Why a Twins Rebuild Was Never the Only Answer

13 hours ago, KirbyDome89 said:

Brooks Lee projected for 2.1 WAR....I mean....

We could pick this thing apart all day, but how is anybody taking these projections, and by extension this article, seriously. 

When something looks like a mistake it actually might be a mistake. You would know if you looked it up 

19 hours ago, hlsballer318 said:

The twins just can't completely collapse during games like they did last year. If the bats are slumping, fielding and pitching need to compensate and vice versa. Last year in a lot of the losses it seemed like when one door closed, every other door and window also slammed shut.

The Twins' house (circa 2025) had no windows or doors marked "Defense"...

More in line with a painted on fire escape in a Buggs Bunny cartoon.   Just less funny.

C'mon man.  Stop it.  Starting pitching is reason for optimism?  Joe Ryan is one of the top 10 pitchers in the American League?  Trade him.  NOW.  We can't have this nonsense. 

This whole fanbase has a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome. 

Of course it was not the "ONLY" answer.   There are a lot of dumb answers available to every question.  

The real analysis is not asking "is it the ONLY answer", but was it the best answer.

I guess finding out if it was the best answer is tied to what the objectives of the season are.   Do the Twins want to compete for a title in a weak division with no real chance of winning the World Series (or even a first round playoff series)?   Or do they want to position the team for a true run at winning?

If they get great seasons out of Buxton, Lopez, Ryan, Ober.   Rebound great season from Royce Lewis.   More consistency from Matt Wallner.  A follow up and healthy season from Luke Keaschall.  And a breakout by Brooks Lee.  And somehow find some relief pitching....   yeah they could win 90-95 games.

The problem is that all of those rolls of the dice coming out the way we want are very improbable and htey may have missed the opportunity of trading Buxton, Lopez, and Ryan at the top of their trade values.

1 hour ago, LyleCole said:

 Do the Twins want to compete for a title in a weak division with no real chance of winning the World Series (or even a first round playoff series)?   Or do they want to position the team for a true run at winning?

This is nonsense.  Tell me the steps that "a true run at winning" look like, because I could sell them to about 20 teams. Until they move the team to 2015 Los Angeles and get a new revenue source they are going to have to go with player development and a little luck, just like most teams.

If you want say "Keep trading away players until you get a great mix of can't-miss prospects and then strike" you're going to have to be more specific. MN has four on the fresh Top 100 Prospect list, so when should they go all in? Do you want anyone on this roster? Any of the many first rounders? Lewis sucks, can't stay healthy, hasn't proven anything. Bradley already has three years in, no future left so send him. Keaschall is probably too old since he won't be here in 2031 so we should trade him while he still has five years of control left. 

If you trade away Lopez and Ryan you leave the earliest possible chance at "true winning " as far away as it takes for three or four of the current youth (SWR and Ober have to go!) to lift themselves to top of MLB. You think three or four of those guys are here yet? Because Ryan and Lopez have to get us the catcher and 1B and SS of the future. Culpepper is no Jeter and True Winners need top talent. This is such nonsense.

Maybe, sure. Right now they have a lot of starters on the doorstep, so sift through those and find out who can pitch. There are some hitters that are half a season away so get them in the game and see what you have. Move the ones that don't measure up to make room. Try not to block anyone, add where you have holes.  Hey look, that's what they're doing.

I won't defend everything this front office is doing. I think they could trade from their heap of young pitchers to get a real long-term 1B or C, for example. But they are moving on from some of the last wave of Super Prospects (TM) to make space for the new faces, so thanks and good luck to Miranda, Julien and we'll see who else in the coming month. Hail and well met to our new guys, let's see how the next couple weeks go.

3 hours ago, Cris E said:

This is nonsense.  Tell me the steps that "a true run at winning" look like, because I could sell them to about 20 teams. Until they move the team to 2015 Los Angeles and get a new revenue source they are going to have to go with player development and a little luck, just like most teams.

If you want say "Keep trading away players until you get a great mix of can't-miss prospects and then strike" you're going to have to be more specific. MN has four on the fresh Top 100 Prospect list, so when should they go all in? Do you want anyone on this roster? Any of the many first rounders? Lewis sucks, can't stay healthy, hasn't proven anything. Bradley already has three years in, no future left so send him. Keaschall is probably too old since he won't be here in 2031 so we should trade him while he still has five years of control left. 

If you trade away Lopez and Ryan you leave the earliest possible chance at "true winning " as far away as it takes for three or four of the current youth (SWR and Ober have to go!) to lift themselves to top of MLB. You think three or four of those guys are here yet? Because Ryan and Lopez have to get us the catcher and 1B and SS of the future. Culpepper is no Jeter and True Winners need top talent. This is such nonsense.

 

 

If they trade away Buxton, Ryan, and Lopez at what is probably their maximum value they would bring in a good batch of quality prospects.  Add that to the prospects we already have, plus some of the existing players on the roster.  

You get those guys in the major league lineup, get them experience, weed out the ones that cannot perform, and add in some strategic signings/trades to fill whatever holes are left.

That is the only real path available to a team like the Twins.  It is a difficult one because the pieces have to work.  I guess you can say that about the "no rebuild" team as I pointed out, but the prospect path of rebuilding now has the potential to be a longer term event.

The risk the Twins have is that Buxton returns to his injuries and his trade value plummets.  Ryan has the injury risk as well as losing a year of team control which makes his trade value huge.  Lopez risks another injury plagued season and low return, although he like Bailey Ober might be more trade deadline type of values to move, hoping they bounce back.

My lineup for the Twins would be OF  Wallner-Jenkins-Rodriguez  3B  Royce Lewis  SS  Brooks Lee  2B  Luke Kearschall  1B -     C-     (I think the last two positions are somewhat screwed up by the limited "contending" free agent signings).   Maybe you get a 1B prospect returned for Buxton.   The starting rotation would to start the year would be Ober, perhaps Lopez...  and then a bunch of the college pitching the Twins have drafted.  

If the prospects like Jenkins and Rodriguez don't pan out, the team will be in for a long streak of losing.

16 hours ago, LyleCole said:

My lineup for the Twins would be OF  Wallner-Jenkins-Rodriguez  3B  Royce Lewis  SS  Brooks Lee  2B  Luke Kearschall  1B -     C-     (I think the last two positions are somewhat screwed up by the limited "contending" free agent signings).   Maybe you get a 1B prospect returned for Buxton.   The starting rotation would to start the year would be Ober, perhaps Lopez...  and then a bunch of the college pitching the Twins have drafted.  

That's the same thing as winning with Miranda, Wallner, Julien, Kirilloff, etc from four years ago except no foundational building blocks in CF or the rotation. Lots of hoping that all the kids work out at once plus the optimistic fiction that the year this comes together is right around the corner. That lineup doesn't win without an excellent starting rotation. There's just not enough scoring to make SWR and the best version of Ober stand up in the playoffs, and even the handful of fine SP prospects we have are not going to become World Series worthy in two or three years. Bradley already has three full MLB seasons, you think there's some corner ahead of him he's about to turn? 

If you want a "true long-term winner" then you absolutely have to hang on to the stars when you come across them and save money on the fungible parts that matter less (no news there.) So pay what it takes for the excellent starting pitchers and one or two offensive stars and then find excellence by parts for the rest. Meaning that if you can't find a very good two way SS, for example, you don't settle for an average one, you get one that's excellent at either offence or defense.  Jeter was only a good-enough defender but hit very well. Cleveland kept Omar Vizquel around for amazing glovework despite his career 82 OPS+. To succeed MIN needs to spin through the kids faster to identify who will or will not be excellent at anything and swap them for others earlier. That's the magic of what Tampa Bay does so well: get rid of the average ones before they're so old that everyone else can see the lack of excellence.

The organization messed up very badly after 2023. They are still digging out, but the shortcut to getting back is hanging on the foundational players. The old "will this guy be on the next great team" nonsense doesn't work because most teams never get enough better to be great as they keep sending the present out for another couple years of potential. Most of the time when a team like MIN trades a guy like Ryan for anticipated cost reasons they want back an awesome prospect, but it's almost never a guy that shows up in under two or three years. Our last anticipatory dump was probably Jose Berrios in 2021, which got Austin Martin and SWR, and those guys are still on the upswing. Teams buying that type of star usually want to keep their own players because they are winning, and weakening the current team in a trade works against that. 

A guy that'll bring the moon with two years left will bring a lot at one year, and still a bunch at the deadline. If you always choose to give up an extra year or two in advance you will not ever have a present. There's some art in choosing deadline vs one year vs two, but given the amount of talent that's potentially only a half season away this is not the time for this team to give up and wait for 2028.

On 1/29/2026 at 12:03 PM, Cris E said:

That's the same thing as winning with Miranda, Wallner, Julien, Kirilloff, etc from four years ago except no foundational building blocks in CF or the rotation. Lots of hoping that all the kids work out at once plus the optimistic fiction that the year this comes together is right around the corner. That lineup doesn't win without an excellent starting rotation. There's just not enough scoring to make SWR and the best version of Ober stand up in the playoffs, and even the handful of fine SP prospects we have are not going to become World Series worthy in two or three years. Bradley already has three full MLB seasons, you think there's some corner ahead of him he's about to turn? 

If you want a "true long-term winner" then you absolutely have to hang on to the stars when you come across them and save money on the fungible parts that matter less (no news there.) So pay what it takes for the excellent starting pitchers and one or two offensive stars and then find excellence by parts for the rest. Meaning that if you can't find a very good two way SS, for example, you don't settle for an average one, you get one that's excellent at either offence or defense.  Jeter was only a good-enough defender but hit very well. Cleveland kept Omar Vizquel around for amazing glovework despite his career 82 OPS+. To succeed MIN needs to spin through the kids faster to identify who will or will not be excellent at anything and swap them for others earlier. That's the magic of what Tampa Bay does so well: get rid of the average ones before they're so old that everyone else can see the lack of excellence.

The organization messed up very badly after 2023. They are still digging out, but the shortcut to getting back is hanging on the foundational players. The old "will this guy be on the next great team" nonsense doesn't work because most teams never get enough better to be great as they keep sending the present out for another couple years of potential. Most of the time when a team like MIN trades a guy like Ryan for anticipated cost reasons they want back an awesome prospect, but it's almost never a guy that shows up in under two or three years. Our last anticipatory dump was probably Jose Berrios in 2021, which got Austin Martin and SWR, and those guys are still on the upswing. Teams buying that type of star usually want to keep their own players because they are winning, and weakening the current team in a trade works against that. 

A guy that'll bring the moon with two years left will bring a lot at one year, and still a bunch at the deadline. If you always choose to give up an extra year or two in advance you will not ever have a present. There's some art in choosing deadline vs one year vs two, but given the amount of talent that's potentially only a half season away this is not the time for this team to give up and wait for 2028.

 

The problem with your position, which is what the front office has been doing for several years, is ownership simply will not provide enough payroll "to hang on to the stars" in enough quantity to meet those limited payroll objectives.   

And,  an even more important problem, we just did not have these "stars".

One of my biggest claims is that the reason to rebuild NOW is that the 2-3 stars the Twins have on their roster are probably at their peak trade value.   

Buxton played perhaps his best season ever.  Maybe in 2021 he was "better", but he only played in 61 games that season.  In 2025 he played in the 2nd most games in his career, 126, and only the 3rd time in 11 seasons (that is hard to believe it is that many) he played in more than 100 games.   The probability that Byron Buxton has another injury season is pretty substantial, and if he is hurt again it will limit his trade value.  Right now he is coming off a big season and his contract is very manageable for the contending teams that would want him.  And many of those teams have high end prospects we can plug into the rebuild.

Joe Ryan's trade value is huge because he has, at least for the high payroll teams, a modest contract and another year of team control.  His trade value at this moment is humongous.

Lopez' value is more limited because of his injury plagued 2025 season and Ober's is minimal.  Therefore there is less downside risk of losing trade value, and in fact, with both of these potentially quality starters their trade value has 2026 upside.  

What other "stars" should we hang onto?   Is Jeffers a star?  Royce Lewis?   For the right offer I would move Jeffers, but Lewis' value is low and I just keep him to see if we can get him back.

32 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Which they do by 

- refraining from gambling

-not making poor decisions on what wagers to offer. 

 

If Fangraphs says 82 and Vegas says 72, I know for sure which is going to be closer way more often than the other.

Half the money on over, half on under, Vegas makes their money on the juice. They are not prognosticating for anything other than to make themselves money 

3 hours ago, USAFChief said:

Correct. They aren't in the business of gambling. 

 

And they're way more accurate than fangraphs. Miles more. Orders of magnitude more. They're not going to offer 82 wins for a 72 win team. 

 

 

Fangraphs doesn’t claim 100% accuracy. 

Fangraphs has a deep investment in methodology and not pissing off fans. Accuracy comes in third or so. 

37 minutes ago, Cris E said:

Fangraphs has a deep investment in methodology and not pissing off fans. Accuracy comes in third or so. 

Fangraphs will tell you that WAR is an approximate number. Therefore the win total is an approximate number. What one can gather from their numbers is that the teams in the central division are all about equally mediocre so it is possible to be competitive in the central division.  Every team has a collection of what ifs