Brock Beauchamp

There's some irony here, as you clicked send and sent this message to a server in Texas, and then back to you (probably in Minnesota) in milliseconds. People all over the world are sending and receiving data to each other, usually in under a second. These aren't carrier pigeons. The time delay for an umpire to receive the ball/strike is instantaneous to human perception, either through an ear piece or a buzzer. The only delay is the umpire literally saying "ball" or "strike", which already exists.

I pretty much agree. I don't think this team will be terrible but I have a hard time seeing even a .500 outcome. Having someone like Stroman pencilled in for 2-3 wins would go a long way toward making this roster a borderline contender, at least for a WC spot.

Either way, that's picking nits. The front office hired a coach and that coach did his job, drastically improving a player in the process. Does the front office actually tell a coach what to do? I suspect that's not the case, particularly in this front office. They put the processes in place to let coaches succeed and then let the system sort out when and where that happens. And at the end of the day, the front office hired Tanner Swanson and then Tanner Swanson coached Mitch Garver into being a good catcher. They get credit for the process and system, which is literally their job.

Deal! You're gonna lose, sucka! ?

I don't do this... basically ever, but it's a fun thing to think about. Gentleperson's bet? 69.5 wins. I'll take the over.

But that's missing so much, Sconnie. Who went into 2016 as an arm you looked forward to seeing like Ober or Ryan? The Twins didn't have much hope past Berrios, who was absolutely terrible. Never mind the defense of 2016. Holy Moses, the defense. If I recall correctly, Robbie Grossman's defense alone was worth -2 wins. BTW, I'm happy to be proven wrong about any of that but I've looked it up in the past and I'm not going to double-check anything while I'm wrapping presents. Happy Holidays, y'all!

Posting it on his birthday, nice touch!

You're ignoring that offense and defense also factor into this equation, and heavily (particularly offense). A replacement level team (AAAA) is roughly 52 wins last I checked. Given the Twins roster sporting the likes of Polanco, Sano, Garver, Kepler, Buxton (literally could be worth nine wins by himself if healthy), Rogers, Duffey, et al, it's almost impossible to work this roster into sub-60 win territory (which is still +8-ish wins over replacement level) without hysterical doom and gloom in every aspect of basically everything. By the way, the Twins have have won fewer than 60 games exactly once in their history. In 2016, when they were on the tail end of a pretty ugly rebuild, they won 59 games. It's hard to imagine this roster even coming close to that kind of ugliness.

If you don’t give a front office credit for hiring a catching coach with progressive ideas and green-lighting that coach to fly to a player’s home and coach him, I don’t feel you’re arguing honestly about this. If Garver went outside the org for off-season coaching, sure, but Falvine literally hired Tanner Swanson to do exactly what he did with Mitch Garver. *screams silently in head* Come on. If you won’t give Falvine credit for *that*, literally whatever coach they hire gets all credit for everything and they get none.

While I’ve been very critical of Ryan in this thread, I’d like to point out that I consider his terms as two separate entities. The second term was bad, IMO, particularly given that his only success was that first draft. It was four years of mostly ugliness after that. But I disagree with you that his first stint wasn’t legitimately good. To take a Metrodome team with its payroll limitations and build a team that had nine winning seasons in ten was more than good, it was very good, borderline extraordinary. Sure, he didn’t do that final thing to push the team over the top in any given year and that’s a black mark on his record but the Twins were downright dominant for a decade and it’s because of Terry Ryan. Unlike the arguments we’re having now about Bill Smith vs Terry Ryan vs Derek Falvey and who gets what credit for which player, those 2000s teams were entirely of Ryan’s making.

Mitch Garver disagrees with this take on Mitch Garver’s defensive improvement, for the record. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mitch-garver-wasnt-catching-strikes-so-he-changed-his-catching-stance/amp/

The 2021 Twins season was interesting. They were *so unlucky* early in the season and then played slightly lucky ball in the second half as they hovered around playing .500 ball. Are they a .500 team with that roster? I doubt it, as I think they gained 2-3 BaseRuns record over that stretch. But they're maybe not a terrible team, either. I don't even consider Maeda a loss, really, at least the injured version of Maeda. He was barely above replacement level in 2021 due to his various injuries and ineffectiveness. If the Twins aren't ravaged by injury in St Paul again, they could actually improve upon that performance using only the farm. The real key to the entire season is whether the farm is actually healthy. They have *so many* options in the upper minors that at least one or two of them should not be absolutely awful in a Twins uniform. Which is why I'm so irritated at how the front office treated this free agency season. This team is primed to bounce back in a pretty big way but relying entirely on the farm to do it is basically throwing away a season, IMO.

I don't know if that's a given. The White Sox had the third best record in the AL last season. Will they actually be better than that in 2022? It's certainly possible but not a given. I call them a wash. The Guardians are almost certain to backslide and I foresee a fire sale coming their way soon considering how ownership clutches the purse strings. The Tigers are trending upward, no doubt. The Royals? They certainly have a prospect pipeline coming, not sure what will happen with it in 2022. They'll improve soon, I just don't know if it's in the cards for 2022 or even how good they'll ultimately become. The Twins? God only knows. They could go trade for a #2 or stand pat. They could see piles of injuries again or they could stay relatively healthy in a pretty normal way. They could go back to patching together good bullpen pieces or we could see -3 WPA relievers again. There are just *so many* things that went wrong in 2021 and I can't say if they were bad luck, bad decisions, or both (or what combination thereof). I'd say the Tigers are the only team in the division clearly trending the right direction, though Chicago is obviously good (not really a fan of how they spent on the bullpen, though, considering how volatile that can be YoY). The other three teams are pretty clearly wildcards, as any of them can over- or under-perform to the extent they quickly become a terrible team and blow it all up. While the Royals probably have the most potential to improve in 2022, I'd argue the Twins have the highest floor with the likes of Buxton, Sano, Polanco, Garver, et al keeping them out of disaster 100 loss territory.

Maybe I missed it but I'm surprised no one lamented the short stint of RA Dickey in a Twins uniform, just one year before someone in the Mets org taught him to refine his knuckle and become a dominant pitching force for a few years.

I feel the same but went on the optimistic side. I think if the Twins just throw their pitching prospects into the fire, the results will be better than we expect, particularly in the second half. That still means they're a bad team - I'd guess somewhere in the 70-74 win range - but not a terrible team that is carried by a pretty strong offense and a healthier season from the likes of Buxton. Even getting just 100 games out of him is worth an extra win or two.

I generally think of myself as being pretty positive about the front office but wow, some of you are giving them a lot more credit for free agency than I do. I consider Cruz their only well above average signing, not including their "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" bullpen approach. Donaldson was fine. Schoop was fine. Cron was fine. Pineda was fine. Then there are a bunch of pretty garbage signings, particularly on the pitching side. I'm giving this front office a pass for their prospect pipeline in the short-term but I'm not terribly impressed by it yet either. I can think of just two areas this front office has legit impressed me: their trades for middle-of-the-rotation arms that became front-end arms for at least one season and their transformation of how catching prospects are drafted and trained defensively.

Twins fans:

My ridicule of those drafts is entirely justified. The Twins had picks 4, 5, and 6 in consecutive years and produced nothing from it as the team lost 90 games over and over and over again. A bad product on the field in Minnesota and blowing draft picks left and right. It's a bad combination and absolutely deserves ridicule. Frankly, I'm perpetually confused why you're not critical of those late Ryan drafts. They sucked. Unless I'm missing someone, I don't believe even one of the 2013-2015 picks accumulated 1+ WAR in a Twins uniform. ONE WAR. That's just about the lowest bar I can set for a draft. And in my post, I didn't imply any drafting acumen by this front office. I've liked some of their drafts and disliked others... but to have individual picks derailed by injury is a lot different than just making bad picks, as the Twins did in 2013-2015. None of Stewart, Gordon, or Jay were hit particularly hard by the injury bug, they just didn't perform. Stewart and Jay were particularly bad picks. The likes of Lewis, Cavaco, Enlow, et al are still works in progress and only time will tell where they land when the dust settles. The books are nearly closed on those 2013-2015 drafts while the books are very much open on the 2017+ drafts. If those Falvey drafts turn out to be as atrocious as those late Ryan drafts (a nod to the 2012 draft, which was legit awesome), I'll be just as critical of them but I'm not going to declare the game over in the fourth inning.

By the way, if anyone is holding out to see Spider-Man, go see it before anyone spoils it for you. The movie is absolutely delightful and surprising at almost every turn. It's probably a top three Marvel movie. I was on board for the premise but no way did I think they'd be able to make a film bursting at the seams with fan service be so heartfelt and touching in a variety of ways.

Except they had Garver for 3+ seasons and the end result was literally the worst framing catcher in baseball. The old front office showed no interest or acceptance of framing so it's a stretch to believe they would have fixed Garver's framing problem if given more time (of which they already had plenty). The current front office didn't even fix Garver right away, it took them a couple of seasons to implement a new strategy and hire Tanner Swanson, after which Garver took a large step forward (but they also acquired Castro right away explicitly for his framing skills, which probably helped the younger catchers in 2017-2018).

While there's a lot of validity to your other points, this one doesn't accurately reflect reality. Without this front office applying modern defensive coaching (and were actually ahead of the curve in a few ways), Garver wouldn't even be a catcher right now. He'd be a bat-only no-position guy, if he was in baseball at all. This front office inherited Garver, who was literally the worst framer in baseball and cost his team and enormous number of runs, and turned him into an acceptable defensive catcher. There's a good chance we would have already forgotten about the existence of Mitch Garver had this front office not altered his career trajectory.

The old regime was worse, as they wasted three consecutive high first round picks as the team floundered through half a decade of 90+ loss seasons. While this regime may ultimately do the same, they have yet to do it. We know the old regime was bad while the jury is very much out on the current regime.