jmlease1

I'll take any result that doesn't mean the Twins carry Outman on the roster via scholarship, whether it's Roden or Rodriguez tearing the cover off the ball or something else. I just want that 4th OF position to get WON by someone, not handed to them.

Maybe, but they certainly don't need to do it right now. They can have him build up like he might start and shift him to the bullpen, but you can't go the other way without wasting 2-4 weeks, so might as well have him proceed as he is. With Pablo done for the season already, there's 2 spots in the rotation up for grabs and while I see Bradley, Matthews, and Abel as the most likely contenders, Festa could still be in the mix and they might feel the need to have more than whichever one of those three doesn't get the initial nod plus Morris and maybe Preilipp in AAA waiting on the call to start. Moving Klein to the bullpen seems more urgent that Festa right now, at least to me.

Catching for the Twins is definitely in better shape than it was; as much as Vazquez brought to the team in terms of defense and working with pitchers, the utter collapse of his bat made him a liability. (it's hard to say that signing worked out particularly well; the cost ended up being too high because the defense wasn't elite enough to make up for the black hole on offense, but the thinking was still reasonable. They just projected Vazquez would likely be putting up an OPS+ more in the 75-90 range, and instead he never cleared 60.) Jeffers is a solid enough catcher, Caratini adds switch-hitting and very respectable offense...at catcher. The more he plays at 1B or DH the less effective he'll be I'm afraid. It'd be great to slide Jackson to AAA and hope no one wants his salary as their backup, but I wouldn't keep him on the 26-man as a 3rd option. Tait and Jimenez really improve the upside in the system, where they've been struggling to find the successor to Jeffers. You never know with prospects, of course, but these are guys with real upside. Much less squinting required to see them in MLB. If Tait continues to progress, he could be an option in 2028 for sure, and if Jackson sticks in AAA we're fairly well covered for 2027 even if Jeffers leaves and Tait isn't ready yet.

Outman's lack of options should not be a reason to hand him a job. That's scholarship BS. Make him win it on merit, because he'll almost certainly pass through waivers, and if he couldn't win the job in the first place he's not a great loss of an asset anyways. Would much rather see what Roden, Martin, Rodriguez, et al can do. Opening up a spot by trading Larnach is fine, but no scholarships.

If he can stay on the field, I think he's going to be quite good. I'd rather have a hitter with good strike zone awareness need to add aggression than try to have one learn patience after swinging at everything, and Emma has certainly shown he can make loud contact. He's athletic and skilled enough to handle CF, and I'd vastly prefer to see him on the 26-man than Outman. Hard to tell with this club whether they would consider him early or not; they've often made guys sit and wait behind mediocre veterans...but they also rapidly promoted a guy like Keaschall too. Health really has been what has held Rodriguez back I think. Only 112 games played in the last 2 seasons combined. He needs to stay on the field, so hopefully his off-season program has prepared him for it.

Morris is going to be an interesting one to watch this season. I suspect he will have to trim his pitch mix, at least initially, if/when he gets to MLB; it's hard to see him having 6 pitches that are actually usable against MLB hitters. But it will be interested to see whether focusing on a smaller arsenal allows him to improve those pitches and command them more consistently, or whether he was fooling people more often because there were so many choices for what was coming at the hitter? It's interesting. Even if he cuts things down to being a fastball-sweeper-cutter pitcher, that could be enough of a primary arsenal to stay in the rotation, depending on how his L-R splits start looking. Curious to see how the cutter develops for him and if that is the pitch that becomes the best 3rd offering for him. Hope he stays healthy. Too me he looks ready to slot in as one of the first options up from AAA if/when we need reinforcements. My guess right now is that the MLB rotation starts out as Ryan-Ober-SWR-Bradley-Matthews, with Festa a candidate to a) not be ready from Day 1, and b) move to the bullpen and then have Abel as the first call up from AAA with Morris right behind him. (I think Rojas needs work after a mess of a time in AAA in 2025, and won't be a real consideration until midseason at best) If they leave Festa in the rotation, then he's probably ahead of Morris presuming equal health. (I really don't know where Preilipp fits at this point?) Morris has talent. Hope he can stay on the field and pitch enough to continue his development by refining his pitches.

Expecting the Twins to have a 50% increase in payroll in 3 seasons seems unrealistic. While I have zero interest in protecting the Pohlad bank accounts, the issue for the Twins ain't getting to $200M in payroll, it's going up to $150-160M and then ratcheting back to $100M because you're so terrible at business that you somehow managed to claim tens of millions in annual losses. $200M was a top 10 payroll in 2025. That made the Correa, Lopez, and Buxton contracts feel unsustainable, when in fact they're market rate for Correa and well below market rate for the others. Hells bells, if we'd just managed to make $150M for this season we'd have been in good position to go for a quick turnaround, adding some real thump to the lineup and some proven bullpen options on top of what they did with Bell & Caratini. But we have terrible ownership, not just because they're cheap, but because they've been utterly terrible at the business of baseball over the past decade, minimum. Anyways. Wallner. Seems like a good dude, and I think he can bounce back and have a quality season slugging for the Twins where he seems like a very reasonable and impactful clean-up hitter. Would like him to move to DH more, especially if he still looks slow and clumsy in the OF like he did last season, which was notably worse than in 2023 or 2024.

It would be great if he can do it. The stuff is real, the command has been shaky. If he finds some consistency then he could be a guy. I'll be interested to see how the competition for the last 2 spots goes (you would think that SWR has the 3rd spot locked down unless he's an absolute mess in spring training). I hate losing Pablo, and losing him early like this. But we do have a bunch of starting pitchers with real potential, so let's see what we got. I'm a little baffled by the people who seem to have given up on every Twins pitching prospect already; it's almost like people are rooting not just for the team to be bad as another middle finger to Falvey (who is gone) and the Pohlads (who we are stuck with regardless), actually rooting against the players for some reason.

It's stylistic. There are some people who despise K's and any hitter who generates a lot of them. They'd rather have a guy put the ball in play a lot even if they never walk, slapping singles around and hitting into easy outs, than a player like Wallner, who swings very hard but also whiffs a lot. And for the people that hate that style of play, they want the Wallners of this team gone, and the easiest way to get rid of them is to have them actually stink. If Wallner is actually terrible, they get to point fingers and say "see! I told you he was bad and this kind of player was useless!" Keep in mind, there's a fair number of people who refuse to believe that Wallner was actually really good in 2023 or 2024 as well.

Just a reminder that only 33 players in MLB cleared 30 homers in 2025. 34 dingers would have tied for 15th in MLB, and only 7 players cleared 40 homers last season. It's pretty dang hard to get to that level. Wallner isn't going to add much defensively; his poor quickness, bad routes, and slow reactions aren't good, and while his arm is excellent and will keep some players from taking an extra base, the impact is still much smaller defensively. So he's got to hit. The power production is good enough and his ability to get on base by taking walks and letting inside pitches bounce off him that he doesn't need to be a high average hitter to have success; it just can't be flirting with the mendoza line. If he's hanging out around .230 the other numbers should put him in a good position to be an impactful hitter. fewer grounders, more line drives and suddenly his quality of contact starts looking better, the BABIP shoots up and that OPS starts sitting in the .800+ range again. There's going to be some slumps, and the K's will mean that some people will never like him or give him the benefit of the doubt at any time, ever. He's probably better suited to DHing and avoiding LHP as much as possible, and moving on from Larnach would make that more possible? We'll see. he seems ripe for a bounce back season; unlike Julien he followed up his breakout year with another quality effort, even if it did require a minor-league reset. He's got a career OPS+ of 127 and that certainly seems achievable and would be a welcome threat in the lineup.

It's an interesting idea, and Pablo has shown an interest in security and certainty over maximizing his dollars in the past. But I don't really know what an extension would look like at this point? I too would love to keep Pablo pitching here: terrific pitcher, very fun to watch, incredible dude. I would love for him to be here long enough that he considers MN his team and becomes part of the organization long-term, because he's an incredible ambassador for the game, mentor for other players, etc. But it's probably going to be a difficult window to navigate.

It will be interesting to see if Lee can evolve as a hitter and add a little range as a defender. I think the former is more likely than the latter, but if he's able to consistently field the balls played to him he'll probably be passable at SS for the season...if he starts to hit. The good thing is reducing his chase rate would be pretty impactful for him and it's one of the skills that's reasonable to develop as you get more experienced. he doesn't need to clock 20 homers or hit .300 to be a useful hitter (though both would be lovely); he just need to stop chasing breaking pitches out of the zone and turning them into weak contact. Take a few more walks, wait for your pitch to turn on a ball, take good swings at strikes. We'll see. It's a bit of a make or break season for Lee. I hope he makes it.

I'd love to move on from Larnach, who seems to have little ceiling left at this point and if he's not mashing RHP adds basically nothing else to the roster since he's seen as primarily being a DH (no speed, no defense, can't hit LHP), but trying to flip him for a quality starting pitcher is a fool's errand. No one is giving up a rotation piece for Larnach. I mean, I'd deal Larnach for a 5th starter if one was on offer, but just because someone will need one before the season starts when a starter gets inevitably injured in spring training, and they'd be easier to move than Larnach. I'd still love to flip Larnach for a reliever. We have space in the bullpen for sure, and I'd much rather open up competition between the young guys to have someone WIN an OF job, not be handed one on scholarship. Make it possible for Bell & Wallner to DH more. Maybe it's one of the RH OF bats we have pushing their way up the minors. Maybe it's one of the LH bats that can actually cover CF. But let's sort it out, rather than give Larnach 120 games of league average offense at DH....

And there's a good school of thought that because the playoffs are much more random than the regular season, any year where you have any chance of making the playoffs, you should be going for it. And if you think the team might be 80-82...hell, maybe they catch a few breaks and end up at 83-79 and steal a Wild Card slot (worked for Cincy in 2025). Plus, the changes to the draft/lottery have really disincentivized the Astro Strategy of "lose a ton for 4 years, pile up the top 5 draft picks, and get it on", because you ain't getting top 5 picks 4 seasons in a row again, ever. Sigh. I'm bummed about losing Pablo. He was fun to watch pitch. Maybe we'll get lucky (for once) and Mick Abel or Zebby Matthews figures it out and turns into A Guy.

I swear, this franchise is cursed. This really sucks. Big fan of Pablo Lopez, love watching him pitch.

Only reason to sign another starter right now is if we're also dealing a starter to fill holes on this roster and attempt to rebalance things. Let the kids pitch.

which is a bit nonsensical; getting added to the 40-man doesn't take a player out of the development pipeline, even making their MLB debut doesn't fully change that. (additionally, it's poor writing to say that Walker Jenkins has "slowly climbed the minor leagues" when he reached AAA in his second full season of pro ball at the ripe old age of 20. Dude can't legally drink until this Thursday.) There's plenty of talent in the OF for the Twins right now if a couple of these guys that are at the precipice can make the leap to MLB, it's just that a bunch of them are on the 40-man. It looks a little thin only when you exclude Rodriguez, Roden, Gonzalez, and Mendez from the list (3 of the 4 haven't played a game in MLB and the 4th might still be buried behind Larnach and (ugh) Outman). We'll see if/who emerges in the lower minors this season, but they were pretty loaded in AA & AAA last season, and are loaded in AAA this season as well. So it should be a surprise that there's a bit of a gap right now as that wave of talent has moved up.

It's an interesting idea and there are ways that you could make it work by using 1 "starter" as a bulk/long man that might be smart. I think the better way to look at it that you have a guy in your bullpen who will be expected to go 2-4 innings when he enters the game rather than having a parade of guys out of the bullpen to finish the game. You're unlikely to make it work well consistently pairing guys up I suspect, but could it work well if you look for opportunities to have your long man pitch multiple innings every week rather than holding them only in case of a guy having a short start? Sure. Instead of sending out 4 one inning guys to finish the game after SWR or someone gives you 5 good innings but a high pitch count, you send in a Festa or Matthews with a goal of having them go 3 innings, and maybe even finish it off depending on the game situation. They can still fill the old long man role most of the time if someone gets shelled early or injured mid-game too. It's not really piggybacking, more like going with a long man that you don't treat like the worst pitcher in your bullpen...

Twins didn't really lose either because you simply can't count on Stewart to be able to pitch. Maybe he would be nice in a few months IF healthy, but he also might never be healthy. He might struggle when he comes back again and give LA nothing. Neither team gave up much, neither team got anything. The way the Twins actually lose this deal is if Outman is given a roster spot on scholarship, rather than be forced to win a job.

There's some rose-colored glasses going on here; you certainly had some botches on the fundamentals on some of the late TK teams especially as the overall talent level declined. (there were some rough stretches with guys like Lawton, Kelly, Brede, etc) It's like with Gardy's squads, who were praised as being fundamentally sound and for "playing the right way" for years even when the performance on the field didn't reflect it. I think you'll also be disappointed if you expect this team to intentionally trade outs for bases by bunting runners over. (seriously, what is the obsession that people have around here with MOAR BUNTING?) It's not going to score more runs, win more games, or put butts in seats.

This system is a dumb one, but it's what we're stuck with for now. It has all kinds of nonsensical pieces in it (like the fact that the arbitrator might not really know very much about baseball or the fact that even if a player had a poor year they're still getting a raise regardless) but it's really designed more to cost control raises for younger players than anything else. Overall it's better for the owners than the players by a lot (Joe Ryan will likely be worth 4-8 times what his actual salary will be for 2026) but as noted: even teams don't like it, especially the process. It might get changed in the next CBA because the next CBA could have some more radical changes to the financial systems of baseball and if it does, arbitration could easily be a piece of what goes, especially in a system with a cap & a floor. I'd be fine with it. I generally prefer players get more. I'm not interested in carrying the water for the billionaire owners, even if the players are millionaires.

I don't mind them making signings like this to see if any of these kind of guys have anything left on a minor league deal with no promises of a roster spot. And if he's healthy and fully rehabbed it's certainly possible that Hendriks can still pitch in this day and age. The real issue is they didn't go out and get a solid veteran RHP for the bullpen that they can plug in and should be able to count on to be one of the pillars of the bullpen as they sort out who the converted starters will be and what reclamation projects still have something to give. They're skipping over the fact that they no longer have a Jax, Duran, or Varland back there any longer and just assuming they can piece it together with nothing stronger than Sands and Rogers as the spine of the bullpen. It's possible they're right, but it's a ginormous risk and they're pretending it's all fine. If they're serious about winning back the trust of fans (lol) this is not how you do it.

TB isn't some mystical organization where if they move on from a player that player must not be capable of doing the job. I'm sure they didn't think Bradley was going to make it in their rotation doing things the way they do them. It's not a guarantee that Bradley will fail as a starter and should be moved immediately to the bullpen. This does seem to be the key, doesn't it? Part of the question is whether that issue is mental or physical, and whether or not different coaching and support can help him find the consistency he needs. Looking at his Game Scores is interesting: He'll put up games in the 60's or 70's and then roll in with a 22. (starts 10-14 in 2025). Same kind of deal in his last 3 starts with TB. (CWS, of all teams, had his number last season: 3 starts, 3 bad results. But he handled Houston great both times he faced them. You never know with this stuff.) He's a fascinating case and to me seems like the one you'd most likely give another run at the rotation first, out of the three profiled so far. Better arsenal, shown he can get deep into games with success, etc. I don't mind him as the 5th starter.

Best case scenario is pretty simple: Sands reemerges early in the season to handle high-leverage roles in the 8th & 9th, Taylor Rogers shows he has enough left in the tank to be the primary LHP in higher leverage situations, Topa stays healthy (LOL), and the funnel used to hash out who else fills out the rest of the bullpen shakes out quickly and they're able to settle in some of the converted guys. It can certainly work? I do believe that you're better off building your bullpen this way, rather than spending big on FAs who throw limited innings and often have wide variance year over year. You want to staff up by converting starters with a weapon or two in their arsenal, but not enough to make it as starters (maybe it's because of endurance, not enough quality pitches, etc) and developing guys internally. But the Twins dealt so much from their bullpen last season that they don't have enough certainty from Day 1. They cut so far that no matter the returns (and YMMV on whether they were the right or sufficient ones) you've put yourself in a position where this year is uncertain at best, potentially disastrous at worst. It's fine to be trying to sort and find 1-3 relievers to fill bullpen roles in a year, but we're looking at more like 4-6 (depending on how...charitable people want to be). I think there are some starters that could thrive with a move to the bullpen. I think there are some arms from the minors that have a lot of upside in relief. But I also think it's going to take a while and some success/failure to sort out who they are, and the Cheap Pohlads self-imposed payroll limitations and the front office's choice of risk tolerance have left the team vulnerable in the bullpen.

Nah, keep trolling people by using "pipeline". The outrage is amusing. Twins have struggled to fill SS on a long-term basis; since Greg Gagne held down the starting job for 8 seasons, we've had only 2 SS with 5+ seasons (Meares, who did it for 5 years, but was only a decent starter like twice and was never a league average hitter; Guzman who got 6 seasons as the starter, despite being shockingly bad getting the job on scholarship as a rookie, having a fluky '01 all-star campaign, but mostly being a below average starter). From 2009 through 2021 we had 8 different starters at SS and only 1 season where they were an average starter by bWAR. (Thanks, Jorge Polanco for that 2019 season) If Culpepper can't make it, we might be looking at the revolving door for another generation. (Houston can do it defensively, but...yikes, I dunno about that bat)