jmlease1

Carlos swiped 4 bags without being caught and generally did a solid job on the basepaths for someone who is pretty dang slow.

Larnach will probably be better next season with a full off-season to heal up the turf toe that he battled all year. But overall the twins are not great and frequently not aggressive baserunning. Some of that is injury related, some of that is an unwillingness to turn some guys loose. For example, Julien has good ability to swipe bags and has the minor league track record behind him (and he walks enough that he's certainly had opportunities). But they don't send him often.

This. JD Drew had a career OPS+ of 125. Only 3 Twins exceeded that this season. If more guys had hit like JD, this team would have done much better. the problem with Ed Julien this season was he hit .199 and slugged .323, not that he wasn't animated enough. When he swung the bat, he didn't make enough contact, and when he made contact it wasn't solid enough. People love the scrappy little energizers when things are going well for them and they're getting on base, swiping bags, beating out swinging bunts and slow rollers, etc. And they're just as awful as anyone else when they're not hitting. Scrappiness didn't make Nick Punto a good player in 2007, when he got 150 games in and had an OPS+ of 53. Having a lineup that's got a more varied and balanced approach might help a team avoid lengthy slumps...but then again it might not. Because at the end of the day it's about whether or not the players can hit. And having someone "scrappy" hitting in front of them won't make them any better than having a guy work a walk in front of them.

Trading Ryan or Ober would be the highest risk of all high risk propositions for this franchise. They would almost certainly bring the highest return of anyone not named Walker Jenkins, but would also blow a hole in the rotation that we might not be able to cover. You'd have to absolutely hit on the trade AND be sure that someone like Festa or Matthews is ready to replace their production from the jump next season, otherwise, this team isn't contending for anything. (Which the Pohlads may not care that much about, but tossing the team into a rebuild spiral with plummeting attendance WILL drive down the price of the franchise by limiting the suitors. For every gazillionaire excited about being able to build their own thing there's 2 who would be saying "wait, we're going to suck for 3 years unless I take big losses out the gate? Hard pass.") I don't think the salary saving this season makes it worth it and there's too much risk in selling on these starters without more confidence in the next wave. I like Festa, Matthews, Lewis, Morris, Raya, etc but I'll know a lot more where they're at after 2025. I'd say we're one season too early to consider moving them. especially because of the surrender optics.

well, he's from outside the organization, but since he was previously with the Twins I'm sure some people will be furious about this decision.

The Pohlads are cheap. They've invested in some areas of the farm system, but where exactly have they done more than the average in terms of spending resources on their farm system? Buying into the Saints to bring them into the farm system doesn't really count. Falvey has done a great job in terms of modernizing the farm system. but a lot of that is from setting a new directive for the system and hiring the right people...not necessarily because they're spending additional money.

Goldschmidt is a Hall of Famer, but it usually ends with a whimper even for the greats. And right now, it looks like age is catching up to Goldy and the 2022 MVP season sure seems like it's the "one last great year" rather than a sign he's going to keep hitting until he's 40. The power is slipping: the last 2 seasons have been 2 of the 3 worst ISO in his career, and all of his 3 worst have been in the last 5. And we're not talking just a little slippage, this is a huge drop off from where he's been, down much closer to MLB average. he's also substantially worse as a defender now too. Goldschmidt has been the much better player over his career, but Carlos Santana was much better in 2024, even with a horrific start. But the bigger issue is a Hall of Fame caliber player like Goldschmidt isn't going to take a massive pay cut to come to a new team that isn't necessarily a title contender. Much more likely that StL signs him to a 2-year deal for $25-30M, or AZ comes a-calling if they can't work out terms with Christian Walker to bring him back to the desert, etc. It'll take $10M+ for sure to sign Goldschmidt, and very possibly 2 years on the deal. twins don't have the money form their self-imposed payroll limitations and Falvey seems pretty adverse (correctly, IMHO) to multi-year deals for aging veterans. I'd say Pass, except I doubt it'll ever really be an option, unless things go very sideways with StL and he's sitting without a team in late Feb. but even then, I doubt we have the money available. I suppose it's possible that he becomes one of the test cases for the new economics of baseball without the sweet sweet RSN money. Aging veterans are definitely the most likely to find their markets drying up first. But it still seems like a fools errand to try and dance with Goldy.

I'm still a fan of Rosario, and he could be a solid RH bat if he can keep the Ks manageable. Think it was smart to get him back in the AFL to get some ABs considering he missed 2 months in the heart of the season, and the competition level in the AFL is good enough for him to work on some things. He's certainly got the power, and seems like a solid, if unspectacular corner OF. Ben Ross needs to impress here; he's useful defensively, but has very much struggled with the bat in AA. I think the Twins are looking for him to show them something, or his career is going to be hitting the ceiling. Good start in the AFL for him, needs to keep it up.

I think it's Soto. He's got great stuff, a projectable frame, and he's already shown flashes. He's also young enough for prospect hounds to project all of their hopes and dreams upon, along with being picked high enough to add some pedigree sheen to his profile. Prielipp is incredibly talented, but the injury history is a huge red flag for these kinds of lists, specially combined with his age and the fact that he's likely up in AA. He's already 23 with only 30 professional innings. Most of the people doing lists like this prioritize projection and at 24 in AA they're already writing him off into the bullpen, and they don't put very many bullpen arms into a Top 100 prospect list. Culpepper is the next best bet, IMHO. He did great at Ft. Myers out the gate and still competed at Cedar Rapids. Jumping all the way up to high A in your draft year is impressive, even from a college player.

Peter Angelos wasn't marketing the Orioles before his death; Peter Angelos hadn't been active with the team in years and his diminished health kept him from any kind of decision-making or real role in selling the team. The man was 94 with advanced dementia. The Pohlads certainly have some real similarities to the Angelos family in that there's a number of them that don't care about baseball and are perfectly happy to exit from this business. It will be interesting to see who is actually driving the sale; I'm quite confident it won't be Joe Pohlad. Frankly, it's much more likely that Bob Pohlad will be steering things quietly from behind the scenes. He's always been Carl's truest heir to the family businesses; Jim was the official owner of the Twins because he liked baseball the most.

I think this is fair. It's a little depressing to keep seeing "did great, but missed half the season" in various permutations for Correa, Buxton, Ryan, Wallner...

This is the thing: yes, you could have made even more money investing the $44M in something else. But the risk levels are going to be much higher and the variation much greater. Pro sports franchises have appreciated massively for decades. At any time, you could cash out and make staggering profits, and without needing to sell off the business for parts. there's really no other industry like it, and again: the low-risk levels are exactly why you're seeing investment firms, hedge funds, etc buying equity stakes in pro sports and/or providing financial backing for people who want in on this. there will be plenty of suitors for the twins. Whether they'll meet the Pohlad family's demands are another matter. Pohlads might be asking for $2B on a franchise that's worth $1.5B. they might have stacked any of the operating losses as team debt (while having extracted the profitable years as dividends to the family) and expect the new owners to eat that. there's all kinds of ways it could go sideways...but there will be all kinds of bidders. i just hope we get some that will have the cash assets where they won't need to turn around operating profits on the Twins in the millions to support something else straight out the gate. I want them to have the funds to invest in their new asset , not immediately seek to extract from it. That's what I'm watching for.

Despite the twins TV contract issues, not hitting their attendance targets, missing the playoffs, etc the team increased in value by $73M in a year according to Forbes. That's in a BAD year where the economics of baseball outside the largest markets has gotten wobblier. (And I expect that because of ownership's maneuvers they probably still made their annual profit, not that anyone will ever know for sure; hell will freeze over before a Pohlad or any other non-Atlanta ownership will open their books! But YMMV) Pro sports might not be a great year over year profit center in every market, but it is an incredible place to park large sums of cash. That $44M investment the Pohlads made 40 years ago would be worth $255M at an annual rate of 12% (historically, achievable in the stock market over time). That's actually a fine return that most of us would be happy with for our 401(k). If the Pohlad's get $1.5B, then they're talking about what, 84% interest per annum? Who cares about having a few years with an operating loss if the value is increasing at that kind of rate? (No, it wasn't linear, and yes you have to actually sell at some point to realize it...but it's still there) This is why hedge funds are interested in becoming stakeholders in franchises. Historically, it's a spectacular place to hold money.

Sure, but MLB wants a market like that to either be a) sitting vacant as potential blackmail for stadium deals, or b) an expansion target which generates a huge windfall for all the current owners. (look at what is happening with the NBA: they're creating 2 new franchises and it's going to mean a check cut to each owner for $300M that they don't have to share with the players. And it's the real reason Lore & A-Rod were finally able to get the financial backing they needed to complete the sale, since they didn't actually have the cash themselves, and why they need the sale to happen before expansion is approved). MLB doesn't want a team moving out of a substantial market like this. they were fine with it happening (finally) in Oakland because they still have a team in the Bay and they couldn't get the stadium deal done...and they'd much rather do expansion in Nashville or Charlotte than Vegas.

I'm fine with this. Look, you never know until they come in whether a new owner will be good or not, but we do know how the Pohlad family has run things over the past 40 years and we've been given a very clear sign of how they intend things to run in the future. They expect this team to not lose money on a year over year basis, regardless of the situation. They're perfectly comfortable pocketing profits (and they made plenty of profits during the lowest payroll years) and aren't interested in taking losses, no matter what the appreciation in value of the franchise is. Other owners balance the appreciation of the franchise against the annual balance sheet; the Pohlads don't seem interested in that which will be a constant limiter on their investment in the team, which has created staggering wealth for them. Let them cash out. and go away. Almost all billionaires suck in some way, but let's at least find one who might GAF about winning. I suspect MLB isn't going to approve the sale to anyone who doesn't have the cash flow to handle the year over year, and there are enough gazillionaires out there that want the status of owning a professional team. Win a title and you get treated like a hero. they can own the team for 20 years, win some titles and cash out. The unknown might be scary, but the current ownership is doing a bad job of running the team's business and is more interested in their own profits than winning. Time to move along.

Seems fair on the rankings. I really hope this development for Sands is a real evolution and not just a small sample size/reliever variability thing. There are definitely reasons to believe that this is different: the change in pitch mix plus increased velocity hopefully makes him more projectable, but he also had a massive drop in the free passes, which is great...but sometimes not as repeatable. That said, even with regression there he can still be a quality reliever and bullpen mainstay. SWR probably deserves more than an honorable mention, but that's the way it goes sometimes. He did a good job battling his way through, and definitely lands higher on the list if he has a better September. I suspect the twins would have liked to have found a way to get him a break, but really didn't have a lot of options with Paddack not able to get back, Ryan out for the season, and the team needing to go to Festa and Matthews down the stretch. but SWR threw more innings in 2024 than he ever has in a season in his professional career by a lot and 90% of them in MLB, which is impressive. It's not surprising that he wore down in Sept. but now he knows what it's like, and hopefully understands what he needs to do to sustain things next season. He's still younger than Festa or Matthews, so this year was unquestionably a success for him. Hard not to pick Jax for the top: he was simply dominant. He's really turned into a weapon.

so that he becomes less valuable? His excellent offense at SS is part of why he's actually worth the contract he's signed to. And the issue with plantar fasciitis isn't going to be fixed by playing 1B. There's a ton of factors that make trading Correa away a viable option. The no-trade clause, the contract, the injury history, are all real barriers. They significantly limit the number of teams that could deal for him (he's not waiving a no-trade without being able to control where he goes. he's just not.) which also restricts the value the twins could get in return. Dealing Correa to take on another team's big contract that they don't want isn't exactly a great way forward for the Twins, either. And while Brooks Lee might be able to step in at SS, that position has been a problem for the Twins to lock down on a permanent basis for a long time until Correa got here. (go back and look: how many times did we have the same starting SS for more than 3 seasons in a row since Greg Gagne?) The final kicker is this: I simply don't trust this ownership to invest the savings from moving off Correa's contract back into the roster. isn't the most likely scenario that if the Twins somehow did move Correa they'd take back $10M+ in contracts, spend $10M on 2 bargain bin FAs, and then ownership pockets the the remainder because of the decline in TV revenue? Whatever goodwill they generated from the initial Correa signing and increased payroll they threw away with this year's cuts and utter screwing of Twins viewership. I am back to being exceptionally skeptical of ownership in all things again. A position they have EARNED through action and inaction. no to trading Correa. He's still an elite player and brings something to the table no other player in this franchise has.

The biggest need the Twins 2025 roster has is good health. But since that's caught up in a bunch of players already on the roster, I'm not sure how we impact that directly.

Must be a reasonable trade, people are coming out saying it's a bad deal for both sides.

You still have to do some projections, and there have been no indicators that Ryan won't be ready for spring training that we've seen. And Paddack was close to returning in a relief role; he just wasn't going to be able to get stretched out in time to start. Since they don't have any games to pitch in right now, you don't need to base the projected rotation on who is 100% right now. I don't think the Twins are opposed at all to a LH starter. They've got one developing in AAA in Nowlin and another in AA in Macleod. They're not as high on the rotation prospect lists because other guys are pitching better, not because the Twins are against LH starters.

Paddack is a tough one. The contract is more than reasonable, but we're no longer living with a reasonable payroll. I'd love to see Paddack shift to a bullpen role as a bridge reliever, expected to go 2 innings every 3-4 days; I think he could be successful in that role and it would support the team well any time a starter came out before the 6th (and occasionally other times as well). There's a real need on this team for a long reliever, not as a mop-up guy who eats innings a couple times a month when the game implodes, but someone they expect to be able to pitch to any part of a lineup and be effective 1 time through or so. That 5 inning start from any of the rotation guys works a lot better if you have a Paddack coming in for 2+ right after to get you to the Duran/Jax/Alcala/Stewart group, and makes it easier to run with SWR & Festa in the rotation. I expect that Paddack is in the rotation, though. I think they'll want to run with him over Festa and will try to claw their value back through starts. Unless he gets traded in a salary dump (more than possible with our parsimonious ownership), although I have to wonder if that's going to be harder to do with other teams facing a haircut on their local tv rights?

Kirilloff is the toughest one, because he's getting more expensive, hasn't produced, and is constantly injured. The cost seems marginal, but factored against production it's not that small of a number. Castro is very interesting, but I feel confident that he gets tendered. I do think there's a real chance that he gets dealt; he's a player with actual trade value and I'm sure Twins management would like to drop his salary slot considering the self-imposed payroll limitations the dumb ownership has placed on the club. Unless you're convinced that Topa won't be healthy again next season, then he's easily worth bringing back. I'm baffled that anyone thinks that Duran is even a question. He's still a great reliever with elite capability to shorten games and the price isn't outrageous at all. He will get offered arbitration. Period.

Tough one with Kirilloff. He's shown occasional flashes in MLB, followed by longer periods of ineffectiveness that's always been marked by injury. He's got one of the sweetest swings I've seen in a Twins uniform when he's right, a player who can hit with power to all fields, slashing laser beam line-drives all over the place. He's got good contact skills to go along with it...when he's right. But he's so rarely been healthy. It does seem like they finally figured out the wrist issues that nearly ended his career, but the back injury just adds one more demerit to his ledger. If the Twins move on from him, we have to accept that there's no trade value here. He's been far too injured too many times, and has never produced consistently enough in MLB to have any trade value, especially now that he's due arbitration raises. Team control isn't enough of an inducement and the elite promise shown by the way he dominated in the minors is a looooong way away now. I lean towards moving on, and I'm super bummed about it. I've been a huge Kirilloff stan and I love his bat. But I just don't think we have room on the 40-man for unproven players who can't stay healthy, especially when they're starting to cost more. The option is nice and all, but what difference does it make if he can't play? Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like too many injuries with no end in sight. :(

Always complicated when you have a mediocre to bad ownership of a team. The "Cheap Pohlads" moniker probably got overused for a while, because we had a stretch recently where they were spending a realistic amount on the team, had landed a marquee free agent, etc. It's come roaring back this season...and it's hard to say that it's not deserved. Because while clearly there's a reckoning coming in baseball for teams reliant on local broadcast revenues...the Twins appear to have gotten ahead of the curve on this and rather than accept losses to contend, they started the "right-sizing" that a lot of teams of their ilk are going to be (probably) going through immediately. And very possibly before they actually had to. They're almost certainly going to cry poverty in this off-season and claim losses from this season (without actually showing anyone their books, notably), but a) they don't have any credibility on this topic with the fanbase at all, and b) any losses from this season are at least in part self-inflicted. The Pohlad family is immensely wealthy, and they have a variety of business interests far beyond the Twins that generate wealth for them. This isn't a family ownership group whose only real source of wealth is the team. They certainly could operate the Twins at an operating loss for several seasons while the team has a roster capable of contending. Especially considering they had many, many years with payroll levels that almost had to have been generating profits on the club (no matter how they might have cooked the books) and the family. They seem to be choosing not to, and that's out of step with the expectation for pro sports teams, especially ones that have received public subsidies with the Twins have been granted. And that's where this makes fans (rightly) crazy. $20M is an epic amount of money to me, life-changing in ways I can't even comprehend. To the Pohlad family, it's more like a rounding error. For the Twins payroll, $20M could have made a significant difference in the roster, ensuring they had a higher floor or ceiling. Maybe they get off to a better start or a less awful close and make the playoffs. There's no guarantee, but the odds increase a lot. And if Falvey had that $20M to work with and they had a botch like this, I think it would be a lot easier to say "ya done effed up" to Falvey and told him to move on with Levine, because then clearly the issue would be beyond injuries and also about poor investments in free agents and/or trades. But with so few resources to work with...what did we expect? I didn't expect much from relievers like Staumont, Jackson, or Okert. My hope for this team was based more on improvement from younger players. I don't disagree that the biggest share of blame goes on ownership for murdering this season. They cut everyone off at the knees for money. My hierarchy of failure: Ownership Players Front office manager & coaches Bad year for ownership. Do they care enough about the fans and opinion to change it?

It'll be interesting to see if he's got something new lined up already; if he doesn't it would suggest that he was ushered out rather than jumping ship. Have to wonder if the process with the BoSox changed his thinking about being in MN and his tenure. I hope they have a robust search process and at least are considering external candidates. i do believe in promotion from within and it can be very healthy...but at the same time you have to keep open to new ideas and sometimes you need an external figure to disrupt groupthink.