Doctor Gast

IMO, the main proponent to make this work is Moreno. If we get Moreno then we can sanely trade away Vazquez's salary. But honestly, what makes you think that AZ is open to trade him? Moreno is hurt, but why would AZ trade low on him unless there is something seriously wrong with him? Then maybe he's not the answer. I like how you trimmed the fat & I'd like to trade away Jeffers for a more economical backup. The money we save we can use to extend our key players to help keep our window open longer. I'd also keep Lopez over Gallen because under this concept of keeping the core together. If you trade one essential part of the core, IMO if we do that I'd blow the whole thing up & hope BOS is willing to trade Keal & Mayers.

Gonzales is overrated, IMO he's comparable to Austudillo in style, except Austudillo hustled, Gonzales doesn't, Austudillo has a better glove & made better contact, SO rate. I don't see him ever making the Twins. He hasn't done anything yet to put him in my top 20.

That is my reasoning also. That's not that they can't work on their secondary pitches while they are in the pen. IMO like Duran as soon it was apparent that he couldn't be a starter, they should have made that conclusion a long time ago with Canterino, even though he had the repertoire. I would say the same for Priellip, that his arm isn't healthy enough, he should thrown in the pen last season until his arm should say otherwise. I completely agree on how they have used Raya, he has the stuff but doesn't have the arm to be a SP. That's why he has been able to move up the ladder w/o getting hurt. If he can maintain his stuff through AAA. I can see him being an opener for the Twins towards the end of the season to help out the rotation. Like Jax, Varland has the arm but not the stuff. I was totally against Varland wasting his bullets in AAA, while the Twins needed him in the pen. Jax could be experimented in the rotation now as Varland could once he figure his stuff out.

Good point JW, the injury history changes things a bit.

Losing our only true veteran SP would be a big blow to the stability of the rotation. Alcala would not be as esteemed to Boston as he is to MN & Pena is a long way away. I'm sorry Boston would laugh in your face. IMO Boston highly esteems Mayers & they need Bernadino. The trade balance highly favors MN. To get Mayers Boston has to be extremely desperate & the Twins will have to blow them away with an offer they can't refuse plus remember we have Falvey. The way that Falvey is handling our open window. I'd blow the whole thing up! Suppose Boston has a good shot early in the season & is desperate & most likely we're out of the playoffs. In that case, they come to us & say we'll trade you Mayers & Teel for Lopez, Correa, Jeffers & Duran- I under the circumstances would do it, because I don't see us making the postseason for awhile after Falvey is done doing his thing. Maybe after new ownership, Lewis becomes the new team leader & new FO; another window would eventually open.

Duran is part of the successful '23 core. I'd hate to trade him. Falvey's creativity means keeping players we need to trade & trading away players we need. Missing our real needs & wasting the Twins' allotted money on players that we don't need. We have a great core (with only 1 real need, viable SP) & a top farm system that we can easily use to fill that need. Again this year our competitive window is wide open, with our farm ripe for trading for a viable SP or any other small need that pops up as last year. Falvey wants to continue on his creativity that's means continuing to compromise the core to afford players we don't need, not filling necessary holes and squandering another year of an open window. So we shouldn't trade Duran this offseason. Sad to say, the path we are going we will never be in the running for the postseason (& they'll blame it on the budget). We can trade Duran at the deadline. Our farm is bloated but we are in desperate need of Kyle Teal we'd have the leverage (it won't be easy & expensive) but I doubt Falvey could pull it off. Maybe after Falvey is gone another window might open up(?)

I agree with you but Castro also add extra value being a switch hitter where we have players who are good against LHPs but are lousy against RHPs & vise versa, But he is steady against both adding quality depth at many positions.

Adjusting is the name of the game, & the game will dictate how you adjust. IMO the game has shown that he needs to adapt his baserunning. I agree that Buxton needs to learn to adjust his hitting. Buxton has made adjustments in CF to keep him there but he is still elite in CF. Being still elite it's not time for him to move off CF, CF is where we can get the most value from him. IMO Buxton should stick in CF because he's the best & can outplay Emma & Walker there for the remainder of his career. Right now I can see Emma good enough subbing Buxton in CF but not good enough to replace him. I have my doubts that Walker can logically stick at CF or even how long Emma can.

Castro could be our full-time LFer & improve our WAR there, but the fact that he can fill in at RF, 3B, 2B, CF or SS does not make him less valuable, it makes him much more valuable. especially throw in that he switch-hits make him even more valuable. Castro was key to our success in '23 & was our MVP this last season. The thing is that he's not a full-time SS, & his extended time there wore him down. Castro is irreplaceable, we don't have a single person in our organization that can do what he does & w/o him IMO we not achieved what we did in '23 & wouldn't ever be in consideration for the postseason in '24. Instead of wasting our money on outside players, we should use that money to extend him. He one I consider core & should not be traded. We'd never get what he's worth to us.

Which competitive team would be interested in Captain Jax? I'd hope MN. I'd consider Jax as part of the core, We have a very good core, stop trying to be "creative" & continue to compromise it. We have a very good core & a top farm system & a lot of good valued young players that are not IMO not part of the core. That spells a competitive window, take advantage of it. Stop hoarding prospects, and forget about creative trades that'll continue to compromise the core while gorging out our farm with redundant prospects. I'd be tempted to trade Jax for Teal but I'd rather trade someone else who I'd not consider part of the core.

Thank you so much Jason for making my offseason. It should be illegal for LAD to pick up another Japanese superstar. I wish we still had Meada around to speak in Sasaki's ear about how evil LAD is & how good it is MN. Besides LAD, SD has Yu Darvish, who Sasaki looks up to. We can still hope. Sasaki could add so much to the Twins, not only 6 yrs. of talent but also revenue from added ticket sales also added Japanese revenue in merchandise & TV rights.

I'm all for giving players an opportunity to shine. Overall, I'd like to see if they can make an impact at AAA 1st, which none of them have. I would have liked to have seen Keirsey given the chance to see how much of an impact he could have had, after making an impact at AAA prior. The only player who might make an impact this season is Emma, like I said with Brooks Lee. Even if he'd have a good spring training. I'd still like to see him prove himself at AAA. The rest I could see a late call-up to get their feet wet but that's it. I still like to see where Keaschal's arm is at before making a better judgment. I've been criticized for advocating to have had Kiriloff stationed at 1B so it'd be easier on his body & chided that 1B is no different than any other position. So tell me why Keaschal, after the discovery about his arm, was placed at 1B, where he had never played before pro, & was a waste of his talent if it was not because it was to preserve him? Why not keep him at 2B & OF?

If 1B was such an important need & Santana was the answer we should have gone further in the postseason than the year before? But in reality, Santana's glove didn't even get us to the postseason, with Santana we were able to achieve 4th place in AL Central. That's how important Santana's addition was.

Zoll being part of LAD org. I'd have high hopes for him. But his time at LAD was short & his time under Falvey's wing is extensive. Anything good he might have picked up at LAD, he has lost sitting under Falvey's philosophy & supervision. Many high picks of college big bats & weak gloves never made it out the MiLB. Focus on primarily developing HRs hitters, they have screwed up a lot of promising young hitters. Hitters that rejected this philosophy have done well. Hitters that have made it to the MLB Sano, Jeffers. Larnach, Wallner & Julien that adapted to Falvey's philosophy have had to revamp their approach to stay up. Jeffers & Larnach have adapted, hopefully Wallner has, Sano has not & Julien, I have serious doubts. We are way behind in defense & baserunning. In our system we have too many psuedo SSs & CFs & real ones are ignored or traded. But our greatest need & my greatest concerned is if Zoll is able to initiate & finalize essential trades. Zoll has been sitting in some of Falvey's transactions so Falvey has mentored him in the art of "creative" trade, What a laugh, a creative trade, needs to be initiated, have a positive effect & of course be creative. That said, Zoll isn't qualified to be a GM. It took Falvey 3 yrs. to come to the revelation that Cave could not sub Buxton. It took them 2 yrs to discover that Polanco's ankles couldn't stand up at SS. It has taken them 6 yrs to hopefully discover that focusing on drafting & development for HRs while neglecting defense & basic baseball fundamentals was wrong, I want a GM who is 1 or more steps ahead than a GM who is always 2 or more steps behind, When are they going to discover that our catching situation is terminal that putting a bandaid (Vazquez) on it might mask it but hasn't fixed it? Falvey was hired to establish a pitching pipeline & that's taken to fruition. My guess is that we are now behind maybe only ATL, LA, TB, CLE, MIA & SEA as far as developing pitchers. Great! But why can't he sees that he sucks at everything else. He has deceived himself, BSed a good portion of the fanbase, the ownership but he hasn't BSed me. I hate to be BSed. My hope was that Falvey would have that epiphany of that he sucked at a lot of stuff & what the Twins needed to be GM, was a man (or woman) that is able to be who he couldn't be, not another hand-picked yes-man clone, who majors in weird analytics. Now Falvey has fingerprints all over the Twins, which I'm afraid will be the touch of death. No wonder Levine got out when he did, he didn't want anything to do will the Twins downfall.

I believe that St Peter was more involved in marketing & business end & never poke his nose into what the philosophy should be, who to sign, who to trade, who to play 2B etc. (operations)

Many fans are up & down but I've maintained all along that we have a great core, A great core isn't a guarantee for a successful season. The core talent & chemistry needs to be maintained & the essential holes are recognized & filled in order the team can sustain any success they have throughout the season. If they don't, any success is short-term.

St. Peter had nothing to do with the operations of how to run the Twins. That was my hope that Falvey's promotion would entail. Falvey's less involvement with the decisions of operations of the Twins, would vastly help the Twins. But your quote: "that Falvey is the top baseball decision-maker—will remain the same." Has further my distaste for the Pohlads. To be fair Falvey has done a good job of eventually establishing a pitching pipeline, a job that he was hired to do. But IMO after the Bomba Squad '19 Falvey got a lot of acclaim & it went to his head & he started to take over areas that he wasn't capable of doing. He has no vision beyond pitching in how to run the other end of the game. He developed the "all or nothing" hitting philosophy after the juiceball ended. Where HRs were everything- hitting, defense & baserunning were counted as nothing, Falvey had terrible player evaluations of putting players where they didn't belong, picking up players that had obvious injury problems. Never admitting mistakes but always doubling down on them hoping to get out of it. that never worked out but hurt the Twins. But worst of all Falvey knows only how to make bad trades & can't initiate essential ones. If Zoll has better player evaluations & negotiating skills or they can bring someone in who has these skills then I'd be OK with it, But if it's another ego trip for Falvey, then we have failed.

For the last 3 offseasons, we have had a great core to work with the 1st brought us postseason success, The idea to progress from success is to keep the talent & chemistry of the core intact & add to it. So the 2nd offseason we lost Gray so that means that trading from our prospect surplus & some expendable young players to obtain a frontline SP along with Ober & Ryan taking a step forward, Buxton, Correa, Lewis, Polanco, Miranda & Kiriloff entering the season healthy, With promising young well-deserving rookies ready to step up to fill in where needed. W/o touching anything else (except maybe cutting some fat like Paddack & or Farmer) we be adding to the core not subtracting & still meeting the budget. But Falvey's "creative" maneuvering subtracted from the core, failed to fill our major hole, frivolously spending our allotted money on players that didn't add to what we had & some subtracted from what we had. Falvey's "creative" moves caused a motivated postseason contender into a 4th place AL Central pretender. Failing to build upon our core we enter our 3rd offseason with a core compromised in talent & chemistry. IMO we can still pick ourselves up with the remaining yet still very good core. Return to filling our need at SP, Give our players opportunities to grow, cut fat not muscle & stop spending our allotted money on frivolous players & expensive FAs. Save that money to extend important core players like Lewis. We can't take any more of Falvey's "creative" ideas. All that said is to show how ridiculous it is to trade Lewis. Trading Lewis is completely giving up on this core. A great core with a farm packed with great prospects. That is an open window to take advantage of, not to destroy this core by trading away Lewis for a bunch of prospects to further gorge our farm. Besides I'm not interested in any of these players in any of these trades. This isn't a good time to trade Lewis because his value is down but it is a good time to extend him if we can stop spending & scrap up some extra money.

Cave, Gordon & Celestino we are talking about CF. That is an entirely different animal. CF is a premium defensive position, 1B is the least important one. At a defensive premium position, Twins showed their priority of bat over glove in running Cave out at that position year after year. 1B is the least important defensive position, where the priority is bat over glove. Miranda has shown a good glove at 3B where the transition to 1B is easier, much like the transition from CF to LF. Where the transition from LF to CF is more difficult, 1B to 3B. At 1B it is obvious that they can be more patient with Miranda.

FO creativity has killed us. This means that the other teams dump off players they don't want or can easily live w/o to get what they need. Falvey isn't able to initiate this kind of move, he's always on the other end. I disagree with you that 1B is a priority & Diaz will not be cheap in players & salary & we'd have to trade away someone who we'd need more to afford him & after 2yrs he's gone! After that, we are in the same boat as now when Santana left. I rather invest in our own players at 1B. Santana has had what? 15- 20 yrs. at 1B, he should be good by now. Give Miranda a full year, we know he can hit, and his glove should be adequate until he improves when he is given enough time. Lewis could be an excellent choice to play alongside Miranda. There are a few options there so we don't have to go down that painful route.

It's hard to find a SP that'll come in to help as a SP, most of the time you can find some RPs. The only name that stuck out on the list was Brendan McKay (LHP). He had promise back when but have no idea where he stands now.

Even though we have a worse core than we had last season, we still have a very good core. A core like last season has only one main hole . This season they have to do a lot better job of recognizing where the priorities are. Last season they felt that the priority was back of the BP so they loaded up the back of the BP (none of them worked out), they figured that they had a hole at subbing Buxton & couldn't trust Keirsey so they picked up Margot a player LAD wanted to unload. Instead of making us stronger they made us weaker. They figured that Julien could take Polanco place at 2B & dumped Polanco , again made us weaker & disturbed the chemistry. They deemed 1B defense as totally essential to our success & neglected the offensive superiority of Miranda & Kiriloff & their need to be protected at 1B, The WAR at 1B didn't improve from '23 to '24 with addition of Santana nor has it dropped from '24 to '25 in projections w/o Santana. IMO if Miranda & Kiriloff were given 1B our WAR would have been much in '24 & '25 projections. Deadline need was a LHRP & they never came through, Twins misinterpreting our needs & focusing on backend BP, outside help at CF subbing & 1B & missing our real need for a viable SP & later LHRP. Took us from a postseason contender to a postseason pretender. The focus should be this offseason as was last off season & that is to preserve the talent & chemistry of the core, viable inning eating SP (at least), prioritize catching defense over 1B defense, maybe a LHRP, give well deserving young players an opportunity to prove them self. We have a budget crunch, forget about FA as our solution or targeting big bucks players in trades, quitting spending on frivolous players. cut fat not muscle. FO has to learn how to inniatate & close on vital trades. To close I'll reinnerate as I said last year, We have a great core & a whole lot of young players & prospects that could be & should be traded. Forget about breaking up the core to get more prospects we don't need. The core has suffered last year but it still has a lot of potential & I have faith in them.

Roster-wise I'd take ours over theirs. But how they are developed & managed is a different story. CLE has better player development & evaluations. They successfully teach their players how to play baseball not HR derby. Better evaluations, they know the value of the players they pick up(how many players do they pick up are hurt or are terrible?), they give opportunities to their own young players to get better & grow with the team. They can also better evaluate where their problem areas are & deal with it. If something is wrong they can quickly see & fix it, instead of being blind & doubling down.

WAR doesn't tell the whole story but it's the best thing we have to evaluate players. We had a very good core last offseason that thrilled us in the postseason, the main focus should have been to keep the talent & chemistry intact. The only meaningful loss was Sonny Gray. That means entering into the trade market with a boatload of prospects to land a top-end SP to fill that hole. We would enter into '24 with a great rotation with expected young SPs Ryan & Ober to take a step forward. Our biggest hole was SP, we needed at least a mid-rotation inning eater, to help take the burden off SP wannabe- Varland, recent TJ- Paddack, a bunch of rookies & the BP. That didn't happen. For a postseason-inspired team, you need to fill the real holes, add to the core not subtract, give deserving in-house players a chance to prove themselves. FO spent all of their allotted money on frivolous salaries that did nothing to help the club. That plus not filling our real hole at SP & disturbing the chemistry, I had very little expectation with the Twins entering into '24, even though we had a wonderful core. Again for a postseason-inspired team, you need to get better & better. Although we still have a good core & better w/o Margot, we are worse than last year, Because we didn't allow well-deserving in-house players to develop into their potential (last year was lost) & still have a hole left by Gray. (to be continued)

Great job Nick. Paddack is the type of fat that we need to cut. Paddack does have value & still has upside but not as much that this FO thinks. They signed Paddack to an extension, to hopefully have something to show for the wasted time, talent & money spent on him. Mets were interested in him (but backed out because they knew his arm was ready to fall off) before the Twins picked him up & invested in him. Paddack can be easily replaced & is the best place to start cutting fat. A small prospect can be added to even out the small negative trade value, that can be involved in a different trade. IMO HOU could also be a trade partner, HOU needs some help in the backend of their rotation, HOU could also be a home town team & the farther fences could aid in Paddack's fly balls. IMO he wouldn't be that hard to move with no negative effects to the team & we cut salary w/o trading someone which would be harder to replace.