Western SD Fan

I know many of you are Vikings fans so you will understand this question. The Kirk Cousins conundrum: nobody liked Cousins as their QB, but who were you going to get that is better. I believe a similar question applies here with the FO. Who are you going to get that is better? Remember, your choices need to include the following: 1. Be prepared to work under the financial constraints that ownership may give. 2. An uncertain TV contract which may (likely) affect point #1 3. Be willing to move/live in MN. I know MN is a very nice place, but when your candidate likely has other choices and you factor home living, climate, taxes, etc, MN may not be at the top of potential replacement’s lists. 4. May need to work with Correa on potential personnel decisions. Seems like I remember an article about how Correa had a list of players he wanted FO to pursue. Also, where do you think they would/could go? NYY - Cashman will be there until he retires, or Dick Bremer retires. Detroit - only if they believe that ownership will spend money when it comes time, Seattle if DiPito is eventually fired this off-season, LAA - Moreno will spend money, but is too hands on for their comfort, NYM - I think they have their situation sorted out now. Maybe the Cubs would be a better situation, but that is the only one I see, but I could be wrong. My only change would be in manager. I think either Ron Washington or Kevin Cash would be improvements. Washington does have ties to MN.

This seems more like 2022 than 2023. In 2023, standing nearly pat and depending on our IL to come back and heal up worked out. Whereas in 2022, there were too many injuries to overcome and we sunk like a rock as we were sucking air and looking for bodies to fill out a roster. While I don’t think we are at 2022 yet, we are approaching quickly and the upcoming series with KC or Cleveland may put us out of our misery.

We needed that Miranda PH a couple innings ago…..Thanks Rocco

If only we had a hitter that was willing to make contact to move a runner…..

That was why Lewis getting the runner over was imperative for the rest of that inning. Adjusted how the other hitters had to adjust their AB

This is when you are in a slump, you get the runner over by any means necessary

The advanced metrics have created an organizational problem in not teaching things like choking up on the bat, hitting to all sides of the field, bunting, moving the runner over, or the sac fly. Just hit the 3 run homer, it’ll be fine.

2-0 you can get a quick rally and get back in the game. 4-0 is more of a process.

When you know things aren’t going well……

At least they made him throw a lot of pitches. Hopefully that helps later in the game.

Notice they have Alcalá warmed up just in case……

You haven’t watched the underbelly of our bullpen lately. No lead is safe….

Let me predict Rocco's pitching strategy: 6th - Okert will walk that man, but since he must face 3 batters, will give up a cookie before he can get replaced, but makes it out of the inning only giving up 3 runs. 6th - Richards - does alright in what is hopefully a still mop up position 7th - Theilbar - needs those lefties out, SD subs RH and since he has to face 3 men, gives up a couple runs before being replaced by Sands 8th - Jax - We are nervous about choking this one away and overuse Jax down 4 9th - Duran - See 8th inning strategy I really hope this doesn't come to fruition.........

Rocco has obviously not trusted Okert since he has hardly pitched in the last week. Was the bullpen that depleted that he had to run him out there?!

I don’t suggest this was part of Sunday’s game. But an umpire’s strike zone can lead to an implosion. We saw that with a more seasoned pitcher earlier (Yates) earlier in the series. He was potentially squeezed out of a couple pitches and that imploded into a crooked number for us. I’m not sure what you do there. Alcalá lost the lead in under 10 pitches. You just don’t anticipate that. But the team didn’t give up, Santana hits a 9th inning home run to still give us a chance. If you would have said going into the series that we would take 3 of 4, I would have been happy. It’s just the way the loss occurred that leaves the sour taste.

Dealers choice: a 6th inning of SWR or Theilbar

What dance is he doing? 🫣

Well, back below the Mendoza Line for Farmer…..

According to mlb transactions, Festa was sent down as well. Who is replacing him? I see Julien for Buck and Henriquez for Varland. https://www.mlb.com/transactions/2024/08/15

Tough loss, but I will take saving the bullpen as an outcome. We need those arms tomorrow and against KC next week

Probably the first time this season I get to defend Rocco and the coaching staff today. When Ryan goes down, you need someone who can get hot quickly. That may not be Sands, who may need longer. Yes, they do have as long as it takes to get warmed up on the game mound. But for those of you who watched the TV broadcast, LaTroy Hawkins discussed the difficulty and changes in routine of such an appearance and the pressure to be ready vs actually being ready to go. With 2 lefties, a switch hitter, and a righty, it would make sense to put in Richards as a short term solution to get through the inning and let Sands warm up as normal for the anticipation of pitching a multi inning outing to patch the game through. It didn’t go as planned obviously and Richards should have been replaced earlier when it was apparent he didn’t have control of one of his two pitches. But I still feel the decision to put Richards in at the moment was fine.

I was not around when the Griffith's owned the team. I will have to acquiesce and believe the commenters here that the Pohlad's are a better ownership family. Let us take a trip down memory lane of the Pohlad ownership of the Twins: 1984 - Purchased 52% of the Twins from the Griffith's. 1987 - Win WS: Traded and signed for the following players: Ron Gardenhire, Jeff Reardon, Al Newman, Joe Niekro, Steve Carlton, Don Baylor, and Bert Blyleven 1988 - First year Twins have 3 million fans in attendance, only beat by 2010 1991 - Win WS: Traded and signed the following players: Steve Bedrosian, Randy Bush, Mike Pagliarulo, and Jack Morris 1997 - After tearing down the team over the past few years, the Pohlads threaten to sell the team to a NC ownership group with intention on moving the team. Later takes this back as only a bargaining tool to get a new stadium, but who knows? 2001-2002 offseason: Serves his team up for contraction so MLB can buy the Pohlads out. Team is saved by the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission suing to honor their contract to play out the season and a MN federal judge agrees. The kids grow up and make their best playoff run to date in spite of ownership trying to contract them. 2006 - Ownership finally gets a deal with Hennepin County to help fund a stadium. Total is $522 million with Hennepin County footing $375 million of it by approving a county wide sales tax. Side note: Counties that do this typically sell municipal bonds to raise the funds for this type of project. So the cost is likely more than $375 million and likely that Hennepin County taxpayers are STILL paying for Target Field for the Pohlads.. 2010 - Target Field opens: Fans respond by largest attendance ever by the team (3.2 million). Team goes for it by acquiring Matt Capps for future Joe Mauer replacement Wilson Ramos Since Target Field has opened, the Pohlads have essentially played the hokey pokey with fans. They get a little in some years and other years are little (or a lot) out. They have spent a lot of off seasons and trade deadlines staying put rather than making a move that could have helped the team when they had a chance to win. I encourage anyone to dispute or add context to my timeline if they believe I am being unfair. When the Pohlads just purchased the team and had that nice pretty new team smell with something to prove to a fanbase, they went for it and were awarded with two WS titles in the first 10 years of ownership. After "they got theirs", they threaten to move AND contract the team in the next 10 years of ownership. After finally hooking Hennepin County into helping fund a new stadium, they promise to raise payroll and bring competitive baseball back to MN. We have had more losing seasons than winning seasons since Target Field has opened up, so I am still waiting on that competitive baseball spending. Let me respond to the commenters who ask what they should have done at the deadline. I agree that the prices in prospects were too high for many of the trades that were done. I have said that this angst has been nine months in the making by announcing they are slashing payroll within days after the team's most successful run since 2002. At the time, we didn't know how much but understood because the TV situation was in flux. After they sign the TV deal, we dream that they will open up a little more and get the players that could help us, like they did in 1987 and 1991. They didn't just like they didn't spend any of the TV reallocation money that was supposed to help generate trades. One last point. Younger fans follow stars of the sport, not necessarily a team anymore. If you want new fans, new merchandise spending, new ticket sales, you need to develop, trade for, sign, and market your stars. Younger fans are following Aaron Judge, Mookie Betts, Bobby Witt, Jr, Vladdy Jr. We have our start, Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton, Pablo Lopez and Royce Lewis. Unfortunately, they are a lot tougher to market and I don't think the team does a good job of marketing them nationally. IMHO, this ownership group got their WS titles early and are just willing to sit on their laurels and deposit dividends as they have the past 30 years. Sometimes they have one middle finger at the fans, sometimes two middle fingers, every once in a while, they poke the fans in the eye with that middle finger. Rarer still, they don't raise any fingers towards the fans and give us hope. As for worse ownership, it could be worse being a fan of the A's. Comparing to the Rays, we are the Rays with a better stadium and worse player development and coaching and a marginally higher payroll. I apologize for the lengthy post. I really wanted to push back at the commenters that jump at the 48-hour reaction of "What do you expect them to do?". This apathy by ownership is a company culture which is decades in the making, not just this year's deadline, not just this past off season. I believe politicians more than I believe in the Pohlads as an ownership group. Sadly enough, I don't think I'm the only fan posting on TD that believes that last statement.

Let's try and do some math. You're estimating that they need approximately 500,000 subscribers at $100 per year to replace the estimated Bally income. For reference, I live in an area where the Rockies are a blackout area as well and MLB's Rockies TV was offered for $100 per year AND is still on local basic cable. Whereas, Bally has cut off access to the local cable affiliates so the only options here are Direct TV or Fubo. If we combine the estimated households per US Census in the basic Twins Territory (MN, ND, and SD) gives me 3,021,871 households (cut off at 3,000,000 for calculations). Let's estimate that 15% of those households would either pay the $100 or allow it to be part of their basic cable package. That gets me 450,000 possible subscribers with the remaining 50,000 potentially coming from Iowa, Western WI, out of market subscriptions and business clients. My estimation may be too high, and I'll gladly be wrong if someone explains why. As for attendance, let's assume that the majority of the fans in attendance drive no more than two hours from the Twin Cities to attend more than 5 games in a season. Personally, I live on the very edge of Twins Territory and it is a small trek to get to a game. I end up spending at least $1,000 in tickets, merchandise, lodging, food, and various shopping plus the time away from work in order to make the trip. I can only afford one of those trips per year and I am one of the lucky ones. Should we just say eff the rest of the fan base because they live too far away to contribute enough to the ownership's pockets? I know that it's not ownership's job to negotiate tv contracts between Bally Sports and Comcast, Dish, Midco, Bluepeak, etc. But for them to not ask any questions and live in blissful ignorance to me is still negligence at best. All of this to say that I believe most of us understand that we will never spend like the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, or Mets and are alright with that. But this has been a PR disaster nine months in the making. An excited fan base gets doused in ice water bath reminiscent of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge by announcing they are cutting payroll prior to even getting a chance to sell a new season ticket. Next, we find out that they are getting a one-year deal with Bally so there is hope that they will loosen the pocketbook a little somewhere during the season. Then Bally and cable providers get into a carriage standoff. While not the Twins fault, they signed the contract with Bally and now you have a fan base losing interest in the team that they can't watch. Apathy means no ticket or merchandise sales, which does affect the Twins bottom line. Finally, MLB announces that teams like the Twins will be receiving up to $15 million in TV allocation funds in order to jump start the trade market. So when other teams in similar situations make moves, you further anger the fan base. While you may be technically correct that the prospect capital and/or payroll may have been too high to make a significant trade, the fact that this has fervor has been nine months in the making and just blowing it's top now. A screaming fan base means they still care. We don't want to get to Disney Star Wars territory and just have apathy. That's when the swirl around the toilet bowl starts.

I have been very critical of the FO and ownership for the off-season moves (specifically Farmer, Margot, and DeScalafini). We definitely could have used that payroll now. Seems like ownership is going to pocket whatever money they were set to receive from the TV reallocation. This is especially sad when you see other teams in similar positions (Guardians, Royals, Dbacks, and Padres) using theirs. After listening to pundits from MLB network and ESPN Houston about the various trades, I’m not sure I’d want to give up the trade capital necessary get the likes of Kikuchi, Tanner Scott, or Trevor Rogers, especially for rentals or reclaim projects. We already have a roster of reclamation projects at various stages of success I of all fans want to make a move, but these moves needed to be made in the off season not when the market is hottest.

Kikuchi officially to the Astros. All prospect rankings are preseason per MLB Hou - Kikuchi Tor - Jake Bloss: RHP #9 in Astros, on MLB roster Joey Loperfido: OF, not top 30, on mlb roster Will Wagner: INF, #13, in AAA Toronto had stated they want mlb ready or very close. Given that the Twins have the 15th ranked farm system per mlb and the Astros the 27th. Would this trade have worked? Twins give up Canterino, Severino, and maybe a PTBNL? I might be way off and will defer to our minor league experts on whether this is too much.