Brock Beauchamp

That honor still goes to 2011, which had *two* former MVPs under 30 on its roster to open the season. Wow, that season was terrible. Much like this season, everything that could go wrong did but at least that team still had a ton of under-30 talent. The bulk of the team people cared about was still under 30: Mauer, Morneau, Kubel, Span, Baker, et al.

The Rule V draft happens in early December. And I'd bet quite a bit of money that Detroit had no more than the typical confidence one has in a Rule V pick... and that's very little confidence at all. Sometimes, people just get lucky and others get unlucky. We don't need to attribute mastermind scheming - particularly from the likes of Detroit - to explain they took a calculated risk and won while the Twins took a calculated risk and lost. It happens.

While I am critical of the front office, I think it's hindsight and unreasonable to accuse them of mistakes for not outbidding other teams for the likes of Gibson and Schoop. The Twins simply do not have the budget to retain every player on their roster, especially someone like Gibson who was terrible and sick when he entered free agency. That contract looks a lot less great if Texas didn't luck out of not paying him much in 2020 when he was, again, awful. And while they made mistakes with pretty much every pitcher they signed this season, that doesn't mean it's fair to go back multiple years and point fingers for not signing players who no one really wanted signed at the time. Not a single person I can remember was sad to see Gibson so somewhere else on a 3/$30m deal. The same goes for the likes of Schoop, who had just been replaced by the younger, better, and yet-to-be-injured Luis Arraez.

Which is mentioned in the article. And while the system looked pretty good overall when they took over, the pitching situation was bad and that hasn't really changed. The new front office inherited a really bad version of Berríos (which we all expected to improve) and little else that showed real promise, especially in the rotation. As we were about to find out, the previous front office had completely blown three consecutive top six draft picks, two of them on starting pitching that would never pitch in Minnesota.

I can give them a pass on Baddoo, as I suspect leaving him unprotected was a calculated risk that backfired. Having not played in a couple of years and being a Rule V candidate that needs to stay on the MLB roster, I completely understand why the front office would take the risk that no one would draft him and if someone did, the Twins would receive Baddoo back in short order. Trading Wade was probably the right decision but... wow... to dump Anderson so quickly while Wade was thriving requires a series of bad evaluation and mis-management that deserves loads of ridicule.

My problems with the front office don't have a lot to do with this season in Minnesota, at least not directly. They made some mistakes, did dumb stuff, was slapped around for it. That happens, now let's see how they rebound next season. But... 1. They've shown to be pretty bad at self-evaluation of the organization. They're routinely trading or waiving or leaving unprotected players that immediately turn around and have success elsewhere. Their trades from their first two seasons, 2017-2018, are showing mixed results at best. I can forgive them a Baddoo but not multiple Baddoos over only a few seasons. 2. People are being rather unfair with the pitching timeline (there are currently only five pitchers from that 2017 draft with >1 career rWAR, pitching takes time) and I've been quite patient with the results, particularly with Covid. But in the wake of Covid, we have over half a MiLB season to evaluate and let's just say they're not blowing my socks off with these results. Right about now is when we should be excited to see the coming wave of prospects but what we're really excited about is other teams' prospects that the Twins gave away high-end MLB assets to control. That's not an encouraging sign. 3. This is tied into #2 but... Beau Burrows. And a thousand other players like him in 2021. It's time to wipe out these fringe acquisitions and promote from within. If they don't see what they have right now, they won't know what they have to start 2022, either. And while it's primarily a problem with pitchers, there is zero reason for Andrelton Simmons to be on this roster right now. Play Gordon, IL Donaldson, call up Miranda... shuffle things up because record no longer matters in 2021. I'll forgive the front office for everything going to hell in a handbasket in the immediate follow-up to 2020 but their responses are almost as disappointing as the failures that led us to this point. I'm not ready to move on from them yet but where I was generally positive about them one year ago, I'm am equally as negative today. It feels like they're operating without a coherent plan right now and that's possibly the worst trait a front office can have in a time like this. They need to commit to a decision and move in that direction.

Yeah, it sounds like Thorpe is still dealing at 89, which makes him close to useless as an MLB pitcher, even a lefty. I sure wish we knew what has happened to him and whether it's something that will resolve itself in time or if this is just who he is now.

If these four players are traded, they should trade literally every player with over one year of service time because the team has no hope of being good for several years. Come on, it doesn’t feel like much thought was put into this piece.

Yeah. The gift that keeps on giving. Sigh.

I'm not sure about that, but it's definitely possible. We might see Strotman and/or Ryan, which would be fun... but I'm not holding my breath, as I suspect the team is eager to shut down one or both of them after 2020. I CANNOT WAIT to put 2020 in the rearview mirror permanently.

The September rosters are very different this season. Teams can only add two players for a total of 28.

In this case, Manfred did it right, IMO. Yesterday was so much more exciting and intense than most deadlines, as GMs had their safety nets of the waiver wire deadline taken away from them.

No silly, that's Robert Redford.

Bah, now they're just being greedy.

I've been hard on this front office lately but they literally traded JA Happ for a live human being that plays baseball.

As Ayn Rand famously wrote, "Who is John Gant?"

Both players are in AA so they're relatively close to MLB.

In a season full of weirdness that's almost universally bad, Colome's explosive HR/FB numbers are at the top of the list.

@ashbury By the way, you just reminded me that I had created a badge last month but never saw it in my feed. I looked in the admin panel and it wasn’t set to live so I activated it.

I agree with a lot here but I'm not sure why so many people minimize Berríos' skill level right now. No, he's not an ace, at least not by my personal definition, but it's almost impossible to classify him lower than a good #2 right now. His ERA rank out of American League qualifying pitchers the past three seasons: 8, 13, 11. HIs ERA+ over the past three seasons: 119. That's pretty clearly a guy who, if he's maybe just a click below a traditional ace, is clearly in that second tier of starting pitchers.

This is hilarious because the first draft of this article had this image in GIF form.