old nurse

Are Cashman and the guy in LA great GMs or does the money mean they can buy all the right players? Billy Beane has cycled up and down with the Athletics. They wouldn’t write a book or a movie now. He is still employed. Is he a genius now like then? John Mozeliak produced winners in St Louis, until he did not and got early retirement. Did he forget what made him successful? Andy McPhail was the Boy Wonder after winning 2 championships, Never at a loss for a job but never ended a season with a big win. Terry Ryan had a string of success, came out of retirement to have a total system failure. That bunch that was a total system failure was called Ryan’s core when the team won a division under Falvey. Is Falvey competent? Maybe, maybe not. He probably came up sounding competent in the interview talking about pitching. He might be as competent as the developer of an internet site that has a system that regularly crashes in the middle of a note, The competency will be evaluates on the next wave of pitching. He certainly had a half dozen relievers get better while he was leader. Was it competence to trade them all will not be determinable right now. Is it competency when a lot of the arms start blowing out? With the random thought out of the way, here is the random opinion. Baseball is a game of adjustments, One of the hardest adjustments is to change what a team drafts or signs as amateurs. Baseball when Falvey took over was on the position player side was becoming 3 outcome baseball. Note that for all three outcomes defense isn’t part of the equation. The focus is offense. The money for position players always has been offense. They draft for offense, Problem was the shift by MLB in the ball they used. That shifted the metrics on the three outcomes, HR were not as easy to come by, Third row power became warning track power. Contact became important. When contact, ie ball in play, became important, thus the defense matters. The metrics on what works change in baseball. How quickly a FO adjusts is the competency. The other part of competency is trades. What is winning a trade? Losing a trade is hard to define. The Dodgers paid the cash but the Margot trade was a loss. Luis Arraez won batting titles, Lopez got Cy votes. Did either team really lose that trade? The DeScalfini trade, the Giants pretty much paid his salary. Topa was injured again, the prospects were still developing. Polanco played so well his option was not picked up. Has anybody won at that point? Assessing trades can take longer than many people’s attention spans will allow. That makes it hard to assess trades. That makes it hard to assess competency. So what is the fan to do to assess competency of the FO? When the team loses over 90 games, finishes out of the playoff, loses in the playoffs, or otherwise does something the fan does not like there is only one thing for the fan to do. That is thump their chest, holler they know baseball and utter an expletive filled tirade about the competency of the front office. How does the owner decide competency? 3 ways. Pocketbook is one. Make the owner money. Whim is number 2. It is called dysfunctional franchise. Way number 3 is unproven but maybe having the pictures or some documentation for leverage helps. Circling back to where I started. Cashman has every advantage and how many years has it been since a World Series win? Almost a whole generation? He must have leverage.

You stating that this was not a dream team would be your opinion Saying that Falvey’s opinion was that this was a dream team is inventing attributes to rip on people for what they did not say.

Well, I was going to say Cuddyer. Mauer and Morneau were pretty talented from the get go, Hunter had a couple of years of OTJ major league learning before he blossomed, as did Cuddyer

Scratch Suzuki off the list. He is going to manage the Angels

The last player to be fully developed into a complete player by the Twins was Torii Hunter. That was so long ago that Torii’s kid has come and gone in baseball

The collapse started when Lopez went down and Ober pitched injured and the Twins did not have the caliber of backups to replace a Cy Young contending pitcher and one that was touted as such on this site.

Yup, by picking cherries one could make the argument tto get rid of every player

Sounds like someone is attributing opinions to someone without them ever being expressed by the person

Developmental players, fill in players, change of scenery players, below average players and adjust, adapt and overcome players Keaschall, Lee, Roden, Martin and Rodriguez are developmental players. Development is non linear has been a mantra here, except when it doesn’t fit the narrative. Lewis, Wallner, Miranda and Julian are slightly past that level. They could hit until the pitching adjusted. They are the adjust and adapt stage. Doubtful for 2 of them. Outman was a change of scenery guy. Great rookie campaign. Adjustments tried? Probably happened. Change of scenery? The team tried Roden out before Outman, so there is your expectation level. Larnach has had up down alternating years. Last year was the down cycle. Still a below average for a starter player. The rest of the list with their amount of playing time is why league average is a useless stat. Nobody should consider these players as anything but fill in. That is how they ended up on the roster.

The question was asked why the Twins pivoted from spending money. It was an obtuse analogy, not a poor one. They had 2 star players in Correa and Buxton, traded for or signed 3 players. They gambled and they hoped by winning that the team would be back to sellouts, a full house. Drawing a hight three of a kind in draw is long odds. You fail, you pivot from the high stakes, and go back to penny ante.

A Pat Murphy type hire is a short term hire. It is also a concession to if you did hire someone good, somebody will offer them more money. The Twins have always been a budget restrained team. The monetary gap between the budget teams spending and those that don’t has grown.. When the team expanded the budget and were in first place in the division, there was a few more fans but not like other cities. It is unlikely the team would try that again. They will have to assemble teams like Ryan did for winning teams. Players that work hard at their craft in all phases of the game and are ball rats is what he built and left for Smith. The hardest thing to find for a manager is one that likes to build over and over again. Maybe that is a good reason to hire a college coach like another team did

It can’t be done in a simple sentence and you did not follow multiple sentences

You sure there was not consequences. Jonas Bride managed to play in 33 games

History would say you are correct. Hiring a manager almost always ends up looking like a mistake. That is why so many of them get fired. An optimistic guess would be about a 5% chance of hiring a manager that won’t be fired

You just laid out why I was correct in my statement with your comment on their needs for pitching now and in the future. The same scenario holds true for their position players. The Mets have been trying to win for a few years. They have not traded a prospect that wasn’t a suspect. They haven’t made a trade for a big time player since Lindor. 5 years ago.

You can question a comment. Now try knowing understanding developing people’s talent. It is neither linear nor does it have to be age related.. a lot of good players develop late

Thanks for the reminder that with Air Force vets everything had to be in fine detail so they didn’t miss the point

So you are saying you son’s know what a major league starter hits,

Post pandemic the Padres increased their fan total by a million they were traditionally a middle of the league attendance team. I didn’t say the Twins used logic They took a gamble and lost If you would like to compare it to poker, they drew 3 cards to a low pair hoping for a full house p

So you are saying a player that has an OPS in the major league this year that is above average is a depth piece. You are saying that a player with a WRC+ of 113 this year is a depth piece. Roden has a whopping 153 plate appearance in the major leagues and you want to pass that off as a large enough sample size to judge someone who has a .917 OPS in the minor leagues as a bad player That is your prerogative but it does lead me to question if you bother to look anything up

Why would either be a depth piece? Neither really has enough AB to say success or failure

It is quite possible they thought a winning team would bring in fans. When the fans didn’t come out, they had to do something different

When money is not the issue why would the Mets give up good prospects for talent? They will gladly trade the suspects

In 2 years in Seattle Polanco has played at 2b 150 times. Only 119 were complete games there. There was a possibility of 324 games. Playing that way for the Twins they still would have needed a 2b

Equating the Polanco trade with the Twins and Correa is a real stretch. Not the most preposterous thing posted, but close