tony&rodney

Asbury laughed. Is that due to the optimistic December closure of the CBA or from an imagined conversation where there is screaming going on at a conference of the owners?

The Twins are having that discussion. The front office staff often have different thoughts than those guys working with the players (manager, coaches). Everyone uses analytics and various forms of it have been in baseball from the beginning. One wonders if the suits give more credence to the paperwork. Falvey certainly did. Zoll's up now. Will he follow in the footsteps of his mentor? Hopefully he watched the playoffs.

Every batter gets as much information as they can handle. The amount of "coaching" is almost exclusively up to the individual. That is true on every team. Hitting a baseball is incredibly difficult. The hand-eye coordination has to follow the mind processing information. Pitchers increasingly tunnel and disguise their pitches. Velocity adds to that degree of difficulty. Left-handed batters see fewer LH pitchers growing up, so it is largely a function of experience. The dance is how much experience does one get. Do you sit Oliva, Carew, Mauer, and Morneau? They hit RH pitchers better and had some tough PA versus lefties. The coaches do help. Players do improve. Some players struggle versus same side pitchers.

There have been a dozen articles that include Jeffers. Jeffers is not close to the best free agent available. He is the best slugging catcher available. As has been discussed, Jeffers catches 80 games and maybe that could be pushed to 90 or even 100. There are a pile of glove catchers available. The key remains .... the budget. A $170M number has room for Jeffers. The TD number of $130M makes that real iffy. In any event, we should be able to agree that people have their thoughts and those positions have been made hundreds of time since the season ended.

There can be no argument that this has been the past practice. The dugout staff changed last year and after allowing the Opening Day starters to prove themselves in need of movement, the decision was made to move guys around. That would not have happened from 2019-2025. So, there is a ray of hope that a voice exists to push the Twins away from their past practices/decisions. Hope is all we got there. Another person asks about Trevor Larnach. Larnach is not an outfielder. He could be a DH who plays once a month in left field. That shifts a discussion to whether the Twins will pay $7M for a DH/PH. Larnach has value (imo), but that value is more likely to another team. People who see Larnach, Jeffers, and Arraez as needed for the 2027 Twins roster are plentiful and those arguments have been discussed/beaten ad infinitum. A comment correctly posits that Walker Jenkins could suck. That is a possibility. The response is rather simple. Jenkins needs to play through his struggles. If July has arrived and the average is still at or below .200, a confidence boost in AAA may be necessary. I guess the thought here is what are we talking about with Walker Jenkins? Is he vastly overrated or will he blossom? If it is the former the Twins should be hinting to teams that Jenkins is available. This November seems crucial for the Twins for their next half dozen years. Zoll is top dog. What can he do?

Nice pun.

While that seems like a legitimate idea, I cannot think of a deal that is Roden for ...... (fill in the blank). Who out there has an idea of a pitcher coming back with Alan Roden (or Emmanuel Rodriguez) going out? My idea, much panned, was to trade Ober and Roden for Lawlar. I would add Larnach or Sands if it made a difference and Arizona was keen. That does not bring back a pitcher though.

In other words, the owners solve their revenue collection and dispersal issues amongst themselves and a new CBA is finished in December.

The dysfunction of the Twins front office in the last ten years along with whatever it is that the Pohlads do is being encouraged by this article. It is not a secret that Walker Jenkins needs to improve as a major league player. Nobody knows the specifics more than Walker himself. There is nothing left for him in AAA. If the Twins somehow see things similarly to the author, there are teams willing to trade for Walker Jenkins. Tomorrow we will read that Kaelen Culpepper still can benefit from some additional minor league seasoning. Every day that Zoll sits on his hands in November increases the risk of a discouraging roster in 2027.

If Walker Jenkins is going to be a platoon player, it might be worthwhile to see if he can return a better player in a trade. I like the idea of adding two strong bullpen arms. Please add details of your guess at length of contracts. They are not signing for one year. How many years did you offer Bauers? He may take the QO from Milwaukee. Kody Clemens had a good year but I think the Twins want a better glove at second base and Clemens fits as a strong utility player. What happened to Wallner, Larnach, Ober? Did you send Rojas, Matthews, and Festa to AAA? The $135M budget gets tossed out here, which is an optimistic thought. This looks like $160M or so. C'mon Tommy Pohlad, do a $160M payroll. Thank you for submitting a blueprint.

Please stop with articles that involve Jeffers.

Can someone start a petition to end all articles involving any discussion of Ryan Jeffers? This topic has been beat to death.

There have been so many articles on Jeffers. To your question, the response by comments submitted on Twins Daily can be broke down in to two areas. One is sign Jeffers, move him to DH/1B when Lackey arrives. The other is a combination of a) Jeffers will cost the Twins a shot at signing a star bullpen arm or bat; b) Jeffers is a good hitter but not a catcher or a first baseman or a good enough bat to just DH, plus the Twins may want to hold the DH spot open and the Twins need to improve their defense. Those are the two positions.

I have struggled to see a trade put forth that makes sense to me for Joe Ryan. I can see opportunities to complete trades where someone like Ober is traded along with a controllable player for a player that could fit into the Twins needs. The news we see concerning the lockout is primarily driven by the owners. The PA sits quietly by the sideline, except to react to big proposals by the owners. Collusion, as mentioned in a previous comment, would not surprising in the least. The owners agreeing not to do this or that until a resolution of the CBA is not likely a legal mistake unless specific emails, notes, and agreements are carelessly passed around. Of course, the teams failing to bolster their rosters through signings and trades reduces the quality of the game. I understand that everyone has opinions on this topic and some are strong. To me it has always seemed really simple. The owners want a CBA to put hard restrictions on all of the owners in a fashion which protects the cost/risk for every franchise. As a few owners have stated, the values of clubs should rise with controlled cost across the industry. Thus it is the players who should bail out the owners, agreeing to a cap system, to save the owners from their inability to agree amongst themselves on how to share revenues.

The Twins greatest risk they can possibly take is to continue to roll it back with the same basic group and fill the roster openings with a couple of plaid signings. What was the saying? Did anyone hear something about go big? There are opportunities for trades. A few of these can be simple or they can rock the joint a little bit. Free agents cost money and draft choices. A couple of bullpen arms and a bat are needed. How they add those pieces .... I don't care. The bat has to own a glove and have some power. Zoll needs to accomplish something substantial before the lockout or the Twins will fade further from the view of sports fans, leaving behind only us few old diehards. That sad number cannot support a franchise.