TheLeviathan

I'm just not sure you can learn your way out of having a noodle arm and bad instincts by playing more. Middle infield is the top of the defensive spectrum for difficulty, I think he could become a solid defender but it's going to have to be somewhere lower on that spectrum. Like left field.

He has a ton of trust in sports media in the Minnesota market....but I'm starting to think he may not be the wizard we think he is. It's been whiff after whiff after whiff for about 3 years now.

I will be more than disappointed. I'm really tired of the team pretending to be something it is not.

We may just need to ride it out a month. Larnach, Bell, possibly Clemens, and maybe even Caratini could (read: should) move at the deadline and that should free up two months to let these kids show us what they've got.

This team is not a contender. If they want to sign Jeffers to a short extension I'd be open to that possibility given the dearth of catching options on the team. I'd rather deal him to a desperate team and find a catcher via another sell move.

I also yearn for the day when college sports look more like they do in Europe. Our current model is just utter nonsense.

Right, still under .500 with a negative run differential. I'll never cease to be amazed how fans of this sports can let small samples drive their thinking. Glad it was a fun week. I'll keep checking out the farm systems of actual contenders.

We've been lulled into this false sense of optimism a few times this season. Just saying.

I wondered the same thing. I'm happy to see the kid up and improving his game but titling the article this way when his last 7 games are sporting an ERA close to 6 is weird. Why not "the new pitch connor prielipp is developing"?

Yeah I really don't like this. I'm actually kind of a fan of having players develop more in college as a general rule, but this isn't the way to go about that. The NHL system of very short contracts for draftees followed by restricted free agency and then full free agency is the way to go.

We should be selling aggressively. Keep building around Jenkins and Culpepper and anyone else that supports them.

He's just got a really, really bad arm. That makes it difficult to play him anywhere unless you think he can be a super rangy LFer. I think that's really the only option to try though, he can't stay at 2B in whatever version of the Twins takes the next step into contention.

They can't, but in the NFL they can hide him away unless he looks amazing and then people will forgive it.

People will probably forget that in 2021 the Buxton we see today wasn't exactly the one we slapped this contract on. Byron was an incredible player, but one that couldn't get to 400 at-bats in a season. (He was somewhere between 250 and 300 depending on how you want to count his early career) As a result he took a deal that offered the team significant upside in what they were paying him versus his talent if he could stay on the field in exchange for him getting a life changing guarantee of money that he may not have gotten if he gambled on his health. Luckily for him (and the team), in his late prime he has found the ability to be a much more consistent player in terms of availablity. The contract has worked out beautifully, I only wish Buxton would've hit the escalators and got the payouts he deserved.

This sentence! This one right here! Yes...Joe Pohlad cut the payroll. We agree! That's all I've ever said! That act felt like the turning point from "things aren't going well" to "holy bleep we're back to 1995 again". That's all I was saying. I was pinning the blame for that tone-deaf decision on ownership. You argued that Falvey is responsible for that and I never understood, at any point in our conversation, why you kept trying to absolve Joe Pohlad for a decision taht was 100% his. Falvey was not responsible for that. We got there my friend, I'm happy to see it! Now here's where I want to make sure you feel like I'm not excusing Falvey or the level of blame you assign to him, because we agree there too! What he was responsible for was all the other things you list here and I totally agree! He mismanaged the payroll he was given. Butchered the draft. Failed the development process. Meddled with on-field management. I even agree he didn't "deserve" higher payroll! None of that changes that it wasn't his call and undercutting the payroll was a really dumb move. Both things can be true. What I acknowledge is purely my bias and opinion was emphasizing that move as a turning point. Maybe yours is somewhere else in the process but for me that was where we got gut-punched into today's travesty. I'm glad Falvey is gone and I'll be even more glad the day the Pohlads sell. In the meantime.....let's hope we're not stuck in 1995 too long and this next wave of Twins players can give us something to root for again.

I think we found the crux of our disagreement here. I am down on the Pohlads and like Woof I suspect "right sizing" was driven by failures outside baseball. That only adds to my opinion but regardless it isn't Falvey's job to dictate payroll increases or decreases. It just isn't and even you basically admitted as much. Knowledge or not, it isnt his call. Definitely not if outside real estate blunders by the Pohlad family add to it. And that's the crux, if you go back to my original comment I was purely talking ownership and their post-2023 decision as feeling like the turning point on this steep decline. But you are 100% right that the equation contains many components. I wouldn't even argue that Falvey owns blame on most of them! I've been in the chorus here wanting him fired. I just can't fault him for the one component I feel like was the seminal moment that really set this death roll into motion. The tone deaf Pohlads in charge now own that one. Along with a bunch of ****** downtown real estate properties, :)

More young kids and play them daily please!

I'll let the Guiness Book of World Records know about your entry for "Longest Spelling of the word "No"" I think it's got a chance.

You are correct in the timeline, I'm playing loose with the word GM, but the point was that he never had business control until after the decision was made. Even then I question whether the appointment in November of 2024 constituted that kind of power. Simple question: at any point in his tenure with the Twins in any of the different hats he wore did Derek Falvey have control over and dictate the payroll cap of the Minnesota Twins?

It's pretty impossible with no money to spend unless you set the trade logic in MLB the Show '26 to "Take whatever deal bean concocts" like your Nats deal for Wood and Abrams.

Falvey was not the head of baseball operations until after this. He was the GM. GMs do not set payroll. He absolutely was a passive bystander in the budget waiting for orders from his bosses on what he would be capped at for spending. That's what the job of GM is. He was then in charge of how that money was allocated. Which he was bad at.

This is the correct answer. Sorsby's case won as yet another outcome of the NCAA believing they had omnipotent, unchecked power to profit off young adults.

Hear me out....with KAT and Darnold having won championships.....we trade Ryan to the Dodgers so he wins a World Series. Former Wild defense Mike Reilly wins a Cup. Curse is finally broken.

I've read everything you've typed, it hasn't made sense at any point. Let's start with this - Falvey's job is partially to take "marching orders" from the Pohlads. He is their employee. You seem to flirt with this implication of him as a partner of sorts when he was not in any position in 2023 to act in such a way. He was a high level employee but an employee nonetheless. No part of his job is setting the payroll, he was not in that sort of role until later. You don't stop there: You imply he frivolously spent knowing that the budget would be kneecapped. Hell, you seem to even impugn him for *checks notes from the last post* the sin of spending the full budget he was allocated. These are really bizarre attacks on him for reasons I don't understand. What I, and now Riverbrian as well, are trying to get you to see is that none of this passes basic logic or Occam's Razor. It's layers of nonsensical behavior on Falvey's part that you continue to assert with the only stated reasoning for implying these behaviors is to allow you to throw him into the blame pile for this very specific act. (Cutting the payroll after 2023) Falvey is responsible for many parts of this mess. His drafting and development have simply been poor. When he was aggressive his trades were not as successful as desired. He lead the organization through roughly a decade of "blech" in terms of talent acquisition. What he is not responsible for is abrupt budgetary decisions by his employer. I don't understand the crusade to make that his responsibility when there are so many other parts of the mess he is actually responsible for.