Western SD Fan

I found the secret Twins plans for the year!

My preference would be for the Twins to just rip the band-aid off and take Funderburk over Chafin. When listening to the ST game today, Molitor described how players, like Chafin, who are non-roster invitees with more than 6 years' service time and finished with a team last season, must be informed whether they will make the team 5 days prior to the start of the season, which would be this Saturday. If Chafin is not granted FA, then we likely know the answer on whether it is Chafin or Funderburk. Sadly enough, I could see the Twins sending Funderburk to AAA with the knowledge that as soon as one of Rogers, Banda, or Chafin implode and are DFA'd that they will bring up Funderburk.

I could make a tepid argument for Zach Littel. While I wouldn't suggest he has flourished, he has managed to carve out a meaningful career post-Twins. Even so much that some people wanted to bring him back in FA to round out the rotation for this year. 😬 If Zebby had established himself last season, there could be a better argument that his ST shouldn't matter as much and be given a little more rope. But he didn't and the reason that they traded for Abel and Bradley is what you see now: a chance for them to establish themselves into the rotation. As other posters have noted, I still see Zebby likely getting 20+ starts this season, especially if Ryan is eventually traded, or a pitcher goes down with injury. I do like @IndianaTwin idea of having both Abel and Matthews start in St. Paul and riding an extra reliever for the first week. Bonus that both the Twins and Saints will be at home during the same weekend so one of them could get called up for the game on Sunday April 5th and would just have to take the Green Line across town.

My concern is more on Ober than Ryan similar to how many have posted on here. Ober has lived off the concept that his fastball could look like 93-95 mph even though it has only ever been 93-90 mph due to his height and long stride that allows his release point to be closer to the plate. Ober has had to adjust his mechanics twice within a year. First when he injured his hip and knee last year and played through it and second when he has come back from it during the winter and during ST. He may feel better, but getting his mechanics back will be the last part of the recovery process. Considering Zebby's ST so far, Ober is still one of top 5 pitchers in the Twins rotation. I can see a scenario where he is the number 4 or 5 starter at the beginning of the season so there may be a possibility of skipping a start if he is still not 100%.

Tommy Pham has entered the conversation......

Might be too early to tell but I just read a story that Yastrzemski was pulled from today's lineup. Now a LH OF trade may make sense for the Braves if this development becomes more serious.

I came to the same conclusion yesterday when the news was released about Profar's suspension. Larnach would just not be a fit in Atlanta. Of course, I am picking up the phone if they call. I agree with the premise that Outman is the preference to see go somewhere off this roster, but that doesn't seem to happen at the moment.

By continuing to run Outman out in CF (including today), the Twins must feel that Outman is the only viable backup for Buxton. My hope is that Outman is traded near the end of camp, even if it's just for cash considerations and Roden will take his spot. Other real concern is that this is the new normal for Ober and it doesn't look like he can live at this new velocity. Is it possible that he can stay in extended ST to build up his arm and have Abel come up with the club?

Unless you expect Jenkins, Gonzalez, or Rodriguez to win ROY of finish in the top 3 in MVP, it makes no sense from an organizational standpoint to bring them up right away. Those conditions give an extra draft pick to the team that does this. Otherwise, you play the service manipulation time game and bring them up when you can get an extra year of control out of them. Of course, that may change with the upcoming CBA, but the organization needs to live under the rules that are currently in front of you.

Signing Pablo to an extension likely only makes sense after a new CBA is in place, if the entire 2027 season isn't wiped out. By that time, we will likely know Pablo's progression and a potential return to the field. If an extension is discussed, a salary that is laden with accelerators, performance bonuses, and buyouts would be great. Paddack has already been mentioned. Pineda also signed a similar contract following the 2019 season. From a PR standpoint, it may be important to at least approach both Pablo and Joe Ryan with extensions as they have really spent a lot on marketing for Pablo although I don't see Ryan signing any extension with the Twins.

Another thing to think about is that Lewis's season really didn't start until mid-August. Lewis never had a spring training due to injury. I argued at the time that he was rushed back too quickly as the season was teetering on disaster and his performance suffered prior to being injured again in mid-June. His spring training essentially started in July and improved as the season moved forward. They even let him run a little, which was probably the first time in his major league career that he was let loose to steal a base.

There is a consensus that Larnach needs to be traded to free up the logjam in the outfield. But it appears that his current value is that of a throw-in for any trade the Twins may make. Think Dobnak or Rooker. Larnach is likely still on the roster because nobody wants to trade for him at this point in spring training. I would agree that Funderburk, Roden, and Martin should be on the team when they break camp. As for Outman, I was just listening to the Twins Daily Podcast, and they conceded when the Twins traded Stewart that Outman was likely the best player they were going to get out of that trade. Why they have held onto Outman for this long is the surprise for me. Here may be something to consider about why we have all of these outfielders blocking the likes of Jenkins, E-Rod, Fedko, etc. If you're looking past this year, it's possible that the organization wants to limit the service time of these prospects considering they do not know what changes will be made to service time or the arbitration process during the current CBA negotiations.

Twins.TV was great for my location in Western SD. I believe I was still considered in the Twins market for 2025, but I'm not sure for 2026 as they reworked the local markets and I may be considered in the Rockies local market now (Yay me!). If I remember correctly, the $100 Twins.TV package also gives you Twins minor league games as well. I upgraded for the $200 MLB package so I could watch the other teams, except the Rockies since I had to choose my team market between the Twins and the Rockies. Living in Maine, you won't have that problem. Of course, as stated before, this won't include any nationally televised games.

Another possibility is there may have been lingering effects from the concussion may have affected his initial reaction time or pop time for the remainder of the season.

Sorry, this link doesn't exist to us plebians. 🫠 I'm guessing this is what happened to the last article as well that was supposed to have a caretaker link.

Multiple things can be true at once: 1. Most of us still want the Pohlads to sell the team regardless of what Tom says or does. I honestly believe that Tom authorized a payroll of $150M+ and there would still be quite a few fans who would still want the Pohlads to sell (me included). 2. Tom may be the more competent Pohlad of the group and was brought in to stabilize the product in order to retain its value for a future sale, likely after the CBA negotiations. 3. Tom may be paying us fans lip service in an effort to get us back to the stadium. What he has publicly said gives off the impression he knows they screwed up in previous years. Couple that with the promotions for the upcoming season, the phone calls to season ticket holders and to outspoken critics such as Plouffe and Tom is at least making the effort to reach out to Twins fans. I still want the Pohlads to sell. Until that day happens, I hope I get to watch the best Twins team that I can and that seems to be what is going to happen this season rather than bottoming out.

Fully agree with you that the Twins need to do a better job in scouting and development throughout the system but revamping that will take a year or two. In the meantime, if the Twins have extra pool money and need bullpen help, it seems like a win-win trade for the moment.

My curiosity will be is how critical will he be of the team's performance, specifically infielding. I hope that Molitor will use his expertise to educate us fans on what these players are doing on the field. This way, us fans will Morneau and Perkins don't ever seem to have any criticism at all, which is why we all like Plouffe, because he's never been afraid to tell the fans what he sees on the field.

I fully agree with your assessment, but there are flaws in it that need to be pointed out as many of the players you mentioned that were AaP spent many years on other teams prior to joining the 2023 Rays. Eflin spent 7 years in Philly, Glasnow spend 2 1/2 years in Pittsburgh, Littell spend 3 years as a Twin, Armstrong spent over 7 years with 3 teams before coming to TB, Stephenson spent over 7 years with 3 different teams. I could maybe give you Fairbanks as he started in Texas but was traded in his first year in the majors to TB. In looking at your 2017 Cleveland reference, I only found Shaw that played for Arizona for a little over a year before coming over to Cleveland. I used baseball reference as my tool. I think Cleveland is the better example as the Rays are more apt at turning around reclamation projects from other organizations (Eflin and Littell are great examples).

Two things can be true at once; that the Pohlads can be scumbag owners with no plan and very reactionary as an ownership group AND that Falvey made enough inexplicable moves/drafts that he deserved to be fired. The argument for the Pohlads: From a business standpoint, there was a lot of convergence of circumstances that they should have seen coming that eventually caused them to pull back on payroll. First, the CARES Act funding from the Covid years ended in 2023 so the government-funded gravy train that likely propped up many of the Pohlad businesses ended and they failed to plan for it. I don't know their other businesses, but the sense from TD is that much of their non-Twins business is in commercial real estate. My assessment from national reports is that this real estate market has never really recovered from Covid, but I do not know the Twin Cities market right now. This absolutely terrible lack of planning likely a factor in the pullback in payroll. Add to this a nearly $500M debt incurred and it's easy to see that just the interest payments could be crippling to an organization. Notice: I don't care where the debt came from, just the result of how it crippled payroll. Finally, Dave St. Peter failed to prepare the Pohlads for the fallout coming from losing at least a reported $45M with the ending of the Bally/Fanduel/Diamond Sports Group/Main Street Sports Group or whatever name they want to call themselves today. My guess is they announced that they were going to start Twins TV in 2024 before researching what happened with the Padres and panicked, which led no money to spend on upgrading the team where necessary and the pullback in payroll after 2023. The argument for Falvey: We have all stated and repeated ad nauseam about the 'pitching pipeline' that Falvey was supposed to create and really haven't materialized. I believe another focus should be on Falvey's drafting of position players. I had always remembered something from Falvey's early drafting that left a mark on my thinking. Early on, Falvey seemed to want to draft big college bats because he believed they be later traded for pitching. Early examples were Sabato and Larnach. I finally found an article relating to this here: Twins 2018 MLB Draft: Minnesota selects OF Trevor Larnach with the 20th overall pick | Twinkie Town. Of course, the flaw becomes that these hitters never materialized into the expected mashers that other teams wanted to trade for. This leads to the issue of having so many corner OFs that all look and hit about the same (Larnach, Wallner, etc.) which leads to a logjam when all the players finally graduated, as we can see now AND did see then when these players were shuffled back and forth on the St. Paul Express. When you the bad FA decisions of both pitchers and position players (Gallo, Margot, Shoemaker, Happ, etc.) and it creates a bad combination that only a few other GMs can match (namely the Rockies). Finally, I prepped a spreadsheet months before when the idea that Falvey needed to go was brought up. The results of my spreadsheet compared payroll, winning %, and playoff appearances to other teams that we have been comparing the Twins to (Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Tampa Bay). I can show my work if you want, but my results were that the Twins, on average, had the highest payroll, the lowest winning percentage, AND the fewest postseason appearances during the Falvey Era (2017-2025, except 2020 since that really threw off the averages in payroll for obvious reasons). Both parties made grave errors causing the Twins to become one of the worst laughingstocks in North American sports. Frankly, Falvey still needed to go. Be it because he couldn't do what Tom Pohlad wanted him to do or because Tom finally realized the ineptitude of Falvey and told him that he could be fired or negotiate a way out and leave. I'll finish with where I started, both premises can be true: the Pohlads are terrible businesspeople that created the chaos of the payroll that Falvey had to swim in AND Falvey was terrible at his job in terms of drafting and quality free agent signings and needed to go.

If we look at this situation as cynically as possible, this may be a possible reason for the whole thing. (cue the rampant speculation music) We have all speculated that when the Pohlad family took the team off the market and took on investors that these investors were brought in to clear the debts, make the books look better, and make a quick return on their investment. Many of us are also expecting a lengthy stoppage in 2027 as it seems that many owners are entrenched in the belief that their only way out is with a salary cap. If you take all of this into account, it makes perfect sense what Tom is doing since he took over as CEO of the Twins. With sports franchises, their biggest value comes in brand reputation and exclusivity. The brand reputation of the Twins is about the lowest it has ever been since they have moved to Minnesota. I remember the 90's Twins, but I'm not old enough to remember the early 80's Twins so I am going off my knowledge. I do believe that Joe and Falvey had a plan to do a more complete teardown and shoot for 2028. While that have made sense from a baseball standpoint, it didn't make sense from a business standpoint if your goal is to boost brand reputation and juice the value of the team for an eventual sale. Tom came in and wants the facade that the Twins will be competitive. This means that they need to spend just enough money to make it look good (congrats!) and keep what little reputation they have left to get through the next CBA negotiations and cash out. If this entire exercise was to raise the value of the Twins so that the Pohlads could get the price they want and sell, then I'll take whatever pain I need to suffer to make it happen.

It also seemed odd that Baldelli, the large majority of his staff, and even Joe Pohlad was fired from their respective positions and Falvey survived. We all questioned the idea when Dave St. Peter retired from his position as President of the Twins and Joe gave Falvey St. Peter's position as well. I saw many comments on this site when Levine and St. Peter left that there's now nowhere for Falvey to hide on his decision-making when it comes to the team. It does look to me that Joe Pohlad had no clue what he was doing as overseeing the Twins and gave Falvey all of the power without any meaningful oversight. Tom took over just over a month ago. If he had no knowledge of the situation prior to taking over, it would be reasonable that he would take some time to get up to speed before making major decisions. From reports coming out of 1 Twins Way (your mileage may vary), Tom called season ticketholders and asked why they did not renew. He flew to Georgia to talk to Buxton, same to CA for Ryan, and visited Lopez at TwinsFest, similar to what Shelton did when he was hired as the Manager. It is quite possible that Tom ended up having questions for Falvey about how he was running the team that Falvey could not answer. If Falvey tried giving Tom one of those same lengthy discussions as he gave to the media and us fans, Tom probably wasn't going to put up with it. It's possible that Tom came up to the same conclusion that us fans did at least two years ago, that Falvey was in over his head. Rather than take a demotion, Falvey just left. None of that leaves the Pohlads off the hook for blame. The Pohlads as a group created the problem, but Falvey was not skilled enough to ride the wave through to smooth out the bumps that the Pohlads were creating. The Correa contract made sense when they were operating at $150M+ payroll. When Falvey was forced to cut payroll, the downfall started and hamstrung Falvey. Even if you consider it lip service, Tom even admitted that it was bad business to slash payroll immediately after the most successful season in Twins history in over 20 years. Falvey did a great job in getting out of the Donaldson contract when it started to look bad. All this adds up to that Falvey likely needed to go and should have been gone after the season. It just took a new sheriff in town to make it happen.

A question to be asked is if this actually increases the chances Joe Ryan is traded between now and the deadline as potential suitors now have a number in mind of what it would take to retain him next season.

Getting back to this list of non-roster invitees and trying to guess whether we will see any of them make the team coming out of spring training. Spoiler alert: none of them, regardless of what kind of spring they have barring injuries. Even if Culpepper or Jenkins tear it up in ST and seemingly force the issue, they will still send them down to AAA. Call it needing extra seasoning. Call it service time manipulation. Cory Lewis probably needs a decent ST or season to not be considered a candidate for the bullpen. That doesn't mean that ST storylines shouldn't be fun to watch. Many of the players mentioned will look to give some hope that cupboard isn't bare and that maybe we will see some of these players sooner rather than later. Finally, about Sabato. I think this is the most coverage he has received since he was drafted. I believe the point that was attempting to be made is that it's pretty common for non-roster invitees to be granted free agency to try to sign on with another team unless they really want to sign on with the team that invited them. I would agree that he is not holding anyone back in St. Paul, but I also wouldn't be holding a roster spot for him, either in the majors or in St. Paul.

Let's look at this offseason holistically first, then drill down to the minutiae of what has actually happened. I have seen signs that maybe the people at 1 Twins Way may finally have a clue on the damage that they have done to their own reputation and the fanbase. There have been reports this week that Tom Pohlad called approximately 50 former season ticket holders to ask why they haven't renewed and apparently received some colorful feedback from some recipients. I also look at the signings of Caratini and Bell as showing that they are going to make an effort to compete this year. Until now, I would suggest this is more spending that many people on this forum (including myself) expected out of the team given the overall landscape in baseball (upcoming lockout). A cynical person would suggest that the Pohlads are finally protecting their investment. Someone must have finally got their attention that the majority of the Twins value is in reputation, goodwill, and other intangibles and not the physical assets they possess. By killing their reputation, they are killing their value to when they finally do sell the team. As for the bullpen, good bullpen pieces are fairly hard to find. We can look at last year that the Yankees, Blue Jays (even after acquiring Varland) had shaky bullpens and they definitely had more to spend than the Twins do. Even the Dodgers traded for Stewart because they needed additional help. All of that to say that bullpens are typically an emerging beast that you are always tinkering with and trying to improve. I can see some spring training invites, some minor league contracts signed, and some additional low-cost contracts given out to round out the bullpen.