Rod Carews Birthday

That’s a good question but it has been reported in the media that he is an extremely hard worker in training and (again from what has been reported) a vocal guy in the clubhouse. The example of this kind of attitude surely influences other players positively, and he has the credentials and career to back up what he says. I’m not there to know any of this for certain, but those are the things that are out there. My own observations about his body language and to his willingness to be out front for commentary about good and bad times is to me what leadership is all about. He also appears to have a really great baseball mind that has seen a lot of plays and learned from them. It’s hard to play shortstop with plantar fasciitis and not be terrible unless you have some pretty good instincts and experiences to draw from. That said, his “gutting it out” through plantar fasciitis in 2023 probably taught him a lesson about his own mortality and led to him being a little smarter in 2024 when it struck on the other foot. The games played weren’t much different but the quality of play certainly was. Let’s hope for better health this summer. As far as too much pressure, that’s hard to say. Some guys “want the ball” (sorry, basketball analogy — like Jordan or Kobe) every time no matter what the situation. I think Correa is one of those guys. Players like that seem to be able to completely tune out the pressure and perform anyway. I would argue that Correa’s ability to be “the guy” is why he was signed in the first place.

I think he’s probably hyper-focused on training and preparing for baseball in 2025. He strikes me as the kind of player who is saying to himself “If I work hard enough, I will carry this team on my back to the playoffs”. Not in a bad way, but from a leadership perspective. One of the (supposed) strikes against Joe Mauer was that he was a great player but not a vocal leader. I don’t know if that was entirely true, but Correa seems like the vocal leader that Mauer never was (at least publicly). I also think that he is smart enough to be a realist. Only one team’s players get to celebrate a championship at the end of the year, and some of those players are the last guy on the roster, not just the stars. At 30 teams, that means that less than four percent of the players actually get to do that celebrating. It’s tough odds, but that’s what professional ball players spend their entire careers striving to be a part of. I think he’s also enough of a realist to know that players come and go and rosters change. I think he’s in it for the long haul and not so concerned with what the Pohlads do.

The nature of a baseball roster is that it is full of question marks. If it weren’t that way, we wouldn’t need to play the season. We could just line up the stats and see how it winds up. You are obviously averse to potential injuries, listing Buxton, Correa, and Lewis among your question marks. OK, but Duran, Stewart, and Ryan were also injured last year, so are they question marks also? Ober is just a couple of years removed from being unreliable due to a pattern of injuries. Lopez is probably due for one since he has been so healthy. You have Wallner as a question mark. I think he’s demonstrated an ability to hit well, even with his poor start to last year. In fact, the players who you suggest we pick up are along ways from sure bets as none of them have long consistent track records of performance. I’m going to call them question marks also. My point isn’t to poke holes in every one of your choices, but rather to point out that there are no sure things. Aaron Judge was hurt a couple years ago and produced almost nothing — that could happen again. That would take a pretty big bite out of the vaunted Yankees offense in 2025. Gerrit Cole has been hurt. Others as well. Teams have to assemble a roster that they feel strongly about and put it out there. It is only then that we see what happens. There are certainly places I would like to see filled with long time proven productive major league stars, but I think that the positions are filled pretty reasonably, and I would argue that the rotation and bullpen project as well as any I’ve seen on a Twins team. Let’s get the season started, the team sold, and see what this Twins team can do.

Unfortunately in a set of articles like this there is no room for nuance, which is sorely needed. Also unfortunate that everyone can find something in it that reinforces something of their predetermined narrative. Carl Pohlad was a rich businessman. I'm not sure that any billionaire qualifies as a good person all of the time. In pretty much every case I've seen, someone took advantage of someone else to amass that kind of fortune. I'm sure that Carl Pohlad did too, as did probably every single sports franchise owner in the country. In fact, probably every single person with the money to buy a sports franchise has done that. I'm also aware that Carl Pohlad did step up to buy the Twins when they appeared to be on a one way bus ride to Nashville or Charlotte back in the 1980's. In retrospect, he got an AMAZING deal, but that same deal was available to anyone else that wanted to outbid him as I'm sure that Calvin Griffith (now THERE was an owner -- Yikes!) was holding out for every last nickel he could bleed from the franchise. I'm not a big Pohlad family fan, but I also don't think it's necessary to beat up a man who has been dead for more than a decade. I personally CAN'T WAIT for a sale!

I'm not sure that I can agree that there is no path to a passing grade, or even what that means in the first place. If the Twins can make a trade or signing that makes them better, that's great. But if it is trading and signing for the sake of trading and signing to make it look like there is activity, then that's a waste of time, energy, and money. AND that doesn't equal a good grade. They certainly have question marks, but they don't have holes (way worse than a question mark), so it may make sense to stand pat. If there are no good options within the budget (that Falvey can't control), then standing pat is probably the best option. I don't love it, but it's better than just making bad decisions for the sake of creating churn.

That's a great bunch of names on the MLB list, but I'm not super surprised that Jax (or Duran) didn't crack it. Sometimes it takes a longer track record to get noticed on things like that, or to have a truly jaw dropping season to really put you on the map. Jax was terrific last season, but I would guess Duran (who objectively had a less good season) was probably higher in MLB's "also receiving votes" category. That said, I'm thrilled to have him back in the bullpen. IMHO we have a stronger rotation than bullpen at this point so I think he will provide the most value to the team as a reliever, whether he's the closer or a setup guy makes no difference.

No. I don’t either, at least not especially so. However, some individuals are certainly better than others/most. There are guys who almost never swing at a bad pitch and guys who swing at almost everything and still manage to be good like Vlad. The team chase rate stats are really kind of fascinating. The presence of the Dodgers and Yankees at the top makes me think there is a real correlation between (low) chase rate and success. My closer examination just confuses me though. (The Twins are around the middle of the pack, slightly below the league average.) It looks like good chase rate is certainly desirable, but there are teams scattered throughout the list that have both good and poor records. Not sure I can process this appropriately.

Obviously this stream of thought has gone way off the path, and for that I apologize to the original author, any moderators, and anyone else who got drawn into this. My original intent was to demonstrate that sometimes, what seems like a high number (97%) isn't actually that great in context. Maybe I needed to be more direct and less esoteric. Would you be satisfied with an airline pilot who only crashed 3% of the time? I think not, and we shouldn't be satisfied with that either. Now back to silly season. I have more than 40 years of experience both playing in and conducting bands and orchestras at many levels of achievement. I know how they work. I was speaking from real world experience. This description cherry picks information and then misinterprets it into all levels of distortion. It's really OK. You can disagree with me about umpire accuracy and not approve of my analogy. I will not continue it.

Last thing first. . . I like the comparison with Mauer in that he never really developed the ability to destroy the early cookie. If he had been able to do that, he would have gone from Hall of Famer to "inner circle" Hall of Famer. A career like that of Mauer would be a dream! However, I'm pretty sure your description of a professional symphony orchestra is not very accurate (at least not ones the caliber of the Minnesota Orchestra or the Chicago Symphony). The type of music they play is such that all of the players have complicated parts to play. The thought that only a select few can play all of the notes is a long ways from reality unless the orchestra you are talking about is a middle school orchestra. Last time I checked middle school baseball players aren't minor leaguers, or even close. A professional orchestral player is able to and expected to play all of the notes, not just 75%. So, yes. One percent is pretty impressive. Yes, calling balls and strikes is difficult, but we should be talking about the very best of the very best umpires, not just a bunch of guys off the street. They need to up their game or get out of the way and let automation take over.

While that sounds like an excellent record, it’s actually not. Generously, more than 50% of balls and strikes are easy calls, so that means that that success rate drops down to less than 94% for balls that are actually borderline. Seems less impressive now doesn’t it? Let me put this another way. In my real life, I am a musician (a conductor actually — insert joke here). If you go hear the Minnesota Orchestra, or where I live, the Chicago Symphony, how many mistakes do you think those musicians make? On a note by note basis, it’s way less than 1% and probably less than 1/10 of 1%. They should be able to do that, because those players are absolutely at the top of their game. They’re major leaguers, if you will. To me, that means major league umpires should be able to do that as well. Now let me scare you. A number of years ago, a company published a piece of music for high school band with mistakes written intentionally into the music just to prove a point about music education and the accuracy it involves compared to other subjects, like math. The number of mistakes were about 5% and when the band played the music it was awful — unrecognizable and unlistenable. I can’t easily draw the line from high school musician to professional umpire, but it does make you think a little. Back to Mr. Rodriguez. . . I agree with @ashbury that this is a terribly difficult one to predict because of the crazy amount of walks in his game. I too doubt that the (soon to be) lost walks will just translate into equal production, but I would guess that a certain amount of it will. My “realistic” pie in the sky comp for ERod is Curtis Granderson — a guy who hit a lot of home runs, struck out and walked a lot, but was athletic enough to also hit a lot of doubles and triples as well as steal a few bases. At a career of over 40 WAR it puts him in the Hall of Very Good and I would be beyond thrilled with that outcome. My floor is not a very happy one, because it hasn’t been identified yet. It’s probably Eduard Julien. Right now he’s teetering between figuring it out and becoming a successful major leaguer and not figuring it out and becoming a bust. When we know Julien’s floor, then we will probably know Rodriguez’s floor as well. Argh.

“While this skill is essential (especially with base stealing on the rise in contemporary baseball), a catcher's ability to manage a pitching staff, block, and frame are insurmountably more critical. Even though Vázquez excels at these ever-important qualities, any argument for keeping him and his bloated, expiring contract over the seven-years younger, $5.5-million cheaper, and vastly offensively superior Jeffers falls flat.” Not sure on this. But, correct me if I’m wrong, wasn’t pitcher ERA lower with Jeffers catching than with Vasquez catching?

HAMMER TIME!!!!!!

Hey! The A’s were bad but not THAT bad! 😂

So this takes him from ridiculous to merely good. I would expect as much as he ages. I like your analysis of an admittedly difficult subject to dissect. A good deal of it is that he has figured out that it is a fool’s errand to go all out diving and running into things. Otherworldly defense followed by injury doesn’t help the team nearly as much as being available. Eventually he will likely move to left field, but that is probably as much dependent on Rodriguez and Jenkins as anything else. Until then, I’m very happy to have him out there - JUST STAY HEALTHY!

A billion here and a billion there. . . Pretty soon you’re talking real money! 😂

Ahhh. The wonders of compound interest! I shed no tears for the Pohlads, but you are right, big time investments generate those kinds of returns. If they didn’t, no one would want to buy the teams.

Glorified minor league teams have records like the White Sox and are not competitive. I too would like to see more investment in the team, however, calling it a glorified minor league team is a little over the top. More investment will definitely increase the potential for success, but it’s certainly no guarantee. Ask the Angels. You’ve got to invest it wisely.

I suspect that there are all sorts of NDA’s being signed by people who are looking seriously at buying the team so they can’t disclose internal Twins information. That may also go the other direction a bit in that buyers may not necessarily want the world to know that they are in the market or that they are actively pursuing a team — either to reduce potential competition or for other reasons concerning their other business interests. My guess is that the Ishbia brothers leaked that information themselves, as they are really interested in buying the Twins and they actually want to advertise that fact. Other buyers may want to or need to be discreet for their own reasons. The article in The Athletic indicates that MLB is already doing some vetting of potential new owners. If that is accurate, this thing is moving along nicely.

That’s pretty impressive. Sometimes it takes longer than that just to sell a house! Let’s hope the Twins are on that same trajectory.

I’m not sure I’ve seen an estimate of more than $2 billion for the Twins, but regardless, I do agree with your last point. Perhaps the imminence of a sale has offset the urgency of shedding salary or trying to stick with a $130 million payroll. Don’t misunderstand, I still don’t think they will add a bunch, but maybe there is a bit more of a chance that the status quo will remain for the payroll situation. Maybe that’s part of the reason there hasn’t been a good old fashioned salary dump.

Trading Jeffers means at the end of this year you have no MLB catchers signed past the end of this year (unless they trade for someone else). I suppose it’s a clean slate, but I’m not sure it’s one I want to deal with.

Overall nice list. I will quibble here and there but I think you mostly hit the mark. The differences are what makes a list like this personal. My overall thoughts are this. 1. The three headed monster of frontline pitching is really a pretty wonderful thing because it makes everything else better around it. As stated, put them in any order you want and they are probably the best thing the Twins have going on right now. Add to that Festa and Matthews coming up the list and it seems very promising. 2. Not sure if it's nice or scary that we have two relief pitchers in the top 11. I was surprised that neither made MLB's list last night. They are both excellent and deserve the ranking (and I agree with the placement), but shouldn't we have position players that send them further down the list? Asking for a friend. . . 3. Byron Buxton probably belongs somewhere. He's signed for a while. When healthy, he's very good (in fact according to MLB he is the #3 CF in baseball right now). I don't think he's top ten, but I think he belongs somewhere below Carlos Correa. 4. I will always quibble a little bit with prospects on the list and you have several. All they have to offer right now is potential and hope. The chances that they all become good MLB players are pretty slim, so I just prefer to wait. Of the prospects(ish) on the list, I think Brooks Lee in particular is too high. He had a chance and showed pretty much nothing offensively. Now I know it's SSS but I think he's destined for utility guy status. Right now my feeling is that if he is actually that valuable, trade him immediately because his value has nowhere to go but down. I also don't really like Walker Jenkins as #1. Maybe he's going to be THAT good, but I'm not ready to crown him as our best asset yet. He's certainly valuable, I just think it's premature.

I think that it is still pretty difficult to project what Festa will do long-term in the majors. Your assessment that he has really big stuff is certainly true, but he hasn’t quite put it together yet. Hopefully this will be the year. If he can do that, I predict he’ll hit the top five next off season. I’m a giant fan of having two relievers like Duran and Jax in the bullpen. What a great tandem and I really don’t want to see it broken up in an attempt to put Jax back in the rotation. We have a solid rotation. If we thought that he would definitely be another Lopez/Ryan/Ober type arm, maybe it would be worth the gamble, but I don’t think that’s the case. As for Lee, and I know I’m in the minority in this opinion, I just don’t see him being more than an average-ish MLB player — and that’s AFTER he shows that he can actually hit in the majors, which he needs to still do. We’ve long heard that “his floor is high” even if his ceiling isn’t huge. At this point, we’ve yet to see that. Defensively, he’s a very welcome addition, which makes me think that his upside is more like a Willi Castro replacement rather than the #6 player on the team.

Glad to see some comparables, and while all arms are different, the track record seems pretty positive. I'm pretty hopeful that Ryan will be back to normal really quickly.

I so very much wish that were true, but count me in the club that says Castro will be the most difficult of the three trade candidates to replace. None of those guys has the proven defensive flexibility that Castro has and only Martin has hit (and barely, quality wise) in the majors. The other two are successful AAA guys without much pedigree. The success rate for guys like that is pretty low. Could they get lucky with one of them? Sure but the odds are stacked against it. Remember, even though Castro didn’t seem very impressive when the signing was made, he did finish fourth in the ROY balloting a few years earlier. That’s a pedigree that the other three can only dream about.