LA Vikes Fan

Is that also true or those of us who still get cable (what!) that has ESPN?

By the way, CBS spots and Dan Hays at the Athletic are reporting that Bradley and/or Abel are likely to get a start this weekend in Chicago. Perfect team to let them start with.

I disagree but not completely, which is why I mentioned that another $10m in addition to the $5m already allocated might get us either a quality BP piece or a middle of the order bat. I think both Buxton and Wallner are starting MLB OFs. I agree the rest should be 4th, 5th or AAA OFs (although I live in LA and Outman may be better than you think), but I think it's worth half a season to see if Gonzalez, Jenkins, or Emma (or Outman or Martin) can hit the ground running and/or be a MLB caliber starting OF. The BP is a complete crapshoot. Who knows who will be available. Coulombe is a FA that has pitched poorly for Texas so he might want to come back, there may not be room for Stewart on the Dodgers' 40 man so he might be available, and there are always guys out there to pick up. A bullpen is the one thing you can build on the fly for not a lot of cash. The big hole is the closer. I would actually try Festa there if only because the Grim Reaper would be a cool closer moniker. Seriously though, I think Festa could be an awesome closer and I think SWR's profile and pitch mix screams stater turned late inning reliever whose 92 mph heater now hits 95 and he has the breaking stuff to go with it. I see SWR as a better version of Jax. I understand why people want to move Lopez and Ryan, I just don't think it works if the rest of the team is young guys learning their way. You have to have something that keeps the games competitive if you want the young guys to learn - they need to be put in crucial late inning situations to get better. That 8th and 9th inning at bat isn't as instructive if you're down 8-3 as it is in a tie game, that 7th and 8th inning relief assignments not as helpful if you're down 3 or 4 (or 5 or 6) as with a small lead or in a tie game, and that start is more pressure packed and instructive if the team is around .500 and being mentioned in the wild card race as it is if you're 10 games under .500, etc. Players develop in competitive situations more quickly and better than on uncompetitive teams. Keeping Lopez and Ryan makes it much more likely we will be in competitive situations and I think that would really help speed up the development and frankly the evaluation of guys like Keaschall, Wallner, Lee, Lewis, Mathews, SWR, Adams, Ohl, etc. Lots of guys can play well on a team that is out of it by May, just look at Brent Rooker. We need guys that can play well when the games matter and you don't develop those guys if the starting pitching is so bad that the games never matter.

I would agree with this if Lopez and Ryan were in their mid-30s and likely to head down over time, but Lopez just turned 29 and Ryan will turn 30 on September 1. Lopez is signed for a team friendly number through his age 31 season (2027). Ryan has 2 arb years left (also thru 2027) and will be 32 when he hits FA. These are the type of guys you try to trade FOR, not the guys you trade. Even if you don't think this team will be competitive until 2028 or later, you keep these guys at least until mid season next year when their trade value will be maximized and trade them if the team stinks because the young players aren't any good. That way you give your young players a cornerstone to start next year with starting pitchers that will keep the team in 2 games out of every 5. You need that to develop young players; you can't have a team without any established pitchers that gets blown out every night because then the young guys don't develop. Why not? Because then they don't play in high stress situations where they learn the little things that win and lose games. It not only makes financial sense to keep both; it makes baseball sense. Ober's a tougher case. He's the same age as Ryan and also has 2 arb years left, not anywhere near as good, and much more replaceable by a Matthews, Festa, SWR, Abel, Bradley, etc. He has less trade value; a whole lot less. I would check the market on him. If he alone or with a good A ball guy can fetch a high upside AA hitter (particularly a catcher) or a blocked guy who's tearing up AAA, I'd really think about pulling the trigger much as I hate to give up a competent mid rotation starter who is less than $6M a year. Those guys are very hard to find.

I understand the 100M payroll prediction but I'm optimistic that there's no need to trade Lopez or Ryan to get there, or Ober for that matter. I get to a 100M payroll including the 10M to Correa without trading Ryan, Lopez, Ober, or Jeffers and giving the latter 3 the likely arb raises. The only person I trade is Larnach. I also bring in 1 FA Bullpen arm at 5M (or that can be two at 2.5M like Coloumbe and another) and 1 FA 1B/DH at 10M (or 3 and 12, just a total of 15). I also use two of Matthews/Festa/SWR/Bradley/Abel in the rotation and 1 in the bullpen. I wind up with 15 (!) 820K minimum(ish) salaried players. 2 of the above 5 are in the rotation and 1 in the bullpen with the other 2 starting in AAA as depth, Sands, Funderburk, Adams, and Ohl are in the bullpen, Cardenas is the #2 C, Keaschall, Lee, two of Clemens, Julien, Fitzgerald and Eeles in the IF on the bench, or Culpepper if he's ready, and Wallner, Outman, Martin and one of Roden/Fedko/Gonzalez/etc. in the OF. Outman will be on the team - he is Buxton's backup and that's why they traded for him. So, I spend 77.5M on vets, 12.3 M on minimum salaried guys, and 10M on Correa and I'm at 99.8M. I actually think that this or something like it may be the plan. With that rotation and the right FA in the bullpen, we may have enough pitching to compete. The hard part will be scoring runs. Her's the roster: Rotation Lopez 21.5M Ryan 7.5M Ober 4.5M Matthews 820K Festa/SWR 820K Bullpen Sands 820K Tonkin 1.75M Topa 1.75M Funderburk 820K Adams 820K Ohl 820K FA 5M Festa/SWR 820K Catchers Jeffers 7.5M Cardenas 820K IF Keaschall 820K Lewis 3M Lee 820K Clemens/Julien820k FA 1B/DH 10M Fitz/Eeles 820K OF Wallner 820K Buxton 15M Outman 820K Martin 820K Roden/Fedko 820K Correa 10M Total 99.8M This looks like a rebuilding roster to me. Add another 10M to get a good closer and the pitching may be there. Add another 10M to get a good hitting OF and the lineup starts to look interesting. This is doable.

Agree. At least replace Urena with Abel, Gaspar with Cardenas, and Clemens with Sabato, and use Julien in a 1B platoon with Sabato. At least you feel like we're learning something for next year.

Ba Dum dum! C'mon folks, these are the jokes. I know you're out there, I can hear you breathing...

Rooker looking like he did with the Twins.

Hey, at lest Larnach scored from first on Lee's double. That was actually good baserunning.

Well, that was not good. At least they're trying to be aggressive on the bases. Lee is pretty dang slow, though.

I hate to say it but almost anyone including Julien has a better chance of getting a hit right now as compared to Clemens.

They aren't going to let Clemens hit against a leftie are they?

I like this much better than what's in the article. It preserves the league identity and keeps cities with two teams having one in each league. It does however leave a really bad division in the NL South but the rest of it looks good

I would normally agree with you but I think there's a big caveat here with Lee. He already has 570 PAs and should be at around 700 by the end of the year, assuming he plays basically every day the rest of the season. He has probably of the second-most exciting position player prospect in the organization nipping at his heels in Kaelon Culpeper. Culpeper will be ready for the majors if he stays on his current trajectory by no later than mid season next year. By then, Lee will have his 1000 PAs. Frankly, Culpeper should get some major league ABs this year. The team needs to know whether Lee will be the shortstop or not by no later than the middle of next season, preferably by the end of this season so they can switch Culpeper to the outfield or to third base in place of Lewis. We can't just sit around and wait on him. Having said all that, I'm actually cautiously optimistic on Lee. His bat seems to be better when he plays shortstop every day and I'm guessing his fielding metrics at shortstop are roughly average or slightly below. Those metrics could improve with an off-season of flexibility and agility training and maybe get him to a solid slightly above average fielder at short. If he can do that and be even a .265/.325/.400 hitter, we have a solid major league shortstop for the foreseeable future. He is neither of those things yet but he potentially could be and that's what we need to find out.

I disagree, I think this is the time to talk abut Lee and what he can be because of where the team is right now. The lineup is undergoing a core shuffle. We need to find out who can be part of a contending core in the next year or two, including whether Lee, Lewis, Keaschall, Martin, Wallner, and Larnach can be part of that core. If Lee can be a future everyday SS that gives us options with Culpeper and others and frees us up form having to find one. If Lee can hit but is too slow to be an above average fielder at SS, can he hit enough to be Lewis' replacement at 3B with Culpepper at SS? Same questions about Lewis. It looks like he's improved and can field the position but will he ever hit again? Getting data on these questions is what this year is all about now and this article is some of that data. How Lee ranks on this year's team leaderboard on the team is interesting but not very meaningful as bad as this lineup is. We need to know how he ranks versus quality players on contending teams. We need to know if he can be a no. 5 or 6 hitter who plays an above average SS on a good team. If not, we need to try somebody else like Culpepper. I hear you on Clemens but I don't think he's getting a pass, I think we aren't talking about him much because we already know the answer. He is not an every day MLB player because he can't hit well enough. A .208/.292 BA/OBP is not going to cut it, not even close. Even worse, both measures are going down the more he plays, not up. Add to that the fact he's already 29 and he isn't part of next year's MLB roster other than maybe as a 25th or 26th man on the bench and can't be played against LH pitching. I frankly would sit him and play Julien at 1B every day for the rest of 2025. He very well may be the same thing or even worse, but he did have MLB success in 2023 so let's find out if that can come back and whether we want him back in 2026. The rest of this year is all about evaluation and projection. All of the position players except Buxton and Jeffers need to be evaluated and hard decisions need to be made.

By the way, Stewart hit his 35 inning limit (made it to 37 this year!) and is now on the IL for shoulder inflammation. The word out here is that he Dodgers are "hopeful" that he'll make it back by mid to late September and pitch in the playoffs but there's a 50/50 shot he's done for the year. He's a 34 year old Arb 2 player next year on a team with lots of money but only 40 protectable spots and lots of players angling for spots 35-40. Will be interesting to see what the Dodgers do; he may become available again.

One of the things you learn running an organization is that it's very difficult to have a successful organization without accountability. But accountability isn't just about measuring results because results can be random and dependent on outside forces. Accountability is about effort and the discipline to focus that effort on the things most likely to make you and by extension the organization successful. Also, to work accountability has to come from within the organization and within the person; it's not top down chewing people out if they don't perform. Effective accountability is actually the opposite - it's celebrating and acknowledging the effort and focus regardless of result. When I read Pablo's comments I heard that he thinks the players (or some of them) are not holding themselves and others accountable for the effort they put in and the focus with which they work. Ask yourself - what did I do today, and yesterday, and last week, to improve my personal performance and/or put us in the best position to win today? If I made a mistake, did I acknowledge that mistake, take responsibility, and focus my efforts so that I don't make that mistake again? Or, as many people do, did I make an excuse, decide that "it's all good", keep my head down and hope no one notices or calls me out, and just hope it doesn't happen again. Or even worse, did I just do today what I've always done and hope for better results? The first group are the people you want, the last two groups are the people who kill an organization. I think the culture issue is a lack of accountability and I read Pablo's comments as an effort by the remaining leaders to start enforcing accountability from within. I don't think Correa was a problem but I think he was miscast as a leader because he wasn't willing to call people out and he didn't always exemplify the effort he wanted from others. I think he's better as a complimentary clubhouse piece, but not the clubhouse leader. I frankly think Buxton may be the same, but all of this is just a guess based on what I see and what we don't see is more important. I don't know what goes on so I don't know if Rocco is part of the problem or the solution and none of the rest of us do either. I do blame the FO because I think we have too many scholarship players and are too slow to acknowledge evaluation mistakes. Regardless of all that, taking better accountability would be a huge step forward for this team at all levels, including ownership.

I agree that Abel should get a look this season and I'm frankly hoping for this Thursday against Oakland instead of another bullpen game. He's had 3 starts in AAA - 15.1 IP, 7 hits allowed, 23 SOs, 6 BBs, 0.85 WHIP. Hard to see what else he needs to show there. He pitched Saturday so Thursday is right on schedule. I would also like to see Taj Bradley get another look at the MLB level. He hasn't been as good in AAA as Abel, but we need to see where he is and AAA doesn't really do that for you. He should get 2-3 starts in September. Look, they may stink at the MLB level but that's part of the process. I was one of the posters clamoring to give Adams and Ohl a shot. We did and found out they are not ready with some encouraging signs. We now know that neither is likely to start the 2026 season in the bullpen but they may be a mid-season or injury replacement option. That helps with determining what we do in the off season to fill out the bullpen. Same thing with Abel and/or Bradley. Let's see hat they can do as starters, helps us figure out what to do with other guys.

Well said. We may be whistling past the graveyard, but well said.

I agree, he does suck at the plate. The problem I see, is who else is there? Gaspar hits even worse than Vasquez.

Actually, re-signing Vasquez on the relative cheap might be the way to go. Gaspar doesn't seem to be able to hit MLB pitching, there are no available free agents, and Vasquez is at least a strong defensive catcher who's familiar with the pitching staff even if he can't hit a lick. The best of the AAA lot looks to be Noah Cardenas. Not a lot to choose from.

I don't think revenue sharing is enough to get you profitable. For this team to make money, they need to draw 2-2.5 million plus and have a decent TV deal. They can't draw that amount with a lousy team so I think they have to have a competitive team to be profitable. This isn't LA where you can still draw 3 million fans to an average/mediocre team. Keeping Ryan and Lopez gets butts in the seats. The TV piece is a real problem. That part of the business has changed radically in the last couple of years and is killing this and several other teams. Losing that $55 million annual Diamond Sports payment put a huge hole in their cash flow, and I doubt if they collected more than $10 – 15 million with their direct to consumer model. The only hope there is either that MLB puts together a consortium of teams and sells the content to a provider like Amazon which gives each of the teams a better payout, or that there is some form of revenue-sharing between TV markets and everyone else. Good luck on the latter, I just don't think that's gonna happen. For that matter, a salary cap/salary floor would help a lot to make teams like the Twins competitive but I don't think that's gonna happen either, at least not without a significant work stoppage 2027. By the way, I think that's exactly where were headed.

For those of you convinced Ryan and/or Lopez are being traded this offseason, I think it's way too early to tell. The first thing we need to know is who are the two new limited partner groups, how much are they putting in, and what power will they have - are they simply passive investors with no power or influence, private equity guys looking to squeeze and sell, fanboys looking to get reflected glory off of owning a pro team, or guys with a runway to eventually own the team over time. The Pohlad statement is pretty ambiguous. One scenario is this cash infusion allows the team to stay competitive on payroll starting next season when they actually have the money or maybe is used to buy out family members who don't care about the team and just want their money out. There are a thousand scenarios and at least I don't have enough information to know what this may play. I'd love to see the documents and know the investing players; that would tell me a lot. I'm not particularly optimistic, but I'll withhold judgment until I know more. Getting back to Ryan and Lopez, the smart money play is to keep them, not trade them. You have two high-value assets at below market prices. Those are the assets you keep. They also make the team more competitive, puts more butts in the seats, increases your cash flow, and makes the team more valuable. One strategy would to be to sell off a portion of the team and the player roster to solve your short term cash flow issues, reduce outstanding debt, and/or buy out recalcitrant family members. You can then rebuild from there in a way that increases cash flow and team value and justifies the investment by the new limited partner groups. I've no idea if this is what's actually intended but it makes a lot of sense to me from a business perspective. One thing I am pretty confident of though is that future cash flow and spending has been discussed in excruciating detail between current ownership in the new investors and that there is a plan. I'm also confident that plan convinces investors that the franchise will be worth more in three to five years than it is now otherwise they would not invest, especially since they're not getting all of the team as limited partners. To me at least, keeping Ryan and Lopez would be of the strategy most likely to increase franchise value and thus keeping them makes the most business sense.

I like the idea, but Buxton likes hitting leadoff and hits better there than any other spot. How about Keaschall hitting second? I'd prefer a batting order like this (using what I consider the starters and likely permutations): Buxton CF Keaschall 2B Wallner RF/DH Jeffers C/DH Clemens 1B Lewis 3B Larnach LF/DH Lee SS Martin/Roden LF/RF/DH When Jeffers sits, everybody moves up one and Gaspar hits 8.

I would change Matthews to SWR on your list. Keep Matthews in the rotation. He's gong through the adjustment period now but he has the stuff to be a #2 starter. Even as a #3 or #4 he would have much more value than in relief. SWR on the other hand, tops out as a #4, more likely a #5 or #6 starter since he can't go 3 times through a lineup. Nothing screams relief pitcher more than a fringe starter with good command, a 92-93 MPH fastball, and a below 20% SO rate. Put him in the bullpen so he can go max effort and maybe add 2 MPH to his fastball and add 3-4% to his SO rate. He could become a real late inning weapon. I think Prielipp and Raya are more likely than not to wind up in the bullpen. Prielipp has nasty stuff but his history suggests he can't handle a 180 plus innings a year load. Same for Raya and Raya is having real troubles as a AAA starter. I would try them both as relievers at the MLB level next year. Same for Andrew Morris - a 2 pitch pitcher with real velocity. If it doesn't work or our needs change, they can always be stretched out again. We have a chance here because we actually have a deep pool of potential starters between (in order) the Big 3, Matthews, Festa, SWR, Bradley, Abel, Rojas, Morris, Prielipp, Raya, and Lewis, Let's not forget Mike Peredes who is 11-0 as a reliever with a 2.65 ERA in Wichita (but he is 25 and only 5'11"), and CJ Culpeper in Wichita. I would seriously consider trying Morris, Raya, Lewis, Peredes, and Culpeper, in the BP in ST next year, rather than the usual cast-offs, and start Prielipp in the AAA rotation with an eye towards an MLB bullpen role if needed.