Doctor Gast

I said most of the bad luck, his wrist injury did not reoccured & that was the main concern. His shoulder problem came from over doing it from the OF, it's a learning experience to see how he can progress. IMO they'll limit his OF appearences & I wouldn't doubt that Kiriloff will play much more than the 88 games he played last season. Mark my words.

Thanks Cory! It's one more great incentive to reach out to MIA for Luzardo because of the comradery with Lopez

Hey Mat; I seriously thought you'd take over for Nash at Locked On Twins (no knock on Brandon). But selfishly happy that you are able to write all these articles for us at TD.

No, but Tyler is

If the Twins think they can control Cabera's control problem I'd be all over that but Rogers would work too. MIA wants catching but Vazquez doesn't work. Just think if the Twins tried to sign Ohtani for $700MM+ & swung it, with all $ deferred except 2MM/ yr. for 4 (yrs) after 4 yrs he opts out. Just imagine how much $ the Twins would make in tickets, merchandizing (USA & JAP) broadcasting rights (USA & JAP) just for a fraction of what Castro makes. Life sometimes isn't fair.

IMO PIT are making a transition from rebuilding to becoming a contender so their focus is on SP- SP- SP. I don't think they'll trade him this year & will try to extend him down the road. Although it's a nice thought

Hey Bly; When I heard that they were serious about getting Henry Davis (PIT Crown Jewel) back into catching again. My hope rose that PIT would be open to trade Endy. But my hopes were crushed to hear he got hurt during winter ball & lost for the season.

Yeah, Greg, that Young trade was head scatcher even at the time. Before that trade the Devil rays were a so so team. After that trade of Barlett & Garza, The Rays had taken off & never looked back. Just think of that ripple effect that the Rays made from that trade if the Twins could have made those same trades? It's mind boggling.

You forgot our best clutch & walk off hitter that done most of it while playing unneccessarily hurt & that's Jorge Polanco. This season he'll be 100% so watch out & don't undersell him.

With Paparesta, I'm otimistic that most of our bad luck in injuries will go away if they listen to him.

I hate to do anything with the NYY but I came up with a good trade including Kepler. This flurry of LHB Ofers put the cabosh on that idea.

Thank you Theire for bring this us this blog. Being a fan of Julien ,I have followed him for some time. But since AFL I´ve become a bigger fan. I´ve advocated for his move back to 1B which IMO his natural position , Especially when Kiriloff was hurt, that be called up to play 1B because I believe Julien is the real thing. To limit this to Miranda, I attribute his slump due to him being overextended at 3B which eventually caused his shoulder injury. By his stat we see he doesn´t have the arm to play 3B so the idea of putting him back at 3B doesn´t ring with me. Up the middle, CF, SS & 2B you need above average range. Julien played only a partial season at 2B on the MLB level yet was stretched due to his average range. If Julien is the primary 2B this coming season, I see him entering a slump & possibly have some injury problems. If they change their minds & return him to 1B I say don´t trade him but if they they are dead set on keeping him at 2B our next best thing is to trade him. I´m sorry to say. P.S.- IMO Miranda will make a comeback. Hopefully he'll be so motivated to show it early (normally he's a slow starter) & platoon at 1B.

It was fun to see Tom together with you guys. Agree with most of the things you guys brought forth.

The point I was making about accessibility had nothing to do with Target Stadium, It had to do with being able to access games via streaming apps. So you can watch the games whenever & wherever you are & limiting "blackouts".

I was part of the 3% that bucked the 97% to say keep him because his trade value was so low & with the shift ban I expected he'd start hitting, it took longer than I expected but he came back stronger than I expected. I'm a big fan of Kepler & he could rack up more WAR this coming season than last but his trade value is at a good place. So if ever we decide to trade Kepler this is the time.

I just hope reason will win out.

To restate, I don't mind keeping Kepler, Polanco, Vazquez & Farmer but if we have to trade someone. Kepler is the most expendable.

Simple move Julien back to 1B where he should have been all along with Miranda & Farmer as our RH options. Larnach was our leading slugger in the 1st half of '23, With Wallner & Kiriloff at RF will give him plenty of time for Larnach to find himself if we ever need him as Kepler found himself the 2nd half.

Wow! we only have Wallner, Larnach & Kiriloff to replace Kepler in RF. Yes, Kepler is much better than any of these but RF is a non premium position where team often hide their less defensive prone players. I really like Kepler & if there isn't any good offers then by all means keep him. But especially with him in his last year IMO he's the most expendable than Polanco, Vazquez & Farmer they play more premium positions. Any thought of putting Lewis in the OF is totally ridiculous. #1 you're placing one of our main reasons of breaking that humiliating curse of winless PS games in risk again #2 lack of quality depth in the INF that includes only Correa, Lewis, Polanco & Farmer. People are crying out to trade Polanco & Farmer & remove Lewis to th OF. Martin will be joining the OF sooner rather than later, Brooks should be much later.

IMO baseball is a family event, where you fully enjoy the game as a family. But now that's very difficult for most families, Some can afford themselves once in ahile yet many can't even do that with this economy. Lower the tickets alone will have a small affect. To maximize we have to do more to create interest.

All this Ohtani thing leads to the Dodger is able to whoo Yamamoto. If they are able to sign Yamamoto, it's extremely unfair even if it's legal. Maybe this could create enough uproar for enough owners get together to completely change how MLB does business. Even not, like NYM tried to monopolize the market last off-season & didn't make the post season I hope the same for LAD unfortunately for Ohtani. LAA, even though they had the players with high WAR to perennially make it to the WS, never made a run.

Cody I enjoyed your miscellaneous news most of all. 1) Castro will be making almost 2x as much $ this season than Ohtani 2) Mauer is on track to enter the HOF on 1st ballot. both would be very shocking to most

jharaldson's blog got me thinking & instead of discussing it on his blog, I was afraid we'd get off-topic so I opened a new one. 1st we have to look at the older fan which makes up a good portion of the total of fans, that would get lost streaming , So cable would make more sense, going back to Midwest Sport Channel or Fox. But cable is more expensive & we have to make Twins games more accessible. The older fans are less active so cable works but more active younger fans needs apps on their phones & something cheaper than cable. If I could buy cable the main reason is to watch the Twins but in Brazil, Twins games are absolutely not an option on cable. Ownership needs to know that the Twins fanbase is dying out. How? #1 Twins fans are literally dying #2 Tickets are too high for most fans #3 Twin games assessibity is very limited, #4 Twins are not as competitive as they should be, so they aren't attracting new fans, #5 as a State we are losing that family/ baseball connection on all levels. Now with some Twins success IMO we have gained some new fans so how do we maintain them & further grow the fanbase? Creating new clean city uniforms won't do it (not that it hurts), Getting back to to main idea of making the Twins games accessible we need a combination of cable & streaming. We can be creative about this & be much more conservative with the blackouts, So even people in Brazil can watch them. Reducing the ticket prices, will attract more people along withsome of my other suggestions. All with the goal of maxing the attendance, maxing the attendance elevates the teams moral, elevating the moral, team wins more games, win more games you increase attendance. As you can see it can produce a snowball affect. So reducing ticket prices can actually make ownership more money. Not including the extra $ from merchandizing & concessions We must have a more competive team. That means aborting the "Plan" of drafting, signing & hoarding big bats while ignoring the rest like defense & details of small ball. FO has made good steps in upgrading premium positions of SS, CF & SPs; becoming more open to good trading opportunities instead of ignoring them. Even trying to encourage base stealing & taking the extra base. The other premium position catcher, they got Vazquez which vastly improved the catching (which elevated it to upper mediocre) & pitching. Other than this the catching position has been completely ignored, never drafting any upper level prospects. The ranking of our catching prospects now are super low. When we lose Vazquez, the level of our catching will greatly decrease with no hope in view. We must start to focus on upgrading our catching by obtaining very good/ elite potential MLB ready & soon to be prospects. Pitching we need to at least maintain what we had. FO can't rest on their laurels & let things slide or we'll lose all the new fans that we gained. We need to encourage & invest in the family/ baseball connection on the State level. By putting baseball in the hearts of families & individuals it's easy to be become Twins fans while improves the community, encourage young people to play baseball & could provide a better avenue of life to some kids. Those are some that I can think of on top of my head. Maybe you have others because baseball should be important to all of us.

That was my point, sorry that I didn't summarized.

Yes, Nick, this subject is very relevent. Our focus needs to be about advancing in the post season. Lopez has the record & experience that'd envy any WS hopeful. Ryan & Ober have made good progress in stamina in '23 but they are still young, I expect further progress in '24 yet still need to take into consideration they are still young. Both Ryan & Ober now have limited PS experience that will help. But we still need an outside SP to add to our rotation. I'd shoot much higher than Maeda, We need another Lopez type trade. Lopez was ranked upper 2nd tier when we got him but advanced well into top tier , We don't have to find a (finished product) '23 Gray substitute. An early Lopez type will be just be fine. Then we might have 3 or 4 to choose from along with Lopez to help us advance in the PS.