Riverbrian

I don't but I'm going to keep typing on this website in hope that they do.

Great Post It's time to trade Larnach, Ober and Kremer. All of them should have some value. The money they save around 18 million can be added to the money that Tom Pohlad is implying he will spend to improve this club and if they are able to be aggressive enough to land a couple of legitimate free agents instead of the painfully average ones they typically sign. And if they don't kill their youth and let that youth become the same youth that fed the Red Sox, White Sox, Gaurdians, Brewers, Nationals, and if they don't waste roster spots on role players like Martin or Gray or Kriedler. They could take a serious run at this.

Based on the words from Tom Pohlad. They are going to go for it. Myself... I can see the need to acquire additional assets and delaying a run as you suggest but... I can see a path but only if they do what I want them to do. LOL In my opinion of course. Last off-season was different then this off-season for three reasons. 1. The bullpen needed a complete rebuild from the ground up. A bullpen can't be rebuilt from this extreme in a single off-season. It needed to built the way they did it. Through frantic audition and finding arms like Gomez and Morris and Nance. 2. They didn't have enough position player talent especially in the infield. It is just plain irresponsible to go with a somewhat injury prone and struggling Lee at SS, A very injury prone and struggling Lewis at 3B and a sophomore slump candidate at Keaschall at 2B and Clemens platooning at 1B and go for it... especially in consideration of point #1. They needed a 1B at the very least and they also needed infield insurance especially at SS and 3B. They made no attempt at fixing this and the entire infield needed to be restructured to the point that nobody was standing in the original spot they were being counted on at. 3. In consideration of point #1 and #2. Joe Ryan and Ryan Jeffers were at peak value and needed to be cashed in at this time. Going for it was a very very very questionable decision. Was I right... Yes and no. The offense in total surprised me. It did better than I thought it would but the infield was exactly what I was concerned about at every single position. The starting pitching surprised me because it didn't do as well as I thought it would even if they would have traded Joe Ryan. The bullpen performed exactly how I thought it would. The team was healthier than normal but injuries are always a moment away. So what's different this year. I can see a path. There is enough depth and by depth I mean talent in house with the influx of young ready or not talented players. We have optoins, we have players in place to replace. We just need to add a little more to that depth and it's in the same spots that we needed to address last year. 1B and infielder with SS capability. The comments ny Tom Pohlad about the roster not being good enough for 162 games has me heartened that maybe the front office learned from rather stunning mistakes last year and will therefore take it more seriously this time. 1. The Bullpen still isn't there yet but it made progress so it won't be a ground zero start up like last year. A couple of decent trades and a couple of unexpected finds and the bullpen could be at least average if not more. 2. We have 7 outfielders in place that have talent. We can easily staff 5 outfielders with talent we really don't have to do a thing other than don't platoon Jenkins or Emma. The infield still has the same needs as last year. If they could sign a Bauers to play 1B and trade for someone like Casey Schmitt... we could be 6 deep and have cover for any injuries or Royce Lewis and Matt Wallner type failures in 2027. And once again... I like the depth of the starting staff but I'd like them to add one more. I don't care about catcher. It's Caratini and someone else bat them ninth. I do not want a DH unless it's a monster. Josh Bell types are decent but not a monster. Use the DH to supply AB's to the depth that I am asking for. 3. Joe Ryan is no longer at peak value. He still has some value but getting a couple of decent prospects from him isn't happening anymore so you might as well keep him. Ryan Jeffers is gone but with the kids... we might be able to trade Ober, Kremer and Larnach along with other minor league players to acquire a Casey Schmitt and add to the bullpen with some younger arms with talent. Anyway... I can see a path. I will agree with you 100% if they are just going to Nathanial Lowe or Randal Grichuk the off-season away. If that's the case... just sell everything not nailed down let's look at 2028.

In my opinion of course. Houston needs to get some AAA under his belt and perform well at that level before any plans of his helping the team in 2026 are considered. Leaving a gap on purpose with plans for him to fill it would be a mistake. I'd rather the team actively try to staff the infield with 6 talented options because we know injuries and failure will be part of the equation with those 6 talented options. With that said... I'm Ok with Houston being planned as the 1st call up when a call up is needed anywhere on the infield. You can bet your bottom dollar that a call up will be needed because injuries or failure are almost certain to happen. We just need to be a little patient. Let him get some AAA time in and let him show that he will be what we hope he will be. December 28 is when he will have to be added to the 40 man to protect against Rule 5 so we have some time. His performance this year at Cedar Rapids and Wichita was encouraging. I am in no way diminishing any expectations for his future with the club. The continued development of Houston is critical to the future of the Team that you and I cheer for.

They can't mess around. Competitive Bids right out of the box. Tom once said Go Big or Go Home. Competitive Go Big bids right away... or they go home. Unless they have inside information that the new CBA will change the game and they want to wait for the game to change. They'll need to get pieces in place before a lockout occurs. Free agents may want to deal before the lockout so they could sign quicker. I'm guessing of course. I have no idea how the market will play out. Who does?

If Tom is serious about what he said about commitment and support from ownership and it wasn't just PR words much like politicians says "I will work across the aisle" when everybody should know that they won't be working across the aisle. The Twins can't put Royce Lewis into a starting spot and think the work is done. Royce Lewis needs to earn his way back. If Tom was serious about the 2026 team not being built for 162 games. The Twins will not ask bit players like Kreidler, Gray and Arcia to be the infield depth. Especially on a team where every single infield position was adjusted. Lee to 3B, Kreidler to the OF, Lewis to the minors and then to 1B with Kriedler, Gray and Arcia was bad assessment and bad planning for 162 games. If Tom is serious about what he has publicly said. The Twins will have to bring in 1B or 2B and I prefer a 1B. I don't know anything about Sato but if he is anything like Murakami... we will need him or someone like him. If the Mets who also need a 1B are going to do what it takes to sign him as rumored. Jake Bauers is the guy. If Sato or Bauers are not signable. Brandon Lowe at 2B is the next best option. I would also consider Chisholm for the power speed athleticism combo. I love Arraez and wouldn't mind him coming back to Minnesota but I want a King Kong type bat and if you don't have the power... I'd like some speed and athleticism at the very least. Either way at 1B or 2B... the Twins need to bring in a King Kong type bat to help make Tom's words less empty. Goldschmidt, Nathanial Lowe, Torres, McNeil. Those guys... it's just more of the same one year contract junk we have been doing since forever. I'm hoping Bauers will be the 2nd biggest free agent signing. The biggest needs to be a multi year deal for a real good starting pitcher. They need one that can improve 2027 and join Bradley in 2028 so the departure of 4 starters doesn't sting as much. . Morejon coverted to a starter is an interesting idea. So whoever is going to cost more between Morejon and Bauers. I assume Morejon. That's the biggest free agent signing. If the front office can sign these two players. Tom Pohlads words might match the actions of the front office. The words certainly didn't match last off-season's activity.

The front office will need to rely on their starting pitching in 2027 if they are going to come through on the promises made by Tom Pohlad. They will also need to mitigate the upcoming loss of 4 starters after 2027 while being competitive in 2027. They need to lessen the amount of starters you lose from 4 to 2. However, they have to competitively bid for a decent replacement in the free agent market to at least improve the rotation despite the loss of two. Don't shop in the Dylan Bundy aisle. Get a legit guy to a multi year contract that you can add to Ryan, Lopez and Bradley in 2027. And is also a guy that you can add to Bradley in 2028. You spend some money here. At this point... you might as well hang on to Joe Ryan. His trade value is gone. Trading him now... would be... just cementing the stupidity. Might as well take a run serious run at this thing one more time. But this time... I hope they are actually serious since we have a serious Tom Pohlad talking about championships.

I like looking up and down the rosters of the players. And saying to yourself... Who are these guys? 22 of the Rays Roster were not top 100 prospects. Baker, Williamson, Mesa, Deluca. Aranda, Simpson, Walls. Palacios. Vilade, Seymour. Seems to work ok for them. The Brewers they have quite a few top 100 guys. They are still a young team. 1st round picks seem to pan out for them.

Not every pitcher... They are selecting some for the experiment. Low number of selectees. Off the top of my head. Adams and Ohl come to mind. There are probably a few more but I have hair on the top of my head and it gets in the way.

If I ever get sick or take a vacation to Fiji. You could take over for me.

The Twins were not what I would call a platoon heavy team until the MONEY got pulled after the 2023 season. Ever since then it has been platoon, platoon, platoon to milk your way through a season. I think you are exactly right when you say they try to raise the floor instead of trying to raise the ceiling. Although... it's cheaper players... it's certainly not cheaper in the end. It's significantly more expensive because it's 5 million here and 5 million there for Margot and Farmer and you add them all up and you spent 20 when you could have spent 4 million. We went from signing Donaldson and Correa for big dollars (not that worked either) to a bunch of these 5 million dollar guys. Meanwhile... Cleveland isn't really doing that. They platoon a little but they went into the playoffs with a total of two right handed hitters on the roster. Meanwhile... during the regular season. Kwan, DeLauter and Bazzana got to face all the left handers they could handle with 205, 179 and 165 PA's against them. And... Bazzana really sucked at it. He produced a .529 OPS over those 165 PA's. Not of that mattered come playoff time. Small sample obviously but Bazzana was facing lefties in the playoffs even after that .529 OPS and he produced a 1.024 OPS in the playoffs including a dinger. Cleveland will develop superstars in the end. The Twins won't because they are too busy hiding Bazzana and searching for Kyle Farmer to hold him down and Cleveland beats us today thinking about tomorrow when everything we are doing is for today. White Sox... Loaded with left handed hitters and loaded with youth... Can't platoon them all. So Montgomery, Montgomery, Murakami and Teel they got to hit all the left handers they want during the regular season. The White Sox will develop superstars... the Twins will not. Tampa... Aranda and Simpson 200 AB's and 164 AB's against left handers. Neither produced an OPS over .678 against them. Still won baseball games. I've already covered the Brewers in a previous thread. People are simply dismissing my arguments out of hand... maybe they are right but I'd really like them to look what WINNING TEAMS are doing and at least notice that it is nothing like what the Twins are doing and not winning with. We spend more almost every year than these guys spend. These teams constantly develop and reload and we just go from Santana to France to Bell to Nathanial Lowe. AND THEY STILL BEAT US! We have to stop before 10 years are gone down the same drain. The 2nd wave is here. The time is now.

Not all all. Miz can throw as many innings as he possibly can. He's one of the best in baseball... you want innings to go to your best pitchers. You don't take innings from the Miz. Don't touch him. Don't reduce him. Dylan Bundy... the way it traditionally works... You have a 5 man rotation and the back end of that rotation will throw 5 innings every 5th day because that is the structure that has been in place since forever. Dylan Bundy for example threw 140 innings for the Twins and he produced a 4.89 ERA in 2022. Our bullpen guys in 2022 had Jax throw 72 innings, Duran 67 Innings. Thielbar with 59 innings. Because they are limited to one inning an appearance. These guys were better pitchers than Bundy was but the structure guarantees that he will throw twice as many innings. So... I openly question weather it should a 5 innings for Starters and 1 inning for relievers with nothing in between. I'd rather see a better allocation of innings based on ability. Get your better pitchers more innings. However... that would take invention and it would take a departure from the structure that we are locked into. There has to be something in between these two worlds because there is clearly space in between 1 and 5 innings. Can you get Duran up to 120 and Bundy down to 110? I don't know but it's a thought that would clearly improve overall results if you could. Weather the Twins experiment in this regard is working or not. I like the experiment.

Love this post. It's spot on. If they stay on this path they took with the 1st wave. If we end up needing to rebuild 5 years from now. We will have nothing to sell. Just like we have nothing (very little) to sell right now. It's the same result because we took the same path. Meanwhile... Cleveland keeps reloading for tomorrow and keeps beating us today. And we keep loading for today. Relying on marginal platoon advantages that may or not materialize on a game to game basis because we can't beat Cleveland.

Exactly. Great Post!!! It's talent... Athleticism... It's development. Talent is talent... it can be unrealized talent or it can be realized talent but it's talent either way and talent is what you want on your roster. You want unrealized talent to become realized talent. Twinsdaily will bitch about development, they will bitch about defense, they will cut players who have no trade value but don't want to do a thing about increasing trade value, defense or development because they want the same thing. 3 platoon guys to platoon with 3 other platoon guys. Rinse and repeat and they yell at the short side platoon guy because he sucks when he is forced to face right handers and they will face more right handers than left handers because there is a 3 to 1 ratio. We need to just stop doing this. And we need to stop today because we already ruined the 1st wave and the 2nd wave is here. We have developed nothing that will return anything more than a relief pitcher. Other than Ryan and Jeffers. Are we going to ruin this 2nd wave. That decision starts today.

As long as Martin is in the minors. I'm ok with your lineup choices. But... if you choose Roden and I'm ok with that... I won't argue your choice. Just keep in mind that the Twins will want a platoon partner for Roden as well as Emma. That puts Martin back on your roster. Needing a platoon partner for Emma as well. That might be Grichuk. Now Jenkins is the guy who waits in AAA. It has to change. Emma... I wouldn't spend a lot of time looking at his AAA splits. He was hurt for a long period of time and the sample size is low. They are pretty neutral or nothing to be concerned about but he is small sample. Regardless... the point with Emma is that he is 23 years old. I don't know what he will be but he was a bunch of great athletic energy even if he struggled a bit at the major league plate. He's 23 and what you want out of him is a high value 27 year old. Denying him out of the box is influencing what he can be at 27 years old and Emma at 27 is the prize you are working for. Just taking it away for today is going to sacrifice tomorrow. I am just not convinced that these things are helping in the win loss column so I'm not sure the sacrifice of tomorrow is necessary. It's what I did all of this research for.

We have 6 better in house right now. Of course that is my opinion. Buxton, Keaschall, Emma, Jenkins, Larnach and Roden. I'll even state it's possible that Wallner is potentially better because of his potential 40 home run power. That would be 7 total. Put Martin in the minors for our AAA depth. He has an option. I wouldn't release him unless we have 40 man issues. If other teams want him... we could trade him. The rostering of Martin is the rostering of a lesser player Prepare yourself though. If Martin is rostered. There is a good chance that Jenkins will be in AAA as a result. Also... a high probability that if Martin gets hurt that Gonzales will be called up ahead of Jenkins. and A 100% chance that he will attach to Emma as Emma becomes the latest compromised developed left handed hitter joining the long line growing over the years. and He will face more right handers than he faces left handers over the course of the season.

It's the opposite of how you are presenting it. You want to get more innings to your best pitchers and a lot of times your best pitchers are your relievers. If you have the Miz on your roster. You'll want him to throw 200 Innings if he can. I have no issue with that. If you have Dylan Bundy on your roster... why try to get him 180 innings. If you have Duran on your roster... why limit him to 60, It's about decreasing the amount of innings from your questionable starters by increasing the innings of your lights out relievers. Who are your best pitchers. Figure out how to get them more innings and less to your lesser pitchers. That's hard to do with a systematic assignment of starters go 5 and relievers go 1 regardless of the talent of the participants. Perhaps there is an answer somewhere between the two static worlds.

It's a fatal flaw. Just look at Austin Martin. He had more plate appearances against right handed pitching than he did against left handed hitting. He struggled to hit right handed pitching. If you roster him (or anyone) for short side work and we did that with Austin. The sure number of right handed pitchers is going to almost guarantee that he we will receive more PA's against right handed hitters. So yeah we got that protection against the big bad lefty if Martin does his assigned role but we are always asking the short side guy to do more than that MORE OFTEN as they end up with more PA's against the hand that they are not good at. Making this a talent discussion. The rostering of lesser players to feed this platoon thing. And the end result isn't producing a greater number of wins.

I stop short of issuing a conclusion but your conclusion is where I was already leaning before I started and I'm still there. Just look at Brooks Lee and his splits. He stands in the correct box all the time as a switch hitter. Yet his splits say platoon. I understand that his defense and who is else is an option will also lend itself to playing time... and I am in no way advocating that remove opportunity for Brooks Lee to get better against left handed pitchers... However... I'm wondering out loud if the Twins are not guilty of jamming people into the lineup as long as they stand in the correct box and that is supported by the numbers I'm presenting. Therefore... this is a talent discussion as much as a platoon discussion. Is the strict adherence to the platoon causing a drop in overall talent. I believe that is quite possible.

I agree with the first two paragraphs. The third paragraph. I can't help but wonder why MLB baseball doesn't have anything between 5-6 innings for a starter and 1 inning for a reliever. Anything that black and white with no middle ground is a little to systematic for my tastes. Surely there is something in between those two that can be introduced to the game. Weather the experiment is working or not working can also depend on the quality of the test subjects.

I have no idea what the issue is. There is a bottleneck and it appears to be at the AAA to Majors crossroads. We don't seem to transition highly ranked farm system to major league value fairly well. If I were to guess and guessing isn't fair to anyone. It's the top prospects who make it to the majors or get the opportunity to make it to the majors. Everyone seems to know who the top prospects are so how are the scouts going to be the difference? None or very few are major league ready when drafted but everyone agrees on who they are. So if they are not major league ready. You got to get them major league ready so it's the getting them major league ready part that I would look at first and that is where you will find the bottleneck. Just guessing of course.

I have added Average Runs Scored for all lineup compositions vs Right Handed Starters and Left Handed Starters. I'm not seeing anything suggesting that the platoon helped us or hurt us in 2026. Purposely choosing players for the roster by the batters box they stand in. Setting the lineup based upon on the batters box they stand in. Instead of choosing players with more talent is where I'm leaning. Not so much leaning... as already fallen over and struck the ground.

That does put a lot on Houston's shoulders. However... Adding Houston out of the box... Clemens to 1B makes sense with Culpepper at 2B. I'm not personally ready for that. I sure hope Houston is. I'd like to see Houston get some St. Paul in before jumping to the majors. We are going to need solid replacements on the farm. We are going to need Houston later. I will say this... if you agressively pushing Houston up... You are not going to like my plan. LOL. There isn't anything frightening about Clemens at 1B. I'm a fan... I just see 1B as a position where we can add a big big hitter because 1B is where a lot big big hitters reside. Most teams have a big big hitting 1B. There will probably be less competition here because most tams have already created one. The Twins spent 100 million... the owner has committed support publicly and the Twins could very reasonably free up additional money at 6 million a pop with some of our expiring guys like Larnach and Ober. This is where Tom proves he is serious about support. Get a King Kong 1B to a multi year deal. Clemens at 2B and we got some serious pop to mix in with the athletic kids. Bell did fine... but I really really really don't want him back. I'd like to keep the DH spot open in order to increase the talent level of the entire 26 man roster.

That could be the mechanism that gives the Twins a chance at signing him. Offer him starter money and a starting rotation spot. The big boys are going to go after him for their big boy bullpens. Be the team that is dead serious about the rotation and compete with starter money and that will take some of the big boys out. Ryan, Lopez, Ober and Kremer will be walking arm and arm into free agency after this season. The Twins will need to mitigate the crash into that wall. Replace one or two of that 4, with a longer term contract. Bradley and Morejon can help usher in 2028.

Now you are talking. Morejon. Pay it.