Whammy

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.

Everyone you've listed is a Lefty. Anduhar is a righty. He would be an "always start" against any lefty (almost 1.000 OPS against them in 2025) and a sometimes start against righties. I'm surprised the article author focus more on his handedness. That seems like the biggest reason this would be a no-brainer.

Some people just like to vent, whether it makes actual sense or not. Their default mode is unadulterated negativity. It feels safer to them than hope and positivity. That's one of those posts I get to the second paragraph and just say to myself "no need to read the rest, it's just going to be complaints based in, at best, half truths"

It's kind of odd to frame this article as a "Ranking Minnesota Twins Trade Candidates, 1-5" but then have their trade likelihoods go: High Low Medium High Medium-High I understand it's more of a "value of core guys who might get traded" but if we go off of that premise, trading Wallner and Lewis would almost certainly fetch more than Jeffers and I think they are both more likely to be traded that Keaschall

I understand you're going off of what Falvey is saying. I think what I'm saying is, for 2 reasons, I think he's just using it as a convenient way to kick the can down the road and/or not really answer the question.... 1) As I said before, it doesn't make sense from a historic minority/majority owner perspective. We don't know the percentages of ownership, but we DO know that the Pohlad group is retaining over 50%. I think it's a pretty safe bet to assume the new owners will have a combined 30-40% total stake and have that be roughly split between the two parties. 2) Just because WE don't know who the minority partners are, or what they are thinking payroll wise, doesn't mean Falvey doesn't. It would be crazy if he, as the team president, didn't know those things or at the very least have a good idea of their thoughts.

First 5 years: Bert - 1335.2 IP - 0.6 HR/9 (0.9 HR/9 adjusted to 2025 HR rate) Joe - 641.1 IP - 1.4 HR/9 So, if you adjust for MLB HR % by the era, then Joe Ryan has given up 50% more HR than Bert.

I understand this has been the talking point and on it's surface, it seems to make sense. BUT... The only way I could see a minority owner (who owns, what? 1/6th of the team?) having any sway over payroll would be if they said "here's an extra $30M to put towards 2026/27 payroll." Outside of that, since when do minority owners get a say in what the team's payroll is?

I believe the extension was finally begrudgingly announced at the press conference announcing his firing.

My question back to him would be: "It doesn't appear that you, the owners, were willing to experience any short term pain after the 2023 season. Why would you expect fans to be willing to experience it, if you weren't? And do you regret deciding not to experience a little short term pain after 2023?

The future will tell us whether they, on an individual basis, made good deals or bad deals. I assume the front office made what they felt were the best deals possible. I’m not arguing about the return. None of us really know. I’m saying we cut SO deep into the roster that we went beyond a tank and are inadvertently doing real long term damage to the brand. A brand that doesn’t really have enough strength to be taking on extra damage. A tank is one thing. Trotting out this bullpen is an insult. And people don’t like to feel insulted.

I came here today looking to make a similar comment in whatever thread made the most sense. I figured there would be one. This thread is as good as any... I want a front office that feels empowered to make tough decisions. Decisions that will undoubtedly be unpopular with many fans but are part of a long term plan. Sell offs like we had this year fall under that category and I largely supported (and still support) most of the individual decisions that were made. There are two problems with how things have gone after the trade deadline. 1) The plan. Fans need to be able to see it. You don't need to tell us the plan, but we don't want to look at what's going on and think "is the plan just to slash payroll, not only in 2025, but 2026 and beyond?" At the trade deadline, there was still the massive unanswered question around ownership. So, while we maybe didn't understand the plan, it was easy to look at the overall situation and say to ourselves "new owners are coming. New owners = New plan." But then not long after the deadline we get the ownership news and we're back to wondering if the plan is almost exclusively tied to payroll decisions 2) The tank. I have no problem with a tank. Back to making tough decisions, a tank falls under that umbrella. The season is/was lost, so why not give the young guys a shot and make some trades that infuse your farm system with guys that will hopefully be part of your future. But I fear we've crossed a line here. When a team performs THIS poorly I believe it has an avalanche effect on everything. Rather than the story becoming the young guys getting a shot, the story morphs into one of utter failure and embarrassment. Once you become an embarrassment bad things start to happen. The parts of your team that ARE performing get ignored and the parts of your team that aren't performing get amplified. All everyone talks about is how much of an embarrassment you are. Media. Fans. Probably players behind the scenes. An attitude of pure apathy sets in and you reach a tipping point. You're no longer tanking. You're failing. Most people can see the logic of a tank, but those same people can't stand failure. So, did the front office (and ownership) not properly assess the damage that would be done by selling off as much as they did? Yeah. Probably. It feels that way.

Seems like a foregone conclusion that Ryan Pressly will be a Twin in about 48 hours

This is why the Varland trade is so crazy. If you believe Pohlad said "trade everyone that can save me any money," then why trade Varland? He's still basically league minimum.

I can sort of wrap my head around each deal individually (while still being shocked at the shear breadth of it all).... except for the Varland trade. I really don't get that one.

Dang it! He was one appearance away from gaining RP eligibility in my Yahoo fantasy league.

No chatter about this on here? Went on the IL yesterday with a blister issue.

I feel the same way about openers as I do about fouling up 3. I get it. But I don't have to like it.

I like articles like this. It's why I come to TD. Given what TwinsDaily generally is (a collection of aspiring sports writers, or people who have other professions but also like to write about sports), I also hope people don't mind when I give a little feedback. Article structure isn't my department. Maybe it's good. Maybe it's bad. I don't know. What I DO know is that one of the things I was hoping to see when I opened this article was a little discussion about the few players that were picked around him. I love seeing what Culpepper is up to in the minors, what people think about him and how that's changed even in the last year, but especially since the title of this article is "Kaelen Culpepper Is Quickly Proving Minnesota Twins Got It Right in 2024 Draft" I was hoping there would be some additional information provided around who the Twins maybe just missed out on or who they passed on.