JADBP

Uhhhh. Why wasn’t this flagged as inappropriate?

LOL. Why is “…and the Twins go down quickly” just ringing in my ears?

Actually it seems like the batters just give up after about the 5th inning or so. How often do you ever see them come back to win? They’re lifeless.

Proof: from last night’s post-game interview: [Rocco] “Our guys played their butts off out there tonight. When you go on an individual basis and look up and down and see what all the guys in the clubhouse did in that game -- the way we pitched and the way we competed in those at-bats against [Sale] -- it’s about as good as it gets. We grinded.“ Don’t worry about that 10 RISP….we’ll do better some day.

Come on, guys (and gals)! Don’t give up hope! The players are battling their butts off (according to Rocco)! And don’t forget: win or lose, everyone gets a Dairy Queen after the game!

DAIRY QUEEN FOR EVERYONE AFTER THE GAME TONIGHT! This was the most painful loss of the season to date. All those runners on 2nd and 3rd...surely you can push one or two across the plate? Bases loaded? That was pathetic. But, the worst moment of the game was the post-game interview with Rocco. I say with no sarcasm that Rocco displayed all of the feel-good juju that a mini-van-driving Daddy/coach gives the kids after a Little League game. Rocco: "I am so proud of the awesome effort that you kids put out today. You kids did AWESOME! DQ mini-Blizzards for everyone on the team!" Kids: "YAAAAAYYYYYY!!!!" Somehow Rocco thinks this translates well to the Biggs. Somehow he thinks modern coaching is about coddling the players, while slavishly juggling strategy based on slivers of numerical advantage. The players players don't give a damn because they are not being asked to give a damn. Other than the rookies, they are all making millions of dollars no matter how well they play. Why try harder? The coach never gets mad at the players. There are no consequences for failing 10 times to get that teammate home for 2nd or 3rd. And the owners....they certainly don't give a damn either, because they are just trying to cash out the team for a $Billion or two. There are no consequences here. DQs for everyone! This is Rocco....he's yelling "Come on, hurry up guys, DQ closes at 9!" Please hurry up and sell this team so a new owner might see through this BS.

Unless they sell the team to someone as stupid as themselves.

I just can't imagine someone buying the team, then letting baby-Pohlad continue to run the team. The teams finances are trashed...and who's fault is that? Man oh man, with that expectation, they will never sell the team!

sorry for the repeat....

Yeah....I am sorry, but this team looks like a bunch of high school kids trying to play pro ball. Its embarrassing. It would be more frustrating if we didn't that there really is some high level skill, talent and power in all of these professional athletes. So, let's look at he big picture. The Twins management have done absolutely nothing to support these players. Last season, they cut payroll and added dumpster-dive players. They were competitive some of the season, but management bailed on them at the trade deadline, getting for a player that they kept what, 2 weeks? It was like they said "See, we made a trade!" This last offseason, they let some good players walk and, as usual, went dumpster diving at the end of the offseason, when all the good, low cost gems were lost. Traded for nothing. SO, basically, the team has been going backwards for at least 2 years. Bringing up an occasional good prospect like Lee or Lewis keeps hopes up, but the injuries...just ugggly! What is really going on? Is there any hope at all this season? NO. Give it up. 1. The owners don't want the team anymore. Meaning they could care less about the team, the players, the fans, the success or failure of the franchise--they are done and want to cash out. 2. The team is hideously, deeply in dept. Obviously whoever has been running the organization has little to no business skills. Whoever buys the team is going to have to pay off and estimated $450 million in debt--meaning the value and the price is reduced by $450 mill. Too bad the Pohlad's are holding out for top $$. 3. Wait, this story gets better! Not only do the Pohlad's want to sell the team, dump that $450 million in debt while pocketing over $1.5 Billion, but they also want to retain management control of the team after they sell off their ownership! On what planet are these morons living?? Even if there was some logical reason to do so, would you want the current management, who ran up this enormous debt and who ran a competitive team into the ground, still running the show? Are you kidding me????? OK, so the ownership has completely trashed this team in many ways, while being arrogant enough to think that someone would allow them to continue to run the team. What do you expect the players to think about this sh17show that ownership is running. I am surprised that they even bother to show up to play. And, when they do, are they going to bound over large dog houses to play their best? Are they going to get serious about warmup stretches and batting practice? Or are they biding their time to get some experience and move on to the next team willing to pay them? Or just sitting on the trainer's bench counting their Millions?

WHAT JUST HAPPENED???! What in the world are Twins management thinking? From the mlb.com/twins.....we learn: Throughout the latter stages of Spring Training, even as Bailey Ober kept racking up strong results, he repeatedly told reporters that he nonetheless felt a bit out of sync. His velocity was down, and though he was getting hitters out, he was not pleased with his delivery. Unfortunately, just as Ober felt he had mostly ironed out those wrinkles, another complication struck. He got sick. Ober spent much of Friday in bed and Saturday taking IVs as he battled a virus. And so Ober never really ramped up in ST, never really got it "in sync." OK, so maybe he needs an extra week or two of prep and repetition to get in sync? Then he gets puke-virus-sick and is taking intravenous antibiotics for two days laid up in his hotel room...and the very next day he is asked to don a Twins uni and provide a max effort athletic performance. Come on, what is the chance that he is fully recovered? What is the chance that he is even 50% recovered? Who is the absolute moron that asked foe--or--even allowed Bailey to go out there and pitch on Sunday. It should have been obvious during warmups that he was not 100%. It should have become slap-across-the-face obvious that he wasn't gonna last much longer after the first inning of 28 pitches of declining quality. Same thing last year with Ober pitching. Blink and it is suddenly a half dozen runs. That's a FAILURE on the part of part of the manager. Why did the Rocco keep running him out there? Why wasn't Dobnak warming up in the first inning if Bailey was sick and questionable? Why didn't they see this in warmups? They're hanging over the railing...why didn't they see this in the first inning? Why didn't they hit pause and use one or two mound visits in the first or second innings. They could talk to Bailey and assess his health. They would buy extra time for Dobnak to warm up. Why did they do NOTHING until the StL had score EIGHT runs? Did they not see the train wreck happening? The train was blowing its whistle for the last three days...Ober was not ready, don't run him out there. This one is 1000% on Rocco, He should have scratched Ober. Let him skip a turn. If he wants, he can throw a simulated game, but DO NOT let him pitch in the game. It became a throwaway game. And, this is MLB, not Little League. These games count just as much as a game in September. Its a LOSS. But, immense kudos to Dobnak. He SHOULD have started the game, I find it immensely heartless to send him back down. What a D!@# move.

Yeah, OK...I know...I know...its just Spring Training...but....WHO DO YOU LIKE? CLE: 10-17 added Santana, Resigned Bieber, lost Boyd, Cobb, Gimenez, Josh Naylor, Eli Morgan CWS: 10-16 added Perez, Slater, Tachman, WIlson, Rojas, Taylor, Gilbert, Thaiss, lost Leone MIN: 10-15 added Bader, France, Coulombe, lost Farmer, Kepler, Santana, Thielbar, Moran DET: 12-12 added Flaherty, Torrez, Urquidy KC: 18-11 added ZJonathan India, Estevez, lost Robbie Grossman, Will Smith, Singer, Frazier, Pham DeJong, Gurriel

Uhhhh...play the guys who hit? Then what were they doing late last season...because NO ONE was hitting!

I’d be far more worried about Julien than Miranda but I worry about both. France is a rental/trade chip (if another collapse). Lee, Lewis are going nowhere—here to stay—and likely to star someday. Keashall and others are coming soon. So, if Miranda and Julien don’t start playing at a higher level they will get swapped for a bucket of balls.

Can you imagine where we would be without Sonny Gray and/or Jorge Lopez in the Twins org?

Geez don’t be such a downer, man!

The Twins made the worst roster decision last year in signing Margot. Seems like they are trying to repeat that mistake this year. Bader and France are far from the answer. SO, shame on the FO for these signings...but the real insanity was pushing players out there night after night when they keep repeating the same inability to hit. Of course, Margot is a ridiculous example, but also Julien, Lewis and most of the team in the last 60 days. I am unsure how Rocco kept his job. But, then the Twins did make an off-season move, and it was a huge one! One that will start making a difference immediately. It fixes a really bad mistake made 4 years ago...when they chose to go with Popkins over Matt Borgshulte as hitting coach. I don't know how they made that decision because Matt was doing a bang up job as hitting coach--working his way up the ladder to AAA hitting coach. Then they chose Popkins--who had just one year of as a coach for the A-ball Great Lakes Loons. Oh yay! BTW, Popkins is now the batting coach with the Blue Jays, where he says he wants the players to pick their spots and then swing for the fences. How did that approach work with the Twins? Geez, which did more damage for the team, Popkins or Margot? That's a hard one....

So basically add $6 million to Buxton’s salary because that’s what we have to pay for insurance in the event of the eventual injuries. Not a pleasant thought. He’s far more expensive than we think. Bader adds nothing of any significant value to the team at a fairly high price for a cheap team.

I have two comments: 1. This deferred compensation scheme will continue to work … until a player gets stiffed. Through bankruptcy, through a morals clause, through a cheap owner who just wants to reneg for whatever reason/excuse, a team could CHOOSE not to pay. At this point, you might never get another player to accept deferred compensation. Now if players choose to accept that risk in the hope of getting ever more money, then OK. I am pretty sure that sooner or later some team is going to go belly up and stiff a player—if for no other reason than teams will accelerate this trick and it will get out of control (if not already). 2. This brings up the question of how can other owners accept such salary disparity? Certainly other owners want to win some games/championships sooner or later. Even in the case of the seemingly disinterested Twins, the Pohlads still want to put buts in seats and winning does that. So how can they allow a just a few teams to put forward such egregious payrolls? How does this not hurt other owners? Certainly the Twins franchise is devalued by their inability to compete at this level. The only way that it cannot is if the rich owners PAY the poor teams. Not through revenue sharing. Nope. But a secret deal where owners pay owners to go along with the disparity. Let’s say the Twins are running a loss of $15 million in 2024. The rich teams could pool their massive bucks to cover the loss to keep Pohlad happy. But here’s the trick—it goes to ownership, not players or other salaries. Rich teams could come up with all sorts of ways to disguise this. But there has to be a way to keep teams like MN or Denver or AZ happy because the Dodgers and the Mets are out of control. Soooo … Why aren’t fellow owners complaining?

I boldly predict that the Twins will eclipse the White Sox this coming season. Beyond that--with the management stuck in neutral--I expect a repeat of last year. Same management plan, same management, same team (or even slightly worse without Santana/Kepler), there is just to reason why the results will improve. Aging a fragile team one year won't help. Meanwhile, all of the teams around us are improving...save for the CWS. Oh wait...I forgot that we have new batting coaches! We are gonna win some games....like I said, we will be better than the CWS. YAY!

woops, Tony was #4 for me, not 3.

IT: Great list... but I have to say I am a little confused as to why Tony Oliva--also my #1 favorite Twins Player of all time--didn't make the list! He should be up there at around #4 or #5. I had a rubber-coated "league" baseball that I used to through against the cement block building pretending to be an MLB pitcher. I had a nice neat outline of a batter's box on the way for many years. So, that would have been #3 for me. #1 would have been the whole World Series in 1987 and #2 would have been 1991 WS. I watched the 1965 WS (10 years old) and was so sad to see them lose. #3 is a slightly longer story. I had always professed Tony-O as my favorite baseball player. Around 1990 or so, my mother secretly worked up a great Christmas gift for me. She called the Twins telling them about my love for Tony and would he be willing to sign a baseball. They said, of course, "Absolutely! Tony's the greatest and he will sign anything!" So my Mom bought a baseball and sent it to the Twins office and a few weeks later it arrived with a nice personalized, autographed Tony-O baseball. I was thrilled to receive it that Christmas. Not quite the end of the story....so I wrote a nice thank you note to Tony and sent it to the Twins office, again telling him how much I appreciated his talents, his contributions to the Twins, and his kindness. Still not the end of the story....a couple of years later, my phone rang and when I answered, it was TONY! I was stunned, but after I gathered myself up, we had a wonderful chat for about 45 minutes! He was apologetic for not calling earlier, but my letter had sat on his desk all that time with him meaning to call and say '"You're welcome, and thanks for all the kind words." Now can you imagine a ball player ever doing that? Tony Oliva is simply the finest, greatest man to ever put on a Twins uniform. All the best in 2025! John

No. Sell the team already and put us out of our misery! If this is the best we can expect from the Pohlads then let's move on. Enough already! Twins fan deserve better than this. Twins fans won't pay to come watch a Gasper. I am confident that the Pohlads are not going to put another dime into this team, in the hopes of making the team look like a better value. They are flailing, trying to prop up a financial disaster that THEY made. Astute buyers will buy the team on the super-cheap, because the Pohlads made it a distressed asset. Their only out is to sell the team, take the $$ and run. Retire to Florida and chase golf balls. Imagine, on the other hand, if the Pohlads had pulled the trigger on another SP and maybe a 2Bman at the trade deadline last year? Even a rental could have only cost prospects. And, if they made the playoffs and even won a game or three, the team would be worth far more than the one that absolutely imploded in the last quarter-season. They could be selling HIGH with the team on the upswing, but baby-boy Pohlad is not quite able to see that far ahead.

Sorry, there is little evidence to suggest that the Twins lost $50 million this year. And that is an insane amount. If it were true, that would suggest that the Twins Mgmt is horrible at running a profitable business and they would ALL have been canned. It certainly would be insane to sell the team after suffering a $50 million loss. What this really points to is four things: 1) The family today does not have the affection for the Twins that Carl and Eloise had for decades (before and after buying the team). It wasn't vanity, it was affection, that spurred Carl to buy the team. Today, Jim, Bob and Bill Pohlad are the current owners with Joe as currently EVP (apparently Jim was bored with running the Twins). They see the team very differently than Carl--as an annual paycheck (as if they needed one), or a P&L statement, rather than a cherished part of the community. So, it seems like they just want to cash out. 2) I am guessing that they cut $30 million to try to even out the losses of the Bally contract--making them whole for the year. In their mind, they need to pocket $10 each and every year for upkeep of the mansions on Lake Mtka. What they really miss is how long term Sports management works to earn dollars. Carl understood community investment much better, trying to build value in the team as an asset to the community builds equity. 4) The living Pohlads have been poor stewards as they seem to be bad at hiring people to run their investment. There are far more profitable stream revenue streams than MLB or even Bally--companies that are rabidly expanding into sports steaming and have far far deeper pockets (Amazon, Microsoft, etc). That must be too complicated for them--all this new-fangled computer stuff! So, they keep plodding along with the same old-school management (because it is comfortable) and they manage the team into a tragic decline. The management is as near-sided as they can be. It appears that don't care about winning games, just making $$ to hang on to their jobs. Rather than try to fix this mess that the Pohlad sons have made, they likely believe the estimates and are dreaming of splitting up $1.6 Billion three ways. Pathetic!