StormJH1

This prediction, predictably, is proving to be very active. Haha. I don't interact in person with a lot of Twins fans, but I just feel this weird indifference about the team. Which is discordant with an team that has good rotation/bullpen, reasonable star power for a mid-market team, and a decent chance of sniffing the postseason if a few things break right. I think the ownership/sale situation, annual injuries, uncertainty about how to watch the team, and (especially) the lack of investment in the on-field product have really worn on the fanbase.

It's Monday on the week of Opening Day now. I assumed that I was being ignorant and had simply missed news about what channel this would be on Xfinity AND whether or not it will be included in one of the add-on tiers many of us likely set up years ago, specifically so that we would have access to FSN, Bally, etc. This is a friggin' mess. I'm in my 40's and not completely technologically inept. The demographic of people who would be (a) still really into baseball; and (b) reliant on a cable provider to show Twins games skews quite a bit older than me. How the heck are they supposed to figure out when and where to watch the games if it changes every year, changes within the year as it did with the surprise May 1st blackout last season, and then isn't resolved days before the start of the new season. There are like 1500 channel slots on Xfinity X1 service. Are they expecting that your 75-year-old grandfather will just thumb around by accident and locate the Twins TV channel they may or may not be paying for in the mid-600's while channel surfing? My Xfinity bill creeps up so embarrassingly high, I'm tempted to dump the whole thing over stuff like this. My wife and daughter rely on it less and less compared to streaming options as time goes on. Does anyone know if there is an upgrade option if you have the MLB.TV All Teams Yearly Subscription ($149) to include the local team for the bundle ($199), if you are already signed up? My plan was obviously to watch the Twins on TV, since I believed I was already "paying for" it. If that turns out not to be the case, or if I cancel cable, it looks like my next option is to pay the $99 just to add the Twins (or $19.99/month), which seems like an unattractive option.

I definitely was among the many voices earlier this season saying Kepler shouldn't have been re-signed and (later) should have been traded for whatever C-level prospect we could get for him. Obviously, that looks wrong now. But as others have said, I don't much regret the opinion for two reasons: (1) The entire trajectory of his career still makes it more likely that the last few months are a Chris Parmelee-like outlier, versus an actual indicator of his long-term production; and (2) The team has tons of young, talented position players that were being blocked by Kepler (and others), and arguably would have performed nearly as well with that additional playing time. The crow I need to eat would probably be on the Mahle trade. Not because I was so sure it would work out - I wasn't at all. But because I applauded the Twins for finally taking a risk and flipping prospects for a potential upper-half of the rotation arm. Unfortunately, Steer and Encarnacion-Strand are making it look like that trade look VERY bad, and there wasn't a way for me to know Mahle was already hurt and about to become even more hurt the following season.

This situation only becomes more and more baffling to me. It's pain to read articles like the one from Gleeman in The Athletic yesterday because the entire thing is a story about his medical condition, and yet the only description of what the problem is are vague references to his "knee". He's played 56 games this year exclusively as a DH, and the results are obviously very mediocre - .209 BA and .741 OPS. The explanation given by Rocco and the front office thus far - or at least as I interpreted it - was that he could play in CF and obviously would be more valuable there, but since that would increase the risk of injury and his removal from the lineup altogether, the organization was electing not to play him in the field. I disagreed with that approach because while CF could add additional ways he could get injured (running into a wall, slipping on the warning track and tearing up his knee, etc.), much of Buxton's acute injury history happened on the basepaths or in the batter's box. But it was at least a sound explanation as to why they felt they could keep him healthy. Rocco's comment now is that he literally cannot play in the field. I interpret that as "this is a chronic condition, it is not getting better", and he will be on the IL within days if we start asking him to also patrol the outfield. That's a different explanation, and one that's a lot more concerning for his long-term outlook. It also doesn't line up with the other stories we've heard, including the one where Correa talked to him before the season and said "wouldn't it be great if you could just DH and hit 40 or 50 HR's". That version of the story had Buxton eager to play in the field, but being talked out of it by players and FO people who had different ideas about how he could be most productive for the team. So, was Buxton "physically unable" to play CF in March, also? Buxton's 6 for 6 on steals this year, and knowing this, that was probably 6 attempts too many. He homered yesterday, but was on an 0 for 24 stretch before the game started. I'm increasingly wondering if he should be playing at all. It's telling that they don't seem to believe an IL stint and rest period of 10 days, a month, or whatever would make any difference. If they did, they would've done it by now. That would be the normal approach when you had a non-acute knee injury impacting a former Gold Glove centerfielder in the prime years of his career...as opposed to retiring him from his position in the field and trotting him out there several times a week to scuffle through his injury with middling results.

I wish that this was wrong, but it just isn't. I really like Byron Buxton as a professional and at least what he appears to be as a person. As a number of people have said, there isn't much more of him you could ask for in those regards. But I think there's an overemphasis on "per-game" efficiency, as if that's a thing that actually matters. The theory was that 100 games of Byron Buxton was so valuable that even if you had to rest him, or even if he ended up on the IL for 1/3 of the year, he was still so valuable as a CF and as an impact bat that it almost didn't matter. It's the Joe Mauer scenario all over again, only much worse. The projected value of both Mauer and Buxton was based on cherry-picked data from the best-case version of their value, and the assumptions that they would continue as plus/elite defenders at critical defensive positions while remaining relatively healthy and continuing to produce in ways comparable to their peak seasons. That isn't happening for Buxton, and it didn't really happen for Mauer either. However, to Mauer's credit, he did reinvent himself by learning 1B, and while he was never really a "plus" bat again after he turned 30, he actually enjoyed a relatively consistent and healthy 2nd half of his career. Buxton's merit's as an impact hitter are based on extremely small sample sizes, spread out over many years. He's thought to have middle-of-the-order power, but has one 20-HR season once in his career. He was thought to be the "fastest guy in the game" when he emerged, but only stole 15 bases once. (Admittedly, he's also been caught only twice on the basepaths since the end of the 2019 season, which is amazing. But the point remains, that he's either been hurt or not allowed to run.)

Yeah, that's just the problem. I think the take on Julien learning 1B is a solid one, but I think that's probably going to take some time. Remember the original plan was to have him learn one of the corner outfield spots, as that seemed to be the more immediate route to playing time. Except we have a logjam there, too, which is the whole point of this topic. I wonder if the front office truly anticipated that Byron Buxton was going to be the everyday DH heading into May, or if it was more of a situation where the knee was barking around Opening Day, but they'd hoped it would clear up after a week or two and he could go back in the field. Because losing the option to DH guys like Larnach, Julien, and Kiriloff makes it significantly harder to get the young guys regular playing time. Julien is not going to "replace" Jorge Polanco. And, shockingly, Kepler just started 7 games in a row after coming back from injury, until he finally sat against a lefty (P. Corbin). (FWIW, Kepler's splits in 2022 were somewhat even, but he was trash against lefties in 2020 and 2021). It's not just that guys like Kepler are bad. It's that when you bring a veteran back like that, they're so much harder to get out of the lineup when they inevitably slump. 400+ AB's this year from Larnach, Julien, or Kiriloff would be SO much more valuable than getting the same exact production from Kepler in their place.

Fair, but I guess you could argue that you earn "luck" by putting yourself in the position in the first place for something to work out. Like the Mahle thing last year - what if he ripped off 4 or 5 starts like Lopez has had to start this season after he was acquired, and then gotten shut down? I think that is an entirely plausible thing that could have happened, and fans would have viewed it differently. He's also back pitching reasonable well now, so time will tell on that move. But you have try a bunch of stuff, like trading for Mahle AND Pablo Lopez, AND committing $200 million+ to a guy whose ankle may fall off, in order for some of it to work. (I agree that lost Correa like 10 different ways this offseason before getting him back in the most absurd way imaginable, but he is a Boras client, and our initial offer to him him before the Giants signed him was very competitive and kept us in the discussion).

We're only looking at like 3 weeks of regular season data, and the perspective is even more anecdotal looking at just the Twins. But it does "feel" to me like strikeouts are up, and you just see crazy 9.0+ K/9 stat lines from pitchers who have not traditionally been huge strikeout guys. It's also very true that many hitters struggle in April due to a number of factors - timing, conditioning, and cold weather to name a few. So perhaps it's just a case that pitchers are slightly ahead of hitters on the curve of adjusting to the rule changes. But it would pretty unfortunate if one of the unintended consequences of the pitching clock and abolishing the infield shift is that we see even MORE strikeouts. My understanding is that K's were down - not up - in the minor league experiments. But it's plausible that hitters benefited from the constant stop/start, or being able to take more than 10-15 seconds to recover after being buzzed by a 98mph fastball inside. And while more strikeouts are helpful to quicker game times, they aren't helpful to the product. Never seeing the ball go into play harms the TV product, but IMO, it's even worse for the in-person product. There's very views in the ballpark that actually allow you to critique a pitching performance. An 89mph fastball versus a 101mph fastball doesn't really look any different to the dude sitting in section 230 in left field, nor can you really tell balls versus strikes. To be clear, I do mostly like the new rule changes, but this will be a trend to watch. As a Twins fan, I'm obviously enjoying watching starting pitching that can miss bats, and hope that continues.

Love the deal, and while he probably is out-pacing his long-term performance currently, it seems like it has a reasonable chance of looking like a bargain. As much as I loved Arraez, I was in favor of this trade from day one, and I think the early performance has shown that he is a legit talent. Injuries happen to almost every pitcher, so if you could find a position player and SP of like talent, the team getting the position player is going to "win" in a lot of cases just because of injury. To me, that doesn't matter. This was the right thing to do, as was the Mahle trade, and the general decision to stockpile competent SP arms. I probably feel better about our SP depth now than I have since...when? 2010? 2006?

Totally agree with this take. Although I think more people were asking for the Twins to sign an ace than you may think. Despite our colossal depth of problems all over the roster, there are people who legitimately think we should've thrown $20 million at C.J. Wilson or Cliff Lee so we at least had one good ace. First, a free agent pitcher has to WANT to come play for you. Other than a slight pitcher's park, there's really no motivating factor for an ace to want to come here as opposed to LA or Texas (or Boston/NYY, etc.). Second, it would have made virtually no difference to the success of the team - not when you can't support the ace adequately with runs, and the 2-5 options are a mess. Look at the pitchers Seattle has had and been forced to dump because they weren't making a run. But they've been busy actually drafting power arms, so their chances of having a solid rotation 2 or 3 years from now are light years beyond the Twins'.