Otto von Ballpark

And I don't think you'd get any disagreement there. No one here (or anywhere, to my knowlege) has suggested that individual players have tanked or should tank.

I feel like the parameters here are morphing around. Has 73 wins gotten the 6th overall pick recently? It's taken 70 or fewer wins every full year dating back to 2015 (and 4 of those 5 were under 70). Current pace for 2021 would require no more than 70 wins from the Twins since they lose any tiebreaker, but that assumes none of Miami, Colorado, or Detroit loses any ground over their remaining games too. I think it's safe to expect the Twins would need to finish with 68 wins or fewer to have a good shot at picking 6th in 2022. You can still sign FA coming off 68 wins but the difference between 68 and 78 wins could be pretty big to the most desirable FA -- they probably have similar offers from teams who don't need a 20+ win turnaround to be competitive in 2022. If we don't want to talk about the 6th pick anymore, that's fine too, but that was the discussion upthread that I was responding to. I don't disagree with the rest of your take, although I'd point out those ideas are far from mutually exclusive. For example, I don't know that anyone is particularly set on keeping Simmons, even though the alternative (Gordon) is unlikely to start in 2022 regardless. But similar fresh SP opportunities might exist without trading both Happ and Pineda. And Cruz is in a weird spot -- would it be terrible to ask him about an extension, if trade offers are underwhelming? That's less about going "all out" for 2021 and more about setting us up for 2022.

Some teams have absolutely decided not to invest in chasing marginal MLB wins, with improved draft position as one of the benefits. Of course, this is a longer-range strategy, over a several year period, in the face of a longer-range negative outlook. Not a switch you'd throw (or even be able to throw) after a disappointing half-season like the 2021 Twins.

There are a lot of variables, but I'm guessing team record (and perceived team quality) has some correlation with the ability to sign more desirable free agents. Most guys are deciding between multiple comparable offers. To the extent that this is a problem that can be overcome by offering even more money, that leaves fewer resources available for other spots/moves. This is all fair, but of course the difference between 78 and 80 wins in terms of draft position is pretty meaningless too. I think we're basically on the same page, but I don't think the draft position really enters the equation at all right now -- maybe once we get to the last week of the season.

Fangraphs projects us to go 38-35 the rest of the way, to finish at 77-85 (technically 77.1-84.9 ). That takes our remaining schedule into account too. Cool thing about Fangraphs is that you can see the individual player projections that make up the team projection here: https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=8 The projections all seem fairly conservative, except for Buxton (and the 189 PA for him is probably more unlikely than the 1.7 WAR!). No real standout performances otherwise. The obvious trade candidates are Cruz at 1.5 WAR, Simmons 1.1, Pineda 0.7, Happ 0.5, Colomé 0.1, and Robles 0.0. 3.9 WAR total, although that will go down a little by the time anyone is actually traded. If we lost 3.1-3.6 WAR in trade, and replaced them with 0 WAR guys, we might go 35-38 over our remaining games, to finish at 74-88. Of course, we might not trade all of those guys, and we might be able to get more than 0 WAR from their replacements too. And a few of the remaining players are certainly capable of out-performing their conservative projections.

I think Garlick's season might be done. Last I heard, they were still contemplating surgery. Refsynder is closer to returning. Still, they are 30 or almost 30 year old RH outfielders, which limits their potential value pretty severely. (Refsynder has pretty much stopped playing infield -- only 1 game, 7 innings at any level since 2017.) By comparison, Max Muncy was a 27 year old LHB still active at 2B/3B when the Dodgers started playing him every day in MLB. (And Muncy is still only 30, about 7 months older than Refsynder.)

I think aiming for a higher draft pick is a challenging needle to thread. In 2018, we went 78-84 and got the 12th overall pick. It would have taken a 65-97 record for us to get the 6th pick that year. That's a huge gap! The gap could be narrower this year, but it will likely still be at least 7-8 wins. And for the Twins, it will mean playing even worse the rest of the way than we have so far. That's not just shifting wins to losses on a spreadsheet, or simply swapping out a couple expiring contracts for rookies - there would likely be very tangible, real-world health and performance issues among 2022 assets and beyond. Does Berrios fade out again? Does Maeda fail to rebound? Health and performance of Garver, Buxton, and Dobnak? Progress of Larnach, Kirilloff, and Ober? Does anybody step forward in the pen? What can our coaching staff do? Not to mention, how does our finish position us in the FA market this winter? Nelson Cruz signed with us after that 78-84 season. Does he sign with us if we were below 70 wins? His previous FA deals were with 85 and 87 win teams. It's not impossible for worse record teams to sign FA, but I think it clearly puts them at a disadvantage in a competitive market. Unless you're punting 2022 too, I don't think we want any of that. Now, that doesn't mean bury rookies who deserve a chance, but I don't see/project much of that happening anyway. We can still sell a few expiring contracts, and look at younger players over the last 2 months. But there's already enough opportunity on our roster that I think we can accomplish that in the context of trying to finish strong too.

Winder has 7.2 IP at AAA so far, Barnes might not even get protected from Rule 5 this winter, and Balazovic just completed 6 innings for the first time at AA. There is still plenty of season left for anyone deserving to get looks. Like I said upthread, I'm guessing we're not going to make any big 40-man moves until after we make our trade deadline deals.

The 70s Twins teams feel almost forgotten sometimes. Not good or bad like other decades, just consistently around .500. Leaving out the 98 win 1970 division champ season, the rest of the decade the Twins were 714-730 -- an 80-82 pace over 162 games. And they never strayed far from that -- max 85 wins, and max 89 losses. And they followed it up with another typical 77-84 mark in 1980 too. 1981 was the change -- strike shortened season, but a 61-101 pace, after the franchise had never been below 70 wins since the Washington days (and hadn't been below 73 wins since their inaugural season in Minnesota).

BP isn't as much of an outlier on the Twins anymore -- their rest-of-season projection for us is just 2.5 wins ahead of Fangraphs (which has us going 38-35 the rest of the way). Can't really project trades, of course, so I'd expect a shift in these projections after July 30. The thing about BP that gives us even 5.5% odds is that they are simultaneously pessimistic about the White Sox (35-38 the rest of the way) which doesn't seem unreasonable when looking at their roster/injuries and regression candidates. (And everyone is pretty "meh" on Cleveland right now.) 538 and B-R both predict us to play under .500 over our remaining games, so they're definitely on the pessimistic side.

My guess is Jax in one of the doubleheaders, and a bullpen game in the other. Right now Jax is listed as the probable starter for St. Paul this Wednesday July 14, which would put him in line to start again during the White Sox doubleheader on Monday July 19 on normal rest. They'll obviously have a fully rested pen coming out of the all-star break this Friday, so that would be my guess for the bullpen game. Astudillo could come back at the 27th man if there is any lingering concern about Jeffers after he left the game yesterday. Beau Burrows would be another option, if they really wanted another pitcher. If a 60-day IL guy (i.e. Cave) is ready by Friday, they could activate them as the 27th man too, then option someone else out after the game.

FWIW, Law and Coloumbe are both out of options, so they can't be replaced unless they are DFA'd. Not unlikely, but they'd probably have to struggle first, not simply be out of rest. 40-man roster is full at 40 right now. Cave could be coming back from the 60-day IL soon and require a spot -- could be Garlick getting transferred to the 60-day IL himself. Guessing we may not see any other 40-man additions until after the trade deadline on July 30. They may or may not need 40-man spots for some of the guys coming back to us in trades too.

What rookie arms? It's pretty much just Ober and Jax with MLB appearances so far this year.

Had we simply won our two most recent series with the White Sox (just 2 out of 3 each, no sweeps), we'd be 42-47 and 9 games out of 1st, with 4 games in Chicago next week and 3 more at home in August. And that's without any kind of White Sox collapse yet. Still wouldn't have been great odds, of course, but the first week out of the break would have potentially been very interesting. As it stands now, even if we have an amazing and unlikely week coming out of the break, taking 3-of-4 in Detroit before sweeping in Chicago while the White Sox lose 2-of-3 to Houston, we'd still be 9.5 games back with only 7 games left before the trade deadline. (FWIW, the same amazing week, after taking 2-of-3 in our previous two White Sox series, could have brought us up to 3.5 games back.)

Twins postseason odds, All-Star Break update (Monday July 12): Baseball Prospectus: 5.5% Fangraphs: 0.9% 538: <1% Baseball-Reference: <0.1% BP is still the outlier. They project us to go 40-32 in our remaining games, which I guess might still be a good goal regardless of postseason odds.

Like the above poster said, Liriano wasn't "simply good" after 2006. He had an ERA+ of 88 from 2008 through 2012. He was slightly above average in FIP during that time, but most of that was due to 2010 -- he was thoroughly mediocre, in FIP and ERA, in 2009, 2011, and 2012.

Technically, Detroit is still in sole possession of third place, and the Twins are in 4th. Even after the sweep, Detroit is percentage points ahead of us at 40-51 (a .440 winning percentage) vs our 39-50 (.438). We're both 15 games out of first, which is probably where Nick was looking. (Also both 11.5 back in the wild card.)

Eh, Cruz is owed less than $6 mil now, and that will be down to about $4.6 mil by trade deadline day. The Rays are frugal but that kind of money isn't going to bridge the value gap between Cruz and Walls.

I like the idea, but Taylor Walls is a MLB ready SS, with a 50 "Future Value" grade and a top 100 overall prospect at Fangraphs. He may be a little redundant in Tampa but we're not getting him for a 2 month, 41 year old DH rental. Baseball Trade Values summarizes thusly: You could quibble that Cruz is worth a little more, or Walls a little less, but I'm afraid that gap is a little too large to bridge.

I don't think we'd be rendering any final decisions about it on the day of the trade. But in 4 years, if that lotto ticket is a plus producer in MLB, while Pineda fizzles out almost immediately, I think we'd call it a great move by the Twins and a failed gamble by our trading partner. Which seems to be how that particular trade is described in this article (great for the Braves, failed gamble by the Twins). Agreed that there is still time to evaluate the 2018 deals, although the bar is likely higher than just Pressly's WAR (we had to trade for other relievers at the 2019 deadline and could have used those resources to supplement a different spot instead).

FWIW. Boston has a top LHB CF prospect who is dominating AAA and is a likely call-up very soon -- Jarren Duran.

Presumably any player who has crossed the street.

This is insulting to toast. Real toast is delicious.

Wade was only down for about 4 days — he’s back now.