Brock Beauchamp

This. Exactly this. I'm wildly disappointed in this season and disappointed at the lack of pitching advancement within the organization. But I'm not ready to toss them out on their asses quite yet, they receive at least one more year to show they can pivot and that 2021 was the aberration, not the expectation going forward. Their big selling point was pitching, something they have yet to develop other than Ober... but after losing basically their entire farm system in 2020, they deserve one more year to show outcomes, good or bad. And the result of those 2022 outcomes should determine their continued employment.

This argument is so wildly inconsistent and one-sided it makes my head spin. The 2016 squad was injured but the 2021 squad is just bad. Here are the five years of winning percentage of the Ryan administration: .407, .407, .432, .512, .364 Here are the five years of winning percentage of the Falvey administration: .525, .481, .623, .600, .443 This "disastrous" 2021 season would have been literally THE SECOND BEST SEASON under Ryan. You're talking about the great young core - and there was a solid young core, no doubt - but the Twins were exiting THEIR WORST SEASON IN HISTORY and fresh off a season where the team fielded players like Byung Ho Park, John Ryan Murphy, Kurt Suzuki, Ricky Nolasco, the desiccated husks of Phil Hughes and Glen Perkins, etc. etc etc. The 2016 squad wasn't "ravaged by injuries", they were simply a terrible ****ing baseball team, one FAR WORSE than the 2021 squad... and that was the fifth year of bad baseball, excepting the decent-but-still-nothing 2015 season. And let's not even get into the draft picks that preceded those seasons where literally a mediocre 11th man was the best outcome out of three consecutive top six picks. Falvey also inherited that complete failure of drafting, one that still reverberates today. You're not even attempting to be objective about this front office, gunnar. Up until about 15 minutes ago, you have referenced 2016 as a "total system failure" more times than I can count but now that it's a conversation about the Falvey front office, that 2016 squad was just injured and had so much potential. I'm not even making excuses for Falvey, I've been particularly disappointed in their pitching development, but let's inject a dose of reality into this situation. Ryan's teams showed little signs of returning to respectability while this front office has won more often than it has lost.

While there's a lot of merit to your post, this comment feels really disingenuous. You mention they "nearly" made the playoffs in 2015 but fail to mention that they fielded literally the worst team in Twins history in 2016. Let's not pretend as if they didn't inherit a truly awful baseball team, sporting the worst record the franchise has posted in 60 years of Minnesota baseball.

By "that pathetic rut", I assume you really mean "pretty much all of the 2021 season". Split G GS PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB ROE BAbip tOPS+ sOPS+ April/March 14 13 53 45 7 12 4 0 0 4 0 0 7 8 .267 .377 .356 .733 16 3 1 0 0 0 0 .324 163 113 May 27 27 101 92 9 21 1 0 2 9 0 0 9 21 .228 .297 .304 .601 28 2 0 0 0 0 1 .275 116 71 June 20 20 72 67 9 17 3 0 1 3 0 0 3 9 .254 .296 .343 .639 23 0 1 1 0 0 0 .281 130 75 July 25 24 88 80 7 13 1 0 0 4 1 0 6 7 .163 .221 .175 .396 14 4 0 2 0 0 0 .178 42 10 August 25 24 82 77 3 17 2 0 0 8 0 0 4 10 .221 .268 .247 .515 19 2 1 0 0 0 0 .254 85 44 Sept/Oct 6 6 18 16 1 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 .188 .278 .188 .465 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 .188 66 32

I don't even know if I can call it a rough couple of seasons. Despite having three of four bad starts to close 2020, he finished the season with a 4.05 ERA. And before those three of four bad starts, he had six excellent starts. I was really hoping we'd get a better look at a healthy Dobnak to close the season so we could perhaps figure out whether he's closer to those first six starts or those final four starts.

Okay, fair enough.

Well, damn it all. I was hoping to see a handful of Dobnak starts to close the season to get a better picture of where the 2022 Twins rotation might stand on Opening Day. This puts quite a wrinkle in the Twins' offseason plans, as a healthy, decent Dobnak makes some 40-man roster decisions a little easier to make. The Twins probably don't care if they lose all of Smeltzer, Thorpe, and Albers after the season if Dobnak is either in the rotation or ready as a swingman out of St Paul. Yet another bummer injury in a season full of bummer injuries.

It's rare but Edgar Martinez accumulated over 1,000 plate appearances in AAA with a ~.940 OPS before receiving a legitimate chance at playing in Seattle. That's a pretty long time by my standards.

While I have lots of not-nice things to say about Simmons and his anti-vax stance, I can't agree with your take on his on-field demeanor. Simmons is constantly talking to his teammates, directing action on the field, and I think his smoothness looks like laziness just because he's that damned good (or was, as his athleticism is now on the decline). Look at the way the guy throws the ball. No effort, looking flat-footed quite often... and it drops right into the first baseman's mitt almost every time. He makes it all look so easy.

Ah, okay! Spacebar should also work but seems to be weirdly unreliable in specific circumstances I have yet to isolate...

Except the expectation was that Simmons would be a pitching assist player. His signing was primarily to supplement the entire pitching staff after several seasons of terrible infield defense.

Given that I control the god account on the site, I’m considering logging in under 100 different accounts just to like your post, ash.

You’re right, I had the payers reversed. What I meant was that giving back Baddoo out of ST was Detroit essentially throwing away a little bit of money.

Oh, velocity isn't everything but it sure doesn't hurt. And I believe Ryan can be a good pitcher, I'm only saying we need to temper our expectations a bit, particularly after a night where he posted an amazing stat line but actually watching the game, he was slightly less dominant and with 1-2 more mph on a few of those balls (or even a slight pull instead of to dead center), could have merely posted a middling start. Again, I'm very encouraged by Ryan and excited to see more, I'm just suggesting people not get too drunk on his stat line from last night.

While the game was fun and really exciting in the moment, I feel we should pump the brakes on Ryan a little bit. At the end of the day, he's still a two-pitch pitcher whose second pitch isn't great and he has little velocity, to boot. I think he can have a really nice career because he really seems to have the right mojo on the mound, which goes a long way with a starting pitcher, IMO. But Ryan had quite a bit of hard contact last night, it just fell into Twins' leather until the seventh inning. Good start, loved to see it, want to see more. But it wasn't as dominant as it looked on the stat line.

How is it "cherry-picking" to use WAR, which is generally regarded as the best catch-all single stat to measure a player's value? Sure, most players decline in time but it's not a guarantee to happen with high-end pitching, just look at the likes of Verlander or Greinke. They may have declined from "elite" but they're still quite good.

It's very possible. One thing that will drastically change MLB catching overnight is an automated zone. I'm not sure how that will impact Rortvedt, though. I think he'll do fine, as he's such a good catch-and-throw receiver. The type of player it will hurt is Jeffers, assuming he never regains his stroke and hits above league average again (though I think he will in time). Jeffers is a great framer and bad thrower. If he doesn't hit, an automated zone will crush his value.

The problem is "do they have enough 40-man space to hold that many starters?" Remember, guys like Balazovic, Duran, and Strotman are also on the 40-man, though I suspect Strotman is converted to a reliever so that problem solves itself. Still, this is a lengthy list of "depth" and many of these players will need to be exposed at the end of the season: Dobnak Jax Barnes Thorpe Smeltzer Duran Balazovic Gant Albers This is part of the reason why I think the team will open the season with three internal options in the rotation. My biggest hope is that they go bigger with the front of the rotation and make a splash there instead of buying two middling guys who have a higher chance to implode a la JA Happ.

I still don't think 2mph will help Thorpe much from the pen. The problem is that he lost 2-4mph for some reason and no one has really said why it happened.

2:27 game length. Yeah, I'll take that more often.

Remember all the way back when this kind of game was rather commonplace in Twins Territory?* *last season

Holy ****, Jeffers. That was Mauer-esque in its sheer “did he really just do that?”

I'd say it's incredibly unlikely Ryan finishes this game.

Ryan is definitely doing That Thing and this is a fun game to watch.