Western SD Fan

This game was just set up to be a bad one before the first pitch was thrown. Festa seemed rushed out west to pitch on a getaway day game of a ten-game road trip. As Rocco confirmed in his postgame interview, Festa was also on a pitch count since he is still coming back from arm fatigue that he suffered while in St. Paul. Correa was out again, and I was even surprised that Buxton played today, although he was taken out early. Now we get to see how the Twins will line up the bullpen. Coulombe is expected to start a rehab assignment tomorrow. It doesn't seem like they would just have two pitchers down for multiple days in the pen. I believe Patsky said in another thread that our old friend Blewett was just DFA'd by the Braves. Funderburk has looked better, but I assume he will be replaced by Coulombe when he's ready. This may be the ending of the Alcala project in Minnesota. I had hoped he would turn a corner and there's definitely room to blame on the way he's been used in the bullpen for his troubles. In the end though, you have to have people that are capable of getting outs in a game and it doesn't look like he is it at the moment.

Our old friend may become our new friend. Blewett was typically good in situations like this. Multiple inning mop-up work that limited the damage. I have a feeling we are going to need someone like him in the future.

Disappointing for Alcala as I thought he may have turned a corner with his earlier outing in the series. He may end up being the casualty when Coulombe comes back as it would be nice to have two lefties in the bullpen.

Now the real question sets in on the Twins needing to find another reliever for the weekend. I can't imagine they would go two relievers short for multiple days. Fundy would be the likely option since he has options. Per MLB, I see that Coulombe will start a rehab appearance in St. Paul tomorrow. It will be curious if they go short-handed tomorrow with the chance to bring back Coulombe over the weekend.

At least there's signs of life in the out-of-town scoreboard, Detroit and KC have both lost already with KC having to play another game tonight.

I was curious on how early a position player could come in to pitch. I guess it's the seventh inning. Good thing I tuned in late for this.

I've been pleasantly surprised with management and ownership considering we were discussing in the offseason that they would need to trade Paddack, Castro, or some combination of players to get under the perceived payroll cap. With that being said, I just don't see ownership spending much more unless we have another month like we did in May, and we start looking like a true AL contender (deep playoff run). This is not a blame ownership comment, more of a sometimes you have to leave the dance with the girl you came with comment.

We still have another month of games for teams to determine whether they are going to buy or sell at the trade deadline so this exercise may be a tad bit early. For France at 1B, given his current and career effectiveness with RISP, if you place him 5-7th in the batting order, he will be fine as there is not a clear-cut upgrade on the market and he should hopefully get ample opportunities to drive runs in. For 3B, as previous commenters have surmised, you need to essentially give up on Lewis and/or Lee to trade for an upgrade. This is why I've been hounding for Lewis to be sent to AAA to work on his swing, posture, etc. to become the hitter we need him to be and re-evaluate in two weeks to a month. The team has made it clear that they want Lewis to work it out on the ML club, so he needs to play until the team changes its approach to how they are handling Lewis. I'm going to pump the brakes on a Keaschall return and resurgence. He's likely an upgrade over Bride and even Clemens, but we still need to be patient on a young player with an upper arm bone injury. I believe effectively swinging the bat will be the last thing that comes back from this type of injury. It may turn out that he's only a nominally better version of Keirsey Jr as he re-establishes his swing. I hope I'm wrong, but you have to evaluate these things as they will not be 100% ready to go when they come back from injury and are they an improvement over who we currently have.

In 2025, no way on earth would I trade Duran. We need him in a bullpen that is likely going to get used a bit more in the next few months. As for the future, he still has two arbitration years left after 2025. The best comp for Duran in terms of what we have seen before would be a "poor man's" Josh Hader. I use that term because Duran has not been used in the same way Hader was, and he does not have the same national coverage that Hader did at similar times in their respective careers. With that being said, let's look at what the Brewers traded Hader for 2022 as a potential haul for the Twins. For reference, in 2022, Hader still had 1 year of arbitration left, where Duran will be AFTER the 2026 season Padres: Josh Hader Brewers: Taylor Rogers RP (our old friend), Dinelson Lamet (pitcher, now in the Mexican League) and OF Esteury Ruiz (currently in the Dodgers system at AAA-OKC) This is not exactly a cornucopia of riches for a high-profile hurler that arguably had more value at the time of the trade than a potential Duran trade currently does due to Hader's track record and national recognition. You're just not going to get someone who will be an upgrade to who we currently have on the roster as expected everyday players.

The series with the Blue Jays always concerns me. It seems the entire city of Winnipeg travels down to the TC for the series and it's about 1/2 Blue Jays and 1/2 Twins fans. Maybe that explains why Festa is pitching today instead of on Friday as now we have our best (remaining) pitchers going for the Toronto series.

Another great win, especially keeping the A's bats in check. I think the Pablo injury shuts the door on the Paddack discussion pending a collapse before the deadline. I also have a feeling this community will also be even more hyper-sensitive of Rocco's bullpen usage as we are going to need every out we can get from the starters as I would expect the length of the starters will go down. It's looking like the team is learning the lessons from Lewis in how they are treating Wallner. With Wallner, they waited until it looked like he was ready (beyond ready for some people) and are willing to give him days off as he was just activated from the IL on Saturday. Finally, we need to ride the Bader train into the ground as he is still hitting out of his skis for the year, even if that means costing Wallner or Larnach an at-bat or two once in awhile.

I was dreaming of a couple more runs so this lead could possibly have been Fundy-proof.

Didn't someone call for some insurance around here? Did the State Farm guy show up yet?

Stewart is the answer. Hopefully the answer will actually be the solution.

Had Springs started the game, he would have already had a quality start.

One thing I have seen an improvement in Lewis is that he is taking more walks. That shows me that he is at least seeing the ball and that he doesn't feel like he has to wear the superhero cape all the time.

Especially since Pablo will be out for so long. We need to stretch every out we could get from our starters to save the bullpen, Zebby at least needed an opportunity to get through the sixth.

The A's pitcher has channeled the ghost of Jamie Moyer. Easy throwing crafty lefty that shouldn't stymie hitters, but here we are.

Definitely a good problem to have. You can play the hot hand nightly and gives Rocco better quality pinch-hitters. Bader is hitting out of his skis compared to his career numbers so maybe we ride with Bader until he cools off and goes back to the hitter we all expected him to be.

How does Peter think about 3 run games?

How will this bill potentially affect a future sale of the Twins? In my hour worth of research, I read about six articles about the bill and came to this one being the most honest and had the least bias. That link will be here: Costly loss for sports team owners embedded in Trump tax bill | Fortune In reading this article I found: This deduction was intended for intangible assets. For sports teams, these things include items like Goodwill, team logos, team branding, reputation, brand recognition, intellectual rights, radio and TV rights, etc. The current deduction allows these assets to be deducted up to 100%, amortized over 15 years. The administration originally wanted this deduction to be reduced to 0%, or eliminated, but settled on 50% to get the bill through Congress. Other provisions the administration considered was not allowing tax-exempt bonds for stadium buildouts. For example, had the MN Legislature hypothetically created a tax-exempt bond to pay for the requested upkeep or upgrades of US Bank Stadium by the Vikings, it could have been possible that those bonds would not have been given tax-exempt status. This provision was already dropped in the bill that passed the House. The deduction was originally put into legislation as part of the 2004 tax bill sponsored by then President George W. Bush, who was a former part-owner of the Texas Rangers before becoming President. This reduction only applies to owners who purchase teams after the law takes effect. Varying experts opine on both sides of the argument that this could create a disincentive to purchasing sports teams or very little effect will be shown due to the fact that there are only so many sports franchises. Opinions/Observations: A Newsweek article covering this topic also wrote that the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that reducing this deduction would raise up to $991 million over 10 years. As we can all likely agree, that's barely a rounding error in federal budgets so it's possible this doesn't make it to the final bill if it creates too much of a sticking point with Senators. The Math: For discussion, let's use the Forbes valuation of the Twins of $1.5 billion and assume that 50% of this valuation are comprised of intangible assets as referred to above. I'm likely low on my percentage, but it makes the number easy. That's leaves us $750 million to be amortized at 50% ($375 million) over 15 years, resulting in a yearly deduction of $25 million instead of the $50 million the current law would give them. Tax accounting for sports franchises are incredibly complex so this could very well be off by millions, but this is an exercise to give some perspective. Timing: We still do not know when this bill will actually take effect, if passed. For reference, most tax bills have an effective date of January 1st, but what year will be the question. If it is retroactive to January 1, 2025, the new owners will be subject to the new law, regardless of when the bill is passed or the sale is finally finished. If the law takes effect January 1, 2026, then a new owner will have incentive to get the sale done before 2026 so they can still take advantage of the old laws. As much as we are concerned about how this law will affect whether the Pohlads will actually sell, this law could actually INCREASE the value of the Twins as potential buyers could become more motivated to buy as to take advantage of the old law prior to it changing in 2026. Opinion: This will be another issue which will have to be negotiated through if the bill passes with this provision in it. I'm reasonably certain that the Pohlads and the interested buyers already have developed contingency plans on how they think this affects the value of the team. I'm also certain that all involved parties have contacts, lobbyists, etc. working on this provision and probably know in real time where this provision stands on making it through the final bill where we are just guessing with a couple short news articles. Ultimately, I do believe that the Pohlads, as a group, are finished having their name dragged through the media and will likely sell regardless of this law passing. It just complicates the negotiations. Writing was never a strength of mine. I hope that this will jumpstart the thread back towards the subject at hand and further the discussion.

For context, I have been riding the trade Paddack wagon since the offseason. I finally got off a few stops ago when he started going through this current stretch of excellent pitching. I don't fully trust in the combination of Festa, SWR, and Matthews. Matthews gave us a Herculean start on Friday keeping us in the game in order for us to come back for the win. Festa is building back up from arm fatigue. SWR is improving in St. Paul, but I'm not sure he's at the point he can replace Paddack at the moment in the rotation. None of these 3 have been able to consistently get past the 5th inning. We have been nervous all season about bullpen usage, especially now since it seems we can't trust two of our pitchers in the bullpen. Trading someone who has been saving bullpen arms seems illogical. Let's go all out with rampant speculation and suggest that we can get somewhere close to a similar package for Paddack that the Blue Jays got for Kikuchi. Even if we can get that type of a package, that is three young players/prospects that will be blocked in St. Paul since we already have a robust list of AAA/AAAA players that people are asking for to be brought up to the ML roster with more waiting in the wings. I agree with a previous poster that I don't see a team giving up a middle of the order bat for Paddack and also believe that any trade partner will want us to take on the salary, which we are unsure at this point what ownership will allow for spending.

Agree. They're playing at a band box of a ballpark against a below average pitching staff. If he doesn't start the majority of the games in this series, he should have been moved so he could get some at bats, rest, or whatever he needs to get better out of the limelight. For his sake as much as the teams. The fact that he didn't start tonight brings up more questions about him and not less.

You really start to wonder why you have a lefty in the bullpen when you can't use him like a traditional lefty.

I believe we are going to find out in real time. He was warming up in the bullpen.