dex8425

To be fair, all of those guys were viewed as "can't miss" top prospects, first round pick type pitchers. The Twins don't draft pitchers high, for whatever reason. Charlee Soto and Chase Petty were later first round picks but high schoolers, and they turned Chase Petty into 2 yrs of Sonny Gray, so probably a good return there. I guess we'll see how Riley Quick pans out. Matthews, Festa, Varland, Ober, Ohl, were all later round picks, not really fair to compare them to #1 overall pick Paul Skenes.

More don't make it than do. But we notice the ones who succeed and forget about the once top prospects who don't succeed. Look at the orioles this year-they had a bunch of guys who looked like up and coming superstars and top prospects, coming off two great seasons and then Jackson Holliday hit .240 with OPS+ of 95 and Adley Rutchmann, 1st overall pick, was even worse. Baseball is hard.

Agree with your conclusion but not your premise. A lot of the prospects came up and were good or pretty great right away-Julien, Kiriloff, Wallner, Lewis, Miranda, Keaschell, Sano, etc. But then either the pitchers adjusted and they didn't adjust back or the league figured out holes in their swings and confidence cratered. Julien finished 7th in ROY voting and is now worthless. Miranda- expected to be a middle of the order bat, also worthless. Lewis was incredible for his first two injured riddled seasons (2022-2023). Keaschell is the only one who hasn't slowed down yet, which is encouraging. Martin looks to be figuring it out after a slow start. Theoretically it should be easier to hit in the minors than the majors, and a lot of guys are great players in AAA but never figure it out at the MLB level. The fact that the Twins have had a lot of guys who had some success at the MLB level but couldn't sustain it suggests some other issue with coaching or development.

Easy. To save $. He's due raises in arbitration and a minimum salaried player will be cheaper! Slash payroll and cash in those revenue sharing checks to get the new investors their return on investment.

I think he'd finish 4th in voting if the season ended today behind Skubal, Crochet and Hunter Brown. But it's still pretty close for that #2 spot. Skubal is a bit ahead of the others.

I assume since they're not announcing who the limited partners are the partners want to remain anonymous and thus are going to care about making $. So, lower payrolls and make decisions based on $$, not winning. Just like the trade deadline.

Johan will definitely get in via one of the committees in the future. He debuted on a very crowded ballot, unfortunately.

I assume you are not in favor of Billy Wagner, Trevor Hoffman, Rollie Fingers or Goose Gossage being in the hall of fame either then. Good thing you don't have the choice.

Totally agree. It is definitely vague, and I think that's an issue, because everyone has a different worldview and judge of character. It's not like there aren't guys who did questionable things in the HOF already. Ortiz is in, but Sosa is not? There's a double standard that seems unfair to me. If the character clause was used as a push, rather than a bar as it seems to be, that would be more acceptable-guys like Dale Murphy should get in based on a push from the character clause. Mauer may have benefited from that, but he should've got in based on his stats anyway.

Well, I guess the character clause still exists, right? So players who broke explicit rules of baseball should not get in, along with people like Omar Vizquel. Rose had sex with a minor during his playing days... I'd personally rather they get rid of the character clause and vote people in based on their contribution to the game only.

Totally agree. Kenny Lofton was talking with Chris Rose about how he wanted to hit leadoff and talking about how there aren't guys like him in the game today. I thought well, if the twins had a guy who got on base at a .390 clip and stole 50 bases in a year that guy would definitely be leading off. But the Twins don't have Kenny Lofton. Put your best hitters at the top of the lineup. Wallner vs righties is definitely one of the three best hitters on the team.

I was watching some of the 1991 ALCS vs TOR on youtube last year and the announcer mentioned in game 4 preview that Todd Stottlemyre was a "power pitcher" who could "hit 90 mph". Yeah, times have changed.

Twins get a comp pick if that happens though, which is valuable.

None of these packages are enough to get Cease for a year plus the comp pick you get when he signs elsewhere next year. Padres want quality, not quantity. Does Erod + Paddack get it done? I would do that trade if I'm the Twins.

Seems about right.

Yeah that about sums up what I was thinking. Why should I watch the team if they're not trying to win? Trading Correa says the Twins are punting on 2025. Might as well trade Buxton and Lopez too, at that point.

I just voted on the athletic poll. 2025 ballot: Ichiro (should be unanimous) CC Sabathia (3k strikeouts, he's a shoo-in) Billy Wagner Andruw Jones Carlos Beltran (the players weren't punished for the Houston sign stealing scandal, and he was a HOF'er before that anyway) A-rod should never get in as long as there's a character clause. He literally got suspended for breaking the rules-twice-and served a suspension put in place by MLB. Same deal with Manny Ramirez. Their cases are even worse than players who never served suspensions like Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Gary Sheffield and even Barry Bonds. I personally wish they would just get rid of the character clause altogether-Ortiz got in with the same PED tag as Sosa because....writers liked him. It's not fair to have that double standard or have writers subjectively applying some undefined standard.

Interesting take...Their payroll as a team has been embarrassingly low for years, even when they were really good and consistently had winning teams. Fisher doesn't control the local gov't but does control the payroll.

Definitely throw John Fisher and the A's in the "significantly worse" category of owners too! Otherwise your post echoes a lot of my thoughts.

Seems like if you want to watch wolves, wild AND Twins then you will probably pay for TV, either cable or satellite or FUBO. I don't care to pay for watching wolves and wild games. I'll gladly pay $20/month to watch the twins in the summer though, especially if I can watch it on my ipad and carry it around while doing other stuff.

I'll definitely subscribe for 20 bucks a month and I didn't watch the Twins at all last year. No thanks to paying 100+ a month for FUBO tv.

I've lived in MN all my life, and I'm a pretty big MN sports fan. Like it or not, this is a football town and people mostly care about the vikings. Although the wolves have been just about the most embarrassing and poorly run team in professional sports history, they were an exciting team last year, the NBA is super marketable, and fans quickly jumped on board the last two seasons. I went to two playoff games last year, saw the Twins break the historic losing streak, and then saw the Twins win a playoff series. I went to 16 regular season games last year. This year, I went to one game at Target Field and didn't watch a SINGLE game on TV at my house. I used to watch almost every game when youtube TV carried bally and was affordable. It seems like the Pohlads don't really care if they increase fan excitement or bring in new fans, but just want to make $ and treat the Twins as a business. That's fine, but that doesn't really get me or casual fans excited. The Wolves went over the salary cap threshold to extend Naz Reid, pay Jaden McDaniels, etc.. Marketing of the Twins stinks compared to the wolves and Vikings. Even casual fans are excited about the vikings and wolves right now. Bottom line: when ownership shows they want to put a winning product on the field and want fans to see it, people will react to that. But until then, people will keep their expectations low in order to not get hurt (MN has the longest championship drought among any US city with four of the major pro sports teams). I should be naturally pessimistic about MN sports teams-it's all I've ever known. My earliest sports memories are Gary Anderson's missed field goal and the gophers run to a final four, which was later revoked by the ncaa. I've only seen the Twins win two playoff series in my entire life, never seen the vikings even make it to the super bowl, never seen the Wolves in an nba championship and never seen the Wild in a stanley Cup. I love the Twins and will always follow the team, but that doesn't mean I will always financially invest in the team. If they run it back this offseason with the same team and don't spend more on the on-field product, I'm not going to ST, and I'm not going to more than 1-2 games next year at Target Field.

No. I'd rather sign Trevor Bauer if signing someone outside the organization at this point.

I like the lineup and pen too. The team is winning because the offense has scored the 4th most runs in MLB, not because the starting pitching is winning games. Ober was pretty dang good last year and got rocked in his only playoff start. They didn't trust Ryan in the playoffs last year either. SMW has been terrific, but so was Dobnak in 2019. There are only two starters on the Twins with even an above average ERA-Ryan and SMW. Arizona did well in the playoffs with two studs in their rotation and Brandon Pfaadt. Texas had Montgomery, Eovaldi and Scherzer. Twins can definitely make the playoffs as constructed but can Ober and Ryan be the second and third guy you trust to get 20 outs in a postseason game? Idk.

Lineup and bullpen are good. The rotation needs at least another guy to give them depth who is better than Festa/Varland down the stretch, otherwise Dobnak and Caleb Boushley are going to be making starts in September. Obviously someone better than Ober/Ryan would also be helpful, but expensive in dollars or prospect capital and I don't see that type of trade happening.