Jocko87

It ain't a salary question. In either case.

Two openings, Nelly as an assistant and an experienced guy who likes data as the head guy. I love the idea of Nelly working attack plans with these young guys. No telling if he could translate what he did, but not many hitters controlled an at bat like Nelly. The angle of your elbow plane doesn't matter if you are sitting sweeper and get a fastball.

This was my first take too but he qualifies it as a 26 man payroll in the text. Nobody has a 26 man payroll, good reminder this is napkin figures. It was $131m on Fangraphs. It was never $122m. Odd he would use that number...

Flabbergasted how many people think Falvine would be more responsible than the actual coaches. Organizational hitting philosophy is a bunch of garbage hot takery. There are other threads for that. In his own words.

It's the move we've been wondering about for a couple years. I've alway had the feeling that he was probably very good with the technical parts of a swing but struggled with the feel of the game and reacting to major league pitchers adjusting to you. At the All Star break they had ten lineup regulars with above league average wRc+. The last six weeks they were a bottom three lineup in the league. Too much talent for that to be possible. When we look at guys like Julien being completely lost I can't help but think with bad information you are a half second behind at the plate and dead. I will be very curious to see who they bring in. This could be a top 5 lineup if someone can unlock it. The makeup of the team requires it.

To the point of the original article, I would say that the entire league is shifting to a stars and scrubs(youngsters) league and they missed the mark with the kids performance. And the stars health. The mid-priced veteran player is in an interesting spot. They are being priced out.

Derek Falvey knows exactly what revenues are. If he was at liberty to say, I'd venture he could recite them from memory on a street corner. They aren't his primary concern, true, but DSP and little Joe aren't hiding in a corner office counting pennies. There are two people in the organization with the title of President. Suggesting that one of them isn't aware of the financials is a bit of a stretch. Derek Falvey is a large figure in creating the budget. Forbes has about the same clue as you and I do.

The Polhads should not be made scapegoats for terrible performances of the players and coaches. Look no farther that the Oakland As, who made the best of what they had. At some point, you look around the locker room and say "let's go boys" and do it. Or, do what they did, which is entirely unacceptable, regardless of any input from ownership.

On the other hand, I'm pretty likely to get a full season pack for the Wind Surge next year, even though I won't be able to get to 80% of the games. Does Walker Jenkins have a part in that? Maybe. I also believe in what they are doing. Mostly.

Guys, I think I figured it all out. No really, stick with me here. August 9th saw our boys sweep a double header from the stinking Guardians to go to 65-50. Overnight the mojo was directly transferred, both teams in town, they probably met at Hell's Kitchen or something. The Twins go 17-30 from this point so the Vikings could soar. One week of semi-functional play led to the end in Texas, but the die was cast. It wasn't my choice either but very powerful forces are at play here. If the T-wolves start hot, sell your Vikings stock, is all I'm saying.

St Peter is the key. We still need the story of the chief revenue officer saga. Everything we hated was directly tied to his office.

I've had a managerial philosophy that has worked wonders for me over the years. It's pretty simple. We make a plan, we do our best to execute the plan, we live with the results and adjust future plans as needed. The beauty of this method is that any plan, so long as mostly reasonable, will work if everyone is trying to execute to it. And also any plan, no matter how well crafted, fails if the group is not trying to execute to the plan. The time to get creative is during the plan creation. If the leader is credible that the plan will be adjusted to work better, the team will execute in action and provide feedback later. In turn, the leader demands that everyone do their best to make the current plan works. I can't speak to what Rocco did or didn't do outside knowing some of these details. This is the story of the 2024 Minnesota Twins.

I think he's getting an exact Midwestern goodbye. We are at step 7.

I think the real question is are Minnesotans capable of love? Love includes the hard times and we've seen much harder than this.

This is the part I can't shake, and I think it's more damning than anything else from the past year. There were multiple relievers traded that cost less cash than Richards. I dont mind the swing at Richards in a vacuum, but when his salary represents the same money as three other minimum salary guys something is very wrong. I've been making the case for a long time that I don't care about payroll this year. One of the main reasons for that I was comfortable with them spending from the prospect account. Plenty of Jay Harry to get sent away. Whatever happened here wasn't a cash problem and it's something Falvey controlled directly. If he had another plan that went to hell, I'd like to hear it but it's tough to see where else they could go. Getting something like an Erceg alone would be a jolt. Getting a guy everyone is squinting at for potential is almost a negative move.

That's what I get for not checking the box score. I remembered it was not a new pitcher in that inning and assumed starter in the 6th. Mea culpa. It's still a similar point. Reliever starting second inning should have a manager on high alert. Higher than it would be for a guys first pitch. Every situation different.

Any manager that doesn't have the pen loose as a starter nears the end of his day is an idiot. Any manager that always has a spare reliever warmed in case the first one is instantly awful is also an idiot. You might do it in the postseason but a random August day isn't going end well for you. But, your cotton candy to sour grapes also works. Because they aren't remotely close to the same thing.

Just checking in to the cesspool to point out that in the original example we are comparing a tired starting pitcher to a fresh reliever. Grapes and turnips. Speaking of Rocco getting in heads. Don't miss the easy stuff, like the team did for the last two months.

I'd go so far as to say that Falvey knew he was spending this years money on Correa and Lopez. So easy to forget they spent the Correa money before he came back. This whole thing is almost completely that simple. Then the TV thing took away whatever cushion there was.

After listening to the team talks at the SABR convention, I feel pretty confident they are not anywhere near blindly trusting any numbers. They clearly stated they are using mostly proprietary systems and having debriefs with Rocco about why things didn't work. In simple terms, they are making it up as they go. Unfortunately, if they get something wrong we all see it work out very publicly. Looking back over the last few years, their course corrections are generally pretty good. And I can't speak for Ash, but some threads don't need to take off. Sometimes we need to have good thoughtful discussions among ourselves. 😀

I'm an career aviation guy so this hits the mark for me. Many, many cases of safety equipment, procedures and design in aviation come from near misses. A very high percentage of those misses were due to a pilot knowing their aircraft and realizing something was lying to them. They knew (and know), inside and out, how things worked and from that had the confidence to override a machine. I fully support all the new avionics systems, for they pay me quite well and provide obvious benefits, but I have significant concern that a sort of dependency on them is the primary flight safety concern we have going forward. I have similar concerns with education in a general sense. I don't have kids in the systems but I can't shake the feeling that "you have a calculator in your pocket crowd" are winning out. Automate all you want, someone still has to know how things work under the hood. Basics still need to be taught, drilled even. Nobody can discover anything new if they run around re-discovering things known in the 15th century. Very interesting to listen to the SABR interviews, I missed those. The interview with the Twins guys was great, I'm more positive on this front office than ever. They are certainly saying the right things when it comes to using the data. I'm not surprised, as they have the correct motive of winning games. I suspect most teams are that way. Where its going wrong is that most of the people we hear talking about numbers have a different motivation. I've been giving the Rates and Barrels podcast a couple month try lately. I just stopped listening as I was thinking about this post and the nagging issue I've had with them. It is the absolute nerdiest podcast you could imagine. There is no other place I can find to slop around in super deep analysis and I love about 90% of it. The other 10% makes it unlistenable. Everything ultimately comes down to how it effects their fantasy baseball teams. I could not care less about fantasy baseball. I want to know how the numbers effect the game of baseball and they have different motivations. Their judgement with numbers is clouded looking for something different than the game demands. Then, fans and media get stirred up over different priorities. The fantasy implications on pro football has basically made me stop watching. Play the game, not fantasy numbers. It's a perverse flip. Speaking of stirred up media, the new (8-25) Gleeman and the Geek podcast features a fully plumed peacocking Gleeman, who obviously told us so. I generally like the listen, but Gleeman has a real blind spot on anything payroll related. Talking payroll, he'd fit right in here. There was a moment in this show where he was listing all the ways he was right about the collapse coming where he paused, almost realizing what he was saying. He mentioned the whole team not hitting multiple times and he caught himself realizing its been the hitting for two months, which was not anything like what he was predicting. Nevertheless, he persisted. It's all because of payroll, still, whatever. To his credit, I'm pretty confident that when he calms down a bit he'll put all the blame for the collapse where it belongs, mainly the hitting group. Nobody predicted that, at least not to this degree, but the narrative he's married to is currently preventing him from getting to using the correct numbers. He honestly should be on a different team beat but the thought of him moving, and telling the story about thinking about moving is hilarious. He holds some sort of younger fandom pain that he can't get past. I may be thought of as some sort of contrarian in these parts, and while that may be true by result, its certainly not intentional. Everything I comment on is something I'm trying to understand from Rocco or the FO or ownerships chair. Having sat in similar chairs to some of them, I'm thinking about different things than most. The conversation sometimes gets confused where I have to clarify what I would do vs what I think they are doing but I generally start from their angle. I do that for the simple reason that I can accept they have more information than I do and confidence in them to use it correctly. This allows me to not get too bent out of shape about anything. Current result notwithstanding, I still see the trajectory of this franchise as very much up and sustainable. I'm well aware the way I think isn't compatible with the modern sports world, at least the way the media and sites like these drive it. It was good to hear the Twins guys say that most of their data stuff is proprietary but the inability and sometimes unwillingness of the media to discuss the numbers in a manner similar to the way the teams are trying to use them is a major disconnect.

It is so, so Minnesota and Twins Daily to wait until it was all but over to get optimistic.

It used to be good but bots take all the times now.

When the countless articles are posted blaming cheap Pohlads and not getting pitching, I'll be pointing at this series and the offense for the real blame.

Can we stop arguing the difference between in the room and final say? There's bad base running to talk about. Sheesh