mluebker

Unless they can find a catcher as good as Jeffers for less money, they’d be fools not to try to sign him for three years. Anything else is going to be a downgrade.

I don’t understand the resistance to trying Keaschall at first. It keeps his bat in the lineup and his experience trying to play second at least gives him some experience on that side of the infield and alleviates the concern about his arm in an already crowded outfield. Spend whatever money Tom Pohlad is willing to spend on keeping Jeffers (or finding a solid replacement) and upgrading the bullpen. Then start focusing on player development and figure out why so many supposed future stars turn out to be mediocre when they finally reach MLB.

Unless there’s a better catcher available for less money (and if there is, I don’t know who it is), I’ve gotta hope he accepts. You don’t build winning teams by downgrading, then hoping to get lucky.

I love the “defense matters” talk here. I just hope someone in the Twins front office is listening.

“We know he can do it, we just don’t know why he can’t do it consistently,” mixed with frequent injuries seems to be a recurring theme with the Twins. Makes me wonder whether their approach to conditioning is what it ought to be.

Of course you’re right. But I chose the most extreme example I could think of to highlight how absurd today’s standard operating procedure seems to me. As for Culpepper and Houston, either way works for me, depending on who looks best where. I just hope the Twins don’t screw either of them up by trying to turn them into anything other than the middle infielders they appear to be and that the team will need.

Or a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball. I wonder how many solid, all-around ballplayers never make it in MLB because today’s mindset tries to turn what made them look good in college into one dimensional power hitters or power pitchers. Seems like there’s little room for anything else these days. If Rod Carew and Jim Kaat were on their way up now, I have to wonder whether either of them would ever make the Twins’ roster.

Well, my comments weren’t about that. Sometimes you add value by subtracting. If you’ve dangled these same guys out there before and didn’t get any bites, it’s probably time to cut bait and just turn them loose. Maybe they do better somewhere else, maybe they think about career changes. But I’m tired of the Twins carrying a roster of guys who can field, but not hit, hit but not field, or just struggle to do either consistently. YMMV.

I think it’s more like the comments are suggesting the Twins stop moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic and climb onto a different boat. They’ve tried Lewis everywhere but pitcher and catcher, and his biggest accomplishment in 2026 has been hitting almost as well as Kody Clemens. If he could field as well as Clemens, maybe they could get a prospect for him in a straight-up trade.

We’ll see. People were saying the same thing about Lewis a couple of years back. Not that moving him there turned out as they hoped.

This is the first thing Pohlad should do to demonstrate he’s serious about loosening up the purse strings and putting a serious team out there. Then unless Buxton is willing to move into the role, he can sign Bell as the everyday DH and clear out all the wannabe outfielders whose only roles seem to be taking up bench space while waiting to get at bats.

Keaschall at first. If he’s going to have to learn a position to keep his bat in the lineup, it might as well be there. And I don’t buy the whole “a first baseman must be a power hitter” line of thinking. He’s a solid hitter who creates excitement on the basepaths, two things Lewis has demonstrated he isn’t. As for Lewis’s hypothetical upside, how many years are we going to talk about that before acknowledging that he’s showed us who he is already? If they can’t trade him, DFA him and let both him and the Twins move on.

He’s become Kody Clemens Lite, but without the defensive chops and versatility. Time to do him and the fans a favor by sending him elsewhere and hoping the change of scenery allows him to thrive.

Huh. Sounds like some kind of hipster or beatnik lingo to me.

As an “older guy,” how can I resist an appeal like that? First, if you’re a small market team like the Twins, charging more and more for tickets when you’re fielding a mediocre product doesn’t sound like a great strategy for filling the seats. A couple of sources say 2026 was the lowest average crowd size (excluding during COVID) this century, that on average they sold and distributed just 56% of available seats. So I don’t think the problem is the fans, I think it’s the product. Second, baseball used to be the working man’s game. When you price him and his family out of the stadium, you’re basically telling your (traditionally) most loyal fans they aren’t welcome anymore. Maybe on game days they need to put all unsold tickets on sale for five bucks each and try to fill the seats, instead of having nearly half the stadium empty at game time. Will the people who paid full price for seats in the same section be ticked off? Sure, just like the people who couldn’t afford to pay full price are ticked off when they find themselves priced out of an afternoon or evening at the ballpark. You pick who you feel sorry for. Third, they’re trying to sell “the stadium experience” harder than they’re trying to sell watching the team. The stadium experience isn’t a reason to be out there in the stands regularly. It’s a one-off. When your friends ask if you’ve been to Target Field, you can say yes whether it was once or dozens of times. If you’re a fan and care about the pennant race, want to see how Kalen Culpepper looks at short, or you just enjoy sitting in the sun and keeping score, you aren’t coming out to evaluate the ballpark, you’re coming out to watch the team that plays in it. I spent my younger years going to Met Stadium with my dad, the Metrodome with my friends, and Memorial Stadium in Baltimore with my future wife. We’d go on a whim—“Let’s see the game tonight,” and show up at the box office to buy whatever tickets we could get. This generation of fans, unless they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, isn’t going to know what that’s like, and nobody who could do anything about it seems to think that’s a problem.