Woof Bronzer

The thing I remember about Pagan is that there was a time that over the past 3 or 4 years he had the worst ERA, worst WPA, and worst HR/9 of any reliever in baseball. But sure, bring him back, it'll be different now that he's older and losing velocity by the day.

Are they removing those PAs though? In 2025 the Twins got 0.6 cumulative WAR in roughly 2K PAs by Larnach, Lewis, Wallner, and Lee and "ran it back" with all 4 of them.

The Warehouse District has existed since the end of the 19th century. Like most neighborhoods that age it has changed over the years from its roots as the main commercial hub in the city, with different eras and vibes. It's just absolutely ludicrous and ahistorical to suggest it was some sort of blank spot on the map until the 1990s. Read a book.

Ah, you've shifted the goalposts now from "subsidies bring value" to "yeah sure they don't bring value but it's just the way the world works". Still not true though! St Paul didn't give the Loons a dime for their stadium construction. All it takes is for a politician with courage to say to a billionaire "quit coming to me for welfare, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, work harder, and pay for it yourself." Socialism for billionaires needs to stop.

The value never, ever offsets the costs. There have been multiple studies on this. Subsidies for stadiums help billionaire owners and take resources away from everyone else. Lol if you think the Warehouse District didn't exist before Target Field. DC just gave a billionaire some stadium welfare and to pay for it they cut money from schools, safety net programs, and other services. Taking money from regular people and handing it to billionaires - that's just what we do as a country now. Socialism for the rich.

Maybe not, but that wasn't really what I was saying. It's that excellent catcher defense can elevate a pitching staff and probably has the most direct impact on run prevention of any position (other than pitcher). And to me if we are going to make a long term investment at catcher, defense should matter. More than offense if you ask me. If we're looking to put the best team on the field in 2027 to "compete" again then Jeffers is probably the best hope on the QO, but I'm more looking at it long term. How do we build a sustainable program given our constraints, and how do we end up celebrating a Series in a few years like our neighbors to the east. I think you and I just disagree on Jeffers' defensive skills, which of course is totally legal.

Agreed. If they want to pretend to compete again, fine, sign him for 1 year, it's just money. But from 2028 on the Twins have got to start relying on their deep prospect pool. Watching Contreras in the Series was a master class on how important defense is to the catcher position. He saved so many runs with his blocking, he threw out runners, he used challenges brilliantly (was always right on calls that flipped the count in big at bats). And just the way he managed the pitchers. Calming them down, well timed mound visits. So much impact on the game and not all of it shows up in the box score. The Twins have got to get more defense out of the catcher position long-term.

Cannot say this enough. The Twins need to do things differently.

The old "you can't not hire me, I withdraw!" Michael Scott pulled this move in an Office episode.

Can you provide of an example when early extending a prospect crippled the franchise? I literally can't find a single one.

You could make all the same arguments for the players the Brewers extended early. They extended a 21 year old SS with 2 years or minor league experience, and that kid was absolutely lights out in the World Series. They are paying him like $8m/year until he's 28. Could it go wrong? Sure. Right now it looks like an absolute stroke of genius. This is the kind of thing the Twins absolutely need to be doing. Will it work out every time? No. But at some point you need to trust in your development and your organization. We need to stop being so afraid of everything. Instead of insisting on what could go wrong, why not look at what could go right. And if it goes wrong...that sucks, but so what? The Twins are literally paying Correa $10m to not play for them. They paid Vasquez $10m for 3 years to be terrible. They gave Caratini $7.5m to be pretty average. Extending Lackey is a risk, spending money on subpar catchers consigns you to being subpar at the position. I'd much rather take the risk on Lackey at like $8m/year than spend more money on catchers we know aren't very good or paying players not to be here.

Off topic, but I have been in awe of Contreras in the Series and I'm sure you have too. His pitchers bounced so many pitches late in the game with runners on base in both Game 1 and 2 and he blocked every single one. Also threw out runners. Almost perfect on challenges. Dude is incredible.

If this is the case then we are in agreement my friend. My understanding was based on an article from a few months ago, Totally onboard with a selective experimenting. Here are the quotes that stuck out to me: “I think what you ultimately see is you have some of your best starting pitchers sort of piggybacking each other,” said MacPhail. “So I think what it ultimately means is you have sort of more of your starter type guys pitching on top of each other more, but ultimately that's sort of one of the benefits as well, is you kind of have two guys going back and forth, giving you a lot of innings, actually more than a starter pro typically would, is the idea and some two of your best pitchers taking over that workload.” That sounds different than what you describe. Though to be honest I'm not even sure what Mr. MacPhail is describing here, it just sounds like having 2 starters do the work of like 1.25 starters, but I assume there's a little more to it than that. Who knows. I just want the Twins to develop their best pitchers to pitch as many innings as possible.

Man, teams try different stuff all the time! The opener. Long relievers. Closers. Firemen. LOOGYs. 6 man rotations. Teams have been trying stuff since the day baseball was invented. I'm almost certain somebody somewhere tried the "let's have everyone pitch 3 innings before" but we don't hear about it because it didn't work. Trying to solve the problem of bad starters by devaluing all your good ones is just craziness! Using your math you are sacrificing the 60% good starts to avoid the 40% bad ones. That doesn't really math to me. Experiment with something on those 40%. I can see doing a piggyback thing with your 6,7,8 starters. Great, try it out. But why would you want or need to do that with a guy who has ace potential?

As I understand it the Twins are training every pitcher to go 3-4 innings. In this strategy pitchers like Miz won't come through our system. There will be no more aces, just a group of interchangeable, replaceable pitchers who all do the same thing.