bean5302

I wasn't performing an analysis of your whole post, but sure. Defined roles for a terrible bullpen doesn't exist because you never know when a reliever will be unavailable so sometimes you have to use a reliever in a situation you'd rather not. Banda is not a good relief pitcher. He was on a really great "results" tear there for almost 20 games after sucking so badly he probably should have been released. 18G, 16.2 IP, 0.00 ERA. Yay!!! 9.18 K/9 (meh), 3.78 BB/9 (not good), .220 BABIP (red flag), 91.3mph EV (that's bad), 4.56 xFIP (bad), LOB 94.1% (amazing luck). The Twins currently have ZERO great relievers. Gomez might be "good" but probably not. Having a defined plan when none of your relievers is good is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Keaschall doesn't provide much value to the club right now. Playing him in RF makes no sense. He can't hit well enough to play 2B, let alone RF. The team can take two approaches. Continue to give him an unlimited leash to learn how to hit MLB pitching and try to improve infield defense like they did with Brooks Lee or send him down to AAA to change his swing.

Because the Twins do not have the personnel they need in the bullpen, but it doesn't help anybody to come out and say the bullpen is filled with mostly waiver wire worthy guys who are making their last go 'round in the big show.

Almost every single non-huge market team in the World Series the past decade had a tear down a rebuild a few years prior to their first appearance. It's non-optional. It's REQUIRED for a small or mid market team. Small and mid-market teams cannot sustain World Series viability without a purge of their players who are coming out of cost control. Those arb 3 and free agent players are boat anchors. 26 guys on the roster. $3MM average = $79MM $4MM average = $104MM $5MM average = $130MM $6MM average = $156MM $7MM average = $182MM $8MM average = $208MM

@ziggy I'm sorry you went through so much dough for that game! Only sellout at Target Field this year. I wonder if the ticket scalpers were driving the prices? That said, attendance was listed at 39k. I haven't been to a game with that kind of energy since the 2023 playoffs. Must have been awesome!

It's always a bad take if you're debating me. :D hahhahaha

Rojas is probably the guy the Twins are going to rely upon to eat innings. Not sure what limitations there are on Prielipp's workload? Shelton is letting Prielipp throw more nearly 100 pitches with regularity. Doesn't seem like he's being limited by pitch count or innings as the Twins are letting him go at least 6 innings. Historically, the Twins have limited pitch counts with inning caps if they're protecting a player. Prielipp is at 70 innings right now (15 AAA, 55 MLB) With 15-16ish potential starts left in a full season for Prielipp, he's probably on pace for 75-90 more innings this year, max, putting him at 150-165 innings on the season. I don't think the Twins are going to shield him much based on how they're handling him.

Attendance went up after Mauer retired. Up after Puckett retired. Up after Santana was traded and Hunter left. Fans don't care about the names on the jerseys when it comes to game day attendance.

Also, pretty sure I've covered what the Twins SHOULD do to get people to the game. 1) Give away tickets to competing high schools. Fill entire sections with high school students. At least 1,000 seats a game during the school year. Give them a free hot dog and soft drink/water. Give them an exclusive meet and greet with players. Have give-away items for the winners (and losers) of the competition of who cheers loudest, etc. 2) Good give-aways. Not a Truly fanny pack or a container of dental floss or whatever they give away. Something exciting. TWINGO too. Make it actually worth playing and going to the game potentially rewarding. 3) Market steep discounts to nearby apartments and condos on season ticket packages. Sign up rates for the building increase the discount. Give free season ticket packages away to those management companies for participating. Get season ticket holders back. There are none anymore. 4) Partner with local (North Loop) tap rooms and restaurants to give away non-transferable Twins tickets before events. 5) Partner with influencers and pop culture people to advertise on social media. 6) Work social media bonuses into contracts. The Twins (and baseball) events need to be seen as popular and fun to attend. Pohlad still thinks it's about winning and losing. Idiot. Winning helps. Playoffs "help" but it's correlation vs. causation at work.

In regard to the arguments people care about players names or the game itself... I've pointed this out before and I still remember @USAFChief vehemently disagreeing, but he's still wrong :p Take me out to the ball game! (event) Take me out with the crowd! (ambiance) Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack (event) I don't care if I never get back (ambiance) Root, root, root for the home team (ambiance) If they don't win it's a shame (ambiance) For it's 1 - 2 - 3 strikes, you're out! (is actually baseball related) At the 'ol ball game! (event) Almost nothing in that entire song is actually about baseball.

They sold out Target Field for years when it opened. Weather is not the driving reason people attend games. Right now, attendance is lower than it was in the Metrodome. Fans hate the Pohlads and don't want to put any money into the Pohlad's pockets. The Twins are not exciting or popular. Baseball is not exciting or popular in general. Attending Twins games is boring because the stadium is empty (catch-22). Minnesota United sell out 20k fans every game. A diverse crowd of all ages and ethnicities, and honestly, I see demand continuing to rise. It's popular. Soccer is popular despite being intensely boring IMHO. It's about the game day experience. It always has been. It always will be, and the Pohlad's are clueless.

While Dozier was certainly a fan favorite, he was traded for low value because he was already playing poorly. He was not the face of the franchise. That was Joe Mauer, who was retiring. If Dozier's decline was due to his hip, then he would have had a big rebound season. He didn't. Dozier was always a bit sketchy in terms of his performance. His fly ball distance was warning track +3 feet. When those 3 extra feet went away, his home runs turned into warning track outs. Nobody missed Dozier in 2019 when the Twins made the playoffs. If Polanco wasn't willing to play "hurt" he would have never played in his career, and while he was solid, he wasn't a great value player. I'm glad the Twins traded him, but I'm not happy with how Falvey handled the marketing of Polanco.

Blue Jays just DFA'd him (which is not the same as "releasing"). SWR is not a good MLB level pitcher. He's not going to help an MLB team in the rotation for sure, and he's of questionable, but potentially salvagable value in the bullpen which is like about 100 other guys on the waiver wire or minors who could be picked up for a Snickers Bar. Maybe the Twins will get him back? https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2026/06/blue-jays-designate-simeon-woods-richardson-for-assignment.html

Kepler activated.

I'm pretty skeptical about Raya. His past 10 appearances have been dominant. "Electric stuff" is seemingly untrue as the results speak for themselves. The promise of prospect hype and scouting reports fade quick when players are tested against high minors and MLB level challengers. The ever-present TD Hype Machine tool of comparing average ages for leagues vs prospects in the system concluding every trash performance was expected because of age kept Raya at the top of the list around here for a long time. Supposedly, Raya's big issue has been the inability to hit the broad side of a barn, but it's more of hope rather than confidence because truly great stuff doesn't need to land for strikes in MiLB. MiLB hitters can't lay off great pitches that are well outside the zone. That's why those hitters aren't in the show. Raya still has potential, but he's going to need to develop command over a couple of his pitches before adding the full repertoire back into things. To build on his MLB-worthy options, he'll need to stick around in MLB long enough. Last 10 appearances in AAA 17.0 IP, 2.12 ERA, 2.32 FIP, 9.00 K/9, 0.00 BB/9, 27.4% K, 0.0% BB WHIP 0.71, BABIP .250 He's literally walked nobody, and he hasn't allowed many hits. We'll see. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/marco-raya-694397?stats=career-r-pitching-milb 2026 Scouting grades: Fastball: 55 | Curveball: 50 | Slider: 60 | Cutter: 55 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 45 | Overall: 45 Originally drafted out of the Texas high school ranks in the fourth round of the 2020 Draft, Raya didn’t make his official pro debut until 2022, with the pandemic ruining any chance of him pitching after he signed and then a shoulder strain forcing him off the mound for all of 2021. He showed glimpses of potential on limited workloads the next two seasons, then took off and reached Triple-A in 2024, earning a spot on the 40-man roster. A return to Triple-A St. Paul in 2025 did not go as well as planned. A combination of size, concerns about durability and command issues are now pointing Raya towards a future in the bullpen, a transition that started at the end of last year. One of the big adjustments will be to pare down a repertoire that has had as many as six pitches in it. The fastball-sweeper combination will likely lead the way, with the heater coming in around 95-97 mph and the 86-mph slider missing a lot of bats even while he scuffled last year. His mid-80s curve can also make hitters look bad and he has a 90-91 mph cutter as well. The curve gets misses against left-handed hitters, so he might not need to worry about developing his changeup, which had good action to it, but he couldn’t land in the zone. There could be more ticks in the four-seamer coming in shorter stints, and he won’t have to worry as much about his command. If he can settle on a smaller menu in his new role, he could develop into a starter-turned-effective reliever kind of like former Twin Ronny Henriquez.

Hindsight looks pretty favorably on trading Dozier. He wasn't good enough to be a starter the rest of his career.

It's so hard. MiLB has massive differences between leagues and there are multiple leagues for the same level. Beyond that, there isn't the kind of precise ball tracking in MiLB. UZR/DRS use a framework which divides up the field into dozens or hundreds slices of pie and determines how often a position player gets to those balls in their zone. OAA uses an exact location the position player is standing with precise batted ball tracking to identify the likelihood a player would be able to make a play on a batted ball relative to their peers. I use RF/9, which sucks because Baseball Reference uses RF/G as the default so I have to visit each teams' site, evaluate who is the primary position player to compare (ignore the 28 year old journeyman, etc) It's only valuable inside a specific league due to the differences in pitcher quality across leagues. RF/9 determines the number of put outs and assists a player at a position has per 9 innings played. Comparing RF/9 can get some picture of defensive value, in concert with fielding percentage. It's still a little iffy, though. For a team which has a lot of ground ball pitchers vs. a team with a lot of fly ball pitchers, the infield values could change quite a bit. RF/9 for a SS is basically 4.00 is the minimum. 4.25 is good. 4.50 is elite, historically. Fielding percentage of .970 is the minimum, .975 is good, .980 is elite. The margins are really tight and those are "general" numbers, historically.

Yeah, no need for MiLB at all. Don't even know why guys play there? Get Houston up! For the record, Culpepper is viewed as an "adequate" SS. He's not a good shortstop. He just might not be terrible, and he's probably below average as it stands today.

I mean, this front office seems very incompetent so maybe? I'd hope not. Dude's been DFA'd 2x this year and cleared waivers both times.

Mendez's numbers at AAA are too SSS to take much from them at this point. He's got an extraordinary line drive rate so the ground ball rate really doesn't matter much. It he can suddenly become a 30% line drive hitter, he'll have success. Honestly, I expect him to be a lot like Gabriel Gonzalez as the plate appearances add up, but he's worth watching.

Hasn't played since June 9th. Not May 9th.

No team in baseball would have given Buxton what the Twins did. It was an absurd offer 7yrs $105MM for a guy who might have commanded 2-3yrs at $40-60MM max, and definitely without a NTC in free agency.

They're close to the same height and weight, too... Very important considerations.

Bummer for Abel. He'll almost certainly be headed for the 60 day IL with maybe an outside shot of making a short appearance or two in September.

The Twins typically use about 8 significant starters for a season. I think the Twins have been fine on depth and are seeing normal results. Trustworthy locks 1. Lopez 2. Ryan Untrustworthy locks 3. Bradley 4. Ober Untrustworthy possible rotation choices 5. Woods-Richardson 6. Matthews 7. Abel MiLB Depth / Reliever 8. Prielipp 9. Morris The Twins rotational depth has been touted all year, but it was honestly just "adequate" to begin with. Prielipp was not ready and the Twins told him to add/work on a pitch (curveball). He was looked at 50/50 as a starter / reliever anyway. When Lopez went down in Spring Training, the Twins depth was immediately exposed as thin.