bean5302

SWR, front line starter! I don't think I've ever heard such a bullish take on the pitcher. Certainly not since he reached AAA several years ago. While SWR did have a great finish to the season, it came with an average exit velocity against him of 92mph (terrible), a 9% barrel rate (terrible) and a 40% hard hit rate (from Statcast, terrible) yet with a miserly .152 BABIP against. He did dramatically increase his K rates, and that's a positive, but he's flashed K rates before. With a track record of over 50 starts as a barely adequate #5 with uninspiring peripherals under his belt, it'll take a lot more than 3-4 lucky games chained together to get me on board. Especially given his history of seemingly having conditioning issues and being difficult to coach. Emma is a reach in the top 10 at this point as well.

Oh really? I've let them off the hook have I? What season ticket package did you cancel? I upgraded my season ticket package in 2023 before the payroll cut announcement and paid $10,000 into the Twins in 2024 in terms of a season ticket package and game day expenditures. I canceled for 2025 and haven't picked up for 2026. How about you? I like realism in my evaluations because it lends credibility and it's easier to support. Making radical statements which are easily chipped away or contradicted like "Pohlads one of the worst owners in sports" when there are plenty of examples of ownership groups who are arguably worse just off the top of my head in MLB alone: more miserly (Guardians-Dolan), less successful (Nutting-Pirates), more predatory on fan bases (Loria-Marlins), more hated by fans (Fisher-Athletics) more misguided while being hands on (Moreno/Angels), more dysfunctional leadership wise (Reinsdorf/White Sox). The Pohlads are not good owners and I want them gone in favor of potentially better owners, but I'd rather have them than Nutting, Sherman, Morena or Reinsdorf in MLB any day.

Wallner and Lewis can be expected to have a huge impact on the season. The Twins absolutely need them to excel if the team has any hopes of achieving the seemingly ambitious outlook ownership has for the organization. Wallner's defense needs to rebound as much as anything else. Brooks Lee hasn't demonstrated much with the bat, and I don't think he ever will since there are so many tools he's missing in his production profile. I also don't think it's reasonable to expect him to be a big producer so that puts more pressure on other players. I think Luke Keaschall could be far more key to the Twins this year than Lee. Keaschall has been willing to take walks, and enough pop to keep pitchers honest. Keaschalls speed means he's tough to double up and a threat to reach base safely on an infield grounder. Even considering his lower actual xwOBA, a league average bat at 2B would still be very valuable and it would be really nice to find a stable every day 2B.

6'1" and 190lbs is not remotely wiry. That's final, full adult, MLB starting shortstop size. Miguel Sano was 6'3" and 190lbs when he was signed back in 2009. It's tough to gauge how likely a player is to stick at a premium position until after they get a couple years into their international signing.

Oh yes. Definitely way worse than owners of say the Pirates, etc. The Pohlad family isn't remotely close to the worst. They're not good, either.

Zebby needs to learn much better command of his pitches or he's going to the bullpen. If Matthews is able to demonstrate that mid-upper 3s ERA potential, he'll likely go to #1 this year. Ryan, Lopez and Ober lose 1/2 of their remaining control this year so their value goes with it. Buxton is probably at peak value right now as well. I find Lee's +30 (2nd highest for Twins, I think) to be a modeling snafu. There just isn't much high end asset value with the Twins entire system.

I've felt Jim has moved towards the more conservative Carl Pohlad as Jim has aged. Bill Smith extended Morneau, Mauer, Nathan, and Cuddyer all to sizable contracts. As Target Field approached opening day, and for the first years of Target Field, there was definitely a different vibe about things. Yet, rather than capitalizing on the momentum, the Pohlads pulled back. It was never the same again, and while the family opened up the wallet in recent years, the spending quickly got pulled back again at the worst possible time.

Lee shouldn't be entirely written off, but 700 PA in back to back seasons is getting to be a pretty solid sample size. There's a high degree of likelihood he'll never hit well enough to hold down an starting spot on an MLB team. I've seen enough of Lee already to want the team to be planning to supplant him.

The Twins absolutely need to have a competent defensive shortstop to replace Brooks Lee in the starting lineup. Fixed that for ya.

Honestly, though, I like this signing. On a MiLB contract, Arcia is excellent AAA roster filler, though I wonder if the contract includes an opt-out? Honestly, I think it's best for Arcia if the opt out is mid-year to give him some opportunity to work on his game with consistent playing time, though patience hasn't been his virtue at the plate. Also, this provides me some personal entertainment value wondering what's wrong with Arcia's stats when I continue to mistakenly input "Oswaldo" into the search bars of baseball stat sites. I think the signing makes even more sense if the Twins believe Kaelyn Culpepper is potentially close because there isn't much AAA ready talent for SS in the Twins' system. If Kaelyn doesn't look ready, Orlando is a much better backup option than Kriedler, IMHO.

Except it's a MiLB deal instead of an MLB deal at like $4MM where Falvey would subbornly keep the player on the roster as if there was a turnaround coming and Baldelli would play them every day just to troll the fans.

In a vacuum, and when done properly. Baldelli didn't do it properly. There is no legitimate use of a 26 man roster spot for a part time LHP-only platoon specialist DH on a well run team.

Shoulder surgery at the end of March last year with a typical recovery period of 12 months. Nick Paparesta indicated it was likely Canterino will take longer than that. Honestly, I'd be surprised if he was on the mound prior to the end of Spring training. It's a 2 year MiLB contract, but I'd say the odds Canterino ever pitches in the big show are very long.

The problem is Falvey was hoarding clock time on all of them rather than calling them up last year to get a look at them. Even if they weren't ready, Falvey committed to a path of gutting the entire bullpen with no money to rebuild it, and the waiver wire guys we brought onto the 26 man to finish the season aren't solutions for the future. Can't have your cake and eat it, too. On top of it, I've seen some conflict in the front office when it comes to how pitching depth is to be utilized. Falvey has been on record multiple times talking about Prielipp as a reliever while Zoll has been clear he wants to use Prielipp as a starter. There doesn't appear to be any strategy whatsoever for this team right now. It's Falvey's job to create one and carry it out. Anybody from this site could do the job Falvey has done with the roster after the trade deadline was over last year.

Spotrac has him at 3yrs $32MM. MLBTR had him at 2yrs $18MM. Dominguez is not elite so he won't be able to set market demands with a ton of suitors, but spending on relief pitchers hasn't been Falvey's typical MO.

I see some comments about Fangraphs and interacting with it. If you're devious enough, you can make stats or sites like Fangraphs say whatever you want them to say. For 32 players with a "primary position" of 1B with at least 400 PA, Eric Wagaman put up the 2nd worst wRC+ For the splits argument, please take a look at the plate appearances last year. Players get a lot more plate appearances vs right handed pitching than left handed pitching. Then you look at 1B splits in general. There were 28 primary 1B with 120+ plate appearances (SSS) vs left handed pitching last year. Wagaman's .783 OPS ranked 59th percentile for RHH, and 64th percentile for LHH (higher percentile is better). Basically, Wagaman was "above average" against left handed pitchers, but hardly elite. When you consider he's only going to see 25% of his plate appearances vs. lefties and he can't hit righties in a position where your performance at the plate is the most important thing in your profile, he's not a significant asset on paper. On top of that, Baldelli v2.0 is our manager so we can expect the same kind of substitution nonsense we saw last year where opposing managers would feint a move, Baldelli would overreact and cripple the line up for the rest of the game using an ill-advised substitution trying to play the stupid platoon game. Wagaman was terrible against 75% of the pitchers he played against. Wagaman was "above average" but certainly not great against the 25% of the pitchers who were lefties.

Perfect example of my biggest complaints about Falvey. Doesn't understand how to operate within a budget. Give him a budget and he'll use it, but he'll squander it with his desperate need to sign every name he possibly can. I can't imagine what the inside of his house looks like. Probably like a Big Lots exploded in there.

This is kind of gross as I'm not normally in the conspiracy thing, but it almost feels like a move to save $50,000 in an outright waiver claim fee because I can't see any other team taking the claim. I do like the 114.5mph Max exit velo, but Wagaman's been a worm burner generation machine. It makes no sense to me unless Falvey thinks some coaching can get Wagaman to start generating fly balls. Very high contact rates for pitches in the zone, doesn't swing a lot at pitches outside the zone, but never takes a walk.

My point was the Twins seem to be following the Colorado Rockies roster model, except spending less. Spending less doesn't make bad strategies better. I posted an image the other day which surprised me. In the past decade, no team in the bottom half of spending has won a World Series. Team in blue, won a World Series Team in green, made it to the world series. Division in blue, won a League Championship (made a WS) Division in green made it to a division champsionship. Teams do not have to spend $200MM to make it to the World Series. But if they can't get at least to about league average, it's not happening anymore.

I don't know what you guys are talking about. Following the Colorado Rockies model (but you know, spending 20% less, cause the Scrooge McDuck moneybin is getting a little low...) always leads to success. I'm glad the Twins have figured it out!

If the Twins are committed to a World Series attempt, they need to be in obvious build mode. They're not right now. This is not a team for which expectations of .500 ball or playoffs, let alone a potential World Series run is reasonable. The team's on the field product resembles a team at the tail end of a rebuild, the point at which a team identifies what they've got and what they need to build. What they've got as playoff caliber guys right now. Byron Buxton, Joe Ryan, Pablo Lopez. What they've got as respectable every day players who aren't going to lift the team, but they shouldn't be concerned about upgrading. Ryan Jeffers. After that, it's debatable whether or not they've got guys who will hold the team back, tread water or push the team into the playoffs. That's 22 other positions on the opening day roster which are question marks. The Twins running out a status quo team is reckless and inconsistent with Tom Pohlad's comments.

College Football literally generates more revenue than MLB so it's going nowhere. From what I can tell, it's a recruitment tool for colleges and a way to float other athletic programs which do not generate revenue but are considered an enrichment to culture.

Bailey Ober got terrible results with his slider compared to "average" results for other pitchers using a slider. The slider and his fastball had the same xwOBA of .360 (bad). The sweeper looked much better in the xwOBA, but few pitches can function in a vacuum unless your name is Mariano Rivera. The sweeper depended on the slider for effectiveness. If Ober stops throwing the slider, the sweeper becomes much more predictable. As this article points out, Ober needs to throw harder. Whether or not he can now that he's entered into his 30s and needs to build back strength from a season long injury is another question.

Falvey's house desperately needs a coat a paint, but he's put it off for 5 years. His insurance company is threatening to cancel his policy. Luckily, he stumbled across some old paint from the 80s at a garage sale for cheap and he got right to it. Somehow he gets criticised even though he painted the house! The insurance company never should have asked him to paint, but darn it, now they.... oh, they cancel his policy just like the Pohlads should have canceled his contract.

Donaldson's contract would have been a bit of an albatross for the team, but they made out pretty well on the long side flipping Mitch Garver and Josh Donaldson into Gio Gonzalez and Gary Sanchez. Donaldson's last year with the Twins was pretty productive. Correa's first contract was great for Minnesota. It's the second round which got ugly fast. No team in baseball will develop their entire World Series caliber roster in house. Free agency is a necessary evil from a front office perspective. Burning $20MM on a handful of 0-1 WAR guys is worse than spending $20MM on a higher end, quality player who will still help the team even if they take a step back. I especially, especially believe this when it comes to starting rotation. My message to the Pohalds, pack up shop and sell to an owner fans will support if you can't be competitive.