Overheard: Hall of Fame Jose, Falvey on the State of the Twins and More

Allow me to assume the role of Derek Falvey for a moment.

 

OK, how'd I do?

I’m taking your attempt and editing it, and adding to it:

As far as pursuing a top-end starter, I know some fans aren’t going to buy this, but we're very confident in the guys we have in the organization. You can certainly never have too much pitching, but we like what we see when we take a look at our in-house options.

First, we believe strongly that Jose Berrios is as good of a building block to a rotation as there is. He's still only 24-years-old and has several years ahead of him in a Minnesota Twins uniform.

Second, look at the career trajectory of Kyle Gibson. He was a first round pick and a top prospect, who was stalled along the way to success, in big part due to injury, but also, we think, due to his approach and pitch selection. In the last 1.5 years, he has really put it all together, and there is no reason to believe he isn’t going to continue to get better this year.

Third, we are very excited to see what Michael Pineda can do for us this year. Like Gibby, he was a top prospect whose career was sidetracked after he suffered from injury. He also suffered from a lot of bad luck in terms of hits falling in (go check out his batting average on balls in play over the past few years) and frankly, playing in Yankee Stadium with that short right field porch. He was a highly sought-after player in Seattle for a reason, and we feel lucky to have been able to get him when we did by taking a risk to invest in him over two years. We are looking forward to the payoff of that investment this year - I think Mike is going to surprise some people with the season he is going to have. (And by the way, I shouldn’t say this, but we are hoping that our investment in him will not only pay off this year, but also allow us to keep him beyond this year, too, either through a qualifying offer or an extension.)

Fourth, I want to point you at two of our young guys who are just now getting their chance to establish themselves in the bigs: Romero and Gonsalves. We have watched these guys climb the ranks of the system, excelling and establishing themselves more and more as legit prospects. They both finally got a taste of the majors last year. While they aren’t guaranteed anything this year, I can tell you this—they are both going to get a real chance to prove that they can be great, and we expect that they will start to do this at the major league level this year. I don’t think that they will be top of the rotation guys right away (such as this year), but their track record tells us that they absolutely have what it takes to get there. Ultimately, of course, it is up to them, and we are excited to see if they can do it.

I also want to note that in terms of our pitching staff, you simply cannot underestimate the impact of getting Buxton and Castro back on the field this year. Those two guys are both going to make all of our pitchers look - and perform - considerably better.

Finally, one more important point. Our new pitching partnership of Wes Johnson, Jeremy Hefner, Pete Maki and others are going to put those pitchers in the best possible situations to succeed. I think these guys are going to bring a lot of new ideas and energy to our pitching staff that are going to have a marked difference.

Oh, and one more thing. In terms of the Martin Perez signing, I don’t really know what we were doing with that one, either. Maybe we’ll catch lightning in a bottle or he’ll finally start to figure it out. Hopefully Wes can work a miracle with him, that seems to be what he has done over the years. Let me just say this: Thad made me do it.

“We’ve added to this team,” Falvey said. “We don’t look at this as a rebuilding team. We look at this as a group that, if all those things come together with our young players — that we are putting all kinds of resources around to ensure that happens — if that happens, along with some adds we’ve made, we’re going to continue to have flexibility moving forward.

This pretty much sums up their committment to fielding a winning team. The 2 biggest words in this response are "IF" and "IF". What "IF" "IF" doesn't happen? He covers his butt by adding "we’re going to continue to have flexibility moving forward." Is that really being committed to winning? No, it's not knowing what you have and knowing "IF" what you've been doing will work. Comparing your team to an Oakland or Milwaukee just because they succeeded doesn't mean yours will. Last time I checked the Twins don't have the same players.

If your fear of failure trumps your desire to compete you may be in the wrong position.

“We’ve added to this team,” Falvey said. “We don’t look at this as a rebuilding team. We look at this as a group that, if all those things come together with our young players — that we are putting all kinds of resources around to ensure that happens — if that happens, along with some adds we’ve made, we’re going to continue to have flexibility moving forward.

 

This pretty much sums up their committment to fielding a winning team. The 2 biggest words in this response are "IF" and "IF". What "IF" "IF" doesn't happen? He covers his butt by adding "we’re going to continue to have flexibility moving forward." Is that really being committed to winning? No, it's not knowing what you have and knowing "IF" what you've been doing will work. Comparing your team to an Oakland or Milwaukee just because they succeeded doesn't mean yours will. Last time I checked the Twins don't have the same players.

Okay. Now put yourself in the driver seat. What are you doing to avoid IF's? Are you going to DFA Sano and Buxton and Pineda ad Castro and Reed and Hildenberger and Mejia and...? How is telling you that they are placing a big bet on all these guys a CYA move or a sidestep?

It's one thing for people to opine that Falvey should take certain, specific actions. For example, to make a bid for Machado, where others might argue against such a move on the basis of it as a baseball decision.

I just think people are being extremely simplistic with all these generalizations and disparagement that they "don't want to win" because they don't take the actions one wants them to take.

As for building a bullpen via cobbling versus acquisition of proven players? We may prefer he do the latter (I do), but he's pointing to an example that illustrates that not all good pens are put together the same way. Your last two sentences don't have any value.

If your fear of failure trumps your desire to compete you may be in the wrong position.

This does not describe Falvey. Might you be misconstruing prudent decisions with fear? With a lack of will to compete? I call bull, my friend.

This does not describe Falvey. Might you be misconstruing prudent decisions with fear? With a lack of will to compete? I call bull, my friend.

Falvey's "prudent decisions" are open for anyone's interpretation, so no I haven't misconstrued anything - in my opinion of course.

It does not describe Falvey the person, but in my opinion it describes Twins baseball operations to a T.

Example: Here's where "fear of failure" resonates with me: being 7 games out of first on July 27, at a critical moment when your team might be starting to gel, and then deciding to be sellers and trading your players instead. Would the Twins have overtaken Cleveland? Possible, but not likely. But possible. Fear of failing to catch Cleveland and not getting anything in return for guys entering free agency. Not everyone agrees that trading those guys was bad. I understand that. By the way, Milwaukee was 6 games out of first on August 28. That ground can be made up.

Cruz was a great signing, the others maybe prudent, maybe not. We will have to watch and see.

I might think accusing them of hubris and getting cute with their calculations. But not fear. I disagreed with the tactic too.

TOM FROEMMING, thank you for your response to my post. I am always interested in how the Twins view their own prospects. In general the FO gives us the platitudes you mimicked so well in your post. I figure the reason sometimes, that the FO doesn't do the things we as fans would like to see, is that they have very different views of their prospects than we as fans do. Even probably what prospect gurus have.

Occasionally we get clues to what the FO might be thinking. How prospects are promoted, who is invited to spring training, certain things that aren't said about prospects. I think we have a pretty good idea about what the FO thinks about about their young major league players and even their near ready position players.

I am very unsure about what they really think about guys like Gonsalves, Stewart, Littell, and Wells. They seem to like Romero, but if they really are moving him to the bullpen, what does that tell us? All the starters in the system farther away, we hardly ever get anything but platitudes about them.

The thing is, what they think about these guys is pretty important. They aren't going to spend big bucks on a long term contract for a Kuechal, if they think they got one or two near ready in their system. There are a lot of reasons for them to not disclose their evaluations about their prospects, but i sure would like to know more.

Yes, it would be nice to be a fly on the wall and in particular hear what they think about Gonsalves, Romero, Stewart, and Thorpe in particular, and to know if they possibly have a higher opinion, like the pundits do, of De Jong and to a lesser degree Littell, than what most commenters on TD have.

They must believe that one or more of those first four have a chance to be impactful future mainstays. I just don't buy all this silliness that the only reason they don't sign Keuchel or somebody is because they're cheap, or they're afraid to fail, or that they don't want to win. I buy that they have a different and higher opinion about some of the internal options than most fans do.

Technically I agree with you. He did answer, but he didn't really say much more than we might get lucky.  For a front office to start the season with such low aspirations is tantamount to saying nothing.  

I guess I see it very differently. He does not agree with you. Or me. But he didn't sidestep the questions.