Road trip

Yup. Gotta develop players. By comparison, here are some that Cleveland developed in the same time period: Jose Ramirez, Francisco Lindor, Carlos Santana, Steven Kwan, Travis Bazzana, Adam Miller, Trevor Bauer (ok, ick), Shane Bieber, and Gavin Williams. That's a whole lotta All Star appearances. Ramirez is likely going to HOF, and Lindor may have a shot.

Wow, that was depressing. As a whole, the top prospects have really under-performed expectations. At least there was a little success with some 2nd-tier prospects (Dozier, Jeffers, Rosario, Arraez, Duran, etc). Of course, almost all of those guys are gone now too.

Innings limit, huh. Optimistically, if he gets five more starts, he might get to about 130 innings pitched this year. Grumpy old guy comment: Blyleven, et al, used to hit that before the All Star Break. More modern grumpy comment: Cleveland's top 3 starters all project to hit 180-190 innings this year, and all are 27 or younger.

I'm kind of here. Not mentioned yet: The minor league system/philosophy. Position players arrive at MLB unprepared for the tasks they should have mastered earlier. Outfielders throw to the wrong base or miss cut off men. Players are suddenly thrust into defensive positions they rarely played in the minors. The can't execute a freaking bunt in the bottom of the 10th because they were never asked to bunt in a game in the minors (Ross... last night, 2 bunts in over 2000 minor league plate appearances). Starting pitchers run out of gas at 80 pitches because that's all they ever throw in the minors. And finally, quite trying to turn every player into a pull/power hitter.

I love the optimism, but check out this group from what is ancient history for many on the board. You won't find many infields that generate 20 WAR: Rk Player Age Pos WAR G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS OPS+ rOBA Rbat+ TB GIDP HBP SH SF IBB Pos Awards 1 John Roseboro* 36 C 0.4 115 406 361 33 95 12 0 3 32 5 5 39 44 .263 .333 .321 .654 81 .308 76 116 6 0 3 3 12 *2/H AS 2 Rich Reese* 27 1B 3.1 132 451 419 52 135 24 4 16 69 1 5 23 57 .322 .362 .513 .875 139 .394 141 215 6 5 1 3 3 *3H/7 MVP-29 3 Rod Carew* 23 2B 5.5 123 504 458 79 152 30 4 8 56 19 8 37 72 .332 .386 .467 .853 134 .411 148 214 7 3 6 0 0 *4/H AS,MVP-10 4 Leo Cárdenas 30 SS 5.1 160 665 578 67 162 24 4 10 70 5 6 66 96 .280 .353 .388 .741 104 .349 106 224 19 4 8 9 12 *6 MVP-12 5 Harmon Killebrew 33 3B 6.2 162 709 555 106 153 20 2 49 140 8 2 145 84 .276 .427 .584 1.011 177 .454 180 324 16 5 0 4 20 53 Nobody threatened to win a Gold Glove, but they sure could hit. The '69 Twins also had Cesar Tovar as a utility man, and he put up another 4.6 WAR playing about a third of his games in the infield.

Not effective early in the game, when trading outs for a single run may not be wise, as you diminish the possibility of a multi-run inning. Very effective in the bottom of the 9th or extra innings where a single run wins the game.

Explain to me how a marginal prospect like Ross could have spent years in the minors and only be called on to bunt twice in his career. Now when it's needed he can't do it. Failure of coaching and prepping.

No.... but if he gets to 5 he would be in some pretty rare air. Looks like almost everyone with 4 titles is in the HOF, but times have changed (Bill Madlock is the only exception who isn't). Above 4 titles and it is really only elite first ballot guys (Carew, Boggs, Williams, Musial, etc). By every other metric Arraez has a ways to go, but he does have a skill set that may allow him to play a long time if his legs stay healthy. Maybe they could build a unicorn annex for players like Arraez. He's a great story, and the baseball loves a great story.

If he stays in Philly it probably won't be his last. Great hitters park. Heck, may not be his last regardless of where he goes..

Is that actually possible (buyout avoidance)? If it were possible, why wouldn't every MLB team that didn't intend to exercise the option simply release the player in late September?

I'll take total revenue sharing for $100, Alex. Local TV, tickets, merch, beer sales, everything. Cap and Floor. The actuaries say I don't have that many seasons left to enjoy, but if the system finances can be changed to give all teams a 1/30 chance of a World Series every year instead of a 1/250 chance (Vegas) the Twins had under the current system I'd gladly sacrifice the entirety of next season to get it. There is no realistic hope the Twins will win another World Series in my lifetime under the current system.

Deserves based on past performance, or expected future performance? Bell has had an unfathomably great year hitting with RISP (.353/.400/.632) in 150 plate appearances. Hence, he drove in many runs. He performed very well under pressure this year. But those rates are way above his career marks. That's HOF-level hitting. Does anyone realistically expect him to repeat those rates? His career rates are only .277/.372/.485. Solid but not spectacular. I suspect that is likely what we might expect for him going forward. Is that worth $10 million from a DH?

Yup, it worked very well for late-career Torii Hunter. He had some great years in RF.

If I'm feeling super, super, super generous I could theorize that they want to maximize his playing time the next three weeks and will call him up on Sept 22 to play a few MLB games after the Saint's season has ended. But I'm tired of lying to myself... Zoll is what we feared he is.

I think the Twins have forgotten him, at least for this year. Calling up Gonzalez instead of Wallner kind of confirms that. Having said that, many on here are saying "$20 million is too much for Jeffers" while others are calling for spending $10 million on Bell. There is no obvious external or internal candidate to replace Jeffers. Spend the money on Jeffers you were going to give to Bell, who can be replaced at DH by absolutely anyone, be it Wallner, Keaschall, Buxton, Sabato, or a cheap free agent pickup. Yes, there will very possibly be a drop off in production compared to Bell, but the drop off is minimal compared to a chasm-sized drop off if Jeffers isn't the catcher. I'd vastly prefer Jeffers + random DH in 2027 compared to Bell + random catcher.

I don't think there is a chance in '27. His long term home might be in the outfield, not behind the plate. His caught stealing percentages (less than 10%) would make him unplayable as a catcher in today's game. He might improve, but it won't be overnight.

Solid "no" on spending on a DH, unless it means spending on Jeffers to come back to do a Catcher/DH 50-50 split. There are only a half dozen difference makers at most in the league who are primarily DH's, and we aren't going to get Schwarber, Alvarez, or Ohtani.

My expectations were 85-90 losses, so they've overachieved that...maybe. They could certainly lose more than 85 yet. I didn't expect them to "contend" for a playoff spot, but who could have imagined that the American League would be historically awful? Meaningful games in August have been a plus. But I also expected or hoped we would have a younger squad by now. So many young players got hurt. This is an old roster. It's hard to project substantial improvement next year, and that is depressing. This group certainly is not the 1986 Twins or even the 2000 Twins. Both of those squads lost games but both were young and on the rise.. I'd rather be there than where the franchise is today.

You are both kinda correct, depending on what part of the season you are looking at. Their pitching staff started the year relatively young, but injuries and trades led to adding Kremer (30), Nance (35), Minter (32), and Hoffman (33). With pitching staffs "healthy" is a more important qualifier that "age" anyway, and health has been an issue amongst both young and old pitchers this year. Now the position players... unforgivably old for a small spending franchise. The Twins rank 10th in age of position players (see https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/2026-misc.shtml), but the 9 teams above them and the 3 teams below them are big spenders, almost all of them with double to triple the Twins payroll. The Tigers, Guardians, and White Sox have much younger squads, which doesn't bode well for future AL Central races.

Jenkins and EmRod are the semi-obvious candidates, plus there will be another pitcher added Sept 1... might be Raya. Wallner immediately IF Bell would get hurt. Otherwise I don't think he has a route to playing time. He started hitting in AAA two months ago and didn't get called back so I don't think he will now either. Look for him next year in KC/Cincy/Colorado/etc. Or a 1% chance of somehow hitting 30 bombs for the Yankees...because that's how we roll. Instead, of course, it'll be Gray...

That is a bit of a sobering list. Some names I expected, but some were surprises. I have generally thought that given his speed, Keaschall would inevitably be able to convert to a decent outfielder with more reps. Range shouldn't be a problem and yet, there is a list of pretty fast guys (Griffey, Garr, Landreaux, Brock, Cedeno, etc) who apparently were much worse fielders than I had remembered.

Being a high draft pick and the relative of two MLB players apparently gets you a boost in the ratings. He is young, but leads (trails?) all of minor league baseball with a 44.7% strikeout rate. My guess is that the Twins will keep hoping and working on him until he is in his early 20's, but I can't see him being promoted up the ladder anytime soon.

I sometimes wonder if the Twins broke Wallner this spring by having him face so many lefties in April, while Larnach was protected. Neither player has historically had much success against them. It's hard to believe, but Larnach has only 1 more PA this year against lefties than Wallner does, and Wallner hasn't been seen since mid-May! When the post-mortem is done after the season, corner outfield production is going to be flagged as a big weakness in 2026. Fielding, hitting, base-running... it is all subpar for the position, although at least Keaschall shows promise if he can figure out defense in a corner. I hope whomever is occupying those spots puts in some good games to finish out the year, but at this point it is just a faint hope.

Roden was either way too deep or got a pretty bad jump on that...

I'm stunned he didn't even really make an attempt. He's really not right physically. Automatic double with normal Buxton.