LastOnePicked

"As the year progressed, Pagan slid further down the pecking order. Eventually, he found his footing and put on an excellent second half of the season. Most of his late-season work went unnoticed, as his reputation was already tarnished." I have to admit, this often-repeated faint praise of Pagan confuses me. Wouldn't almost ANY MLB reliever appear to be an improved pitcher when placed exclusively in low-leverage situations? It's like having a special bench hitter you only give at-bats when the opponent's position players are pitching in a blowout. Of course they're going to look good.

Two roads diverged after 2022: rebuild or reload. The challenge with a rebuild is that it requires patience and a long-term vision. The challenge with a reload is that the frontline talent a team needs to get over the hump can't often be signed in free agency or traded for. I know I was calling for a rebuild, but ultimately I think I can respect that Falvey and Levine opted for reload. Perhaps most impressive to me is that they pulled off a trade that addressed reload needs and rebuild needs at the same time. But will it pay off? We'll see. The first injury will likely send some shivers through the clubhouse. The first blown save will resurrect the grim specter of 2022. It's going to take some very good managing to manage these bumps. I fear that in addressing the roster, the FO ignored the most glaring weakness with this team: the manager. But again, we'll see.

They are glorious. Great work. The Pagan one made my day.

"Fewer outcomes in baseball are less aesthetically pleasing than a late blown lead." Oh, it's not just aesthetics - it carries a mental toll, too. The first save/hold that Pagan blows this year could take the wind out of this team's sails pretty quickly.

2019 was fun and unexpected and unsustainable, but here's the price the organization paid for 2019 - it made an unaccomplished rookie manager seem much better than he really was. Rocco's performance has gotten steadily worse every year since. Last year was one of the most poorly-managed Twins seasons I've ever seen, culminating in a total season collapse from solidly in first in late summer to third-place-but-closer-to-last by fall. 2019 gave everyone in the organization a halo effect, giving some job security they really shouldn't have.

Just when I thought I was out of hope. Nice article. If I could humbly ask the baseball gods for a favor, it would be to give Buxton, Lewis and Kirilloff a chance to play the season with absolutely minimal pain and maximum mobility. It may be asking a lot, but I would love to see this young man in particular flourish at the big league level.

Also agree. Sell high. Restock the farm system, particularly if you're not drafting very high. It's a solid recipe for success. I liked the Arraez trade for the same reason.

Maybe. But it probably depends on who you passed up along the way. A very good pitcher with a much smaller chance of needing TJ might be a lot better than an elite pitcher who is quickly re-injured. I'm sure someone on TD will do an article in 2028 on whom the Twins picked and whom they skipped. I'm hoping luck favors their choice, but don't think that's yet been the case.

Well, they could make the tough calls and make them wrong. Imagine hovering on the cusp of Wild card contention and again slicing up the farm system to bring in guys who instantly collapse. Kind of like 2022 all over again. I know folks think this offseason represents a push for consistent winning. I just see A LOT of question marks all over the diamond - more than you'll likely ever see in a contender. I can't shake the feeling it's delusion, and that we should have been entering Year 3 of a total 5-6 year rebuild instead.

Gray strikes me as much closer to a #3 starter on a contender than an ace. Decent. Pretty good. You wouldn't buy tickets to go watch him pitch, and you wouldn't give away tickets when he's scheduled. The Reds were probably smart to move him when they did. It is a little bit funny that there's a lot of chatter about playoff starts already. I hope folks remember that this is a team that finished well below .500 for the last two seasons. Let's see if they can survive July June May April Spring Training first.

Seth, I appreciate you and your opinions, but can I ask why? I've read that the re-injury rate for players who've had Tommy John surgery is a whopping 57%. Does it seem wise for a team who has struggled to keep pitchers in the pipeline healthy to bet on a prospect with very high odds of re-injury? It makes me wonder if other teams are learning to shy away from these kinds of picks.

Correct, they didn't. They're legitimate. The Twins had a splashy offseason and start 2022 with an injury-prone roster of veterans. The Guardians have a top-notch manager and an exciting and talented young roster. By July, it won't even be close. It's fun to see Twins fans all hyped up, but rebuilding would have been much wiser.

Sorry if some of us are raining on the parade. Personally, I'm not complaining, I'm just confused. I don't follow Twins prospects all that closely, so I rely on prospect rankings to alert me to whom I might likely be seeing having an impact with the big league club within a few years. There are just so many question marks here that I can't even see how someone could project him to be an MLB starter, let alone that rare and elusive #1 ace starter that this organization just can no longer produce. In that regard, maybe I misunderstand prospect rankings, or maybe I trust those that are based on AA/AAA players knocking on the door, not those just-drafted prospects with huge imagined/projected upside. So that's on me. Regardless, I do love the write-ups and descriptions, so I apologize for failing to show appreciation to the writers. They're fun. And then they sorta break your heart, too, when you think about all of the other failed-to-launch prospects you've read about before.

That's exactly what I'm saying, yes. It's in the culture of the organization. It's the small-dog mentality that runs through the team: "We aren't good enough. We aren't talented enough. Something bad is going to happen. We can't survive under the pressure." That's why I've been adamant on changing the coaching staff and the organizational culture through mental conditioning as well as physical conditioning. Injuries to Mauer, Morneau and our incredible pitching prospect Francisco Liriano gutted the morale of the team in the late 2000's/early 2010. Repeated injuries to Buxton have done much the same in the late 2010's to 2020's. Add to that, Rocco is an excuse-generating machine. He looks like a beaten stray during press conferences. When the Twins have no pressure, they tend to play fairly well. Look at the difference in 2021. People expected them to build on the gains from 2019 and 2020, and then they came out of the gate and face-planted. Often in the late innings. Once they were completely out of the playoff picture, they began to play some decent baseball. Then they got off to a nice start in 2022, only to completely collapse once pressure was reapplied. They looked like absolute roadkill against the Dodgers, Yankees, Guardians and Astros, and again lost games late very often. And maybe the injuries increase the stress, while the increased stress makes the injuries more likely. This team fails under pressure, and it has for twenty years. It can't be a fluke when you take two of the top closers in MLB (Colome and Lopez), make them the Twins closer, and they totally, utterly fall apart. It's not a fluke, but you're right - it IS in people's heads. And that's precisely what's got to change with this team.

How does a player who hasn't pitched to a single professional batter, and has as you note pitched just 28 innings over seven starts in the last three years, possibly register in the top ten? I'm very, very confused. Project-ability in dicey for any organization, but for the Twins it's practically a prospect death sentence. If he seemed work the risk, fine, but this FO doesn't have much to show for its pitching gambles and the fact that injuries are the defining aspect of his career so far doesn't inspire confidence that we'll ever see him on the mound at Target Field. Here's hoping they know what they're doing in helping his recover and develop. But it also makes me wonder where Chase Petty would have placed.

Not sure how long you've been watching the Twins, but their performance against top MLB teams over the last few years might not best be described as a "fluke." Sometimes they're outgunned. Sometimes they're overmatched. Often they're out-managed. But always they play scared, like they expect to lose. And then they go and make those expectations a reality. It's not an accident at this point, it's a part of their team culture. Their record against the Yankees isn't an anomaly, and 0-18 in the postseason isn't just some crazy accident of fate.

I love that they'll play the Yankees and Astros right away in April. Let's see what they've got. If they go 0-10 in these games (let's admit it, that's highly likely), then it's time to right-size expectations. If they go 5-5 or better, then maybe it's time for me to readjust my persistent pessimism. Let's start the season already!

I think you're arguing incidents, while I'm suggesting patterns, In isolation, all of these seem like "acts of fate," sure, but even as you mentioned, word was out about Rice's pitchers before Canterino was drafted. Asking a career SS rehabbing an ACL in his first MLB year to patrol CF was unwise. Last year, Kirilloff had been hinting since Spring Training that his wrist wasn't well. Believe it or not, some issues are preventable or avoidable. Not all, but some. Add these back into the context of trades for Dyson, Paddack and Mahle that immediately turned into season-ending injuries, and you have a pattern of lack of awareness about injury and conditioning. Let me put it this way, when misfortune seems to be striking just one team continuously, it's probably not just fate at that point. But all of this is separate from the main point of my reaction to this article and to other articles that suggest that fan morale or fan perception is out of whack for this club. No, the Twins are lucky to have fans at this point. Fans are allowed to have any kind of reasonable or unreasonable take about this club at this point. It is solely, squarely, 100% on the Minnesota Twins to reset the narrative for this organization. Not the fans. Not the baseball gods. The Twins. Period.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one top prospect may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose nearly all of them looks like carelessness. Results are really all that matter. If they can't get a top prospect into the rotation or the lineup, and the only answer is "well the baseball Gods are fickle," then I'm not sure what they can expect the fans to say, either. It may not be fair and it may not be right, but no one can change this narrative but the organization itself. It's just got nothing to do with the fans at this point. If anything, we've been patient and hopeful to a fault.

I'd need to review the research you cite here, but even assuming its accurate, my sample FO statement isn't an apology. It's an assessment of their development that more accurately matches reality. Followed by a clear statement of what was learned or what will be done differently. That, to me, is what's missing. I get the impression from their statements/interviews that this FO still thinks they're the smartest guys in the room but just with dismal luck. Luck may not love the Twins these days, true, but so many of their decisions about personnel are worth questioning.

I feel like we've lost the plot somewhere here. First of all, reactions to everything are varied. Some are emotional, and some aren't. Some are measured and some are reactive. Some are curious and some are accusatory. This is true whether we're talking about the Marlins trade or a spy balloon. But if an organization decides it's afraid of its constituents or its customers, then that's on them, not on the constituents or customers. Jon Stewart recently talked about being a comedian, and he expressed his belief that audiences don't owe a comic anything. Comics dish out the world as they see it, audiences react, and comics just have to be better, smarter and quicker. Just please don't jump onstage and slap us, he added. Are you saying the Twins are afraid of fan backlash to more transparent assessments of their players' injuries? To more clear-eyed evaluations of their failures? If so, tough cookies. Toughen up. Take your lumps. Learn and be better for it. No one expects the team to reveal "secrets" or competitive advantages, but it would be VERY refreshing to hear a representative of the organization say something along the lines of "2022 was an F-minus in terms of grades. We couldn't keep guys healthy, but we also couldn't seal the deal in late innings. We collapsed. We know many fans are mad about our style of play. We've lost a lot of trust over the last few years. We have to make changes, and winning a World Series is the only goal we care about from here until we make it or get fired trying." If they SAID that, and MEANT that, it would likely quiet a lot of the more vehement reactions they're so afriad of. Right now, they're generating some of the animosity with all the back-patting, corporate jargon and self-congratulatory nonsense.

😀 Hope ... now that's the ultimate mind trick that afflicts us Twins fans.

Great first blog post, Harrison. I'd call it impressively optimistic. Bless your heart, but prepare to look back in October with more than a few sighs. I don't think even two of these will come to fruition. Buxton's at a point now where all injuries are cumulative. Top teams passed on signing Correa for a reason. Kirilloff has already admitted that he's feeling pain again in his swing. Lewis is going to have to find his groove after two ACL surgeries. Durability is required to meet these goals, and that durability is probably out of reach. But here's hoping that the stars align.

This. Look, the Twins' biggest issues have absolutely nothing to do with the fans' collective mentality or what their harshest critics are "missing" in their thinking process. The Twins biggest issues are perpetually failing to field a fiercely competitive team. It's why some of us wanted to see a total organizational rebuild before watching them spend $150M on an injury-prone roster of players. I'd rather watch an emerging nucleus of promising, tough rookies gel over the next six years instead of having to say a prayer every time Mahle throws a fastball, Buxton makes a leap or Correa slides into second. 2022-23 made it pretty clear that it's time to move on and turn the page for this inept franchise. Maybe we should be spending more time analyzing what the FO and coaches are constantly getting wrong (in terms of philosophy and practice) than what the fans are missing in terms of perception. That's all. :)

"We, as fans, are not privy to the conversations behind closed doors between an owner and upper management of the team. Heck, others in baseball operations aren't made aware of every conversation. We can forget that." With respect, I just don't think this is the issue. At all. Most fans, if not all fans, are very aware that other conversations were happening behind closed doors. The issue that the most critical fans (myself included) have is that we see patterns of perception and behavior from this FO that don't seem well-aligned to success. One of those is an unrealistic vision of the team's readiness to compete. For example, for all of the hype last offseason after the lockout, the Twins remained a team that was putting too much weight on an injury-free Buxton, an untested rotation and a shaky bullpen. Correa was great to have, but Cleveland was better-built for success. Results proved that to be true. "Some people may be incompetent at their jobs and worthy of criticism, but that criticism should be based on what we can observe rather than the gaps our brains fill in. Remember that even if we don't see it, things are happening." We can debate all day long about the mentality of the fans, but the most observable facts are these: this is not an organization that develops pitching well, plays fundamentally-sound baseball, can either select healthy players or keep players healthy, or actually wins games when it counts. There is no other team in MLB without a playoff win in the last 19 years. There's really nothing else to argue about, is there? The team simply has to silence its critics and its doubters. Until then, at least consider listening to the skeptics. We've been watching this all unfold for a very long time.