Brock Beauchamp

It's sad for Oakland - that team has some amazing history in the town - but frankly, my disappointment is tempered because it's a good personal opportunity for me. We'll almost certainly launch a Vegas site for the team.

He has looked like a very different pitcher this season, which was badly needed if this bullpen expects to succeed. Duran, Lopez, and Jax as the bullpen core is really solid.

I like this year's free agent signings and hope the front office is rewarded for making them. Still wish they traded Kepler, though. I didn't like Gallo and Kepler on the same roster and still don't.

I agree with a lot of this, we just differ on how much the offseason pivoted once Correa was signed. The Twins have rather limited trade options. Their farm system isn't great after they depleted it last deadline. They didn't have many expendable assets on the MLB team. They had a lot of money but nowhere good left to spend it.

Yeah, the last several moves changed everything... but to the front office's defense, they started altering some of their approaches late in the previous offseason. They stopped pursuing bad pitchers and instead pursued pitchers with injury concerns... and that didn't work out much better. But it was different. And it was a lot of the smaller moves that I really liked late in the offseason. I've been clamoring for a right-handed, glove-first fourth outfielder for... oh, about four years now. They finally went and got one. Kyle Farmer ended up being a much better move once Correa was signed. Solano again addressed right-handed concerns they had going into the season. For the first time, it felt like the front office was building a team instead of players that were signed because they were a "good deal", not because they were actually good or fit well within the team. They stopped signing flat-out bad pitchers on one-year deals. But all of this comes with issues, too. Their free agent track record is still quite bad. Their vaunted pitching pipeline looks better but still hasn't materialized. The one area I feel this team has done well is in trades and even that history is littered with more than a few clunkers. I'm still unsure of this front office but I'm far more bullish on them today than I was four months ago because they've stopped doing some of the things that drove me batty from 2018-2021.

Qualifying offers can be given to any player but only once in their career.

I was done with them because they had missed on every significant free agent at the time. Not most of them, all of them. Only through the completely unexpected absurdity of the Correa signing were they able to get back on track. It wasn't an emotional response, it was a response to "you have $50m to spend and literally no one worth spending it on". They get, at best, partial credit for Correa. Most of their other moves were good. And let's not pretend that this was the first offseason that looked dire. The offseason before that was... less than spectacular if I'm being generous. Some might have even called it "absolutely awful". They went out and got Correa and were sunk once again by bad pitching signings, a recurring theme of their administration. I wasn't looking at any single move, I was looking at their entire body of work. Which, at best, has been mixed.

Absolutely. They deserve credit for staying firm and not wavering but outside forces played a significant role, too.

Oh, all of this is true but they almost fell into the Correa deal through the weirdest situation I've seen in free agency. It definitely worked out for them but I also can't give them full credit for it. And the entire offseason really hinged around that move that was half patience, half dumb luck.

As much as I've railed on the front office over the past couple of years, they've been doing a hell of a lot right for the past six months, even if the way they get there is... unexpected.

Damn, this article photo highlights just how good the new home whites are.

That's largely why Diamond didn't pay the Twins. When they're fighting to keep paying teams with contracts that go for years past 2023, there's little incentive to pay the Twins and their expiring contract, who it seems have been pretty hostile with Diamond for the past couple of years (and for good reason).

The Michael A Taylor thing was incredible. Even my nine year old was screaming THAT’S NOT BYRON BUXTON

The scoreboard experience was really something to behold:

Really nice article @Cody Christie. Covered all the bases.

Also, Fubo now streams Bally Sports North and it's a WAY better service than DirecTV Stream.

The Bally Sports app does not broadcast Twins games. The Twins have not agreed with Bally to allow it. I wish they would do so just for this season but given how badly Bally has screwed over the Twins in recent years, I can't entirely fault the club for telling them to get lost.

As I've been saying for quite awhile, Twins fans don't have it that bad. The Pohlads are fine. They're not great, but they're also not Bob Nutting.

Thank you! I spend wayyyyyy too much time thinking up the absolute stupidest prizes I can imagine. I've literally spent a year trying to work out how to create a hilariously terrifying prize. Hopefully I'll get there in 2024.

Please realize this is a juggling act that never ends. In 2022, Twins Daily (for the first time) had over 2,000,000 users drop by and visit. That's an enormous number and it's largely due to the how diverse and comprehensive our coverage is through news, forums, blogs, videos, rumors, etc. Twins Daily is one of the biggest baseball sites on the internet now. It's mind-blowing how a site for a single mid-market team grew this large and juggling the needs of a disparate user base is always a struggle. There's too much content to structure in an organized way. When the site launched, we hoped to run 5-7 stories a week. Right now, we're averaging 5-7 articles a day. We used to have front page news threads in the Twins forum. It completely broke the Twins forum and that's when we were running half the stories we are now. Users stopped generating threads because they'd be pushed out of sight within a few hours by the continual onslaught of front page news threads. We're all about community here so that didn't fly. We value those user-generated conversations and therefore moved news threads to a separate forum to give users more breathing space to create and discuss their own content. In short, when you have 2,000,000 users visiting in a year, there's no perfect way to coordinate that much content. It's going to be chaotic, it's going to be messy, and it's not going to work perfectly for literally anyone who uses the site. You might want to explore this tool a bit. It's super-customizable and pretty cool if you drill down into it. https://twinsdaily.com/discover/unread/

Oh no.

PM me your address!

While Minnesota may be forever mired in winter, the crack of the bat is being heard in Ft Myers. Baseball is back, and it’s time to hand out our offseason community awards. Image courtesy of Brock Beauchamp A few times a year, we hit the pause button and take a moment to talk about and reward our most popular community members and the contributions they bring to Twins Daily. During what was (far and away) the wildest Twins off-season of my lifetime, the community exploded with content. You wrote 123 blogs from when the Astros hoisted a trophy through the day the Twins took that field in their first split-squad games in Florida. 123 blogs. Incredible. Let’s take a look at some of the other numbers: During the off-season, 424 people registered to comment on Twins Daily Over that time, 806 unique people contributed content to the site Users started 1,045 topics In those topics, you wrote 26,948 posts In those posts, you awarded 55,357 reactions to other users All of those are record numbers. Every single one. Mind-blowing. Our most prolific poster was @chpettit19, with @Mike Sixel coming in a close second. Thanks to both of you for your continued quality contributions to the community! Let’s get to the awards, shall we? Most Popular Post The Luis Arraez trade was almost certainly the most controversial of the winter, and @Puckett34’s thoughtful take on the advantages and difficulties of losing a fan-favorite player was the most popular post of the off-season. This award usually goes out to someone who swoops in with the snark, so seeing it go to a serious post is a bit of a surprise. Well done, Puckett34! We award you a thoughtful and heartfelt prize for your thoughtful and heartfelt take on the trade: a laser-etched wood photo frame of Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger holding an autographed Nick Punto baseball card. Honorary Mention Losing Carlos Correa to the Mets was the low point of the Twins' off-season. In the thread detailing his surprise signing (not-signing) with the other New York team, @Nashvilletwin wrote what many of us were feeling; baseball is broken, and MLB seems not to care. Unsurprisingly, this post was wildly popular with the Twins Daily community, earning it the second most popular post of the offseason! Most Popular Blog Entry From the fan perspective, manager Rocco Baldelli is the most controversial person in the Twins dugout. Where much of the fanbase blames Baldelli for baseball ills that transcend what happens in Target Field, @Nick Hanzlik takes the opposite approach by suggesting Baldelli is the perfect manager for today’s game. Some people agreed, which is why it’s the most popular blog entry of the Twins Daily off-season! Congratulations, Nick, and for your efforts, you shall be awarded this (not at all garish) limited edition Spring Training 2023 Minnesota Twins bobblehead! Honorary Mention Want a surefire way to create conversation? Take Mount Rushmore, add your local sports team, and fire off some opinions. That’s exactly what @Luke Thompson did in writing up a blog about the four players on the Twins’ Mount Rushmore, earning the second most popular blog of the off-season! As I mentioned earlier, Twins Daily broke every record over the off-season: more users, more comments, more blogs, and more everything. And a big reason for that is the users mentioned above and all of you who comment daily on the site and add your thoughts, insights, and opinions on the Minnesota Twins. That’s why Twins Daily is the best place to talk Twins baseball. And now it’s time to start watching some baseball and our Minnesota Twins! View full article