TheLeviathan

I'm not arguing that point...but what about the tension that seems to exist with him and Royce?

This is a fantastic post and more people who struggle with the modern way baseball is played/has changed should read it and really let it sink in. It's ok to not like the way the game has shifted, but it didn't happen overnight and some of it is forced by the evolution of athletes. If you try to play like Grandpa and have your starters go 7,8,9 every game....get ready to eat a lot of Ls. Every sport has evolved. The goalies Gretzky played against look comically bad if you go back and watch. Football looks like you put your video speed a x2.5 compared to games in the 70s. Basketball is barely recognizable in terms of athleticism. Baseball is no different.

Yup, just shifting our focus and hoping to see signs of growth and progress. But hey....at least if we're going to be bad, let's be young and bad and not old and bad.

I mean....we've been the worst team in the Majors for almost two months now. This is likely what we face for the last two months. A lot of young guys and patched together games. It isn't great....but nothing other than two weeks in May have been that. Hopefully the deadline offers something to hope for.

Ah, misread the MLB bio and missed that it said he did last year. Good catch, thank you.

Can I ask where you read about his catching skills? Just curious.

I liked the running aspect of his game. I'm intrigued with adding him, but the other pieces don't move the needle enough for me in that offer.

These are at least plausible, but I'd want more from each deal to move the needle to accepting. I'm not thrilled to hear Seattle moved Harry Ford to LF. I know they have Raleigh, but that isn't something I love to see from a top catching prospect.

He wasn't even a good GM. And he resigned, in part, because he was accused of skimming money from latin player bonuses. Horrible, boring, click-baity baseball articles aside....how does this a$$ hat have a job with the New York Times?

Rafael Flores from the Yankees is a guy I wouldn't mind walking away from this deadline with.

Bowden is stealing money from The Athletic. But it is worth pointing out....this dimwit was a professional General Manager. Which is proof we should never underestimate how stupid another team might behave.

Well, I hope tonight's game winner is a step towards righting the ship for Lee. I still think he can have a future on this team, it'd be nice to see him put it together these last two months.

We'll find a guy with a pulse somewhere.

I just want to feel like this Front Office cares about winning. Be bold. Being a Twins fan has meant being subjected to a constant, unrelenting dogma of timidness.

We only sell spare parts. This is article is a shrine to our unwillingness to take chances as an organization.

I hope you are right about ownership. I'm skeptical. I definitely lack enough certainty to make bold choices at this deadline on that basis. It absolutely would be miracle development because right now every single guy you want to count on has regressed. It would be a complete 180 on what we've seen now for a considerable period of time. And not just on those guys - Julien, Miranda, Martin, etc. Could it happen? Sure. But you've got very little reason to be confident it can happen. I've personally stated that I'm looking for position players in AA and AAA. A ball offers can take a hike. Every single rental player will at least give you some lottery tickets and lottery tickets will often fail, but they could become Duran or Joe Ryan. I'll take that over guaranteed nothing. As for Duran/Jax/Ryan/Stewart/whomever.....I'm not shopping for mid-tier lotto tickets. I'm shopping for real help for this core in the next two years. I'm looking for dudes to join the timeline of Culpepper and Jenkins. Because here's the thing - we won't (with absolute certainty) - have all 5 of Duran, Jax, Ryan, Ober, and Lopez in the fold when Jenkins and Culpepper are here in 2028. Some (dare I say most?) will be gone. Rolling out their availability now to see how to bolster those years seems like wise planning to me. But what's the alternative Nick? Last time I asked you, your answer was literally "do nothing". You admit no money and help is coming by free agency. We tried "do nothing" from November to March. How's that working out? We did nothing, we took no chances, we purgatory'd. How do we make this core better without the willingness to take chances? It may excite you to pretend the team is a contender in June when they aren't, but I want an actual, real playoff threat to root for. I'm done with mediocrity. I'm done pretending if everything goes right we might win 87 games and get unceremoniously booted a couple games in. I want a good team. For me....that starts by hoping my team doesn't act with wishful thinking but is willing to take bold, sometimes risky, steps to try and be a real contender. And the need to do that, for this team, has been obvious for months. I won't sit here and bash them years later for taking failed swings. I'd rather have that then the droning complacency we've been treated with.

This is the key. How else do we change this roster if not trading? Ownership tapped out two years ago. That's not changing. It's trade or get miracle development. And how's that last one looked the last two years?

Not a foregone conclusion, a matter of probability. You're the one dealing in absolutes here and it's part of the problem. Could they have gone on a heater and I changed my mind? Possible. Likely? I mean, mathematically their best percentage of playoffs was 20ish percent. The issue isn't about changing your mind. The issue is the BS arguments where you call people quitters. Another example: you're in this thread arguing that selling is "giving cover to ownership" - aren't you the same person who argued "people are overrating the role ownership plays"? You know, when several of us pointed out that selling is our only option because we know ownership won't buy anyone....YOU gave cover to ownership. (I can cite those posts if you want to deny it) All of us know the Front Office will wait to make that call. It's ok that you waited longer to make that call. I won't call you names for waiting. I get it. But....tt doesn't make us quitters, or excited, or whatever other ******** label you want to use next that we decided sooner. It just means we arrived there quicker based on what we were seeing.

He answered: do nothing. Exciting!

If the point of your article is that the Twins are sellers and should be sellers, then this is a pivot from previous arguments you have made. And the problem is....you keep working really, really hard to make disingenuous, unfair arguments to make your point. Before it was "lol"ing at people who saw this team's prognosis before you did. Accusing them of being "excited". Framing arguments as unfairly as possible. Did you lay out an alternative that didn't involve selling to help this team get better? Nope. Are you now going to claim to be as "Excited" as you unfairly labeled others now that you too want to sell? Nope. No Nick....instead you doubled down. Don't believe me? Allow me to sample from this very post! If you're saying you want them to trade all their best players away and commit to being bad in the name of some vague rudderless rebuild, then no, I reject that notion fully. No one.....and I mean no one - not even those of us who are willing to entertain Jax/Duran or Ryan....is making this argument. It's such a blatant strawman. At no point have you been willing to engage with the idea of selling in a way that wasn't a bunch of cheap shots or bad faith arguments. Van just brought receipts. What it seems like is that you're taking your frustrations on how the season has played out on fans who just saw the writing on the wall before you did. Rather than admit "Yup....changed my mind. I held out hope longer. I'm not excited and I'm guessing none of you were either. This sucks...but it's the only way" you keep doubling down on bad faith arguments. So I'll say again - none of us are, nor have we been, excited to conclude this team is going nowhere. None of us want to watch a 63 win, rudderless bunch of hacks. None of us have been on this position because we WANT to be. We're here because the only path to being better, is to try something different. To try to add something else to the core we are stuck with. Welcome to the club.....I promise none of us will slander your reasons for joining.

I think you could make a case that if the Twins had gotten a healthy, productive Royce Lewis, Brooks Lee, and Matt Wallner we might be having a different conversation. (Plus Correa not turning 57 before our eyes. The cliff is real) You can squint and see the path they were hoping for. But reality is here. Copout arguments about whether this is "exciting" or not doesn't change the fact that the Twins are getting a season from Buxton that might yield MVP votes and one from Ryan that might get Cy Young votes and they still look like trash. Too much didn't work out to lie to yourself that this team is worth investing in. Any time spent continuing to perpetuate that lie only bleakens the future. Whatever possibilities it may hold.

Sell high.

Here's my thing....why are we judging the right thing to do by what excites us or not? That was the flaw in the argument a few weeks ago too. I'm not advocating we sell because I've got my popcorn out and I equate a prospect trade with a playoff win. I'm advocating we sell because the product my eyeballs are seeing is quite CLEARLY not good enough. Not even close to good enough. Circling the wagons and standing pat won't change that. Frankly, Nick's argument was a fallacious framework from the start. You sell for three plainly clear reasons: 1) no reinforcements are coming by free agency 2) trades are the only way you'll get out of baseball purgatory other than pure, blind luck with prospect development (which would be a total 180 from the last five years) and 3) we'll have to get a LOT better to have a chance to be more than a playoff doormat. Being better is what would excite me. Selling is the only path to that outcome.

Man...I knew Lee had been bad lately but those totals for July are preposterously bad.

I would personally extend Ryan. But with ownership such an unknown.....it's hard to make concrete decisions. But my god....reading these threads makes me think people are downright jubiliant to be an 82 win team every year. Like.....at some point taking risks to be more than mediocre playoff jabronis should be the goal.....right?