The Great Hambino

These are really starting to blur the lines between satire and reality.

Certainly starting to look like "none of the above" is the likeliest closer. This bullpen screams closer by committee The plan must be to keep it all together with smoke and mirrors and bubble gum and duct tape in the first part of the year and hope a converted starter or two with upside can transition to high leverage roles by the end of the year. That's not a good plan if you're truly expecting to compete

I might be in the minority on this, but I like having a red home alternate option. Balances out the blue road alternate in the Rain Man part of my brain, plus I thought the red ones with the TC logo over the heart looked pretty good a few years ago. The M hats should be exiled to wherever they decided to stash Joe P, whether that's the offices of another business they want to run into the ground, some remote Caribbean island, or a utility closet at Breck. Those hats stink and they should be using the TC - which is unique, iconic, and good - full time. The cream Twin Cities alternates are great

You're not wrong. But changes to revenue sharing without an effective salary floor are also pointless. Otherwise you're just taking money from teams willing to spend and giving it to those that aren't wiling to spend with nothing keeping them from simply pocketing it. Can't imagine why the union would be opposed to that. They're all needed in tandem to achieve the desired effect.

It's also just an unsubstantiated claim made by the owner. We don't know what was actually offered, if anything. Just his claim that "we totally thought we had a 20% chance". Well I think there's an 87.625% chance he pulled that number out of thin air. There are no silver medals in free agent acquisition. If you're actually serious about getting him, you immediately pivot to your next option if it doesn't work out. It was Feb 4 when Valdez's signing was first reported. I'm sure they're TOTALLY IN ON plan B

It's because they're not trying to increase their endurance. They're trying to increase their velocity. They've decided that they're better off having starters go shorter but harder, then handing it off to a platoon of relievers that also are throwing harder and harder. Sort of how even the world record holder in the 400 meter dash couldn't hold a candle to a mediocre 4x100 relay. It's not as romantic or as aesthetically pleasing as seeing a Bob Gibson go the full 9 every time out, but it's coldly more effective against lineups where just about everyone is a legitimate threat to go deep. Bob and his friends didn't have to face that in their day. And if they came up today, they'd be throwing shorter and harder too. And before someone goes "BUT BUT MADDUX!!!", we're talking about someone with perhaps the greatest command of his pitches of all time. Unicorns don't disprove general trends. To me, it's the logical endpoint of the race against batters to neutralize each other's power. Players throw harder, swing harder, hit more homers, and strike out more often as a result. I do wonder if this cultural shift is a byproduct of the steroid era. Today's MLB pitchers were just starting their youth careers in the aftermath of that time period, and I wonder if the all-encompassing quest for velocity had permeated all levels of baseball instruction by then. Secondarily, I've gotta believe that these lab-designed breaking pitches (which are also incredibly effective) aren't necessarily the best things for elbow ligaments. But pretty much everyone has them now, so it's just next man up if someone goes down. What's the solution? The best I can come up with is reducing the size of pitching rosters (with fewer available relievers, starters would have to pace themselves as a necessity), but that could just as easily create more problems than it solves. It's also treating a symptom, not the disease. I don't know how that genie gets back into that bottle.

The union doesn't want to be broken by the owners, so they're proactively breaking themselves Bold strategy, Cotton

The Red Sox need starting pitching. They gave up real prospect capital for damaged goods with a FIP on the wrong side of 4.50 in Johan Oviedo while letting Giolito walk. Maybe that should tell us something

If I'm the Twins, I'd be interested in Littell only with the understanding that a spot in the rotation isn''t guaranteed. He could end up there through injuries/inefectiveness/a late-offseason trade of Ryan/Lopez/Ober, but his planned role would be that of swingman/long relief. If I'm Littell, I'm telling the Twins to pound sand and holding out for a rotation opportunity that will surely materialize elsewhere as spring training unfolds and injuries inevitably mount up somewhere. I don't know if they're allowed to bring in Giolito in a similar role since he hasn't pitched for the Twins before

I am The Great Hambino, and I approve this message! What's the worst that could happen, anyway?

If everything is elite, then nothing is elite Take note, PJ

I really think if they'd just let athletes get endorsements instead of digging their heels in against what was clearly a losing cause in the NCAA v Alston case, a lot of this would have been avoided. I mean, do you know how off you need to be to lose 9-0 in the Supreme Court these days? That opened up the floodgates. Now they can't enforce any of their rules because they don't hold up in court since the revenue-producing athletes are being recognized as employees by any reasonable interpretation of employment law. This will continue until they either start recognizing them as employees (it is technically a form of student work, after all) or they get an antitrust exemption from Congress

Exactly. It's not about the level of spend, it's asset allocation and roster construction. It's about understanding that dollars spent at an area of surplus - whether it's $2MM or $4MM or $10MM - are dollars not spent at an area of need. They need bullpen pieces or more than they need another mediocre left-handed corner outfielder that is best off being DH'd. And they had the easiest off-ramp for Larnach this season relative to their other similar pieces. He's also a symptom of their delusional belief that they are a competitive team and their misguided refusal to finish the rebuild that they started as they risk of the withering away of the trade value of their remaining valuable pieces that won't be here when they have a real chance to be competitive again.

I liked him when he was The Most Interesting Man In The World for Dos Equis

A team could definitely win a Super Bowl with Derek Carr as their backup QB Or maybe he's just long-windedly saying that he's not coming out of retirement

40% of the time that 4th day will land on a Lopez or Ryan start, so you're losing any benefits you're theoretically getting on those days. It's theoretically possible if you were to pair two guys together and tell them "the first eight innings are yours come hell or high water" and that was your fifth spot in the rotation, and you were committed to letting your top guys and others who are on a heater pitch deeper into games. But that falls apart in practice because that's not a reasonable expectation. It would be different if they were in evaluation mode like at the end of last year and you can live with the downsides in order to gain more experience/information, but they're in competition mode. So, yeah. Unworkable

I'd rather pinch hit with Bell/Caratini/whomever else is available off the bench and bring Rodman in for defense and use Larnach's salary on the bullpen or maybe towards better middle infield depth. I realize Bell and Caratini weren't on the roster at the time he was signed, but surely they knew they'd be bringing in someone who could hit righties given the $14MM they spent on those two. Walking from Larnach would've been one of the easiest ways to rebalance the roster given their constraints. I was in favor of tendering Larnach because I thought he could be moved for a reliever. And maybe he still can. I also don't think they're legitimately competitive, so an alternate answer is "I don't really care, stop wasting our time/your trade resources and get on with the rebuild." But that ship has sailed

Is it assumed that Larnach and Wallner are the starting COFs? I don't know if it's ideal to have them both in the outfield at the same time. That leaves a lot for Buxton to cover, and it's not platinum-glove Buxton out there anymore. I could see Martin and Roden/Outman (Rodman?) taking care of LF the majority of the time early in the season. Bell can play 1B if you want both Larnach and Wallner in the lineup at the same time (the one not in right takes DH), since I assume that means they're facing a righty I wonder if Zoll would take a mulligan on tendering an offer to Larnach at this point if given the chance. I thought he'd have been traded by now if there had been any interest in giving up a competent reliever for him at his arb salary

After all the Yakety Sax plays Twins pitchers made trying and failing to throw the ball to first base in the early portion of last year, pitchers fielding their position doesn't sound like a bad area to focus on in day one of camp

Now that we see why he was released, and given Tommy P's insistence that improved vibes will lead to 10 more wins on its own, I think he needs to be signed immediately

Fair enough. That was a good call then

I completely forgot about Topa, he obviously takes one of my NRI slots Where am I off on Banda? Some are reflexively panning the move out of habit, while bunsen is ready to throw himself a victory parade. I feel like I'm pretty lukewarm on him

Clearly a good value, but at first glance it seems like an odd profile in that in comparing his 2023 2022 to his 2025, he cut his ERA in half (6.75 to 3.18) while his FIP actually got worse (4.50 to 4.52). It does look like he did well in his limited high-leverage opportunities. Hopefully can sustain that because he's probably the #1 high-leverage option now So now Banda, Sands, Rogers, Funderburk, Orze are probably veteran locks, which would leave three spots to be filled by failed starter prospects and non-roster camp invites. Will it be 1 and 2 or 2 and 1? My guess right now assuming full health (LOL) would be Festa, Altavilla, and Hendriks. Maybe one of Adams/Klein/Morris take one/both of the NRI slots. I'd prefer Raya show some degree of competence at AAA before getting a shot in the bigs, even if they've already decided to transfer him to relief EDIT: 2022, not 2023. In my defense, his BBRef page is a mess

It would be kinda strange to put someone that's not even on the 40-man at the top of the depth chart, wouldn't it?

It's worth noting that, based on things I've heard multiple times but can't seem to find in print, attendance reactions to team performance generally operate on a one-year lag - apparently, most tickets are sold before the season begins. That's why they set their attendance record in 1988 and not in 1987. So where were those one-year-lag bounces recently? In 2020, they got COVID-ed, while in 2024, they right-sized themselves out of that bounce. Tom basically admits it with this quote from this very article: I think it's safe to blame ownership when ownership blames ownership