Whammy

There goes Buxton chance to extend his hit streak with runners in scoring position. (From 1 to 2)

I forgot about the silly $13M because it was completely meaningless silliness related to coming to an agreement just before the arbitration hearing. It never ever had any chance of being picked up. Zero. 0.0000000% But technically, yes, there is a $13M mutual option.

I was a huge Wallner apologist but honestly ABS ruined my view of him. It’s not that he’s made dumb challenges, it’s that the challenge system has shown us that he has no idea where the strike zone is. That’s bad.

I have more hope in Royce at this point than Wallner, but a) not much more, and b) he actually only has two more years of team control after this, as opposed to Wallner’s 3 years

I think this is just you being obtuse. Not many teams jump from 70 wins to championship contender. I don’t think we’re going to get even close to 85 wins this year, but if enough things go right, we do get to 85 wins, and we sneak into the playoffs, I simply don’t believe that you will not have perked up at all. If for no other reason than we will have identified some very solid core pieces to a championship contender.

One thing to add to the Jersey topic. I know this is total recency bias, but I was a little bit tempted this weekend to buy an Austin Martin game worn (or maybe it was “team issued”) one from the Twins authentic apparel place down the RF line. It was actually kind of a reasonable deal. If I’m there in the near future, he’s still doing well, and the jersey is still available, I think I might buy it.

$13m is his projected arbitration raise. Thats just historically, guys making what he’s making this year make that amount in their next year. Thats not locked in at all. If he performs poorly, it can be less. If he performs really well it could be more. If he’s injured, then it can be less than tht projected amount, but it can also be $0. So, the reason why he might say yes to 2/25 is because one of his options is to make $0 in 2027 and $???? In 2028. We’re getting the cart waaaaaay ahead of the horse here, but just for the sake of argument, if he was to have TJ surgery tomorrow, then 2/25 would be an exceedingly fair offer. So fair, that I’m kind of skeptical that the Twins would make it.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with my daughter at the game yesterday. She loved Bader and was sad when he was traded. I told her all the reasons why trading Bader made sense, but in the end she didn't really care. She missed having her favorite player on the team. So now she's talking about getting a new jersey. She'd mostly outgrown the one she has, which was a generic (unnamed) city connect jersey. So then we are talking about WHO she should get. She wanted to get a Bader one last year, but since I knew he was almost certainly only here for a year, I said no. You'd ideally get one for a player who's going to be around for a while. I have a Buxton one, so she didn't want that. She didn't really want a pitcher because she wants to be able to know they will probably be playing if we go to a game. Her: Jeffers? How long does he have left in his contract Me: This is his last year. He's been really good but it seems unlikely that he'll be back. Once our good players hit free agency, usually they're gone. Her: Moose? How long does he have left. I love his nickname. Me: 3 years left, but he's been really bad this year. I hate to say it but I'm not sure how much longer he's going to be around. Her: Larnach? Me: Last year with him. Don't get me started. Her: Royce? Me: Similar to Wallner Her: Keaschall? Me: He's probably the right one. He's got a lot of years left and he's kind of stinking right now, but I think that will probably turn around. So, we went with Keashcall. He then proceeded to rip 2 doubles in his next two AB, so that was nice. All of this is to say... I agree. Long term connections matter. Fanbases are built off not only connection to the team, but connections to players. Trading away your good players toward the end of their arbitration might make baseball front office sense, but that doesn't mean it makes franchise sense. Both of those things need to coexist.

One wildcard to some of those scenarios is how a potential new CBA might change some of those options.

It would be his last year of arbitration. So... like an option year, but different. If we assume TJ Surgery for a second, then here are the Twins options: 1. Offer him arbitration, And hope that he comes back mid-season and is effective enough that you can trade him (unlikely) or give him a Qualifying Offer at the end of 2027. 2. Don't offer him arbitration this offseason. In which case he's gone and we get nothing for him. 3. Offer an extension similar to what we did with Chris Paddack. Say... 2 years, 25mil. This give Ryan some security and gives the Twins one more healthy Joe Ryan season before his free agency (and potential QO).

Silly random question, but isn't Joe Ryan required to go on the IL now, since he didn't face 3 batters? It's probably moot because he will anyway, but just something I thought about.

This isn't specifically Twins related, but I do think it's an example of some of the tough decisions the Twins might have to start making..... Yankees optioned Anthony Volpe to AAA. He was a very highly touted prospect (top 10 MLB prospect in 2023) that played solid defense at SS, but just never hit (OPS+ in the 80s all three years).

Counterpoint: they did sign some veterans in the offseason that they didn’t think were washed up. They were just wrong about them.

Twins #9 hitters in the minors hit 5 HR yesterday

Of course it does. Getting fans back is a much different proposition than creating new fans from scratch.

I think it's a mistake to conflate awful attendance with no fan base. We have a very unhappy fan base. But not NO fan base.

Do you mean after 2027 or after this coming trade deadline. I agree that the odds of keeping him beyond 2027 seem extremely low (Basically zero). But what they plan to do with Ryan for 2027 has a big impact on what we should be doing with guys like Festa. I'm sure the FO actually isn't quite sure at this point what they think will happen. Injuries are a variable that they can't control, but the FO really needs to decide what they think is going to happen at the trade deadline. I actually don't mind if they trade Ryan, but if it's not seen as part of a larger plan, it's going to go over very poorly with the fan base. What might that larger plan be? Not sure. Pablo extension? Not sure what the parameters of that might look like, but I have it on good authority that Pablo just moved into a new place in Minneapolis, so it could be that he's open to staying here for a while. If you pair a Pablo extension with trading Ryan I think I could be convinced that makes some sense.

Duran for me. I always enjoyed watching him pitch and even if you disagree with the players we got back (I don't), it was a trade that made sense. Rooting for Varland is just too painful because that was always the trade that made the least sense. Some of the non-Varland trades you can point at and say "See! Cheap Pohlads!" but the Varland trade is just "See! Overconfident Front Office," which isn't nearly as fun.

Ownership deserves a ton of criticism for a ton of things, but I just fail to see how ownership are the ones creating a situation where veterans are winning out over youth. Is there some eventual 2nd tier indirect cause and effect? Sure. But I promise you Tom Pohlad is not ringing the bell for Luis Garcia over Kendry Rojas.

You stole my post. I was planning on saying basically exactly this.

I'm not really saying what Zoll deserves (although his track record as GM isn't looking great), I'm saying what new POBO Owner Representative Tom Pohlad might do.

I think he was extremely ignorant to begin with. I also believe that he is probably the type of guy who knows that, hates feeling that way, and is doing his best to become knowledgeable. Do I necessarily think this will lead to good decisions? Who knows. Maybe not. But I’m pretty sure guys like him don’t like losing, how this team currently feels like a loser, and how that reflects on some of his early comments on the team. There will certainly be change. …. Not necessarily changes related to spending more money though. So, yeah, Jeremy Zoll should probably watch his back.

Gotta think Jeremy Zoll is starting to feel a little heat from Tom Pohlad, largely because of the bullpen, but some other stuff too. He seems to have gotten away without much criticism from the fan base, but he has been the GM since late 2024. I’m not really ready to criticize Tom Pohlad yet. I mean he IS the ownership’s representative, so in that way there should be criticism, but that’s not really about him specifically.

I'm a little surprised it wasn't Rojas, but this is probably just kicking a decision down the road until Abel comes back and a more consequential decision needs to be made.

In my mind the same question exists, to varying degrees for each of Outman, Clemens, and Wallner Who are you going to replace them with, where you're happy with the roll that new player is going to take on, or what it does to the rest of the players playing time? a) Outman. He's barely playing. There's nobody at AAA that I want barely playing. Especially with the current emergence of Martin, who's soaking up what little playing time Outman was getting. b) Clemens. When he plays, it's 1B. There's nobody worth calling up from AAA that can play 1B, so you're going to get a heavy mix of Caratini and Bell over there. Not a great option (not that Clemens playing 1B is some great option). c) Wallner. Probably the easiest 1-for-1 swap since he's both getting a ton of playing time and is a lefty outfielder which we have in spades at AAA. The problem here is that he's the one I'm least interested in giving up on.