Woof Bronzer

So you are saying if the Twins win another World Series, I should not be excited about it because it was a small sample size? Of all the insane things posted on this site that might take the cake. No, it's because so many people don't give two sh%&s about sample size. Most fans watch baseball to be entertained and see their team win. It's a game, after all, not a math problem.

Never forget that the Pohlads tried to contract the Twins out of existence when they didn't get a half billion dollar government handout. If the Pohlads don't get their way they will punch down and punish whoever they can. It's the billionaire way! Now, when no one will give the Pohlads the $1.7b dollars they have been raised to believe is their birthright simply because they want it, they are punishing the folks they can always punish: fans.

Well, if you said it, it must be true! Now suddenly all World Series wins are dismissed as luck? What are we even doing anymore? Dodgers vs Yankees last year was just pure chance? The fact they had $200m rosters filled with some of the most talented players in the history of the game had nothing to do with it? Really? I'll keep saying this til I'm blue in the face: results matter! The point of baseball is to win, not to do good math.

Okay let's post another fact. TK won 67% of his playoff games. Rocco has won 27% of his playoff games. Does that fact matter?

If you don't understand the difference between how fans view a manager who won every playoff series he managed and led the team to the only 2 championships in franchise history, and a manager who has won a single ALDS game in his tenure, then yeah, thumbs down buddy. You're smarter than that.

[Narrator voice]: They do not.

Personally, it's going to take more than one media report about one team possibly reaching out to Falvey - not to mention a report that came from the Falvey camp, and coincidentally led to him getting a raise, which is a trick about 20 college football coaches use every year - to convince me that Falvey is actually good at his job. Especially when the same rumors and descriptors - "highly respected around the league", "will get hired by another team 5 minutes after he leaves" - applied to Levine, who turned out to be so highly respected that literally no MLB team hired him. Falvey's record speaks for itself. It's year 9. He's won a grand total of 1 ALDS game. He's often had the highest payroll in what has frequently been the worst division in baseball. The team has gotten consistently worse as old regime players shuffle out and Falvey's guys shuffle in. The entire Twins organization cannot play defense, execute a bunt, run the bases, pitch deep into games - it will take years to rebuild this. With this year the team will have missed the playoffs 4 of 5 years, including multiple epic meltdowns. The organization is shedding fans by the day. The organization is a disaster, full stop, and Derek's in charge. Obviously the Pohlads are to blame for a lot of it. But I don't really care what anyone who wants to defend Falvey has to say - his record speaks for itself. Results matter.

Boston "came calling" for Thad Levine too, which apparently is all the evidence anyone needs that he's good at his job. Where did that in-demand, "respected around the league" guy end up again?

The only logical explanation is that they WANTED to upset fans. The Pohlads are probably pissy that nobody is just handing them the $1.7b they are demanding, and like all insanely rich babies who don't get their way, they are punching down and punishing whoever they can, in this case fans. It's like Carl throwing a hissy fit when the state wouldn't hand him a half-billion dollars for a stadium and then conspiring to move and then contract the team. If the Pohlads don't get their way, their instinct is to simply destroy the asset in question, punish whoever they can, and move on. "Nobody's paying our ransom? Fine. You get Baldelli for another couple years. Hope you're happy! All this will stop once someone gives us the billions we are owed."

Unless the option expired at 8 pm on June 23, 2025 and the contract required immediately announcing it I continued to be awestruck by this organization's almost unbelievably poor PR operations. Who in the world would think that the timing of this announcement - coming amidst a 1-10 stretch including 4 straight blowouts at home where they gave up an average of 11.5 runs/game - is a good idea? Everybody on this site would have known better to do something like this now. The PR mavens employed by the Twins, at a healthy salary I'm sure, are either some of the most incompetent people on the planet - worse than picking a random fan off the street - or the Twins are intentionally trying to alienate their fanbase even further. Which, uh, ok. Further reminder that being rich doesn't make you smart or competent or savvy. These Pohlads are such astoundingly terrible businesspeople in that they have mismanaged the Twins so poorly, by using it as a debt shelter for their other failing businesses, that they'll be unable to sell it without a huge loss. Imagine running an American sports franchise so badly you lose money selling it. Has this literally ever happened? Simply astounding.

Step 1: Alienate fanbase Step 2: ???? Step 3: Profit!

Yes!

Brooks Lee is a great test case for something that has been bothering me about this team all year. Obviously he grew up learning the fundamentals of the game and, presumably, understood them, practiced them, mastered them with guidance from his dad. In college he was a solid defender and well-rounded player who consistently did the little things right. In his draft year he was one of the best, most well-rounded players available. Fast forward to year 2 in MLB and he is a lazy defender who doesn't hustle and seems to fall asleep from time to time. He's obviously living his childhood dream of playing in the majors...but looks uninterested or distracted or just...off. Why? How does a player forget how to play defense and execute fundamentals after just 2 years with the Twins? Not stressing those things as an organization only explains part of it. There is something going on that even professional pride seemingly can't overcome How do we explain this? I suspect the rot in this organization runs much, much deeper than we know.

Yes, good thing you're keeping that rage in check...I guess my point is this is a total system failure and I don't understand why it's at all meaningful that the Twins have developed a decent starter in Ober and a few minor leaguers. The Ryan/Gardy era Twins were good at fundamentals, did that stop them from getting canned? In fact by your "pitching pipeline" metric Terry Ryan was much more successful than Falvey, no? Being a successful GM doesn't mean picking and choosing one aspect of baseball and doing that well at the expense of everything else, it means holistically and sustainably building a successful team and farm system. Don't ask me, ask Derek Falvey, who said when he was hired that his job was to build a sustainable contender. If even you are admitting that he has epically failed in this mission, than I really don't understand your point on the "pitching pipeline". "Fire him, but thank him for his work on Ober." Ok?

Aren't you the guy who claims Falvey has built this amazing pitching development pipeline while ignoring the fact that the one and only starter they've developed in 8 years is Ober? Do those facts matter? Or is that more about an emotional reaction against those who have the temerity to question the analytics-obsessed organizational philosophy you love that is quite clearly sinking this franchise?

My post was about the Twins' strategy to just copy what others do. I think this is a bad strategy in any forward thinking organization, and I think screeching "but everyone does it!" is a tactic used by sabermetric wizards to shut down any of the nuanced discussions you pine for. Again, it's mind blowing that anyone can look at this organization and say "this is good. the process is good. the strategy is good."

Lol right on cue. "We are just copying every other team" should be a demerit, evidence that this organization is stuck in the mud, refuses to innovate, does things the same way it's always been done. The analytics movement used to be about exploiting competitive advantages and being innovative. Now it's about copying your neighbor's homework.

Sure, the only constant is change, etc. (Though I would say part of baseball's charm is its timelessness...walks will always haunt.) But I have equally little patience for the current sabermetrics cult that has overtaken the game, where there are a set of "right" sabermetrics that every team must adhere to. Pull starters early, no 3 times through the order, strikeouts are fine (for hitters), strikeouts are the only thing (for pitchers), etc. Whenever fans questions these things we hear "every team does it". So, for example, the Twins just keep doing what they are doing (losing, mostly) because it's the "right" way to do things. I doubt Derek Falvey has ever considered that maybe his process is flawed. To the cult, it's ALWAYS the result that's flawed. And to me this is no different than the old "back in my day guy" refusing to even look at any of them newfangled analytics.

I am not aware of this! Wild. I am off down an internet rabbit hole to learn more!

I think this is a matter of a good process that led to bad results. Serious question for the poster: how much more losing - bad results - would cause you to consider that maybe, just maybe, it's actually the process that's bad? It's just shocking to me that we are on our way to miss the playoffs in the joke AL Central for the 4th time in 5 years and we've still got people saying "the process is good!"

The new wizards use analytics that tell them to hit players like Mickey Gasper and Joey Gallo leadoff. Do you really think they've got it figured out now?

Something I've been trying to figure out. Professional baseball players have been playing baseball their whole lives. From youth through high school they are usually the best player on the team, and are the best at fundamentals. College ball has not yet fully sold out to sabermetrics, and often features plenty of small ball. Point being - these players spend years practicing and perfecting fundamentals., So how is it possible that once these players - again, some of the best athletes in the world at playing this game - reach the Twins they are incapable of doing the little things? The field is the same, the bases are still 90 feet away - the game is basically unchanged once a player graduates from tee ball. I assume part of it is the Twins direct their players NOT to advance runners, hit sac flies, bunt, etc - just swing for homers every at bat regardless of game context - but that wouldn't explain why the team can't convert a cutoff play or run the bases. Are the players just forgetting how to do the basics? Or are the basics somehow coached out of Twins prospects as they move through the system? Do they literally never practice these things? Say what you want about the Ryan/Gardy regime, but at least they understood that a mid market team like the Twins cannot afford to give games away due to fundamentals. And fundamentals are cheap: you'll pay a steep premium for homers (big market teams will often price mid market teams out of the market altogether) but guys who simply don't give away outs can be easily and inexpensively had.

What's most impressive from the charts is how many foul ball doubles both guys had!

Those poor billionaires!

Best baserunning team in the AL? Who you gonna believe, a single random sabermetric nobody uses, or your lying eyes?