LA Vikes Fan

Matthews should go into the bullpen. I've think we've seen enough to know both that he is not ready for a full-time rotation spot and that he has a good enough arsenal to compete at the MLB level in the bullpen. He looks more and more like the classic failed starter turned reliever type. Also, these moves don't have to be permanent. If he goes to the bullpen and improves his command, he can always come back to the rotation. He's only just turned 26. I don't think we have to wait until next year to do this. One of my fantasies is that we trade a quality prospect a few years out for a quality rental starter like Robbie Ray or Kevin Gausman, and then move Matthews to the bullpen in a late inning role. Essentially, try to till two birds with one stone. My real fantasy is that we trade said prospect for Freddy Peralta, but I know that's not happening. The price tag on him will be too high to be justified for team like this one.

I hear that and I agree that trading him is the more likely approach. Having said that, I think the reason Jeffers might sign the QO would be to get the one season at $23 million and stay at a place he knows and were they know him as compared to taking his chances in free agency when his most likely value that I've seen predicted on a FA contract is roughly 4 years/$60-$70M. I think you could make a good economic argument that taking one year at $23M followed by a FA contract of three years/$50-55M is a better deal because of the time value of money. In addition, if the new CBA has a salary floor of some kind in return for some kind of soft salary cap (very unlikely the owners can get a hard cap), his value might increase to the Twins so they can hit the floor and decrease to high spending teams. This would all assume he wants to stay, which I don't know one way or the other, and that he's willing to accept the risk that an injury in 2027 makes that later FA contract either smaller or nonexistent. Much as I would like to keep him on the team, I agree that unless you have a pretty good inkling that you can either sign him later or get him to accept a Q0, the right move is to trade him at the deadline. Where I differ from some here is I don't think you just trade him for whatever you can get; you trade him if you can get a combination of someone that can help you in the bullpen this year plus a quality prospect or two. If you can't get that, it may make more sense to trade Caratini for a quality relief pitcher in his 30s, if that's available, and roll the dice on trying to keep Jeffers for next year. You take that risk knowing that you have Jackson to be the number two catcher behind one of those two guys in 2027 and that Jackson could potentially be the number one catcher if he really can hit like he has the last roughly year and 1/2. Jackson certainly has the defensive chops for the position, the issue has always been whether he can hit There's lots of moving parts here and it all depends on something we don't know; what can we get for Jeffers or Caratini if we trade them. I think each of us could make a good, well informed choice if we knew the answer to that question.

Got to go with you on this one. Keeping a guy like Jenkins down for fear of losing a year of control because the entire next season is lost due to a work stoppage seems like prioritizing the risk of loss over the possibility of gain to an extreme. I also think the chances of losing all of the 2027 season is pretty remote. I think it's much more likely that the parties reach a deal on a timeframe that shortens spring training and/or we may lose a few games. The economics of losing an entire season so that the owners can try to impose a hard salary cap just doesn't make much economic sense to me, even from the owners perspective. I'm hoping to see Jenkins on the big club shortly after the trade deadline. I did see a comment from someone else that if we wait until August 14 he keeps his rookie status for 2027. That means that if he is rookie of the year in 2027 we get the extra draft choice. Again, that seems like stretching for an unlikely result but I could see waiting until mid August. I'm hoping he is up and playing by then, either because we trade Larnach or Roden, demote Roden or Martin, or the most likely result, someone gets injured

I have to admit I may have been wrong on Adams. I'm one of the guys writing here that he should back to AAA for frankly any new shiny object that we pick up. I don't get it, but he's been very effective the last month or so. That's great to see because we need it.

Not a bad way to look at this. Trade Caratini, keep Jeffers, hope he signs a QO in the offseason, and go with Jeffers and Jackson next year. Make a low wattage deal with Jackson to keep him around as the #2 catcher. The big question is what do you do if Jeffers turns down the QO. The draft choice is nice but we're left with Jackson, assuming he will re-sign with the Twins, and ... Ricardo Olivar? Noah Cardenas? Jackson looks great right now but I see him more as a bat volatile #2 C guy. I doubt he can hit enough if playing 65% of the time to be a #1. But hey, the man is hitting .322/.355/.441 (.796) in a very SSS this year and .220/.290/.473 (.763) last year, much better in the second half after changing his swing, so I could be totally wrong on him. Trading Caratini is at least another option to think about.

That's a pretty good way to put things with ERod. He could be a real MLB asset if he ever gets there. I do wonder a little bit about his passive approach translating to the MLB level where pitchers have better control, though. I would have loved to see him up this year to see but it looks like another year of development for him will pass. He's still very young so there is time. All of this is why I would be dangling him as part of a package to get a Reid Detmers, Jose Soriano, George Kirby, CJ Abrams, Antony Volpe, Trevor Rogers type guy. We have a surplus of OFs with potential. Let's cash one in for a youngish long term asset, particularly if that asset is a pitcher or middle IF. I'd rather trade Roden or Fedko but they aren't going to get us much, maybe a decent but not great mid 30s relief pitcher (think Pierce Johnson or Kirby Yates, if that). I want more so I'm willing to trade ERod, GG, or Mendez to get a young, controllable #3 starter type or a controllable middle IF bat with upside.

I frankly wonder a little about ERod. He's shown flashes but no real consistency, in part because he is always injured. He could be a star, he could be a bust, he could be anywhere in between. I don't think we know a lot more about where he'll fall on that continuum now than we did a year or two ago. IF we're trying to make a trade for higher end MLB talent with remaining control, ERod is the guy I would be dangling as the centerpiece of a prospect trade.

Sorry, we're going to have just agree to disagree. I think you overstate how interested fans are in seeing minor league guys come up. You and I might be interested in that but I think most fans only care about seeing a wining team and guys they know. Bringing up minor leaguers doesn't get you a winning team most of the time, you usually get the opposite, and it certainly doesn't get you guys most fans know. Oh well, reasonable minds can differ and apparently do in this case.

Any chance of getting someone good higher than A+ ball? I'm sure these guys are good players and someday might even make good MLB players. That someday looks like a ways off for each of them. Maybe I'm just getting old and frustrated, but this looks like more playing for the future that never comes. Let's trade Jeffers for some guys that can come and help us in the bullpen this year or at least next year.

Really? Come on now, think it through. Tom's biggest business problem is trying to turn around a negative perception in the market about whether the Twins are willing to try to win or if this is all about just making as much money as possible. Pohlad went out of his way to go on record saying a few weeks ago that he wants to win and compete for championships. He got some national publicity for saying that and it was faithfully reprinted in the local press. If he then turns around a few weeks later and trades the team's best player for a bunch of prospects that no one other than us baseball nerds had ever heard of, the vast majority of fans will think that what he said before was just empty words. "He's just another Pohlad. All he cares about is making the most money. He doesn't care about the team, he doesn't care about us fans, he doesn't care about putting a winning product on the field. Why should I care about this team if it doesn't care about me. " Tom has created expectations that he needs to fulfill. He doesn't have to do it by trading for Sonny Gray at the deadline and paying him $25 million, but he can't kill the team's image by backtracking from what he said and trading away the best guy on the team. And by the way, yes there will be lost ticket sales for the rest of this year. Think bigger than just selling a few tickets and a few beers this season. The Twins biggest business problem is the rightfully formed image that ownership doesn't care about the team, it only cares about money. Tom is trying to turn that perception around. To do that, he needs to show that he is trying to put the best product on the field even if it costs him more money and even if it may make more baseball sense to trade good players right now for a future team. In other words, he needs to show that he is trying to WIN. People cut slack for an owner who shows he is trying to win. He can say, "hey, new Sherriff in town. Instead of trading good players away and playing for a future that may never come, we're trying to win NOW." Fans will cut some slack to a guy who is trying his hardest to put the best product he can on the field. Tom needs to show that he is that guy to have any chance of turning a crappy situation around. Fans will cut no slack for team owner who is trying to maximize profit or cut his financial losses. Now let's switch to a trade in the off-season. In the offseason the Twins can make Ryan an offer and play the PR game that they offered as good a deal as anyone or the biggest deal in Twins history and he decided to leave anyway. Nothing they could do. And who knows, maybe he'll actually take your offer. You also have Lopez next year so you a have a replacement. Huge business difference from trading him at the deadline for prospects this year. Look, if this was just a baseball decision I can see the argument for trading Ryan now although as you know, I'm not convinced we can't get as good a deal in the off-season as we can now. Neither one of us knows the answer to that question because we don't know what's being offered. I do agree trading Jeffers now is the only thing that makes any sense from a baseball perspective and that may be true for trading Ryan depending on the offers out there that you and I will never see. Still, from a business perspective it's much better to hold Ryan to the end of this year and hope the team actually at least sort of contends for a playoff spot. If they don't, it's not ownership's fault; we kept our best players and tried to get new ones but we just didn't have enough. If they trade Ryan, Jeffers, Larnach, Bell, etc. away and the team tanks, then it is ownership's fault. "The team was good enough to contend but the owners traded anybody making money to save themselves a few bucks in 2026 and get cheaper players." Pohlad can get away with trading Jeffers because he's a pending free agent. He can't get away with trading Ryan away now and still saying he's trying to win with a straight face. He has a better chance of pulling that off in the offseason. The baseball bona fides don't matter as much as the business strategy does at this point.

Agree Falvey was making the decisions. Most of the deal were good moves. There is one deal I would redo; the Varland. I actually think highly of Rojas and think he could be a great starter or late inning guy down the road. Still, I Would rather have Varland at the back of the Twins' bullpen for the next 3.5 years since he's not going to hit free agency until 2031. I think we basically "won" almost all of the other trades. We definitely won Jax for Bradley, Bader for Mendez and Villoria, Castro for Gallagher, and Coulombe for Horn. Duran for Abel and Tait is yet to be seen but the return looks strong. Frankly, if Mick Abel is a #3 starter or better next year, we win and still have Tait for later gravy. Stewart for Outman was a lose-lose since Stewart immediately got hurt and Outman well, he kind of stinks. I also approve of them dumping most of Correa's salary, especially since he's missed this entire season with an injury.

Thanks for that update. Wow, he has been hurt a lot.

That's easy. Jenkins and Buxton, absolutely not. Emma, absolutely available in the right deal. Guy can't stay healthy and his passive approach may not work in the Bigs. Besides, he is out of options although he probably will get 4th option because he's been injured most of this season. Buxton is the present, Jenkins is the future, Emma is a big question mark. He seems to have real talent but he may or may not ever be either good enough or healthy enough to start every day at the MLB level, much less be a star. To me, he is exactly the kind of guy we should be dangling as a headliner in a package to get a proven MLB starting pitcher with 2+ years of control left. For the right deal, Emma goes.

I understand the argument for trading Ryan but I do question one of your key assumptions. Everyone seems to assume we will get a "better" return at this year's trade deadline then in the coming off-season. I understand that there is a risk of injury and that's a real concern. Beyond that, I've never really seen any kind of real analysis about why the return will be "better" now other than the thought that well, a contending team gets two playoff runs rather than one. That makes some sense but hardly seems definitive. On the contrary side, by definition there is a smaller pool of teams willing to trade for right now as that will be limited to those who feel like they are truly in contention and need to pay a big price for starting pitching to contend in the playoffs. Also, it certainly seems like the return at the deadline is always prospects. That makes sense since any team will hold on to contributing major players so as not to create a roster hole by training to fill a different hole. It seems like in the off-season, one sees a lot more MLB player for MLB player kind of trades, probably because teams think they have minor leaguers that can backfill a hole they create or can trade at that seasons deadline to fill the hole if the prospect doesn't work out. It makes more sense to me to trade Ryan for proven talent than for prospects if you can do that, and it seems much more likely that you can do that in the off-season than at the deadline. Look, I think you gotta fish or cut bait on Ryan no later than this off-season. If you can't sign him before spring training ends next year, you have to go trade him. This team isn't close enough this year nor is it likely to be next year that you keep Ryan because this is going to be the "magical year" that we get to the World Series if only we keep Joe. Having said that, I just don't think that the evidence is very strong to support the argument that we will get "more" for him now other than basic logic that a team should be willing to give more to have the extra playoff run with him. I just haven't seen anything that convinces me that that's true, particularly when factoring in the facts that you can get proven MLB talent for a guy like Ryan in the off-season but not now, and that there are more teams that could be interested then as compared to now. Relief pitchers? Probably worth more now which is why we see more trades of relief pitchers now. A proven front line starter? I just don't think it's the same. Of course, all of this is completely academic because Tom Pohlad isn't going to trade Ryan at the deadline if he has any business acumen unless he has a complete change of heart. Everything he has said to date is the opposite and even he has to know trading Ryan would kill the team and kill the fan base. I think there's a very little chance Ryan gets traded at this year's deadline for business reasons, whether or not it makes sense for baseball reasons..

Look, the guy's not a great centerfielder at this point in his career. Frankly, he's barely competent in centerfield, if that. Still, it's more than a little early to make grand pronouncements about his ability to play in centerfield or the outfield at all. He's played all of what, 15-20 games in the outfield total and maybe 8-10 or so in centerfield? I know we all like to judge and then set our opinions in stone never to be reviewed, able to haughtily dismiss anyone who has the temerity to question those opinions formed oh so long ago. I get it, it beats actually having to think, but all of this seems like a little early. I think we need to take a deep breath and give him the rest of the season to get his feet wet as a full-time outfielder, and then give the team the chance to really work with him next year in spring training on things like his drop step, feeling where the wall is, knowing when to throw home or to third base and when to concede the run, all those things that come with real experience. Then we we can judge his defense in the outfield. You know, about next May, not now. Until then, this is what development looks like. For all of you that want to call up prospects from AAA, including me, get ready for some ugly moments at the plate or in the field. There will be some. With all of them. Oh, and by the way, over the last 100 plus PAs, Luke is hitting .303/.413/.419 (.832), with 16 SOs and 13 BBs (almost a 1:1 ratio). He has actually been better than that over his last roughly 50 plate appearances. That guy starts on my team and needs a place to play. Second base clearly wasn't it so let's find him one in the outfield. But you're right, he kind of sucks out there right now. Hope it gets better.