Woof Bronzer

And a better record.

It's quite the world you've constructed here, a land of sunshine and lollipops where the only thing that matters is competency, but unfortunately it's just a fantasy. The Mets made the NLCS is 2024. They made the World Series in 2015. They have unquestionably been more successful over the past 3 decades than the Twins. Since the last Twins series exactly 1 team in the bottom 1/3 of payroll has won a World Series. Payroll matters. It's not the only thing that matters. But to pretend it doesn't matter is delusional.

Yes! One hundred million percent. Bring the receipts! I mean this is a family that 25 years ago tried to contract the Twins out of existence. But sure Tom, the Pohlads have an unwavering commitment to the team.

He's a communications major who ran 2 previous Pohlad media businesses. He destroyed both of those businesses so badly the Pohlads ended up selling both off for pennies on the dollar, losing millions in the process. (Maybe this is where part of their debt comes from.) I know this wasn't what you wanted to hear. But, yeah, he's got experience running businesses all right.

What seems clear to me is, whatever Falvey's role is, the Pohlads think he is performing it at a high level. Right? He's been here 9 years, been promoted, etc. They must really like what he does, which leads me to believe their performance indicators for that position have little to do with what happens on the field. Did you really pop in at 1 Twins Way to ask about their org chart? Because that is...awesome. Sorry about the Dew though.

I am so tired of the Pohlads just lying to fans over and over again. Everyone associated with the ownership or FO thinks fans are idiots. The Pohlads lie like people rich enough to know that they will never face accountability for the lies or anything else for that matter. What's hilarious about this is in order to "defend" themselves against the ongoing train wreck that is the Twins, the Pohlads thought the smart approach was to lie and say "we are more incompetent at business than every other owner in baseball to the tune of $50m operating deficits year over year." When "we don't know what we're doing!" becomes your defense you might want to look inward a bit. And ya gotta love the shot at fans: "Lagging attendance." The Pohlads will never pass up an opportunity to blame fans for their incompetence. If they were losing $50mil/year they would have fired Falvey and St Peter a long time ago. Any business on the planet would do so. If they were losing $50 mil/year they would have sold the franchise for almost anything. Certainly would have sold it for the $1.5b that was on the table. Again - if they are telling the truth about the debt, then what they are saying is they turned down $1.5 billion dollars for a failing business losing a million dollars a week. Perhaps the stupidest business decision in the history of capitalism. If they were losing $50mil/year they wouldn't have attracted investors. If they are telling the truth about the debt than these investors are worse businesspeople than the Pohlads. "Hey, Mr. Hedge Fund, want to pay down this business debt for us for a nice profit?" "Sure, how are you going to make good on the loan?" "Revenues." "How's the business doing?" "We're losing $50m/year." "Sounds great, where do I sign?" Don't believe the lies of these petty, incompetent people.

I mean, yes it's not an ideal situation for the new guy, but there are 30 MLB jobs on the planet and it pays extremely well. Tough job; many many people will be willing and hungry to take it on. The other thing worth noting is that the Twins have historically extended an enormous leash to their managers (the Molitor thing was weird with the new GM.) He'll be almost guaranteed 5+ years so that security might offset concerns about 2026.

Let's ask it a different way. If a player demonstrates he is not adequately performing a particular skill or fundamental, whose responsibility is it to step in and help fix it? Does the manager play any role in this? If the answer is a position coach, ok, let's say the position coach works with the player and improvement still isn't coming. What next? Does the manager play any role in this?

What does Rocco's mentor have to do with who Falvey wants to hire a manager? Falvey isn't the devil but he's a terrible GM, sorry if that offends you. He hasn't hired a single "old school" coach in his entire tenure. He hasn't hired a single "old school" front office person, or anyone with a different viewpoint/philosophy than his. He just fired his "old school" scouting department because he thinks analytics tell him all he needs to know. He has micromanaged Rocco and the coaching staff at every step. But sure, he's changed and now suddenly understands the importance of small ball and managerial independence and is going to hire a strong personality like Maddon or an old school guy like Francona or Larussa. Ok. Falvey loved Rocco and only fired him to save his own skin. He's going to hire another Rocco.

Well...5% of 162 games is 8 games. Since just about every team wins between 60-100, and the difference between say 80 and 88 wins is likely a playoff birth, 5% matters! Especially for a mid sized market team like the Twins. They can't afford to give away games due to bad managing just like they can't afford to give away games due to bad defense or poor fundamentals. Little things matter a ton in MLB.

Falvey would never ever hire an "old school guy" and especially not one who has actually won things in this league. Derek wants a guy who will unquestioningly go along with whatever extreme analytic strategy pops into his head on any given day. Maddon wrote a whole book questioning GMs who do this. Falvey would never consider hiring him.

It SHOULD be someone outside the organization with proven success as a manager who balances old school fundamentals and accountability with analytics tools, who is trusted to hired his own staff and given the freedom to do the job as he sees fit. It WILL be someone who has never managed before and will therefore be very cheap, who is young enough not to have any equity built up to credibly push his own philosophy, who is hungry enough for one of the 30 MLB jobs on the planet that he'll defer to Falvey on everything.

You seem to be confused as to the role of the commissioner. The commissioner works for the owners, and his only job is to ensure the owners get filthy rich. The league's financial structure is set up to allow - heck, to incentivize - owners to do what the Pohlads are doing. Same thing the Rockies, As, Pirates, Sox, Nats, etc are doing and have been doing for years. It's by design to allow smaller market owners hoard wealth too, not just the big market owners. Manfred not only doesn't care about the Pohlads cutting costs, he encourages it - what other lesson should an owner take after watching the As, Rockies, and Pirates blatantly do this for years? Rich, happy owners mean job security for him.

Yeah it feels like he actually meant to say "I take NO personal responsibility for that." Slip of the tongue, maybe.

Yes in fact it was "reported" that night the Red Sox squeaked by the Twins 13-1. Which was bizarre - the news didn't come from the Twins, and I don't think they ever officially announced it. So that means someone leaked the info - either someone in the org a bit unhappy with the club's performance, or maybe I guess Rocco, to make it harder to get fired in season? It makes no sense. What makes even less sense is, if Falvey did really extend him in the offseason, why wouldn't he announce it? Falvey loves Baldelli, and their AI machine needs as much practice as it can get, why wouldn't they use that for some harmless PR points? "We wanted to get this done so Rocco can focus on leading the team to a championship this year." So yeah I would love to know more about the timing of the extension.

Yep, great comment. Rocco had to go, and his firing won't change anything. Both things can be true.

Source? I'm no Rocco defender but this would be quite strange.

Not sure it's reasonable to expect the Pohlads to fire themselves.

They've been allowing it with several other teams for years. The other others probably view revenue sharing as a cost of doing business in an extraordinarily lucrative business. You pay the tax for 20 years and your franchise value will increase by a billion dollars independent of whether you win games or lose them, whether you run your business competently or not. And, like others have said, the other owners probably want to preserve their own ability to go into lose-for-cash mode down the road too. They like options.

It's likely not team debt, and certainly not operating debt (maybe they're carrying forward some stadium debt). The Pohlads' commercial real estate portfolio is in the tank - more work from home, businesses are downsizing their footprint, and as a result the market is saturated. Given what we see from their operation of the Twins it's safe to say they run their other businesses very short sightedly and are probably now stuck with an underwater real estate portfolio they can't unload. They've long used the Twins as a debt shelter and likely are continuing to do so. The Pohlads are poor businessmen, it isn't just the Twins they are running into the ground. Joe Pohlad has run 2 Pohlad businesses before and he wrecked them both. The Pohlads have always been better at destroying value than creating it.

Yep, exactly. They'll sit back and let the TV money/revenue sharing roll in. This is the plan of teams like the Rockies, Pirates, As, Nats etc. Being terrible is very profitable in MLB.

Thanks for these weekly recaps Nick. It must have been a very trying year for TD, appreciate all the work.

I don't know what to tell you, but if you think ABS is 100% accurate you are quite mistaken.

They stole at an 85% clip, that's not high risk. They got 45 more bases in the 2nd half by stealing. That's a good thing. Nobody is saying "steal bases and then you'll magically win a World Series." Nobody is saying stealing bases is the main strategy. It's a small strategy but when paired with a bunch of other small strategies can create a small competitive advantage, which is what teams like the Twins need to find.

They are net positive 45 bases due to steals since the trade deadline. Are you saying this actually hurt the team?