bean5302

I was a Twins season ticket holder the past few years. I got a complimentary MLB.TV package. I am wondering if Twins season ticket holders will receive complimentary Twins MLB.TV packages. I will also believe it when I see it. Last year blackouts weren't going to be a thing, and then the Twins pivoted.

I'll believe it when I see it. Wonder how this will work for the few season ticket holders next year?

The Twins have juuuuuuuuust enough talent on the roster right now to maybe compete for a playoff spot next year if everything goes well. There is definitely no room for losing 2 WAR to save a pittance like $4MM. Your approach would also signal a full rebuild, IMHO. Side note... what is Vazquez going to mentor? How to be old? How to land a contract you don't deserve? How to be physically "short" so they have an advantage in strike zone because of umpire viewing perspectives?

Falvey has drafted exactly 1 legit high round catcher during his tenure, and Ryan Jeffers is just about out of service time now. Khadim Diaw was drafted this season, but he's really an OF masquerading as a catcher 50% of the time. He threw out a miserable 11.5% of base runners looking to advance on him, even in A-ball where good catchers can nab base runners 40 or 50% of the time, and his bat doesn't profile well without adding a lot of power. With zero semi-reliable high minors catching depth, the Twins aren't exactly in a good spot. This has been talked about multiple times this year, and in an article about the future roster already. The Twins aren't going to have any free agency options cheaper than the net cost of Vazquez. I suppose the Twins could eat some of Vazquez's contract or wrap a prospect into a trade to get him off the books with the whole contract being shed. That'd put Jair Camargo (who put up a wRC+ 76 season at AAA), as depth and Chris Williams behind him. Not sure if the Twins will move to protect Williams from the rule 5 draft this year since they exposed him last year. Back to back above average years at the plate in AAA along with... passable controlling of the run game make Williams a potential grab for a team somewhere in MLB, but he'll be coming into next year at age 28, but if he's already striking out at an over 30% clip with all of his experience and polish at AAA, you'd have to believe he'll be over 40% at MLB. Jeffers is the only catcher in the high minors or on the roster who would be likely to generate more than 1.0 WAR at the MLB level. There's just no good way to trade anybody.

Ryan had a grade 2 strain of the teres major. It's not considered serious at all in regard to becoming a long term issue, but it takes a while for that to heal up. Kinda like a pulled hamstring. The expectation is always a full recovery, but it generally takes a player close to 2 months to return. If the regular season was still ongoing at this point, I'd expect Ryan would probably be throwing bullpens by now.

Brooks Lee gets a pass because he was coming back from injury and because he was a rookie? He got plate appearances, a lot of plate appearances, and he struggled massively with them even after he got time off to recover from his physical ailments and other players had to push through theirs. His job was to hit, and he didn't. A month of .178/.200/.301 OPS .501 wRC+ 32 with 2 walks over those 75 PA isn't getting it done. With a miserable 27.4% hard hit rate and an average exit velocity of 86.7mph, it's not like Lee was deserving of better. His rolling xwOBA chart is... tough to look at.

You're really confident in your position, but it makes no sense. Throws to 1B are short for RF'ers, but long for LF'ers. However, and outfielder making a throw to 1B is super rare. Throws to home or to 2B are the same for a RF or LF. No difference. Throws to 3B are short for LF'ers, but long for RF'ers. Outfielder throws to 3B are common. The furthest throw which might make a difference for arm strength in the throw from RF to 3B, and a strong armed RF prevents base runners from potentially trying to take 3B or getting thrown out more often if they do. That's why right fielders typically have a stronger arm.

$7.5MM isn't too much. $37MM (Correa) + $22MM (Lopez) + $15MM (Buxton) + $10MM (Vazquez) + $7.5MM (Paddack) = $92MM is too much if you have a $130MM total payroll and 21 other active roster positions to fill. The structure of Correa's contract was designed with the expectation the Pohlad's would continue to be committed to the spending plan. The Pohlad's clearly went Crazy Ivan on the plan and now Correa's contract structure is creating a huge problem. At least this year is truly the toughest pinch year. Correa drops $5MM next year, Vazquez & Paddack drop off the books, though depth is becoming a real big concern for the Twins.

Paddack is $7.5MM. Jax & Duran are going to be $7MMish. Does anybody truly believe Falvey would roll out a $20MM+ bullpen? Paddack will be traded or in the rotation. Given Paddack hasn't turned in a single decent season since his rookie campaign 6 years ago and he's $7.5MM, I'd have to say the trade market for him is going to be rough. I think the Twins will have to eat a big portion of his salary, and then you have a rotation thin on depth with no money to fix it. 60% Paddack in the rotation 40% Twins eat some money or throw in a prospect (or draft pick like with Hughes) to get Paddack off the roster.

The point of a rebuild is to push off highly compensated players who can't carry an otherwise depleted roster to a World Series championship (except the Twins change that to "carry an otherwise depleted roster to an excitingly competitive .500 ballclub which has a shot at the playoffs maybe") The Twins can probably sustain an also-ran .500 ballclub indefinitely. They can't sustain World Series caliber teams without a rebuild in there somewhere.

Falvey has pretty much tied himself to Baldelli the way Gardy tied himself to Anderson. The Pohlads haven't demanded accountability in a long time, and it took them a very, very long time to move on from Terry Ryan and Ron Gardenhire previously. It feels like Jim Pohlad (the actual owner) is aging into his father. Miser on payroll, nepotism and cronyism with no accountability in management/front office leadership. It's really infuriating to see the ownership act so unbelievably entitled to money. Like watching the big oil execs in an investigation on price fixing with the US Senate many years ago where oil execs basically said, we're going to charge whatever we want, and if you increase taxes to hurt our pocketbook, we'll just raise prices to make ourselves whole again. Jim Pohlad feels entitled to revenue.

I don't think the Twins are in a position they should "rebuild" right now, but they're not far off from it. I don't expect the team will be competitive next year without a very creative offseason or a highly increased payroll. Worst case scenario is KC goes to the World Series. Their owner is already lobbying for a new stadium, and he has proven to be unlike the Pohlad's so he's willing to open the wallet wide in a window. It wouldn't surprise me to see KC push to $150MM. Detroit is large market and I expect their payroll to expand into that 160-180MM range next year. Cleveland seems to just be competitive regardless. The AL Central is shaping up to be a very tough division next year. The Twins will have their work cut out for them to make the playoffs. They need guys to stay healthy. An season ending injury to a high performer would be potentially catastrophic.

Kirilloff has zero trade value. Position players who are going to be non-tendered when you're going to pay them less than $2MM in arbitration do not have trade value. The best you can hope for is an even swap with another non-tender candidate you think you can fix, but the Twins don't have the payroll space to take on even salary. So yeah. If Randy Dobnak was on another team, the Twins could trade Kirilloff for him. Even cutting Castro, Farmer, Kepler, and Santana will have the Twins at their payroll limit. Taking on a couple million for another non-tender guy

We don't have any other catchers. Vazquez is the 4th worst hitter with 600+ PA in all of MLB over the past two years. Camargo had a wRC+ 76 performance in AAA last year. Probably be worse than Vazquez projecting that, to be honest. Jeffers is going nowhere.

Was Kepler ever looking like a non-tender candidate? Like I said, expectations vs. actual production is how I graded. Your snark aside, I would have given Kepler an A in 2019. Larnach doesn't control the lineup card. Of all the hitters with 400+ PA this year, Trevor Larnach ranked 42nd in all of MLB.

Not a similar situation. Larnach was pre-arb and had options, plus he's not a complete butcher on defense and plays a more valuable defensive position. Kirilloff's career WAR is 0.0. Literally. Larnach wasn't a great outfielder, but he was probably a 1.5 WAR player in a full year coming into this season.

There is no potential in Kirilloff. Kirilloff is at 884 PA. He is a DH only player .248/.309/.412 wRC+ 99 hitter across those plate appearances. There is nothing in his hitting profile which stands out as a plus. Doesn't get on base because he doesn't take walks. Strikes out a lot. Doesn't have impressive power. Doesn't have an impressive hit tool. What is this "potential" people keep talking about? The fact he could somehow totally transform himself into a hitter he's never shown at the MLB level? Even in his lucky BABIP fueled 2023 campaign Kirilloff was worth an unremarkable 0.6 fWAR. About 1.0 fWAR in a full season. Brent Rooker only had a 270 PA across 3 years before he broke out with the A's. Teams simply didn't give Rooker a chance.

He won more games than a GM overseeing a full rebuild? Impressive. Bill Smith average season 83-79. Playoffs 2 times in 4 years 50%. Draft/international successes: Miguel Sano (AS), Max Kepler, Jorge Polanco (AS), Brian Dozier (AS) Aaron Hicks, Kyle Gibson (AS), Eddie Rosario. That's over 100 career WAR in 4 years including 4 All Stars (3 with the Twins) Terry Ryan average season 69-93. Playoffs 0 times in 5 years. Draft/international successes: Byron Buxton (AS), Jose Berrios (AS), Tyler Duffey, Taylor Rogers, Mitch Garver, LaMonte Wade, Jose Miranda, Akil Baddoo, Griffin Jax, Tyler Wells. About 75 career WAR in 5 years. Just 2 All Star selections, but both with the Twins. Derek Falvey average season 84-78. Playoffs 4 times in 8 years 50%. Draft/international successes: Bailey Ober, Brent Rooker (AS), Ryan Jeffers, Royce Lewis, Matt Wallner, Spencer Steer, Eddie Julien, Trevor Larnach. About 35 career WAR in 8 years. 1 All Star selection, none with the Twins. While Falvey certainly has the advantage in terms of career ahead of his players drafted, he has a long, long way to go to catch Bill Smith, especially considering he's had twice as long as the head of baseball.

The changes Falvey made to the analytics and scouting departments were absolutely necessary to be competitive. No doubt about that. He just hasn't made particularly good use of the tools. I actually meant to post the fWAR in a different topic, but was super busy, LOL. Oh well.

Alex Kirilloff is a non-tender for sure. If the Twins want him back, they can just be the first to offer him a MiLB contract because he's not going to get an MLB offer.

No, it's really not. I just did the quick math on this for some other Pablo Lopez lover the other day. The Twins pitched 1440 innings last year. Their team's defensive values are as follows: OAA = 0 runs ERA = FIP DRS = -19 runs ERA =+0.12 vs. FIP UZR = -30 runs ERA = +0.18 vs. FIP Defense matters, but for guys like Lopez, not nearly enough to account for his ERA being much higher than FIP. FIP says every single pitcher is identical. There are no ground ball or fly ball pitchers. Every pitcher has the same pitch type, amount of hard contact, and the same launch angles. No pitcher is different out of the stretch than the windup. No pitchers hold runners better than another. It's purely hypothetical and terribly out of date. It's barely better than just using ERA as a predictive stat.

I really don't understand why people think Falvey has done something great in terms of draft/development for the Twins. The best position player he's ever signed out of the draft barely played for the team before being tossed in as a candy bar in the Taylor Rogers trade. Falvey's drafts highest fWAR (everybody at 1.0 or higher fWAR) 2017 Ober 7.7 fWAR 1.5 per expected season 2017 Rooker 6.7 fWAR 1.3 per expected season 2018 Jeffers 6.4 fWAR 1.5 per expected season 2017 Lewis 4.0 fWAR 1.0 per expected season 2019 Wallner 3.8 fWAR 1.9 per expected season 2019 Steer 3.1 fWAR 1.0 per expected season 2019 Julien 2.8 fWAR 0.9 per expected season 2018 Larnach 2.6 fWAR 0.7 per expected season 2018 Sands 1.3 fWAR 0.3 per expected season 2021 Festa 1.1 fWAR 1.1 per expected season 2017 Faucher 1.1 fWAR (traded to Tampa with Cruz for Ryan) 0.2 per expected season Not a great record across 8 years of drafting considering good prospects generally make the majors in 3 years out of college and 4 years out of high school. That means we would expect good prospects from 2017 to have 4-5 years of MLB experience. A solid starter would have accumulated 8-10 WAR already. Not one single drafted and signed player from Falvey's regime is averaging 2.0 fWAR per season based on 3yrs of development for college and 4yrs of development for high school players. Only Rooker has earned an All Star nod, and it wasn't with the Twins. Complain about injuries all you like. In the world of "business," if the Pohlads are actually running one, results are supposed to be what matters.

Compared to Falvey and the Pohlads is what I think is relevant. What I feel is being discussed is how Levine fit into the management style of the Twins, and I think it's safe to say it feels like Levine was more aggressive and bullish on risk. Since the Pohlad family focused on cutting the front office last year to save money, it seems reasonable to conclude they were going to cut the front office to save more money this year. Not sure if Levine had the option of returning or if he made the decision based on differences of opinion on the direction of the club after the new conservative payroll approach directed by the Pohlad's.

Yeah, I do not see Paddack in the bullpen as an option for Minnesota. Even Jax and Duran will combine for around $6-7MM on their own, and they're pushing the limits of what Falvey will accept. Anything over $5.0MM in the bullpen for the Twins gets into the "nope" category. Remember when they pushed Taylor Rogers off the books because he hit $6MM? Here are the top bullpen salaries by year under Falvey. 2017 - Glen Perkins $6.5MM 2018 - Addison Reed $8.3MM 2019 - Sam Dyson $5MM 2020 - Sergio Romo $4.8MM 2021 - Alex Colome $5.0MM 2022 - Micheal Fulmer $5.0MM 2023 - Emilio Pagan $3.5MM

Right now the Twins 2025 rotation is: Lopez, Ryan, Ober, Paddack, Woods-Richardson Depth Festa, Matthews, Morris I expect it will change before opening day via injuries or roster changes. Festa's fastball/slider combo gives him a nice high floor of at least high end reliever, but the lack of a true plus pitch and a 3 pitch combo (assuming the changeup can even play long term) limits his ceiling a lot. He's probably going to be capped at #4 level. Matthews has a lot of pitches, but they're all pretty league average. Without any plus movement stuff, he's going to need to really excel at pitch placement, which he was average at this season as well. His floor is probably lower than Festa's right now down to middle relief at worst, and it's tough to see Matthews getting out of the back of the rotation without significant further development.