Road trip

CES absolutely raked at AA and AAA in 2022 and 2023 when he was in his early 20's, but something went terribly wrong with him. I have no idea what, although I recall he did have some back issues. It may also be that for many players the gap between AAA and the majors is a chasm too vast to cross. He's young enough yet that someone, somewhere, is likely to sign him to a minor league contract. I have doubts that it should be the Twins, but have to note that CES is the same age as Anthony Sabato and has been a much better hitter than Sabato at every level. Sabato is more or less our "prospect" at 1B for St Paul, if you can still be generous enough to call him a prospect. Nobody at Wichita is primed to move up to fill 1B either. So.... maybe?

The Twins defense is bad, to be sure, almost everywhere on the diamond. And yet an equally large problem is the offense. They just can't score runs with any consistency. Just look at shortstop production. The best defender at SS in 2025 was Bobby Witt, at 18 runs prevented above average for the year (per Baseball Savant). That makes Witt worth 19 runs more than Brooks Lee on defense (Lee was -1 last year). But look at their respective offensive production... it's a chasm, far more than the 19 runs worth of difference. Heck, Witt's offensive value over Lee might be worth more than 19 runs in a month! And you can do this all over the diamond, save for CF if Buxton stays healthy and has a good year. Even for traditional offense-first positions like LF and 1B the Twins roster players that are below average hitters. It's gonna be a long year..

Yeah, I mean, he should have just struck out 😉

The fact that Lee was a touted prospect and a 1st round pick still matters, at least at this point. Out of the 2022 first round picks, only Jackson Holliday, Cade Horton, and Zach Neto look like sure-fire major leaguers, and frankly only Neto has had significant success in the majors thus far. It's still early in Lee's career. Results haven't been as encouraging as hoped. Maybe 2022 was just a weak draft, but I wouldn't give up on Lee's bat until he gets to 1000 plate appearances.

Yes, that would be fine for a defensively elite SS, but that batting line seems really optimistic for Houston. .240 is league average these days. Maybe he can become Mark Belanger. That would be valuable. Just understand what you are wishing for: Gold Glove defense with an OPS+ of 68 (that's really bad, btw).

Plan for the future. Don't live in the past. As much as we want a return of 2023 Pablo/Twins, nobody has a time travel machine. The odds of Pablo returning to his prior form are poor. He's suffered a serious injury, and the track record for pitchers undergoing a 2nd UCL is not good. This is especially true of starters over age 30. It was a devastating event for the franchise. If the Twins want to contend again someday they have to face reality and think with their heads, not their hearts.

Martin is really the only player of this list that I want to see on the roster. He might still have some upside, but its almost now or never for him. The other bench options listed in the article are AAAA filler, and that unfortunately may include Clemens. By 2029 we will struggle to remember that any of them once wore a Twins uniform.

It seems likely. Pulled his hamstring severely in April and was on the IL for the next six weeks. Hamstring injuries can be notoriously slow to fully heal for some athletes. His loss of speed may be permanent, or perhaps a winter off will result in slightly better sprint speed this year. We can only hope, because a faster Wallner would be somewhat less of a liability in the field.

A totally valid concern. Unfortunately, the numbers for Abel aren't all that much better, although he ramped up a little last year. 108, 113, 108, and 137 innings pitched. Similar numbers for other young starters like Zebby. For better or worse (I have no idea) this seems to be how young starters are being developed pretty much everywhere. It isn't just a Twins thing. Ideally, by current (low) standards you'd like to have starters that can get to the 150-160 inning pitched range, but it seems very few pitchers throw that many as they advance through the minors. Thus, you don't really find out much about endurance for young pitchers until they get to the majors. I certainly hope this low bar can be cleared by some of the Twins young starters, be it Abel or someone else.

I hate the City Connect uniforms less as time has passed...kind of like I hate the Yankees less as time has passed since their last World Series title. Still hate them, just with a little less passion. They remain an easy last place for me. I'm totally with the Great Hambino on the red uniforms from a decade ago. Bring 'em back.

Agree, sort of, for recent history because the Dodgers have been buying titles of late.. they've developed very few members of their core. But you don't have to go back all that far to see development success stories. The 2014 Giants, 2015 Royals, 2016 Cubs, and 2017 Astros all won titles with cores that were largely developed internally. That was a golden age for developing your own players. Even the 2019 Nationals were substantially home grown in the lineup plus Strassburg. Sure, they all brought in a player or three from outside the organization, but their stars were developed. Is that era gone? Maybe. I hope that development can win a title again, because the Twins ownership is never going to spend like the Dodgers and other big money franchises. Will they sign an injured Pablo to an extension? Who knows. My heart wouldn't complain, but my head would.

Look, I get that Pablo is loved, and we want him to remain a Twin, but those advocating signing him to another contract now should study the results for 2nd UCL surgeries. Add in the fact that Pablo is older than average for this procedure, and the odds of him returning to prior form are very bad. See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39741491/ TLDR result: MLB pitchers provided only half of their value to teams at 3 years postoperatively. Longer version: At 3 seasons postoperatively, pitchers returned to performance in pitch count (55%), expected fielding independent pitching (68%), fWAR (48%), velocity (76%), fastball velocity (80%), horizontal movement (81%), vertical movement (66%), Stuff+ (78%), Location+ (89%), and Pitching+ (78%) at varying degrees. Only 3.9%, 11.8%, and 28.1% of pitchers returned to full performance by 1, 2, and 3 seasons postoperatively, respectively. Only an additional 19.3% of pitchers met 4 out of 5 full performance criteria. Binary logistic regression identified starting pitchers and preoperative faster velocity and older age as strong negative predictors of return to full performance.

Worst offseason ever. There are those on here who have memories much longer than mine, but even in the late 70's when Griffith lost or traded just about every player with a pulse, well at least they tempted fans to dream about a future outfield of Bombo Rivera, Willie Norwood, and Hosken Powell. Ah, the Good Ole Days! Maybe we were just more gullible then... Griffith at least had the excuse of owning in an era with no revenue sharing, no significant TV money, and no other source of income, unlike our current batch of public welfare Banksters.

Pecota projection for the Twins? Yeah somewhere in the 70-79 win range is reasonable. Pecota is higher than my guess, but it's a reasonable projection. I must be missing something on the Pecota projection for Detroit. This is a team that won 87 games last year, returns nearly everyone of importance, and nearly their entire core from last year is under age 30. Everyday players like Greene, Keith, Dingler, and Torkelson should get better as they are all under their age 27 season. They added Valdez and Kenley Janssen. Unless last year Detroit was just unreasonably lucky, I can't fathom why Pecota projects they should be dramatically worse this year.

This may be a case of "misinformation is everywhere". There are different numbers in different places. If you look at Spotrac salary data, which is used to compute MLB Luxury tax numbers, you get a different picture of the Twins payroll. It includes "dead money" for players that are gone but on payroll, not just the active roster: 2020: 168 million 2021: 145 million 2022: 173 million 2023: 177 million 2024: 160 million 2025: 141 million 2026 (projected): 110 million In that time, the Twins went from being consistently middle of the pack in MLB salaries to 23rd in 2025. 2026 is too early to project, but it likely won't be much higher in the rankings. I was also ready for Falvey to move on, for many of the reasons listed above, but the idea that the Pohlads didn't change spending habits seems suspect.