ashbury

Interesting. Might be worth someone's study, if the Twins are just a statistical fluke.

No, my POV is the opposite of what you might have assumed, and I was looking for something specific to riff off of, not a gotcha. I've lived in a few major league markets, and I was in the Twin Cities for about 20 years - and have been gone now for nearly 30. (And no, that does not make me "about 50," LOL.) The relationship between localities and their teams varies - for some it's a love-hate relationship, for others it's love win-or-lose. I have to say that the Twin Cities seemed, to me anyway, as somewhat uniquely "transactional" in their relationship with the Twins: build me a winner and maybe I'll buy a ticket or two in the cheap seats next season if the winning continues. It's the endpoint of why I haven't been especially vocal regarding whether or not to fire Rocco. Fire him, and you still have Falvey. I've come to view Falvey as running a below average but not incompetent front office. Fire him, and you still have the constraints that ownership will place on the next young, eager FO underling they bring in to turn things around. I don't have positive feelings for Twins ownership. Instead of building a warm relationship with the fans, coaxing folks to come out and have a good time win or lose like seems to be happening in Denver (because losing is bound to happen some years for any but the largest market teams), they have shot themselves in the foot with bland marketing and (lately) a propensity for truly tone-deaf statements in public such as Right Sizing. But get rid of current ownership and bring in some new and enthusiastic business folk, and you still have a franchise located in a place where "The Opener" always has meant, and always will continue to mean, hunting and fishing. I don't think it's a good baseball town. That plus the constraints of the current CBA make it too tough. When new owners eventually come I hope they do have ideas on this general front that prove me wrong. Because I basically don't. I know this isn't going to be popular, but there it is. Your use of "partial" piqued my interest but I didn't want to guess.

You must be fun at Cinco de Mayo parties. 🙃

Few if any here absolve ownership of all blame. You're suggesting there are things outside their control. Care to elaborate on what you had in mind?

If it helps, you can say I'm from Blaine.

I appreciate the response but I can't quite click Like. That's a pretty pessimistic take on the man, and you may be right but I hope not. Here's the problem for Wallner. There are guys, such as Buxton, about whom people say admiringly, "he can beat you in so many ways." When he had a tough day at the plate, prime Buxton could still stop a rally with a stellar catch that an opposing player probably wouldn't have been capable of - or if he lucks out and finds himself on first base he can still take a base that doesn't belong to him at some point thereafter. That's not Wallner. He can beat the other team precisely one way unless something flukish happens on the diamond. And the stats I summarized suggest that, in 2025, he wasn't even beating teams in that one way. People tout Wallner's arm as a second way he can beat an opponent, but I'm hard pressed to recall one instance of a game-saving throw from him. Most people probably remember Eddie Rosario's throw in Boston nailing Devers in the ninth, instance. A Google search for Wallner throws merely turns up a case of him getting thrown out at home, LOL. I don't advocate trading Wallner away (mostly because I doubt he'd actually bring back very much), but his career is at a crossroads at the moment. He needs to get better, in terms of winning, at the one thing he does.

TD needs to sign up both of the Kodys currently residing on the Twins roster, as guest columnists.

Which ones are those? Asking for a friend.

First, nobody hits well once they reach two strikes; across the majors the OPS was .512 in that situation this season. A quick look at Lee's splits confirms that he was worse than league average in the same situation, putting together a .454 OPS. Trouble is, he was also worse than league average when NOT getting to two strikes. It's a little harder to find that split, but just eyeballing it suggests MLB hitters OPS around .915 while Lee was around .880. Maybe someone has more precise numbers. He was simply worse than average with the bat, in most every dimension I can think of. (He did pretty well with the bases loaded, in a small sample size of 14 PA. That amounts to "faint praise".) He could work on improving at not swinging at pitchers' pitches, whatever the count. Not reaching two strikes is a worthy goal by itself.

And worth $4.75 on eBay because of the missing corner. 😄

Too soon, too soon. 🙃 / edit - I neglected to give Craig original credit

Yeah, I wasn't saying the book is closed on Amick. The arghh was for the AFL performance so far, and the parallels a continuation would suggest.

I kinda slid over this detail on first reading but it's the type I find myself compelled to double check if I come for a second look at things. It sounded low, and it turns out that this was his service time last January, per bb-ref.com. He had a few games at St Paul in 2025, but was he ever optioned there or were those rehab? Not that it really matters, but his service time has to be near 2 if not actually 2.043 now. He's got 972 PA - nearly the number that Tom Kelly keeps getting quoted as being important. You can't rack that much up in a year and six weeks or so. Does this change either of our points of view? No. He's still not arbitration-eligible. So, unimportant, but there we are. 🙃 / Good lord what a rabbit hole TD can be.

That's probably why I opted to not lengthen my first response post with my revolutionary take, perhaps thinking it was even obvious. I already don't remember for sure. 😁 I just thought the data was pretty interesting.

If our main disagreement is concerning the perceived daylight between "just above incompetent" and "at best competent but below-average," I'd have to be pretty incompetent to get very worked up over it. 😄 I've said elsewhere that, were I in charge, Byron Buxton holds Falvey's fate in his hands if he so chooses. If Buxton demands a trade, I'd consider that grounds for the executive's dismissal. You don't build a good team by alienating a man of Buxton's evident caliber.

I didn't actually get around to saying what I'd do with him, which boils down to "it depends." This is an off-season more than most where the FO should listen regarding any player. Weighing against that is, when you fire the manager, then there's an assumption that the players' performance were held back in some cases. Wallner seems like someone to bank on improving in a new environment - which I did indicate. Now, the reasons I outlined in my post could be taken as why not to expect much in terms of offers - someone else suggested swapping him for a good young catcher and I wonder if the situation were reversed whether many of us would swap a young Mauer to grab someone else's failed lefty power hitter. (OK, Mauer's an exaggeration, but I don't want to get bogged down arguing who in Twins' history was at one time a "good young catcher.") My best guess is he'll be on the roster next spring, and if the FO feels that Larnach and he are filling similar roles, Larnach is the one who'll go. The article asks what the team will do, not what I'd do. I don't know what I'd do, whereas the team has to make a choice and live with it. With regard to Yelp reviews, I will note that we got 2-star performance for his current 1-dollar-sign price, and that isn't really competitive with nearby cities that boast 4-stars for not much greater cost. But trading away the Wallner Cafe isn't likely the route to bringing one of those higher-rated restaurants to our town, either. Maybe the new manager will figure out how to shoo the cockroaches out of the kitchen. One should keep learning at every age. But Wallner turns 28 before Christmas this year. If you feel he's still on the upward curve, he's starting to risk being labeled a slow learner. 🙃

I'm ordinarily leery of slicing and dicing data and then taking it very seriously. Small Sample Size is always lurking. Still, Wallner's 2025 splits contain something I find at least interesting. OPS PA Game Situation .708 322 Within 4 runs 1.113 70 > 4 runs That first line is a very inadequate offensive contribution from a corner outfielder. 70 PA, on the other hand, is a splendid example of a Small Sample. And yet, what "saves" his season and gives him his seemingly productive .776 overall OPS is exactly during those 70 times when a home run here or there was arguably least likely to affect the game outcome. He was a monster at the plate once the game was more or less decided. The opposing pitchers have some say in this too, and they obviously pitch every batter differently depending on a variety of factors. Somehow, Wallner seems to have been more susceptible hitting well only in the cases where the pitcher says, "okay big boy, here it comes, try and hit it, the manager has me in here to eat some innings - I'll be in AAA tomorrow whatever you do." Which reminds me to look up Joey Gallo's 2023 season, which I have pigeonholed as similar to Wallner's 2025. Not quite. With him it was more to do with which team was ahead: OPS PA Game Situation .598 75 Tie game .572 120 Behind .983 137 Ahead Two very different ways these guys had, to put up overall OPS that seemed better than the situational eye test would have told you. Already got the lead? Joey was your man that year. You know the advanced stat that matched up with that eye test for both? Win Probability Added. Gallo's WPA in 2023 was -1.2, despite an offensive WAR that was above 1. Wallner's 2025 WPA was -0.5 despite an offensive WAR that was also above 1. Both players dragged their team down with their negative offense, despite raw numbers that would lead you to think they had contributed positively. WAR, built on the same components as OPS and more, treats every plate appearance as equal. Every slugger hits a meaningless dinger now and then - it's the nature of the game - these guys found subtly different ways to maximize those. There's more than one way to suck during a season. What's a player supposed to do when the game is out of reach or his team is already ahead, not try? No, I'm not saying that. And I'm not calling either player a "selfish hitter," whatever that means in baseball, either. Just this: stats need to be examined carefully if results aren't matching up to what you think you're seeing. (And it may still turn out you're "seeing" things the wrong way and the aggregate stats are more or less right.) I don't question Wallner's toughness, mentally or physically - I always fall back on remembering him take an inside pitch on the chin and yet he was back in the lineup a couple days later. And this situational stuff seems like an area where a new manager or batting coach might be able to help, more than with his mechanics or whatnot - indeed if injury wasn't an issue then perhaps his uniformly lousy September could have been due to trying to correct the situational problem and somehow only making things worse overall. New personnel in the dugout could represent a fresh start mentally. Here's hoping Matt turns things around in a way that shows up in wins rather than only the OPS he racks up.

Billy Amick. Argh. They don't actually do it as often as my faulty memory would tell me, but their attempts to draft a sure-thing college bat only to have that bat fail to develop frustrate me no end. Sabato still stings.

Just for the record, I had second thoughts about my post, and repurposed the thoughts into a blog entry instead. But you had replied before I could come back and erase what I put here. It's kind of a thread-jack so I hope it doesn't distract from the discussion of managerial candidates themselves.

The Twins are in search of a new manager. Regardless of whom they pick, I'm glad they are interviewing a bunch of people. Hopefully most of them, in the process of explaining how they'd run things in the dugout and in the clubhouse, will give their frank view of "what's wrong with the Twins at present?" I wish they had done a similar interviewing process when they elevated Zoll to the (meaningless) GM title on the nameplate on his desk, instead of apparently reflexively hiring from within. Now I hope Falvey is capable of synthesizing from these snippets of what they must be saying all around the league, because he's driven this franchise into the ditch and currently qualifies as at best a competent but below-average major league executive. I know it's throwing red meat out there, to dare call Falvey "competent," but that's what he is, no less but no more. I would consider firing him if I knew of a slam-dunk above-average alternative; but the likelihood is to replace him with some other eager up-and-coming member of somebody else's FO, and that's how we got here in the first place. If I were in Joe Pohlad's shoes, I would want a debriefing from Falvey as to what he's learned from the managerial interviews, and what in particular he plans to do to get better, himself. What's going to be his Special Sauce, going forward? Because it sure hasn't been drafting, or trades, or development - some hits but an awful lot of misses. The talk of sustained excellence back in 2016 had me hoping he really had ideas on that front; turns out he told them that just to get the job and is just like anyone else who depends on tanking and rebuilding every decade or so - same as any other executive not in a large market. Fool me once, shame on you, right?

Regardless of whom they pick, I'm glad they are interviewing a bunch of people. Hopefully most of them, in the process of explaining how they'd run things in the dugout and in the clubhouse, will give their frank view of "what's wrong with the Twins at present?" And I hope Falvey is capable of synthesizing from these snippets of what they must be saying all around the league, because he's driven this franchise into the ditch and currently qualifies as at best a competent but below-average major league executive. I know it's throwing red meat out there, to dare call Falvey "competent," but that's what he is, no less but no more. I would consider firing him if I knew of a slam-dunk better option; but the likelihood is to replace him with some other eager up-and-coming member of somebody's FO, and that's how we got him in the first place. If I were in Joe Pohlad's shoes, I would want a debriefing from Falvey as to what he's learned from the managerial interviews, and what in particular he plans to do to get better, himself. What's going to be his Special Sauce, going forward?

Wow, what a nice surprise! I try to click "Like" more frequently than I receive them myself, and I hope others follow a similar practice. The old political joke, "vote early, vote often!" is actually great advice at TD - the Like button is an important part of community-building and I feel its absence at other websites I haunt. (Then again, I can't explain Facebook.)

A simple "it was a poor analogy that wasn't even central to my point, I withdraw it, let's move on," would have sufficed. 😀

Elaborate.