JADBP

It's not that hard...just keep coming up to the plate with no runners on and he will not run up the RBI score no matter how many HRs he hits (no one is going to hit 100 HRs). That's most likely a result of 4 things: 1) other batters are not doing their job getting on base in front of Wallner, 2) bad coaching with an emphasis on HR's not getting on base, and 3) bad lineup construction and 4) Wallner swinging for the fences rather than taking an RBI-producing single. Wallner has no ability to affect whether or not he comes up with runners on base. One more thing....yanking him every time a LH pitcher comes into the game is just plain idiotic! I am hoping the new coach helps him learn to hit lefties instead of yanking him in the 4th inning!

Sano Adjusted??? I agree 1000% what you are getting at here (just not the Sano part). The problem is that Falvey and maybe the players know that HR's put butts in seats and money in pockets. So, for a guy like Wallner, with all that power at hand, he's gonna try to maximize his contracts by hitting a lot of dingers. Smart players (e.g., Buxton, Correa) will take HRs when the pitch allows, but knows that getting on base (rather than K) is the real goal. I heard Falvey some years back say something along the lines of how great it would be to hit all these HRs. I think he might have been spoiled by the Bomba squad and has been trying to replicate that since. It is a failed approach but not sure the organization has figured that out yet. If this were my team, I'd make Wallner the full time DH and bring up either Jenkins or ERod or whoever is most ready. There is going to be a lot of learning going on next year....rip off the band-aid and get these players into MLB!

A. Maybe, maybe not. I’d say Ryan is close to a top 10-20 SP, still fairly young, and has been robust—never lost a year to TJ. So you know you are getting a rock solid MLB SP pretty much fully formed. On the other hand, while McLean is in AAA you just never know with any P (other than maybe Skenes). There is always some risk with SPs. Maybe there’s a higher upside than McLean, but maybe not—who knows? McLean is not quite ready for prime time where Ryan is ready for the playoffs now. And I’d expect Ryan still has a little more room to improve even further. B. I like Lee a lot but yeah he’s not our long term answer at SS. But the Twins are not competitive at all, they are in total rebuild mode. They have some options coming up at SS so I wouldn’t trade for a SS yet. The bigger need is at 1B and C. We are rebuilding so do trades that support our needs. SP, RP, 1B and C. And whatever else we trade away this offseason. Forget winning next year. Focus on building, training, instruction, perfection.

Well....I'd much rather take Nolan McLean and Clifford. Why or why do we need another SS? Of CFer?

Hey, WTH? How can you ding Zoilo for a short but spectacular Twins tenure but not ding Carlos for his BRIEF contributions? Zoilo outclassed Carlos by 100%!

The Twins will definitely NOT sign Hoskins. Not because of injuries. Not because of the price. No. The reason why Hoskins won’t sign here is because he’s not stupid. He looks at the Twins and sees a big sign above door #34 that reads “Home of a Major S#%& Show.” Who the heck would sign with the Twins other than AAAA losers hoping to catch a break.

But Kepler was a far better defender…..

Sooo many comments here saying the same thing: trade him if we get good value otherwise he becomes DH. It’s a good plan. But that’s not all we need to do. We need better coaching. He’s got holes in his hitting. He likely needs to refine his swing mechanics, pitch recognition, workout routine and daily game prep. All things his MLB coaches need to help him with. So maybe the Twins have failed Wallner more than Wallner has failed the Twins? Yup, Wallner’s 2025 sucked. But I say our inability to properly coach, train, instruct and use him is the reason why. A couple of examples: not starting him against LH pitching, or subbing him out on the 4th inning when the oppo mgr brings in a LH reliever. If I were Wallner when that happened, I’d be 1. Super angry, 2. Embarrassed, 3. Hurt, and 4, even more super pissed off when I told Rocco “How the F do you expect me to learn if I never get a chance to try????

Kepler???

Well, they did have a pretty big sign in RF saying "END RACISM" So, Pohlads, put your money where your mouth is!

You know...a big problem here in Twins country is not that we are missing a 1Bman or another C...it is the player management by the front office. We draft shortstops and CF'ers because they are uber athletes at SS or CF with the rationale that if they are great at SS, then they can easily transfer that athleticism to another position. That's a fine draft strategy IF you ever do move one of these guys off SS BEFORE he gets to the biggs! The Twins approach is to play all of these SS's at SS "until they can't," Then they will take this talented IFer and train him at another position...but that only ever happens AFTER he has made it to the biggs and is blocked by another fine SS! So, we end up almost never drafting and training a guy for 1B, 2B, 3B or C. We just always assume that it is easy to take a guy who has played nothing but SS in MiLB for 2-3-4 years and just jam him into 2B. Whoops...how well did that work out? We got realty luck with Keashall....but look at this endless line of SS's that we have drafted!?!?! WTH?? If you say there are no good 1Bmen to draft, or 3Bmen to draft, then look more closely....because you would be wrong. The Twins unfortunately picked Cavaco over Bryson Stott (the next pick)--both SS's. But the Phillies quickly moved Stott to 2B in the minors and he has turned out to be pretty good at the position. No such luck for Lee, Lewis, and others (is Culpepper next?). I don't have a problem of drafting talented SS's because they are highly skilled athletes, but if you plan to move them, then you MUST give them the training for other positions starting in the low minors. Otherwise you end up with a mess like Lewis at 2B. You can't train him for years at SS and then suddenly say "OOPS, we're gonna move you to 2B or RF or 3B" as soon as he hits MLB! That's just downright inane.

I agree with you PatPfund, but the mostly on your 2nd point. The Twins COLLAPSED after the trade deadline. They had an up and down year before the AS break or trade deadline, but the evening the Twins players watched Falvey go freeking bezerk at the trade deadline was too much. They simply gave up. I can imagine that the trade deadline madness felt like a sharp slap across the face. Some players expressed this in the following days. I'd imagine that the [particularly position] players felt like management was saying "We don't trust you, we don't believe in you, we don't want you, etc." It was obvious that every hitter on the team simply stopped trying to excel...just mailing it in to get through the rest of the season. You could see it in their sloppy swings. Every batting stat took a dive August. Now, you can blame that on the players or the coaches or management or the weather or whatever. I am sure it is a combination of all of the above. But the reality is that management chose to go in a different direction and I am sure that many of the position players mentioned in are not in the long term Twins plans, and they have earned it. This is a game of continuous/regular training, instruction, adaption, and improvement. This was Rocco's job and he failed. Sure, he has coaches do much of the work but he was responsible. We all know that opposing pitching staffs study the data and films of, say, Lee and Lewis, to find and exploit the holes in their batting approach. It is up to the coaching staff to continuously evaluate the same data/films to upgrade their hitting to close the holes. We just never seemed to figure this out. The sad result is that, once opposing pitchers adapted to, say Julien and Miranda, and they never adapted to close those holes, they just got worse and worse at the plate until all confidence was destroyed. Sadly, it ruined their career. It could have been different if the Twins coaching did their job helping these players adapt and improve. Now, we have a team largely filled with weak hitters and some promises in MiLB.

Royce can be a spunky player, and when things are going well, it looks great. But, when things are going poorly, then it looks and sounds bad. Give him a break. His enthusiasm and energy are great assets. He has great baseball talent and skill, but opposing pitchers have adapted to him and he has struggled to adapt to them. I agree, he needs significant MLB training, at both fielding and hitting. His natural position was always SS and SHAME ON Rocco for jamming him onto 2B without months or years of training. Each infield position requires unique fielding skills. Fielding at 1B is different than 2B, which is equally different from SS and then 3B. The positioning, the footwork, the hands, the double plays, the reactions, the instincts, bunts, pop-ups, communication, quickness, commands, catching, ball-handling, throwing, steals, pick-offs, tags, backups, etc. etc. etc......they are very different for every position (this highlights the INANITY of Rocco's insistence on fielders playing several positions). Rocco played Royce at 2B, 3B, SS and CF. How much instruction did he receive at each position other than SS? I can only imagine Royce at 2B feeling totally lost as he was shoved into the position in late 2024. He played a total of 4 games in AZ Fall League at 2B and he "worked out" at 2B in 2022. That's hardly enough to learn a new position at the MLB level. And, hitting: Like all newbies, when he first came up, opposing pitchers threw him a number of pitches to explore is reactions to various pitch types. Once they found the "holes" in his hitting, they focused on this weaknesses. This is a tricky time for every newbie. It takes a combination of analysis, instruction, batting practice and coaching to close up these holes. We do the same thing--the famous data-driven approach for OUR pitchers. But the Twins seem to be horrible at using the data on their own players to fine tune their performance. Royce is a perfect example (same with Miranda, Lee, Julien, and others that we gave up on like Ortiz and Rooker), Again, shame on the Twins coaching staff. I have heard from several posters that Rocco was long opposed to daily batting practice. WTF? Royce will be a very fine baseball player, at any position, with the right instruction and coaching. Hopefully he can get there now!

Love that song!!!!

This is a really bad idea. Sorry but pitting the players against each other will not be pretty. You and the players walking onto the field proud, strong, willing to compete their hearts out because they are part of a proud strong team. You don’t want them walking onto the field thinking “I gotta outplay me teammate so I can get more money….” That’s just wrong. Build a TEAM, not a bunch of players guys fighting each other.

Actually I like the Bruce Willis quote from Diehard better: “Yippie-Kai-Yay, M***********!” I think that best verbalizes the Pohlad’s feelings towards the fans.

Lol. Too late . . . The sky has already fallen!

Holding individual players does not mean you have to be a “hard ass.” It means you you set expectations and give them all the training, coaching, and tools they need to succeed and then again doubling down on the support. When they fail you try again to insure they are living up to their talent level. If they don’t, you move on to the next person. It doesn’t mean a drill sergeant approach. Hopefully any new coach would plant a guy at 2B and say this is your home. Become the best possible 2Bman you can possibly be! Or SS or 1B or whatever. Instead of a team of 30 utility guys!!!!! That was inane! And hopefully a new coach would have BP every day!!!! Extra instruction for those that need it. Did you know that Kirby was the first in to the clubhouse every day and took more BP than anyone else in the team? I gonna go out on a limb and say it helped….

I too love Madden as a choice too but are you convinced he’d come out of retirement??? For the Twins??? He’s got the magic touch.

I have to say, Kurt has one really great thing going for him...he played for 2 years under Joe Madden at the LAA. Joe must have taught him something....anything. He's a born teacher. If Kurt tries to mold himself along the lines of Madden (instead of Mollie) he would be in very good company. Nothing against Mollie, but he was a far, far better player than manager. He also played under coach Bob Melvin, another catcher. So, just saying...yeah, no experience, but a good pedigree of teachers along the way.

The 2025 collapse is even worse when you consider that the same collapse happened just last year. This means that the team refused to learn the lessons of 2024. The team refuses to adapt. The game plan (and the team) was virtually identical. Failing over and over and over, tells us that the Twins management/coaches are intransigent, insular, and unable to learn from mistakes. Insanity. They think they are the smartest guys in the room,--with some secret superhero powers to overcome systemic failures. The Pohlad's are their enablers, having bought into this secret bullcrap. Until they deal with this, we are destined to repeat the losing seasons...we are going to be the next White Sox or Rockies. You can blame Falvey for this insanity, but you have to remember that the Pohlad's are the enablers. I certainly believe that Falvey's choices are constrained by the Twins small market budget. That's just as true for Milwaukee and Kansas City. There are plenty of successful ways to handle a small market budget...but Falvey has one focused plan in his head and refuses to deviate. His trades and Free Agent choices have been mostly failures. Most of his big-time acquisitions/trades have been horrific failures (Lynn, Hughes, Happ, Shoemaker, Wade, Donaldson, Rogers, Rooker, Rortvedt, Mahle, Correa, etc). Cruz was the one great move. These moves are crucial to small market teams. His draft picks have been good but there are some really super bad ones mixed in there...like Sabato, Noah Miller, Cavaco, etc. Overall, the plan on Falvey's part has failed far more often that it has worked. And, add in the inability to turn high draft picks into high performing MLBers, it's a recipe for sustained failure. Until Falvey can change, we are in for more failure, regardless of who the head coach is.

He would have a great career setting up beach chairs every morning at a Sandals Resort. Every day they.would be newly positioned in fun but confusing ways! Or he could be a customer service rep at the Best Buy help counter. He’d be perfect at dishing out total nonsensical, incredulous claims about the fantastic picture on the broken 65” Sony 128K TV that someone is trying to return. After listening to him, they are likely to just take the TV back home and stare at the blank screen. Rocco has a bright future! Just ask him!!!

Tell me… what’s so bad about a manager chewing out a player for screwing up on the fundamentals…like runn in ng the bases? Or spending some time with the troops hitting fungo’s once in a while???? maybe if Rocco looked up from his spreadsheets for a few minutes and actually got out there with the players, and held them accountable, he might still have a job??? I realize this is a big organization with lots of moving parts. But management books abound with CEOs who would walk the production line and visit with the workers. Not every day, but that presence is huge. Rocco was just not present. How many times I saw a shot of the dugout and the players are never talking with him. Maybe Buxton or Correa but it just seemed like the culture was don’t talk to me unless I call your name. Just disrespectful! Please find a manager who is present, who respects and teaches every player from the rookie to the vet. And that respect includes calling out a player now and then, in whatever way helps them learn, grow, excel, and be the best MLB player they can possibly be and the best man that can be.

Yeah. Like TRY NOT TO SUCK! I take a slightly more uplifting approach which is to live up to your god-given talents, but Joe is saying the same thing and holding them accountable at the same time. Wallner, you are far more talented than you play. Try not to suck! Royce, you were a 1-1 because you have so damn much talent. Try not to suck! Lee, come on, Try not to suck! Miranda, what happened? Try not to suck! etc…

And also get input from TK about coaches that will teach fundamentals and hood players accountable. Rocco was horrible inept at both. BYW, I don’t buy the excuse that all of Rocco’s sub-coaches are supposed to do these jobs while Rocco sets the path, the tone, the culture. That’s pure BS. Rocco is still responsible for the job getting done. He’s still accountable for how his coaches failed him, the team, the fans and the owners. He’s not a scapegoat. He was in charge and failed miserably.