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If 2026 was all that mattered, I'd agree, but I given the fact that Lopez, Ryan, and Ober are only controlled through 2027, I feel like we need to continue to develop those young SP prospects as Starting Pitchers, at least until the point where it becomes obvious that they aren't viable as that. If we could look into our Magic ball and know for sure which 3 aren't going to make it as SPs, then yeah, convert them to RP now, but I don't know how we do that with any certainty.

Speaking of same crap different day

I think ultimately what I want to see is something that resembles a plan. As was stated, there are different directions that this team could go at this moment, and I may not like the decisions they make, but if it looks like a plan and they articulate it, then I can support it. I'm going to go back to the trade deadline. It actually felt like they were enacting a plan. You could quibble with individual trade packages and decisions, but I felt like I could see a grand plan. Then the last hour before the deadline happened and it felt like Falvey got trade-drunk and was like "eff it... why not? This is fun" That last hour felt off script and I still worry that it did long term damage not only on the field, but off the field as well. Falvey was looking at each potential deal in a silo and got caught up in the wave of trades he was making. He had no regard for the overall message it was sending players and fans

Bell was really bad vs LHP in 2025, but over the course of his career he's been perfectly fine against LHP (worse than vs RHP, but still above average). You only need to go back to 2023 to see a year where he was actually better against lefties than righties and in that case he was significantly better against lefties (he was also better against them in 2022 and 2021). In fact, his career splits that show him as much better vs righties seem to be largely due to his horrendous 2025 against lefties.

In my previous 2-piece Duran/Rutchman ideas, Jeffers was an ancillary piece going to the Orioles. Lopez + good prospect for Duran jeffers + elite prospect for Rutchman. Anyway… I’ve strayed off topic. New front office needs to make some sort of big splash and it doesn’t necessarily have to mean some huge jump in payroll.

I thought we were going big or going home.... Call the Orioles about Adley Rutchmann

Some quick hit thoughts, which are going to be all over the place 1) The top person in the organization changed. That's huge, even if the last name didn't change. It's still a Pohlad and I understand the skepticism that it will lead to any real change, but think about you and your siblings and how different you can be from each other. We have no real idea how different Tom is from Joe (why must they all have 3-letter names?!?!?!), but it's a big change. 2) Man have I grown sick of Falvey. I've given him every possible chance and he's done some good things (not enough), but I just can't listen to him talk any more. It's like listening to the Peanuts teacher at this point. I'm going to guess Joe and Falvey were pretty in sync. Based only on the last 24 hours of getting to know Tom, I'm going to guess he's not a big Falvey guy. I haven't seen a single quote where he mentioned him (like... "I look forward to digging in with Derek and really figuring this thing out) and he wasn't at the press conference yesterday. 3) What's Tom's goal here? I mean, it's probably to make money, but based on what seems like a little Pohlad family war, maybe he fancies himself the hero of this story. The "go big or go home" quote can easily just be meaningless words, but if he's looking to be the hero, then heroes really do go big or go home. He's not going to be anyone's hero getting the Pohlads 5% on their money. Leopold might be here because Tom likes what he's done with the Wild, which in a lot of ways (especially in the last week) has been "go big or go home" 4) Lot's of voices on here clamoring for a rebuild. Maybe that's the right baseball call and maybe it's not, but I really have a hard time seeing how that's the right business move, especially in the next two year window. The casual fan won't look at a rebuild as a positive move and public interest will continue to dip (possibly completely crater). This new crew seems like they will take the path of "maintain and slowly grow." 5. But having said that, they do need something splashy. I'm going to go back to the framework of a trade that I just can't shake. Pablo for Jarren Duran (we would probably need to include a prospect). The public isn't going to be like "Yay! We got rid of Pablo," but it will do two things. a) balance our roster a bit, and b) clear some money under what is probably a 120M internal salary cap to make a big splashy move. 6) Last one. I worry that even if they truly wanted to, Twins leadership fears that it's not a good idea to go big in 2026. Imagine having a really nice 2026. Fans are coming back. The team outlook is looking good. Finances are turning around, then the 2027 labor mess happens and all of the gains they've made are lost because of something that's not really in their control. Sounds like the 2019 Bomba Squad momentum that got completely stifled because of Covid 2020.

One has to wonder, if the only thing holding Luis back from returning to near his batting title form was the thought of being more selective at the plate and deciding to make more forceful contact, why he chose not to do those things before heading into free agency, and instead decided to continue an approach that was yielding poor results.

On average, over the last three years (which includes one of his batting titles), Luis Arraez has gotten on base one more time than Josh Bell for every every ~7 games they played.

Are we eligible for the lottery? I can't keep track of these ever-changing rules.

I've got great news for you. Josh Bell strikes out at a rate that is significantly lower than MLB average. He too can hit a flipping baseball.

What this thread shows me is that there is a certain faction of people on here who will find a reason to complain about any move the Twins make. Part of me understands the frustration they've built up over the last few year, but most of me just wonders why they continue to bother with a team that brings them so much anger.

Look at how much more valuable the Timberwolves franchise got once Edwards came around and the Wolves got good. Maintaining (or increasing) the level of success after the 2023 run would've more than paid for itself in the sale price and buyer interest.

“Better” for Keaschall is playing more than 1/3 of the season

Zero huh? I guess we just disagree then. Hitters who could reasonably have better a 2026 than 2025: Wallner Keaschall Lewis Lee Jeffers MN Twins 1B Player Will they all? Of course not. Will some of them? Most likely. Could others have worse years? Sure, but other than Buxton, I'm not exactly sure who we'd say had a good (for them) hitting year

We did that 5 months ago

Agreed. Although it would've been a tiny bit more fun if he forced himself to find the best 25, 26, and 27 year old prospects.

Having said that, I DO like articles like this. Makes for fun discussion, which is most of the reason why I'm here. If the Twins keep the core together, and they can catch a little lightning in the bottle with the lineup, there's no reason why we can't compete in the Central. I feel like Royce is a huge one of those potential bolts though (maybe the biggest), so I'd rather not trade him at a relative low point for a guy who would be an improvement over what we were trotting out there in 2025, but ultimately doesn't have that high of a ceiling.

The unwritten premise of this article seems to be "trade Royce and get back a major leaguer" not "trade for CJ Abrams"

Seems to me that's its leftover angst from the Jackson trade, because as has been stated, it would be extremely difficult (and non-productive) to basically lock ourselves into 3 catchers on the 26-man roster. To me, the Twins seem to have been extremely purposeful over the last 6 months with the Catcher position. You can argue how we got to the point we were at 6 months ago, and people have disagreed with individual moves since then, but they definitely seem to have a plan and are enacting that plan. Now we just need the plan to be successful.

And future hall of famer Salvador Perez if you want a recent non-Twins catcher example.

Luis Arraez

This is such a silly attitude. How many current major leaguers, by your standard, shouldn’t have even been bothered with since they had an EV of “essentially 0”

This ignores the fact that they obviously didn't want Susac. It's not like they picked him with the intent of keeping him and the Giants made them a sweetheart deal they couldn't refuse. I'm sure this has been planned for several days. Twins didn't see anyone they liked enough to justify trying to keep them all season. The Giants liked Susac and probably called the teams near the top of the draft to work out a deal to take him. The Twins said, sure, we'll trade you the 4th pick, but it will cost you Caraballo.

Counterpoint: Unlike a typical business, a MLB organization's value is tied largely to its brand and scarcity, not assets. It seems to me that a savvy businessperson would've evaluated the situation at the end of 2023 and done things very differently. Most everything the Pohlads have done since the Twins were eliminated by Houston devalued the brand and made them a less desirable asset, which is of course the last thing you want to do right before you're going to sell something who's value is so strongly linked to it's brand. An additional $80M spent the last two seasons (total) probably would have more than paid for itself in franchise value as well as interest from potential new owners. I suspect if the last two seasons had playoff appearances the Pohlads would have no problem finding new ownership groups willing to pay their 1.7B+ asking price. I'm sure that a private equity group, who's main goal is to maximize asset value can see this. If Varde Partners wants to grown their investment, then tanking payroll spending, and with it team success, isn't the way to do that.