bunsen82

Bragg is below a lotto ticket. At best he is a fungible reliever at the MLB level. You can find those. Outman and Gasper continuing to survive on the 40 man. Those 2 are not MLB level players. Keaschall's defense wasn't great at 2nd and there is the possibility you can more utilize his athleticism even with a weaker arm in the outfield. You get less than a handful of putouts. How does he do fielding the ball. Clemens bat is then a plus at 2nd even if still a tad of a liability on range. Its not a terrible set up - but we have a below average defense infield currently. Lewis, Lee, Clemens, Bell/Wagaman. You need Lee to improve and Clemens and Bell to be average, thats a lot to ask for even with defensive alinement adjustments. You can play Bell closer to the line but then that seems to open up a bigger hole that Clemens won't be able to cover. Larnach gets moved for something the question is what, and at this point it looks like at best an average to below average reliever - either in a trade or we get a prospect and open up some money to get a free agent reliever of that ilk.

In MLB they have Roden/Larnach/Buxton/Wallner/Martin. I had edited stating its not giving any opportunities for rookies. You have to trade at least Larnach - maybe 1 more. Roster construction is still a mess in my opinion.

Granted he could be a AAA option. However it does lend credence to the continued theory that has been floated, that they plan for Keaschall to be in the outfield. Clemens is then a 2nd baseman, and then you have Bell and Wagaman as a platoon/DH options. Its still means there is more moves coming and I don't see how Larnach remains on the team if the plan is for Keaschall to be in Left. His August and September were pretty decent. Lets be real, we took a prospect that is in the 40-50+ range for a player that had a 154 OPS plus for August. Granted its 1 month. You want an honest opinion, I think he is a slightly better Clemens, better hit tool with less power as of now. It appears we are trying to find more 1-2 WAR players and hoping the studs perform. As of now, looking like limited options for rookies in the outfield to start the season.

When will people realize - losing and tanking at the end of the year was as much a goal as getting the other prospects. Its why they needed to not get burned on the lottery which they didn't. They will be getting a 60 level prospect which is better than anything they can get in a trade except for Ryan. Now they will at least put some effort into rebuilding a bullpen, although will not feel nearly as good at this point. Even I have been disappointed at the lack of resources put into it. I felt you needed 2 more solid to really good reliever options.

So they didn't figure out a Castro or in a smaller sample size a Clemens? Lets not brush with a broad stroke something that isn't true.

AK, Gordon were all prior to them coming on. In reality their picks they were in control of was 2017-2019 that could have affected the MLB team. 2020 was covid draft, 2021 we traded away our top 5 picks. If you want to penalize them for that then fine. I think the players from 17-19 have done decent, not great but those drafts weren't awful by any review of the drafts. What they did not do is give us a great player. See I can admit that. Your best swing at a start was Lewis and then we took a big swing on Cavaco that completely fell apart. Success depends on 3 things, talent and more than anything hit tool, work ethic, and health. Luck can come into play but those are the 3. AK had health setbacks. Lewis appears to be more mental than anything while still being decent. What this shows is more the strategy the front office and the Twins have taken since 2017. I would have rather they fully tanked early on in an Astros type tank that built up a war chest of prospects. Just look at their picks though, they took big swings and missed. That is the odds part of this equation. But look what happened, 3-4 of their big swings hit hall of famers. Ultimately you need to swing big and hit on 2 players that are generational talents. How do you do that? You need some luck, you need to draft high and you need to have a good system in place to assist them. I think the drafting strategy has been much more sound. I take our top prospects now - against the entirety of your list above for our top prospects from 2017-2024 and say not only are they better prospects as a whole, they will have much more impact on the MLB team. Now will a couple flame out out. Absolutely. But not all of them will. You have 3 players with the highest of ceilings in Jenkins, Culpepper and Rodriguez - you have 3 individuals whose ceilings are sky high that they can be all stars or if everything clicked in the same territory of the previous 3 in Tait, Winokur, Young (winokur and Young are athletic freaks). There is ample solid prospects throughout the system. A few will become solid players. Mendez I like, I still think adding 1-2 more studs by trading Ryan, Lopez, and maybe Buxton would be smart.

I don’t know how you can like a lineup that has 3 players that won’t be at the mlb level to start 2027. Houston Tait and LeBron who odds are won’t be our pick will continue to try to improve in the minors.

Naming a top 5 is futile. Even still you are looking for players who really flash. Houston will never be a flashy prospect. Not all of our prospects will jump up to the big leagues or lose their prospect status. Gonzalez, Rodriguez and Jenkins all moving up isn’t realistic. That’s 3 outfielders meaning we traded Buxton Wallner Larnach and Roden didn’t show enough. Right now I think Jenkins is the one with eligibility left to try to get rookie of the year next year. As to prospects I really like that I think could flash. Pitchers - Soto- his stuff improved to start the season before injuries. I think he comes back and regains a top 5 spot. Dasan Hill has some dominant stuff for his age and is a lefty. I don’t know that Quick will be the best pitcher this year from his draft class. They picked up 4 potential high ceiling pitchers. Odds are 1 of those 4 is pushing a top 5 ranking. Quick overall package at draft time was the best so still odds on favorite, but Ellwanger Barr of Reitz coming out and dominating at the lower levels would not surprise me one bit. As to hitters. I think Mendez takes the Gonzalez path this year. You have Winokur or Young who have the highest of ceilings. I think this is the year Winokur has everything come together. Draft as of now odds are it’s LeBron, but I have a sneaking suspicion Emerson will fall to our pick.

Personally I think Falvey is worried, I do think his future with the Twins is highly dependent with how well the Twins do this year. Falvey thinks he can still succeed, but threading the needle is pretty slim. The bullpen is still an issue. There is only about 10-15 arms left in RP free agent market that I think can be decent to above average relievers. It is extremely picked over so far. I had always said you could rebuild a bullpen pretty quickly, but you would have to spend some money which they should have had. We just didn't. We needed to sign 1 elite arm to really good reliver - which at this point all are gone, and then at least 1 solid reliever for $3-$5 million. I am trying to figure out where you spend $13-$14 million more. Maybe they pick up 2 mediocre relievers. I will cringe if they pick up Robertson for 5-7 million. Lots of risk hoping for 1 more good season. At this point the bullpen is - Funderburk, Orze, Sands, Topa Likely to Possible additions- Klein, Adams, Ohl Altavilla, Hartwig Prospects who could be tried- Raya, Prelipp, Festa and Morris. That is a lot of question marks. Now if 2027 is the goal, I guess its better to build up those players now. But then still left in the conundrum of letting assets in Buxton and Ryan decrease in value. I still think Lopez can increase in value by having a good year. Jeffers is likely staying as we don't have anyone else to replace him and there is a possibility you could get a draft pick (even though I can admit those odds are slim, he would have to have a really good season). I think most fans are really struggling with the vision which I fully understand.

There is some aspect of coaching, but as I have said this is more of an odds game. How do you increase your odds, no different than some of the premises of Moneyball. How do you increase your odds of hitting on a player, or finding a player that is undervalued by the the rest of baseball. I still think drafting higher generally is the best precursor to increasing your odds (ie. Walker and getting the 3rd pick this year). It is really hard to find a top 20 mlb prospect with a pick lower than 10. Culpepper is not a normal outcome generally for picking in the later half. I think they are increasing their odds, will more pan out - I think so but we won't know for a few years.

Im not dealing with hype - im dealing with results Jeffers 6 plus WAR in 3 years. Lewis 4 War in 2 1/2 comple years with most of that coming in 2023. Wallner is 5 WAR in 3 years. Of the players Lewis is the one that I get the most frustrated with because when he came up he showed he could take the ball the other way. If he does that 10% of the time, he will get so many more pitches inside the plate. If he can cover the outside part better they will have to start coming more over the plate and trying to catch him inside. Right now he is strictly an inside half of the plate player which can be easily pitched around. He can be a 3-5 WAR player if he makes adjustments and remains healthy, will he that is the question. I can keep a straight face with Rooker. It proves my point really good players can struggle sometimes in the big leagues and it can take time. Ehem Ehem Lee. Now will Lee figure it out. Personally yes, but I understand you haven't seen it yet (results oriented and all). I understand your points - but it also is not acknowledging that the Twins have more and better prospects for positional players, since maybe 2013-2015 when Buxton and Sano were leading the minors. There was hype over Miranda - who had 1 really good season. There was hype over Julien. Then hype over Lewis. Jenkins, Culpepper and Gonzalez have all shown better in the minors than almost any of the other players and Jenkins and Gonzalez at a younger age. That is excluding Mendez as well. Those 4 have some of the best hit tools, of the best prospects the Twins have had in the system since Arraez and before that???? Hit tool generally translates. When you have 4 players with very good to elite hit tool, the results will likely be very good. I can look at the whole picture. I understand some of your frustrations, but you are massively undervaluing the players that Falvey has drafted and that are at the MLB level - and giving no credit to the prospects in the system. Just my opinion. I will leave it there because it does appear we won't agree on this topic.

To be fair, he got ridiculed for what he received at the trade deadline deals even though the value seems to be pretty good. I don't want him to give away Ryan. I also don't think Ryan will lose much value between now and the trade deadline. If he puts up a similar season to last season while maintaining his performance towards the end of the season you could still get a really good return. The best offer may have been at the trade deadline but its hard to know what was being offered from the Red Sox.

If you have 3 minority owners, they are not buying the team, they are all in this as an investment, meaning don't expect in massive salary improvements. They will want to manage the debt, then see what the new CBA brings. Personally I think they are all taking a bit of a gamble here.

You keep wanting to say past performance is making you completely discount the performance of current prospects. Even though that isn't true. Rooker is an all star. Jeffers will likely have almost a 10 War with us (6.5 in the last 3 years) . That is not an average player. He has a career 105 OPS and higher than that in the last 3 years. You take that any day of the week. If you had a team of Jeffers you would win a lot of games. Lewis is a 4 WAR player. I think he has some things to tweak but again that is not a below average player. In his first full season yes Lee was a below average player. That is stating he won't improve. The one thing I know I can say about Lee is he is a tireless worker, he will be in his age 25 season. He doesn't have a high ceiling but he can easily be a solid second baseman, shortstop or utility player in the future. I personally see him as a 1-2 WAR per a year utility player and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Yes its optimistic. It also plays in line with what he has done at the previous levels of the MLB. What we know is its a big jump from AAA to MLB, that it takes players a bit to adjust is something we have to acknowledge, you want to say modicum of success in Martin - granted a traded player, but he had 1/2 of a good season with the Twins. Which then means you are having a recency bias as well which I think is part of the issue with your assessment of Jeffers. The law of averages says if you have had less success you can have more success in the future. There is also the law of averages, that the more quality and the larger number of quality prospects will inevitably produce more and better quality MLB players. So in summary yes I am an optimist, but I also look at the numbers. I think you need to also. Don't just be a major debbie downer.

To be fair Keaschall looks dang good. Lewis has a wide variety of outcomes as does Wallner, as both could easily take a longer road just like Rooker. He did draft Jeffers. Overall though, those 17-19 drafts haven't produced enough, or an all star or elite player or let the 1 that we did walk away even though he struggled with 2 other teams before he found his footing with the A's. The 2020 draft is nullified due to Covid, then we traded away most of our 2021 draft (Steer 2019, CES and Petty although not a position player) to supplement the MLB team. So we are left with the 22-24 drafts to produce our position players and on that front we have some pretty darn good options. Jenkins, Culpepper, Keaschall (already mentioned), Lee has a chance to be average to slightly above average (not likely an all star), Diaw is very interesting, Amick, Winokur and Debarge. This is more talent and more quality talent than anything we drafted in those 2017-2019 drafts. Then you add in the players we traded for in Gonzalez, Mendez and Tait (and don't sleep on Jimenez). I am actually quite optimistic moving forward. You need quality players to develop into MLB players, and say what you will there wasn't much in the system when they came, Falvey had a big swing and a miss with Cavaco. Since 2021 - they have done a much better job bringing in pretty solid positional players into the mix. If you want to keep things real this is what I see.

If we were doing a true article - 1. Kaelen Culpepper (SS/3B) - 25+ Home run potential with a good hit tool. He looks extremely solid. 2. Gabriel Gonzalez ( - I love his bat the best of anyone in the system not named Jenkins. He just doesn't provide the defensive versatility the a Culpepper or Jenkins does. 3. Billy Amick (1st/3rd) - .310/418/.455 slash line at A+ is very very good. Now he was outmatched in fall ball. He was playing against players at higher levels - and he still somehow managed to get an OBP of nearly .300. he may struggle as he moves up - but he has 30+ homer potential. I felt his hit tool was much better than anticipated. Had I told you when we drafted him he would hit .310 in Cedar Rapids this year I would say 99% of the people would have laughed.

Marlins signed Fairbanks to a 1 yr deal at $13 million. This comes after they announced they lost Henriquez for the year. The high leverage relievers are effectively all gone but Robertson. I don’t see him taken a big value deal either after waiting out most of the year last year.

Jokes aside, they have some really good young players for a foundation to build upon.

Let’s be realistic, the pirates are being forced by the league to spend more, trying to take advantage of Skenes next 2 years before they have to trade him. Acting like this is a bad thing just seems wierd. I am glad the Pirates should have a competitive team. $ for $ I take the Bell deal over the O’Hearn deal.

I disagree best offers generally come January or February when teams have big plans or have a window open for the season but have struck out on free agents.

What I have gotten out of the Rosenthal report is they aren’t approaching teams about Ryan and as of now they are planning to start the season with him. They haven’t shut down conversations though and if someone was really serious and gave them an overpay they will do. Or wait until the trade deadline. Ryan continues to dominate the 1st half of the season, so I think this approach should work out ok.

A team like the Twins will always have 1-2 fillers. The issue is you need 5-6 good hitters with 1-2 really good or elite to be successful. How do we find 5-6 good hitters. Buxton can be a complimentary piece likely a really good 5-6 hitter or 2 hitter if could increase his OBP. Keaschall has the makings of a really good hitter. Now we will see how pitchers attack him. So we need 4 more. Can Lee or Lewis or Wallner (he is the closest, but too much swing and miss) develop, does it come from prospect pool. I think Lee has a better chance at becoming a good to very good hitter than Lewis in my opinion. Now as you find more good hitters it takes less pressure off the other players and gives them more opportunities. I still stand by the more at bats any player can get, the more opportunity they have to figure things out. The Twins issue at the end of the season was we were starting 3-4 fillers each game.

@Riverbrian I agree with most of what you said. The biggest point is what is the difference between a top 10 prospect vs a top 50. To me it more comes from what level of prospect. There is a fangraphs article from earlier this year. A level 65 prospect has a 33% chance of becoming a star for positional player and it falls off immensely. For pitchers it’s much more equal, 25% for a 60- 50 level prospect it’s effectively the same chances of a star with a higher flameout rate of the lower level prospect. Other than Lewis and Walker we haven’t really had an elite prospect. That’s been the knock on the system, decent depth not the elite player. If you want a hot take, I think Correa was a horrible influence for young players. I think his focus was swing as hard as you can and forget about being a balanced hitter. Miranda had 1 elite year, but is based on contact and spraying the ball, not power. Suddenly Correa becomes his best friend and he is trying to crush and pull everything and he completely lost his identity and confidence. I see the same issues with Lewis. When he came up he was a balanced hitter. He had some success crushing balls inside, then has completely lost the ability to hit an outside pitch. I know the game is difficult and there will be flameouts. I have always said it’s about increasing your odds. Same as the draft. For me there are 2 elite shortstops right now and I hope we get 1 of them.

They were last in the top 5 in 2015 led by Buxton and Sano. 2020 was the last time we had a top 10 farm system. Otherwise we have been in the teens a lot. We will graduate some talent this year. This draft class should give us another top 2 prospect in our system. By the end of this year, I expect 3 of the following pitchers to have very good years- Priellip, Soto, Hill, Quick, Barr Ellwanger and Reitz. By really good I mean pushing top 100 lists. I agree we should trade Ryan now for an elite talent. We shouldn’t half measure this. Load up this year prospects, trade at deadline Ober or Lopez and Buxton, start the youth movement and have 1 more really good draft in 2027. At that point we can supplement 2027 with free agents.

I am not willing to kick Falvey to the curb because the 24 and 25 teams didn't meet expectations. It happens, but whether some want to admit it or not - The organization is likely in its best shape for long term success that it has had since Falvey took over. You may disagree but we have an absolutely a crapload of highend arms in the minors. Pitching - Rojas, Hill, Priellip, Quick, Soto - add in Festa, Matthews, Bradley and Abel. Young pitchers Reitz, Ellwanger and Barr. Hitters - Jenkins Culpepper and Rodriguez Gonzalez. Then some high ceiling players in Young and Winokur. Add in Mendez who has a really really good bat. There are other position players but those are the most likely to make an impact. I don't know that we have had 7 or more players at all levels in the minors who had the potential like this and we should be adding another extremely good class of prospects in the next draft. The minors is pretty well balanced, we will have ample opportunity for the young players. Falvey developed this, I am willing to see if he can finish the remake of the Twins. We aren't succeeding in 2026, and I am ok with that. I am ok with watching some decent baseball for the 1st half of the season. Most likely we will be trading 1 or more of Jeffers, Ryan, Buxton, Lopez and Ober. We will see.