h2oface

Some really want Kepler traded. Not me. Or Polanco. Amazing how Kepler is pitched as such a great value for other teams and for trading, but not a good value for the Twins. Keep Kepler.

Stewart could have had a career year, er, 1/3 year. Theilbar's time could very well be up with Father Time's ruthlessness. He has always seemed like fool's gold to me as he has been surprising. Folks keep penciling them in like they are sure things, just like they are Paddack and Varland right now. To try to make your team better by selecting and adding hopes and players that have truly been given up on by teams that truly believed in them instead of pitchers that have proven their value is why the Twins are always hoping to get better rather than getting better. Now is the time to charge, not back off. Not a whole lot of vision shown by the FO.

It amazes me that this is even a thing to be glorified. Big whoop. Sure, it is nice to hit the ball hard, but it doesn't really matter how the ball drops in, or out of the park. SMH. It is one thing to glorify the contact and distance of a rare home run, when the perfect angle and power meet in that amazing majestic blast that arcs so fine and goes so far, but just "hard hit", like the Buxton roller and the Wallner double that should have been stopped for a single? Exciting? To each their own.

Jim Brockmire. We only need one in the booth, then. Hawkins would be great for Little League games.

Really enjoying this series and countdown. Not for the ratings, but for the trips down memory lane. My only suggestion would be to include the team's record and the playoff record (if there was one) as you list which team it is, or as part of the overview at the top of the story. Sure, I can look it up, and did, because how many games they won was never mentioned once in the article, only at the very end with a Seth quote, and then still involved math to figure out the 98-64 record (the playoffs got their own short paragraph toward the end, that was nice, but maybe fits best in the overview? with the final record?). (I see this might be on purpose, too, as reviewing the other 3 teams articles, it is never mentioned until the very end of the article in any of them. Suspense? We will read them, anyway, you know.....) Remembering the 0-3 sweep in the playoffs two years in a row to the same team sure seems like practice for the 0-18 stretch we just endured. Ouch.

If I'm getting paid around $10 million, I do what I am told by my boss. I don't think the boss wants him in center. That said, I hope he just isn't traded. And they sign Snell.

TOS muah bye bye

Spencer Steer on the list with Royce. Ouch.

Almost all stadiums (all the ones I have gone to last summer, which was St. Louis, Dodger, KC, and Arizona) allow you to bring in food and a sealed drink if you like. I bring way more interesting eats than the overpriced concessions that mostly suck IMO. And if you need $20 beer, and can't do without for a few hours at the ballpark, you are the fool. I love beer, but I am no fool. And the seats, in the first upper level, even at Dodger stadium, and on the rail, I have never had to pay more than $30 on the resale sites for a ticket. Parking sucks when they charge you $20 to park at their parking lot, but that can be circumvented, too, with a little healthy walk, it you like. So I don't know why folks think they can't have a great time for a pretty small cost if they want to see a game live.

Please don't pull a Mahle and assume Montas is OK. It will be a waste of money and time. Clevinger has a rebel personality, has made some bad choices during the pandemic, https://www.ksat.com/sports/2020/08/25/fresh-start-clevinger-back-with-Guardians-after-demotion/ the lost 2021 with TJ surgery recovery, and there is the closed investigation with no discipline imposed in 2023...... https://soxmachine.com/2023/03/regarding-mike-clevinger-who-is-no-fun-to-regard/ While the FO forgives cheating (as do most fans if they play for the Twins), I don't see them looking past a possible "mis-fit" in the clubhouse. But he might be the best of the lot for the money they won't be willing to spend.

Use it or lose it philosophy it seems with the time on the clocks. Just because they were under the times the needed doesn't mean they didn't need the extra seconds. They just had to make sure they didn't get penalized. No need to make the time shorter. No need to create extra stress now. Same with the mound visits. Some games they might need the 5. Really silly rule changes. I love the running to first lane. Should have always been that way.

What a depressing summary. How different would it have been if they had just ponied up and paid for what they had hoped Wheeler was worth and outbid the Phillies and whatever other teams were in the mix. It would have been a bargain for the contract he signed at $23.6/ year average per year for 5 years, as Wheeler "has the most fWAR (19.3) of any starter in baseball since the start of the 2020 season, as he has posted a 3.06 ERA, 26.7% strikeout rate, 5.3% walk rate, and 47% grounder rate over 629 1/3 regular-season innings in a Philadelphia uniform. The right-hander has been even more dominant during the postseason, delivering a 2.42 ERA over 63 1/3 playoff innings to help carry the Phillies to an NL pennant and an NLCS appearance over the last two seasons." They certainly would have gotten more value than Wheeler got paid. A potential free agent at the end of next year, he will be entering his age 35 season when and if they Phillies don't/can't extend him. But these last 4 plus the one coming were the seasons to have Wheeler on the mound for you. Lopez, Gray, and Wheeler sure would have looked nice in the playoffs last year.....

I think we all like to think that as we age. But equal work and equal performance cries for equity in pay, just as equal pay for men and women in the same job does. And then there is the ageism arc. Maybe 26 years at the same job and you need refreshed, and aren't performing and keeping up with the times, and become a liability? Maybe not? It really is a case by case basis, and just because we think experience matters, it doesn't guarantee performance. Sometimes it just produces complacency and entitlement. Contracts will always be a gamble, I suspect. Some will be paid too much, and some not enough. And those on the right side of the gamble rarely if ever renegotiate to make it fairer.

The older players have agreed to this system. They got progressively more jealous and perturbed that the draftees were getting such large bonuses and had done nothing, so they changed it to the draft pool and slot money starting in 2012 to try to control it (Stephen Strasburg signed with the National in 2009 as the number one overall, and his contract was over $15.1 million dollars before the change). and the owners liked that too (at least the small market team owners did). The young 1st and second and third year players that are stars do not get compensated with the "value" they provide with great seasons for their performance for those years, nor can they negotiate a better contract, thanks to the MLBPA that they have virtually no representation on. They get minimum salaries that the older players have decided in the CBA for them to get, and the younger players have no say in the matter. That is the point. They have not agreed to this system. They are a victim of it with no representation.

I really don't enjoy the Homer/Strikeout plan. I find it a pretty boring brand of baseball.

Ryan Pressly was under control for another year and a third (more if you count the postseason), and would have not been a free agent until the end of 2019 when he was traded in July of 2018. He sure would have looked a lot better to me just on the Twins' mound in the late innings of the 2019 post season than Alcala ever has, and my bet, ever will. Even if we let him walk after 2019, like the Braves did Freddie Freeman after winning the World Series with him in 2021 as his contract expired (and the Braves looked totally out of it at all-star break in 2021, with a record of 51-54 on July 30), it would have still had a ton more value than hoping to replace Pressly with Alcala (Duran was a starter and Alcala was billed as the Pressly replacement), and over 5 years later, it hasn't even come close to happening. "If the vision at that time was for Durán to eventually fill the same role for the rebuilding Twins as a late-inning dominator capable of shutting down any opponent, then the front office was quite prescient...... <(It was Alcala that had that billing - he will be ready when the Twins are again competitive - which was actually the very next year, and Alcala was nowhere close - and the Twins were with a much weakened pen)>. ......Still, I think they'd like to take back the Pressly trade if they could. Instead of having him available to their division-winning team in 2019 (and maybe beyond), they've watched Pressly do what Durán just did in October, pretty much every year. In exchange for Gilberto Celestino and Jorge Alcalá, Minnesota gave up one of the best postseason relievers since Mariano Rivera–and sent him to the powerhouse they were trying to overcome in their own league, no less. In 46 postseason appearances, Pressly has a 2.22 ERA and an 11.7 K/9 rate. He's never been tagged with a playoff loss and, perhaps most staggeringly, has allowed one (1) home run, while facing 181 batters in (mostly) game-deciding moments." "A few things strike me as I revisit this last inning of Minnesota Twins action in 2023. One is that we probably don't talk enough about the Pressly trade, and how dramatically it helped shift the balance between Minnesota and Houston over the past five years." Amen to that. But when folks did talk unfavorably about the trade, they were blasted with "hindsight" and "something not nothing" and "it was still the right trade, regardless if it didn't work out". I bet many might still try to say how it was still a good trade and it was better to get something. Me? Not then, and not now. Pressly was on the rise and became the pitcher that cannot be replaced. There was basically 1 1/2 years of control that turned out to be a waste. Even is Alcala ever becomes a real value, what Pressly could have provided for us instead of Houston in 2019 is not worth the "something" that the Twins got or might get. This front office makes all kinds of deals for just 1 1/2 years of control (Mahle for a recent one), so why do you have to trade our best away for a hope and a dream when they still have 1 1/2 year left? They don't.

Great to see the bonuses. The MLB CBA is so veteran skewed, and the young players have no real power to change the CBA. To pay Vasquez around 10 million and Jeffers less than a million for doing a better job, for example, is comical. And Correa.............. but that kind of inequity happens to every team, and so it goes. Perhaps there should be a salary base for each player, and the remaining payroll money could be dealt out each year according to how each player actually performed and contributed. Watching veteran players suck up the coin for sucking and other young players get shafted comparatively for far out performing them just because they have less years under their belt is a reality that cries injustice. If owners were fair, they would dole out bonuses to the deserving just because they deserve it, regardless of the contracts.

Yuk. And not the funny Yuk.

Now I just let 0-2 affect me. 😇

Assuming? I’m not assuming anything. Hindsight is 100% accurate.

Doesn’t matter how many words one uses to defend the Ryan decision - we will never know the answer. What we do know is it was the wrong decision to use Theilbar. No doubt. 😇

My heart goes out to Kirilloff. Well wishes for a quick re-hab and healing. As for team management - what was he doing on the roster in the playoffs? Did they not know he was hurt?

Just watch it go by……. Bye bye season. Fitting it was a called K. 14 Ks total, when you count the ones called that weren’t.

How do you beat the Astros AND the umpire?

That was like a middle middle change up that Alvarez hits out of the park BECAUSE HE SWINGS AT IT INSTEAD OF WATCHING IT GO BY!