bean5302

Under Falvey, in a division with only one other competitive team whosports one of the lowest payrolls in MLB year after year, the Twins have managed to basically be dead average in performance. However, Falvey's good years were almost entirely floated by talent his teams inherited from Bill Smith and Terry Ryan. Names like Joe Mauer, Brian Dozier, Byron Buxton, Max Kepler, Miguel Sano, Eddie Rosario, Jorge Polanco, Kyle Gibson, Jose Berrios, Ervin Santana, Taylor Rogers, and Tyler Duffey. I would be ecstatic if Tom was already frantically interviewing behind the scenes with a plan to can Falvey before the season starts. Ecstatic. I don't think it's happening, and that would create turmoil, but a GM/PoBO who has proven time and again to be incompetent should not be given another year. Falvey is a bad head of baseball. Turmoil is better than guaranteed bad.

I'm much less optimistic than you about the prospects we have, and much less willing to forgive 5 years of poor value returns.

Falvey has some success in the 1st round, but no truly big hits providing value to the Twins so far. There are infinite excuses, but there's a common denominator at this point. The excuses and Falvey. 2017 - Royce Lewis. Made it to the big show, had a brief spark, then weak performance. Long injury history. Jury is out on his future. 2017 - Brent Rooker. Multiple Time All Star. Optioned in favor of Trevor Larnach then traded for peanuts before he offered any value to Minnesota.. 2018 - Trevor Larnach. Replacement level plus player. Just good enough to keep on the roster and play, but not really good enough to use as a starter. 2019 - Keoni Cavaco. Never made it past AA. 2019 - Matt Wallner. Slumped hard last year. Could be a great player or could be a another flame out. Delivered enough value to justify a starting lineup opportunity last year, but just barely. 2020 - Aaron Sabato. Couldn't handle AAA after flashing potential at AA for the first time in multiple go-rounds. He's unprotected and non-rostered. Doesn't look like he'll ever make an MLB appearance. 2021 - Chase Petty. Traded away to the Reds. Made a brief appearance, but had a terrible year in 2025. 2021 - Noah Miller. Unlikely to ever see MLB as he has been unable to hit well enough despite great defense. 2022 - Brooks Lee. Looks stretched as anything beyond a utility infielder. 2023 - Walker Jenkins. Huge potential, a top MLB prospect who is close. We'll have to see. 2023 - Charlee Soto. Lost 2025 to an elbow bone chip removal surgery. Still a lot of upside, but hasn't really pitched above the low minors worth noting. 2024 - Kaelyn Culpepper. Fast riser in the system, viewed as a potential SS of the future. 2024 - Kyle DeBarge. Held his own in low A as a 20 year old college bat, held his own last year in A+. Ceiling remains capped without a boost in power. 2025 - Marek Houston. College SS, totally overmatched in A+ ball. Showed no power at low A, just a really high BABIP. Not sure why the Twins promoted him so fast. 2025 - Riley Quick. College arm, didn't get into any MiLB action last year coming off a return from TJ and first year really starting at Alabama. Huge ceiling, didn't dominate in NCAA in his return. Have to see.

It has nothing to do with the Minnesota Twins business operations from my understanding. The Pohlad family borrowed money for other business ventures and put the Twins up as collateral for securing those loans. Probably because the Twins would have been considered a very secure asset so it's easy to borrow against the the Minnesota Twins as a business. I suppose it's also possible the assets acquired with loans could have been listed under the Minnesota Twins' balance sheet. If those investments failed, depreciated or were sold for a loss, the "Twins" would be forced to write the assets off, but keep the loan so it would show as a huge jump in "debt" as there would no longer be an asset to offset the loan.

Tom is the spokesman for the ownership, but he is not an owner. While it sounds like Jim is handing Tom more power than Joe had, Tom is not going to have control of the budget because that comes from actual ownership. If Tom wants to expand a payroll, he'll need to make his sales pitch to the ownership group. I think it's possible Tom could make a good decision and fire Falvey, though. Until that happens, I have no expectations there is any hope for this team.

Mets too. MLB leadership essentially forced Wilpon to sell the Mets due to financial issues. The Pohlads borrowed money to use for other business ventures and used the Minnesota Twins business as collateral which is where most of the debt comes from. I don't think the Pohlads were in dire straights and needed to find new investors so much as it was obvious they wouldn't be able to sell the team for enough "net" money to fund their additional business portfolio plans into the future so they decided to strengthen their financial position through minority ownership of the Twins rather than getting new investors into the Pohlad Companies who would dilute the Pohlad family control over their other businesses.

I think there's a fair chance a change of scenery turns Miranda around. Here's hoping it works out for the Padres and Miranda.

His floor is a AAAA caliber player, but he still has upside. That's not a lot of assumptions. I don't know if the Twins are a rebuild team, but what we're hearing from ownership and the front office suggests they're not. They've said they're looking to build and compete this year with words, and they haven't traded Lopez, Ryan or Buxton so they're also demonstrating that through actions right now. For a rebuilding team, Mayo's upside is absolutely worth acquiring. For a team looking to compete needing a high degree of comfort with slugging performance from a new player, Mayo isn't a safe bet.

What I took away from this is there is no plan in place yet. So no status change at all. I don't think the Pohlad family understands what fans want, but they think they might (they seem to be wrong). What fans want: Clear expectations and plans (at least to an extent) because that makes us feel connected. Accountability through actions they're sorta showing this. Truthful communications don't lie to us. Investment with a long term vision and commitment to win. Ownership committed to making game day fun (for ticket holders). Ownership committed to making the games accessible (for home viewers). I see almost none of this yet. I honestly don't hold a lot of hope for the Pohlads being able to turn things around. They're truly despised by fans, and changing an opinion takes an enormous amount of effort.

The reason the Orioles signed Alonso is they'd seen enough of Mayo to be uncomfortable trusting him as a key player in the organization going forward. Looking further into Mayo's stats, a concerning one pops out at me, and that's max exit velocity at 110mph ever at the MLB level. Often times, Max exit velocity can help give a real assessment of raw power. There are some more impressive numbers from AAA, but I'm not buying MiLB stats as so trustworthy. Average exit velocity was poor, max exit velocity was about league average, and he's struggled to hit fastballs. I think there's definitely some ceiling there, still, but the floor is AAAA. I think some of the packages being proposed are a little heavy for Mayo, and I view Mayo as a rebuild team target.

We've all seen how this ownership group operates. Dave St. Peter was fired... but kept his office and is constantly used as a consultant. Joe will be fired, but he'll remain with 99% of his existing role. This ownership group has no concept of accountability. Expecting anything else is probably a whole lot of "nope."

Walker Jenkins or Kaelyn Culpepper are the guys you extend, if you extend them because you really really believe they'll be great.

Started working, randomly? Whatevs, it's working now, haha

Not the way this article implies. Joe was the spokesman for ownership and he had a major input into the branding (new logo/uniforms). All the more reason to remove him as he damaged the ownership's reputation and that Minnesota Mariners/Seattle Twins logo... oofff.

Exactly. There is no possible amount of spectacular defense which can make up for a wRC+ 11 bat. It's impossible. Every .025ish OPS = 1 WAR. Playing spectacular defense at SS is still a -5 WAR player... and it's not like the limited metrics agree Kreidler is a good SS anyway. I hope the Twins are just claiming and DFA'ing, but I'm skeptical. Falvey is always captain "Hey, take a loo.... SQUIRREL!!!!!, GET IT!!!" with waiver wire garbage.

OAA is unstable. If Josh Bell had stood in the middle of Center Field for every play (assuming the rules allowed it), he'd have an OAA of 0.0 because he was not in a position to make any plays for a 1B. DRS is also unstable because it overcompensates for fringe plays. Get to a ball at the edge of a section of the field a 1B doesn't normally get to? DRS x1000 points! Play the rest of the year booting balls around the field, you wind up with a neutral score. The Twins manipulate a bad metric (OAA) by positioning their 1B in a spot where they couldn't be expected to get to balls. If they positioned their 1B in a more traditional position, the 1B would have more opportunities to make plays, but since a poor defender wouldn't make them, their OAA score would drop. That's my read on it.

Alex Jackson got lucky in a SSS last year. It's not like he earned the boost in production. 5.0% BB and 37.0% K rate tells you almost everything you need to know about a hitter.

I could argue Mickey Gasper is the best catcher of all time by this logic. Butera has a -3.8 CAREER WAR. Take a look at 2011 please.... Your memories of Butera are in massive conflict with the reality. wRC+ 19 as a primary catcher for Minnesota because of Joe Mauer's "bi-lateral leg weakness" huge reason the Twins collapsed.

Gasper last year owned a wRC+ 42 Jackson's career is wRC+ 48, but at least he's supposedly solid defensively. Drew Butera is wRC+ 45 We're basically getting Drew Butera. I think there is a long shot Jackson could take a big step forward. He can hit fastballs at least. The scariest part is the ice blue center zone on meatballs. If he got every pitch middle/middle last year, his xwOBA would have been a miserable .214. Like seriously... how can a guy have an xwOBA of .214 on meatballs? Hopefully, that's just a SSSS issue and he really has figured a little something out. I guess? Whatever. It's fine. Everything is fine.

Not really. ISO is .165 for his last 4 seasons. Larnach is .170 for the same period. They're the same as "power hitters" Bell isn't a power hitter at all, he's barely median for ISO. He gets to about 20 HR, but it takes him 600+ plate appearances to do it. He hasn't been serious "power" threat since pre-COVID.

It's kind of the point I've been trying to make in other threads. $110MM doesn't make the Twins any better than they are at $90MM. It just doesn't matter. Falvey has no concept of how to manage a budget. None. It's like needing a new car because your 2000 Ford Focus took a dump. You're saying you can't afford a $100k new BMW so you spend everything you've got on an absurdly overpriced $10k rusty, broken down, non-running 2010 Ford Focus with 300k on the clock. Great deal! It's way less expensive than a new BMW... but it's no better than your old car. It just makes your wallet lighter. For every Carlos Santana, there's a Manny Margot, Joey Gallo and an Andrelton Simmons.

I think what this shows is a significant faction of fans are tired of dumpster diving for replacement level players to simply eat up a budget rather than spending money on fewer guys who are seemingly obvious upgrades. Josh Bell has been the definition of a replacement level (aka next in-line AAA call up) for 3 years. No reason not to go sign Ty France again at $1.7MM based on Spotrac's estimate. Save the expenditure for something of value.