Danchat

I also don't see a win, they haven't finished any games yet!

OBP, not OPS! 😉

I did not expect Caratini to be playing 1B right away, but I guess it's for the lefty matchup. It's logical when taking into account how terrible he has been this spring.

Of course, but if we had the foreknowledge to know that it would 5 or more years for Petty to make any kind of positive impact on the roster, you move him for a legit starter.

I wouldn't be shocked if he's gone sooner than later, but I don't think Culpepper is going to bump Lee down to utility infielder in a few weeks. Methinks they're going to give Lee a long runway to figure out if he can hold the SS job down.

I haven't seen much talk about how well the Sonny Gray trade aged for the Twins. That's why you don't trade two years of control of a very good starting pitcher for a single pitching prospect, even for a top-of-the-line starter prospect.

Getting equal money on both sides means setting the lines where the betting public thinks the results will be. Whether their opinion is worthwhile depends whether it's more smart money (sharps/pro bettors) or dumb money (casual bettors/fans).

I agree with keeping Bradley and Matthews as starters for now. Zebby has shown flashes and hasn't had any issues with missing tons of time with injuries and can get deep into games, it might be worthwhile keeping him as a starter for the long haul. The others you mentioned are probably all relievers long-term.

Updated depth chart:

Looks like Chief was wrong about Arcia... I'm surprised Gray made it as the utility infielder. As for the bullpen... well, I guess it's nice they gave Laweryson a fair shake after they seemingly gave up on him this winter. May as well try one of the younger options. I just wish we had more upside coming in the minors for relieving talent, Raya seems like the only arm to have made the jump from starting to relieving. Has Klein? Once Festa starts ramping up, I would move him to the pen. It's his likely destiny regardless of team need.

According to Fangraphs, Roden is 26.3... so I guess they call him up when he hits 26.5? 😆

The Roden part of the Varland deal never made much sense to me, and especially now that Larnach is back and they refuse to abandon Outman. If they're going to sit on Roden, what was the point of taking that last minute offer on Varland? They may as well should have held onto him, make him the closer for this season, and then debate trading him over the 2026 trade deadline (still would have 3.5 years of control). Rojas is a nice pitching prospect, but trading Varland for just one legit prospect is a really dumb move. Ugh.

Yeah, it does feel like that. And it might end the same way with moving him to the bullpen to try and salvage him, but that didn't work either.

13 baserunners for Ober... yikes! Nice to see the bats coming alive. Arcia is having a big day.

Keaschall's a stud... hard to believe will only be 23 this year.

Yup, I think that is close. DH will rotate between a bunch of players and Larnach will retain his LF job for a while.

Buddy, we were losing the game. You don't pitch in the 9th losing as the away team.

If Martin is going to miss time with the concussion, methinks Roden is taking his place.

We got the details on Wentz's deal: It's 1/$3M with $2.65M guaranteed, the rest being bonuses that don't have to be paid out if he's QB3 as far as I can tell. There are a few other veteran QB3s making about $2-3M, so he did not get QB2 money. So I will stick with what I said before, Wentz is here to make JJM earn the QB2 job, and will not be threatening Kyler (I've seen some claim Wentz will be QB1, which is nonsense). To answer the question of "why would Wentz sign now instead of waiting out a QB2 job", it's because he's getting $1.1M in signing bonus. And it's fairly evident that he wasn't getting much other attention on the open market for a QB2 job or he would have signed for more elsewhere.

That had more to do with JJM needing more reps in practice and he didn't get those because it was a Thursday night game. Hence why he played the next week against the Lions and had a surprisingly decent game. Eh, I think a lot of those rumors have been astro-turfed to retroactively salvage KOC's reputation (hence why they all came out after Kwesi was fired, piling on the scapegoat). He definitely wanted Jones to sign here and compete with JJM and did not want Howell as QB2, but otherwise I believe he thought he could coach JJM up. And then it became apparent once he started playing against NFL speed that he wasn't ready, and KOC wasn't prepared for that. His mechanics were not a problem at Michigan nor were they in training camp - he reportedly had a really rough minicamp in 2024 and rebounded in training camp to the point where it seemed like he could push Darnold for the job. And even in 2025 training camp he had a fantastic joint practice against the Patriots where he looked a lot better than Drake Maye. It wasn't until the real games started and then the injuries worsened the issue. I'm seeing people claim that KOC never wanted to draft JJM, which is absurd and plain old gaslighting. JJM was a great fit for KOC's offense, being one of the best intermediate passers in college football who played in a pro style offense which would supposedly speed up the transition from college to pros. And zero injury history, to boot. But the light bulb doesn't turn on for some prospects... Not sure I believe he was "forced to", he was probably chomping at the bit to get back into the lineup to get more reps. Overall I agree that maturity (along with the injuries, obviously) was the primary issue.

9 hits and 1 walk allowed by SWR, good job only allowing 2 runs on that.

Good to hear Abel is in the rotation, as he should be.

I believe they mostly added onto the department, and there were some departures. The last time I saw someone do an article about it, it was something like half Spielman era and half KAM hires. They need to start from scratch.

Plenty of us in the comments section have been sounding the alarms already...

They might ship him off for a 4th round pick, that's true. Once we get Wentz's contract numbers, we should learn quite a bit. Having some kind of signing bonus would be a reason for him to sign now and not wait it out... but I don't think he was getting many, if any QB2 offers elsewhere other than the Jets.