbed the chemistry. They deemed 1B defense as totally essential to our success & neglected the offensive superiority of Miranda & Kiriloff & their need to be protected at 1B, The WAR at 1B didn't improve from '23 to '24 with addition of Santana nor has it dropped from '24 to '25 in projections w/o Santana. IMO if Miranda & Kiriloff were given 1B our WAR would have been much in '24 & '25 projections. Deadline need was a LHRP & they never came through,

Twins misinterpreting our needs & focusing on backend BP, outside help at CF subbing & 1B & missing our real need for a viable SP & later LHRP. Took us from a postseason contender to a postseason pretender. The focus should be this offseason as was last off season & that is to preserve the talent & chemistry of the core, viable inning eating SP (at least), prioritize  catching defense over 1B defense, maybe a LHRP, give well deserving young players an opportunity to prove them self. We have a budget crunch, forget about FA as our solution or targeting big bucks players in trades, quitting spending on frivolous players. cut fat not muscle. FO has to learn how to inniatate & close on vital trades.

To close I'll reinnerate  as I said last year, We have a great core & a whole lot of young players & prospects that could be & should be traded. Forget about breaking up the core to get more prospects we don't need. The core has suffered last year but it still has a lot of potential & I have faith in them. 

Eloise must be turning in her grave, because of  her penny pinching sons who only want the billion dollar sale after paying 40 million.  Please sell and take Dave St Peter with you.

5 hours ago, Reptevia said:

“Minnesota enters the offseason with no clear holes…”

Except 1B, 2B, 3B, RF and arguably Catcher. It could be argued that having a known starter at SS and CF that are both most like half time players brings those positions into question too. I understand the rose colored glasses are required on this forum, but blinders???

No one in MLB would argue that the Twins have a hole at catcher. Jeffers was a 2.1 bWAR player and is viewed as a quality starting catcher by every team and evaluator in baseball. Vazquez is still a quality defender as a backup.

We may not have certainty of quality performance at 2B and 3B, but we certainly have options with either good prospects or players who have performed at one point in Julien, Miranda, Lewis, or Lee plus Castro. Lewis and Julien were down in 2024, but were successful and important in 2023; models like FanGraphs don't write off a player completely and immediately at the first sign of failure...unlike fans.

I'd agree there's a bit of a hole at 1B, because I don't think the team will plug Miranda in there...but a model like FanGraphs would, quite reasonably.

But.... there is a wide confidence interval around the anticipated performance for most of the projected starters (based on injury or performance history)

When this team continues to not reach “expected results”, eventually you have to question the relevancy of the metrics that predict those results.