tony&rodney

Actually the two guys I'm most curious/excited about are older players who had magical 2024 seasons. Carson McCusker fits best as a DH but would look much the same as many of the other Twins as a corner outfielder. The adjustments McCusker made last season in his swing and his continual improvement might just give him a shot at some point. The power is unbelievable, greater than that of Matt Wallner. Payton Eeles is a great feel good story and it will be interesting if he gets more than a glance in camp. Eeles put up numbers that were a bit startling. If you had to choose between Lee and Eeles looking over their St. Paul contributions it is a tough call with Eeles having more speed. I'm not sure what the Twins have in either McCusker or Eeles but it behooves the coaching/managing staff to evaluate whether these players are for real.

Did the AL Central get more competitive tonight?

The Twins are for sale and if the sale goes through soon enough (March 15) there will be chatter within Twins Territory. The Twins are rolling out a new media format. People will choose to buy if they are interested and a sale might help but a shiny new toy acquired via trade would receive significant press and be roundly debated and advertised. This would likely boost sales. The season starts in late March and by May the Twins will have begun to show what type of team they are going to be for people interested in attending games or buying the media deal. A winning team is a positive but a plodding poor defensive team that waits for good things will not be a strong draw. I think we saw that last year. An exciting team will bolster both attendance and media sales and keep the Vikings off the frontal lobe for a bit longer. What does Falvey think?

Catching is such a tough position. We saw the Orioles outstanding catcher take a step back in 2024. By the end of the year he was beat up. We are seeing J. T. Realmuto, a fantastic athlete, begin to decline from the rigors of catching. The position is such a difficult spot to fill. The Twins have actually done ok (not great, but ok) using Jeffers and Vazquez in a timeshare. There are teams who would dream of having either one of those guys for the last two years. Look at the debacle in Miami. So perhaps the sharing route works going forward and identifying how to draft and develop, sign, or otherwise acquire will be quite important in 2026 and onwards. Because I believe a good baseball team starts with strong players up the middle I focused all of my first blueprint moves towards acquiring a catcher. My first suggestion was to trade Brooks Lee for Jeferson Quero, a huge overpay by the Twins but one that I felt was critical now. Later I drummed up ideas to filch guys like Endy Rodriguez or Harry Ford. Ford has been trending away from catching though. Kyle Teel was just too dear to put an offer on. Recently, I wondered if Baltimore would trade Samuel Basallo for one of Lopez, Ryan, or Ober. Huge price but that sums up how important I feel catching is to a team.

Maybe the trick is to have high quality and deep substance alongside of rah rah and style. Wasn't that the Oakland A's winning in the early 1970s?

Dude. When it comes to baseball at this moment .... the times they are a changing.

Actually I think there is a chance at a major trade. This may be particularly true if all of Larnach, Wallner, Rodriguez, Miranda, Julien, Eeles, Keaschall, Lee, along with others like pitchers Festa, Matthews, Morris, Raya, C. J. Culpepper, and Cory Lewis look really good through March. Stuff can happen. I don't expect anything, which is what I have said but not wanted since last October. We shall see.

Draft the best player available. Trade to fill perceived holes.

Good lord, picking over stats to state who sucked worse but inserting an excuse for one but not the other. I give up.

I'm not opposed to a signing either but all of the names we have gone over have declined in talent, usefulness, and are injury prone. This leaves a team with virtually no reason to make a contract offer that an experienced player will usually take. Having said that, we know that both Profar and Iglesias signed for $1 million just last year, so maybe the Twins sign someone like Bader, Grichuk, or Iglesias for $1 million this year. The key is to keep any signing at a minimum, max $2M, and with the idea to jettison the player if they are toast. Michael Helman is an unusual player. He is older, is adequate with a glove almost everywhere, runs well, and has pop in his bat. He also is often injured and prone to striking out a ton. Every time I have watched him play he displays the skills and qualities a team would want in a utility player but he also has those empty plate appearances too. Forgetting his age and stats, the Twins might want to think about his ability to fill a role. If you haven'y seen him play on numerous occasions, I don't think you can judge him accurately. He is an enigma of sorts.

Louie Varland likely needs only a slight adjustment on finger pressure and release to leap toward an elite level relief pitcher. Too many of his pitches are center cut and needing just a little more movement. He can do it. I'm a little surprised that a few teams who have great expectations for 2025 have not coerced Falvey into exchanging Duran for a position player. These teams may regret their inability to deal and I'm pleased the Twins still have Duran. Michael Tonkin has often been mentioned as a player to DFA, but my gut tells me that his value as a veteran and as an effective #8 fellow in the bullpen is more valuable than people understand. A rubber arm is needed in every pen and he is it for the Twins. The #3-7 positions are open for a host of other relievers.

The data from games at the lowest levels for pitchers is only minimally useful. Development is the idea and only those on the ground really know how the pitchers are doing. Scouts watch a ton of these games and try to ascertain who could be pilfered from another team as an additional body of a larger deal via trade.

Worry not, the Twins are not even paying attention to the payroll at this point. The team is for sale. Unless something catastrophic happens (U.S. gov. implodes) the Pohlads are not paying salaries for the 2025 team. All decisions related to transactions of player personell are strictly according to Falvey's plans for the team.

Julien had a bad year last year but was pretty solid the year before. The same statement is totally true for Lewis. It is at the very least a bit odd that Julien has been totally trashed and cast aside as a player of any worth while Lewis still has a brilliant shine to his name here on TD. I'm not promoting or damning either player because it isn't that unusual to see young players struggle at the MLB level. Even a supposed superstar like Julio Rodriguez has had a bit of a slide the last two years from his brilliant 2022.

Highly doubt whether either Duran or Jeffers are remotely interested in signing extensions. They shouldn't be if they trust their talent. Both of them have already made legacy money and unless they have pissed it all away they know they are set to make a bundle down the road. I would advise them to go year by year. The last paragraph largely accounts for why many folks do not want any more worn out veteran players.

If any of those guys will sign a ST invite that provides a $2M contract if they make the team, sure ok. Otherwise forget about it.

Sorry to interrupt the conversation between Riverbrain and DJL44, but after looking back (again) at the free agents available (not Alonso or Bregman) I'm left wondering who a person should be interested in. Who?

I'm also fine with the current group of pitchers. I would like Paddack to be used in the bullpen. If he is put ahead of any of SWR, Festa, or Matthews it will be a poor end result. Spot starts as needed, ok. I'm not sure what trade value, if anything worth pulling off, Paddack or Vazquez have across baseball. Dan Hayes wrote the article to suggest that a little extra money made a trade for Cease possible without having to balance salaries. Cease fits as a good starter. His rental status makes people nervous because of the player cost. Hayes suggests SWR/Matthews, Larnach, a mid level prospect, and likely Castro. That is a huge collection for San Diego and fits all of their needs more or less. Perhaps the Twins can tweak that through including either of Miranda or Julien instead of Larnach and subbing in Cory Lewis or C. J. Culpepper plus a CB draft pick instead of Matthews. The options are there for Falvey and Preller to get what they want in a deal. I'm fine with what the Twins have now for pitching.

The Twins have a good pen and both Jax and Duran are really good.

Every team needs somebody to help catch bullpens in Spring Training. If Gasper isn't gone before April, he is fine as a guy at AAA. If Gasper spends time with the Twins take the under in Vegas for Twins wins.

Going back to the actual article, the Twins are not tied as tight to Twins Daily's $130 million as touted here all winter long. That sure doesn't register as news for me. When the music stops and everyone has a chair in St. Louis, the 26 person payroll will be somewhere from $120-140M, about what was expected last October. Spending $5 million on a tired vet just to spend the money doesn't excite me at all. If it excites others ..... ok.

Looking at multiple guesses across several sites or even making my own lineup for projected players as a starting lineup, I have not seen anyone use any of those five players as starters. Its ok if you want those five to start. That is your choice. I won't argue. If you are trying to suggest that the five names used will be rostered at some point and actually play in games, I won't argue with that either, but wonder why you state them as guaranteed starters. Teams use as many as 50 or more players in a season and the Twins have used at least 20 position players each of the last two years. So taking that information we need to flesh out who are the other half dozen starters, in addition to your five, for 2025 that does not include Jeffers, Vazquez, Miranda, Lee, Lewis, Correa, Castro, Larnach, Buxton, or Wallner. We know all of those guys will start a ton of games. I will guess Camargo, E. Rodriguez, L. Keaschall, P. Eeles, W. Holland, and C. McCusker. I'm not too confident that all of those guys will wear a Twins uniform but history tells us that 20 position players will start games.

I was wondering which of Helman, Julien, Martin, Gasper, or Keirsey Jr. were "currently GUARANTEED a spot in the starting lineup"?

This is a bigger deal than is often thought. I'm a diehard baseball fan and specifically a Twins fan since the first game of the 1961 season. However, my fandom is not exclusive to just the Twins. I was a huge fan of Koufax, Mays, Aaron, Spahn, Stengel, and others. I love watching good baseball and have never hated or despised any teams, not even the dreaded Yankees, although I didn't even try to catch the home run that Mark Teixeira hit to me in the right field seats in the 2010 playoffs because it was such a downer. The game of baseball is nuanced and I'm fascinated by VFW games as well as MLB. It hurts to see St. Louis come down even a bit and Pittsburgh fans are suffering. The massive dose of media money has caused a huge separation in just the last half dozen years and the collapse of the RSN has only hurt the smaller markets. This cannot be a good development for baseball in general. Concentration of wealth is always deleterious throughout human history. In baseball we have recently seen huge contractions of minor leagues that cost communities and individuals joy as well as some employment. The cost to MLB was pennies. The cost to the quality of the game is being debated quite a bit among those who scout and report on the development of players; its a negative in every way with no positive outcome except to put another Snickers bar in some owner's pocket. Sadly I don't expect change for another decade. Meanwhile I will go to college, high school, youth, and senior baseball games as well as watch some minor league games. Retirement is great. I regret not coaching any longer and my body is long since trampled from playing. Life is good.

Forgive me because I have commented on this previously with you. Emmanuel is a better fielder than Keirsey Jr. as an example and I like Keirsey Jr. People tend to be skeptical of a really muscled up guy maintaining their speed and quickness and this will be an ongoing question for Emmanuel Rodriguez. From my perspective Emmanuel is a true centerfielder and I'm not alone, "His reads, routes, instincts and ball skills in center are all spectacular, and right now, he has the foot speed to play there." - from Fangraphs. I guess we shall see soon enough and I hope this happens from Day One of the 2025 MLB season because ER is ready. AAA will be pointless, which many people will disagree with because they look at his stats but haven't seen him play.