NYCTK

For as weak as he was with the higher value assets, Falvey actually got good returns on his rental pieces.

I said that I found that comment ridiculous because I find the comment I was responding to ridiculous. I know you watch a lot of baseball, but it really doesn't seem like you follow the business side all that closely if you make a comment like that. Teams like the Brewers, Royals, Guardians, and Rays also hire veterans on small one year deals. There's no actual juxtaposition.

Are you getting these "good" players on one year deals? If not, then it's not at all comparable.

True. Which is why refusing to trade Joe Ryan is a far greater failure than signing a bland veteran player plugging a massive hole.

Absolutely ridiculous framing. $7M commitment versus a $200M commitment. One doesn't preclude the other, and even so, you recognize the latter was never ever happening.

I can tell you that no one looks at him especially fondly. His comments to the press have made him a bit of a joke league wide. Someone that fans of other teams actually enjoy watching "slump". He's viewed at like all the other once promising highly touted young players that couldn't quite cut it. If trading him for a prospects, I would anticipate he's worth about as much as we saw for Ryan McMahon; one 35+ and one 40 FV propsect. He's actually someone that might be a DFA candidate next offseason. Similar to Larnach he'll be due $5+ million in the next season. So, he has 3 years of control, but is due increasingly more money in each subsequent season.

Good for him, but even if that's true he really sucked, so how does that help the team? I for one don't find it refreshing to hear a player complain about playing baseball. How? A lot of fans get all behind their favorite players, which is nice I guess, but has them then saying stuff like this. How has he been horribly mishandled? Positional musical chairs? He's played a total of 8 innings away from 3B the last two seasons. He was called up and played at different positions, sure, but that's how nearly every team will get their young players playing time to start their careers. We're now complaining that the Twins made room for Royce Lewis to play even though there wasn't a positional hole for him to fill? Beating him down in arbitration? He avoided arbitration. That makes no sense and tells me you're just making excuses for him. Having a manager relive his career? Huh?! The front office sucks, one of the worst in all of baseball, but Royce Lewis has hit .223 / .273 / .372 in his last 666 plate appearances. That's not because of Derek Falvey or Rocco Baldelli. That's entirely on Royce Lewis.

Who is he blocking? The reason this is completely inoffensive, if unexciting, is because there is no one.

Yeah. Sure. Fine.

Weird non sequitur. Kodai Senga is a diva I guess. Wonder if they trade him.

He's just not good enough to be this big of a focal point, or diva. I simply can't believe the Twins organization is so bad they are now seemingly half assing a rebuild. They quite honestly deserve to lose 95 games.

You may as well as ChatGPT. That's fine that BTV says that, but we live in reality and no team would trade any decent prospect for Brock Stewart. This trade was a complete nothing, trading a completely unreliable arm for a completely unreliable outfielder. I get the Twins thinking, with no standout defensive CF in the system ready to play at the major league level, Emmanuel Rodriguez being the closest, as unreliable as he seems like he's going to be himself.

That's a nice wholesome thing to believe, and for a batting champion I can put some belief in it. But there's no way anyone believes attendance was actually in any way increased by the guy with a career 291 OBP. Attendance went up in 2019. But I suspect that has to do with the 101 wins and towering homeruns, not a pudgy guy sprinting hilariously slow.

A lot of people here, myself included, are just annoyed with the many people here (and certain former #1 draft picks) constantly complaining about a baseball player being asked to play a different position on the baseball field. It's not some Rocco invention. There's nothing new school or analytical about it. It's just baseball.

The praise of the bullpen has become ridiculous after the sell off. Come the trade deadline, the Twins bullpen, as a unit, were near the bottom of the league in all of Win Percentage Added, WHIP, Left on base Percentage, and ERA. This after being very middle of the pack the previous year. The Twins bullpen was supposed to be a strength, on paper, but didn't play up their expectations.

With all this complaining that Rocco RUINED Royce by insisting he play around the diamond, I thought I'd point out the diva played a total of 8 innings at a position other than 3B the last couple seasons. This excuse making is his job, not yours as a fan.

Woods Richardson is a perfectly serviceable starter, but there's no real hope for him to improve upon his pretty consistent results. He seems to be a mid 4s starter. Something that is valuable, but plentiful. If you can get Lawlar for that, you take it. Now, the question you raise is a good one, about his health. I'm not familiar with Lawlar's injury history, but that's why they have physicals as part of these deals...unless you're the Angels apparently.

Lawlar in return for SWR would be a steal. He was a consensus top 30 prospect last year and didn't really do anything to lose that shine, apart from failing to usurp entrenched starters.

Quite honestly, Twins fans need to get over him. You can't just point to one exception to argue for every AAA player to get a long run at the major league level. Brent Rooker has a career AAA OPS of 977 (930-ish as a Saint) whereas McCusker is sitting at 800. No one's arguing that McCusker can't be given further opportunities, but he needs to earn his chance to become a big leaguer.

Lee isn't truly believed as a SS by nearly anyone. He's a placeholder until someone else is ready at which point he'll try to get playing time elsewhere around the diamond. No one thinks Keaschall is a SS. Debarge, Young, Winokur, Schobel...all organizational depth. Not what anyone would call a glut of SS talent. One of them could take major strides and show themselves to be more than that, but they could also all flame out. So, we have a pretty good prospect and another decent prospect. As every major league farm should.

What SS glut? Let's list all the exceptional SS in the Twins system: Culpeppper is a fine prospect. Houston is interesting and will be fun to watch develop (or frustrating to watch languish). End of list. It is an incredible failure of management to even try to compete this season. Not trading either of Ryan or Lopez is the sign of a front office with more job security than intelligence.

Sounds to me like the Twins correctly evaluated McCusker as a AAA player that was just going through a hot stretch. The fact that he went down to AAA and didn't even OPS 600 over his next 200 PAs tells me not that the Twins ruined him, but that he wasn't all that good to begin with. Who? There hasn't been a high performing projectable minor leaguer promoted to the Twins since Royce Lewis. At least for position players. Kiriloff, but his injury misfortunes are well noted. Austin Martin, but he had already lost that top prospect status before coming over to the Twins. It seems the bigger issue is fans are getting way too excited for prospects like Trevor Larnach whose highest consensus rating was #83 and Wallner who was never a top 100 prospect. Well...the biggest issue is the Twins have had a terrible time scouting and developing in the minor leagues. It'd be nice if they could have more legitimate prospects graduating more frequently (without major health issues). Wallner is actually a perfect example of the Twins accurately evaluating their talent and the fans losing their minds over proper baseball decisions. He not only sucked in spring training and the start of the MLB season, but Wallner continued to suck for weeks in the minor leagues. It took him a solid month or more to get into the swing of the season, and was only kept off the major league roster 2-3 weeks from his inflection point. Did they time it perfectly, calling him back up as soon as he could have been a contributing player? Not quite. But did fans really want him to get 200 PAs in the major leagues, striking out 100 times, allowing him to find his swing with the Major League team that had won the division the year prior and expected to repeat?

Always strive to be just below median.

Larnach OPSing 750 isn't all that useful. On account of him being a bat only player.

Then you'll absolutely be disappointed with the return of any trade. McLean for Ryan would be an absolute steal. Falvey would go on a week long bender to celebrate getting 6 years of McLean for 2 years of Ryan.