ashbury

And now he is asking, "I got a bruised rib for THIS?"

No rooting interest either way, so that was entertaining.

Pretty good Game 1. What do they do for an encore?

No, that's not what is being said. You can trade prospects for the right reasons. I didn't like the trade at the time. I have a pretty strong principle that you don't give up young pitching except for pitching in return. It's the coin of the realm. I didn't especially like Chase Petty for Sonny Gray, but at least we got pitching in return. I did like Arraez for Lopez, and for the same logic. In reverse, I was bothered by getting only one arm in return for Berrios, plus a can't-miss hitter that I didn't especially care about unless he turned into a perennial all-star - it needed to be two good young arms. You trade pitching for pitching, and hope for occasionally also getting pitching in return for hitters. It's not like Gil has proven to be a staff ace. It's not like I *knew* Gil would pan out. It's because you need so many pitching prospects, in order for even one to pan out. Pitching is like gold in baseball. If you're willing to give up a legit young arm for a backup CF type, you'll find 29 other GM's lining up to make deals with you.

I did mention Singer's performance, but game three was less typical of the season as a whole in that Ober had a terrible game whereas usually he was pretty reliable. Game 2, even as a win, was more emblematic of the trouble lying just below the surface.

My two very favorite teams (besides the Twins of course), going head to head! Whoever is playing against the Dodgers Whoever is playing against the Yankees I hope they both win!

You don't understand. The Twins' talent evaluation is SOOOO bad, it caused two other teams to mis-evaluate him too.

Game 2 of the season. Yes, the Twins won that game 5-1. But if you look at the box score and the play by play, the seeds of the season failure were there. I chose this game because Game 1 was versus a left-handed starter. With the lefty-heavy batting roster, they were in Plan B mode at the beginning. Kyle Farmer batted seventh; their DH named Margot batted ninth. But Game 2 was versus a righty starter, and the season's plan was evident. (With the exception of Royce Lewis who had inexplicably already injured himself performing a basic baseball play, going first-to-third on a single to right.) Lugo had a good season in 2024. In that particular game, he totally shut down the Twins offense. This was not an isolated instance; Brady Singer, another good pitcher, did it again the next afternoon. These two did not go on to achieve 0.00 ERAs for the entire season, but against the Twins in that series they did. The reason the Twins won Game 2 was that they clobbered two of the Royals' bullpen members. Two who went on to have very subpar seasons, not just against the Twins. I don't know how to quantify this, but the impression I had all season long was of the Twins hitters fattening up on pitchers either having a bad day or who shouldn't be in the majors at all. Teams face pitchers like that all the time of course (which is why I haven't figured out how to quantify it), but as the season goes on the arms that aren't performing tend to be sent to the minors or released. And if you look at the top of that starting lineup, almost nothing went according to plan the rest of the season. Julien imploded at bat and his suspect defense actually took a step backwards, so that by season's end he was a basket case. Kirilloff was lost to injury for the umpteenth time. Buxton lost significant playing time due to injury. Correa lost significant playing time due to injury. Wallner started out badly and had to be sent down by mid-April; also in this game he was taken out in favor of right-handed players (a tactic that I don't think panned out as well as the team's analytics department probably can argue for). The bottom four of this game's batting order were placed correctly because their contributions over the full season were not the type that would lead a team to the postseason - the fact that three of them led the team in plate appearances speaks volumes. I don't see moments such as Alcala's meltdown being nearly as significant, as the overall failure for the plan going into the season to pan out. Game 2 is my moment.

I guess it's to make fun of front-runners. A worthy enough target.

The Angels' 2021 draft is an interesting experiment. They invested all 20 of their picks in pitching - 19 college arms and one high schooler in the middle of that draft for some reason. A little soon to declare it a failure, but so far it has not paid off for them.

I don't think landmines are the metaphor to describe the Twins bullpen philosophy, unless landmines that don't go off are the intended mental image. "How Can the Twins Front Office Avoid More Bullpen Duds?"

Two of the three teams with the highest LOB in 2024 will be playing in the World Series this Friday. I don't use that stat to judge an offense one way or the other. (But for the record, our Twins had 8 more LOB than the major league average, while scoring 31 more runs than the norm.)

Gordon doesn't have the arm to play 2B, much less SS or 3B, and the Marlins stashed him in LF until they couldn't put up with his bat and exiled him to Jacksonville for the remainder of the season. Jake Cave OPS'ed .722 in Coors Field, a park where the majors as a whole achieved .800, and he was in the low .600s on the road. Pass, on both.

There were 15 players who logged 120+ games at first base in 2024. Santana ranked 10th in OPS, so he was a below average hitter at his position. Worse, the five players who hit less (Goldschmidt, Schanuel, Vaughn, Tellez, France) all played for teams that didn't make the playoffs; neither did the two guys just above him. He's not a playoff caliber offensive player anymore, and if his bat is hard to replace then the FO has some 'splainin to do. No question Santana's glove was good. But not every error turns into runs, and it's hard for a 1Bman to provide enough on defense to make up for a subpar bat.

Too much content to try to address all at once. Two players: Vazquez: He's not worth the money in an analytic sense. But what's the plan if he's gone? There better be one. He was durable, and replacing him could involve someone not much better, plus every chance that an even worse third-stringer gets significant playing time. Lewis: I would be cautious about deploying Lewis at first base. His propensity for soft-tissue injury could be a rude surprise when he has to lunge for a badly thrown ball. (Either that or he won't lunge, and becomes a terrible defender there.) Conversely if the training/medical staff can get to the bottom of his spate of pulled muscles and other owies, perhaps he can blossom at one of the skill positions he was originally slated for.

And it depends on the injury, etc etc. My reply was brief and the truth is complex. In 2023 we knew about the knee, in 2024 there was the hip and I forget what else. If those body parts impede the swing, 2023 just serves as a cautionary example - the details have to be left to those close to the situation.

I think it's the other way around. The lesson I took from 2023 was that if Byron isn't healthy enough to roam CF, he won't hit well either. Rest him or put him on IL.

Sometimes the same message (or messenger) gets tuned out after long enough. Three years might qualify as a good run. Batting coaches are fungible; doesn't mean they are worthless.

His peers in AAA don't in general belong in the majors. They put up their numbers against batters who don't belong in the majors either. I know you want to avoid small-sample-size, but the threshold of 60 innings contains an unintended bias, as it represents perhaps a few up-and-coming arms but mostly is a group of pitchers who their major league front offices felt were better deployed at AAA than in the majors. Probably it would be wise to start by sorting by age to find a cohort of similar pitchers. Pitcher or batter, a player wanting to contribute at the major league level needs to put up numbers far superior to the crowd in AAA. "Pretty well" gets you overmatched at the next level up. Smoke and mirrors was no factor for Dobnak at AAA, and his major league numbers were in line with what could be expected from his performance in AAA; I very much doubt that the FO was doing anything other than calling up a fresh arm to replace some similar ones they were DFA'ing right and left. We're basically finding different ways to say "replacement level" for a player in his age-29 season An article speculating about the role for such a player kind of answers its own headline question. He needs to improve over what we've seen the past several seasons to have a role. Every year unexpected good things happen, and I'll always root for him, but ever since his finger injury it hasn't happened for Dobnak.

Yes, and we saw it also in larger samples at AAA. His MLB OPS-against was in the low .800s and his AAA OPS-against was in the low .700s. The majors are harder than the minors; his results are reasonably congruent.

Betteridge's Law of Headlines suggests that the answer to the headline question is "No."

The "kid" is in his 40s. I think he's older than Falvey, who also is past the whiz-kid threshold anymore. If Joe Pohlad is wet behind the ears it's not due to youth, he's just slow to dry off.

Concur. While Joe Pohlad is listed on the team's website as "Executive Chair," just above him is listed Jim as "Control Owner," which represents no real change in the power structure from before. I think it's completely reasonable to believe that after 10 or 12 months in that cushy chair starting in November 2022, Joe was asked to present progress-to-plan on his business plan that they presumably all agreed to when he was elevated. The rest of the ownership team was presumably aghast when they saw the revenue forecasts, particularly the coming collapse of broadcast revenue with no remedy in sight, and mandated cuts. Kind of similar to the situation with Bill Smith as GM after the 2011 season. The rumors that I recall were that his get-well plan involved an infusion of capital to bring in talent, and when he was told no, he didn't back down, and was summarily replaced by Terry Ryan V2.0, who then embarked on a "right-sizing" project of his own. I would infer that in the present case, Joe Pohlad may have tried to persuade the higher-ups in a similar way, to accept some losses in order to build up the fan base, but unlike Smith did back down and thus began the past round of right-sizing that may not yet be the last. It's all supposition of course, and going with sketchy public knowledge.

I don't think the sequence of events supports that. Winning the WS is too long a shot for basing the sale strategy around. If the pump and dump were to happen it would have been a year ago, after the fan base was excited. Instead they didn't replace Sonny Gray and "right sized" the payroll. They missed their window, if that were the plan.