The Great Hambino

Yes it is. Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, front offices operate on a budget, and the potential ranges of that budget for where the Twins sit could result in very different ideal courses of action. If we're in the apparent position where the offseason has kicked off and ownership is still keeping the front office in the dark as to what that budget is, then it absolutely is an indictment of ownership. That's not absolving Falvey of blame. That's where falling in love with his own internal development comes in. If he passes up on trades that could help the team because he sees a potential competitive unit already in-house, that's on him. And it's certainly possible (probable?) that he actually does know the budget and is just doing his usual linguistic salsa dance when asked about it. But to say that ownership has no responsibility for the direction this team takes this season just isn't true

With all the debate about whether the Twins should be trying to get competitive and add during the remaining Ryan/Lopez years vs using one or both of them as trade chips to fully commit to a true rebuild, this points things toward the dreaded door #3: effectively standing pat with only minor FA moves to throw a bandaid on gaping wounds like bullpen and backup catcher. Don't get better for the future while giving yourself no chance to compete in the present. The worst of both worlds. The unholy marriage of a front office that thinks way too highly of its own ability to develop internally and an ownership that can't/won't give their front office a direction.

I wonder where the Vikings D ranks in EPA per play while playing zone. It's gotta be bottom 5

Tell me more about your verbal voice Tom Brady

That missed facemask was Darnold-esque

Viola for Tapani, Aguilera etc. arguably turned out to be helpful for the hometown franchise

Additional finishes: Keaschall was 9th for ROY and Ryan was DNF for Cy Young (no votes received)

GameDay is in Pittsburgh today. Pat McAfee brought up Paul Skenes and it immediately triggered a giant "SELL THE TEAM" chant from the crowd. I don't think Nutting is super popular among the locals

For me, not communicating to the fans on this is kinda annoying but ultimately understandable. There's nothing to be gained by tipping your hand to other teams or by delivering bad news to fans before you have to. And I really don't think they're in a position to withhold good news. My issue is the apparent lack of communication with their own front office. The offseason is here. The GM meetings are going on and 40 man decisions are due in days. If Falvey truly doesn't know the direction they're going in, then it's putting them behind the market for no good reason. Yet another avoidable rake stepped on by this ownership group. It could be that Falvey knows but isn't willing/able to divulge the info yet. But again, they're not in a position to withhold good news from a fanbase desperate for anything resembling optimism. Either way, it looks to me like the forecast is grim

Any word on where Keaschall's arm recovery sits at this point in time. Because if it doesn't look great for the future, then I think he might be a better internal candidate to wind up at 1B over any of the current outfielders. I just can't get past the thought that if they thought Wallner and/or Larnach were good candidates to make that move, then they would've at least tried doing so already

The Curious Case of Matt Wallner makes me wish RBI were presented as a rate stat and not a counting stat. RBI opportunities are not distributed equally This is Wallner last year. 4 fewer RBI than average for his number of PAs ... but 41 fewer runners on base than average, including 28 fewer runners in scoring position than average. That's important context in trying to figure out why his RBI totals were lagging behind the rest of his statistical profile

I think I've found our disconnect. I've been following these developments way too closely for my own well-being, and at no point did I come across an article that claimed $500MM in losses. Everything I saw stated that as the debt balance on the books. If you saw articles claiming that number meant losses, then I can't dispute that. Although you should abandon those sources permanently as that's an absurd thing to put out there for a publication of any kind. So yes, I agree that there's no way the Twins could lose $500MM in three years. I'm just saying that's not what that number means. You get a thumbs up for quoting Ice-T

That's fair. Regarding the Pohlads caring/not caring, my read on the situation is that while most of the family doesn't care about the team (rumors out of Interlachen suggest this), Joe actually does. But he's just really incompetent. Wouldn't be the first time he ran a family business into the ground. I think Jim gave him some rope to run the team, then rapped him on the nose and forced him to pull back when he failed to see the writing on the wall and allowed that irresponsible budget in the face of their crumbling TV revenue. As a result, he's been under Jim's thumb ever since. After all, the Astros owner reached out to Jim - not Joe - to get the Correa deal done. Now Joe's trying to prove to the rest of the family that he's a Big Boy business man that can turn a profit. Cue the in-process course correction - maybe even overcorrection

I don't know how else to say this any more clearly: $500MM was the reported debt being carried on the books. It does not represent the sum of operating losses over the last few years. I have explained this in great detail several times over. If you're going to continue to choose to ignore this, then I don't think this needs to be discussed any further. I'm a CPA that works for a family office set up very similarly to the Pohlad companies (on a much much much MUCH much smaller scale, but still). This stuff is literally what I do for a living. Perhaps you should try a google search on the definition of debt.

Better question: why did the people in charge of the business side at that time - Pohlad and St Peter - allow them to add to payroll when they were facing the RSN model collapse? Falvey and Levine spent to the budget they were allowed by ownership and business ops. If that budget was irresponsible, then I can't put that on the baseball side of the operation. Correa's and Lopez's contracts don't happen without ownership approval. Diamond Sports Group was already in bankruptcy proceedings when those contracts were handed out. The business side can't claim they were blindsided by it. This is an instance where the business side failed the baseball side. Is it possible Falvey defied ownership in signing those contracts? Considering that Falvey was subsequently granted more power by ownership, I'm going to say that's highly unlikely. There's plenty of things that can be blamed on Falvey. The right-sizing mess isn't one of them for me.

They picked the wrong week to put so many of their precious pennies at risk. Do any Vegas casinos take rubles?

Supposedly one of the groups added some additional investors that required further league vetting But there's a nonzero chance that the Pohlads botched this deal and the limited partners no longer exist

Oh. No wonder the Bomba Squad flamed out in the playoffs

They still coulda, just needed to do some maneuvering with their second round pi - Oh. Nevermind. For real though, I liked Henderson a lot but they needed a guard. There's already been too much Skule and Rouse in our lives as is, and passing on Jackson would've meant even more of them. That would not have been ideal for Henderson or McCarthy or any of us

I think Falvey has a plan. I'm not sure I'd bet on it being a good plan, but I think he has a pretty good idea of what he'd do given various budgetary levels. Ownership, on the other hand ...

I don't know where this idea that $500MM in debt means they've lost $500MM all in the last 3 years comes from. Debt is not equivalent to operating losses. That is not what debt means. Look at this list of MLB franchise values and debt/value ratios. 28 teams carry some amount of debt on their books. That doesn't mean that 28 franchises lose money. The Dodgers are definitely not losing money and they have over $600MM of debt ($6.9B valuation with a 9% debt/value ratio) on the books according to this. (This list puts the Twins at $420MM for what it's worth.) The Twins certainly didn't start out with zero debt three years ago. If they were carrying a normal amount of debt pre-COVID, then took on some debt to keep cash flow going during COVID, then borrowed some more to renovate Target Field, and never paid down the principal since it was the cheapest debt they could get in the Pohlad Companies portfolio ... they're still probably not up to $500MM, but they're well on their way to it without accounting for any operating losses. The balance of that is likely other Pohlad Company debt, sure. But by no means all of it. You can have an operating profit and still carry debt. You can have operating losses that don't result in debt incurred. Capital expenditures, cash flow variances, equity contributions/distributions, even accounting method variances can cause debt to increase or decrease independent of operating income/loss. But for the sake of argument, let's say it's all Pohlad Companies debt. (It's not, but at least some of it likely is.) In practice, this would happen by the Twins taking out debt, then pulling cash out of the Twins and putting into some other company that needs it. By taking the limited partners investment, it wipes out the debt but doesn't change the fact that those other Pohlad Companies still need cash. To the Pohlads, the Twins are just another Pohlad company in the portfolio. So they still need to get cash from the Twins to their other companies, only now can't take on more debt. So they have to fund it with profits. The Pohlads can do whatever they want with their portion of the profits as long as the limited partners get their cut. But this means they have to turn more of a profit, and they have to do it immediately. And the quickest way to to that is cutting payroll and hoping for a new landscape post-CBA.

They've also never sold as aggressively at the trade deadline as they did this last year, including 3 high leverage bullpen options with multiple years of control. Have they ever traded anyone with more than 1 year plus the remainder of the season of control for prospects at a trade deadline? To clarify, this wouldn't include Berrios or Pressly and their 1 year of control beyond the season in which they were traded. They've also never agreed to pay someone $33MM to not play here while getting almost literally nothing in return. They've also never put the team on the market during Falvey's tenure. They've also never brought in limited partners to get out from under a mountain of debt. They're doing plenty of things they've never done before. They're already in uncharted territory. I don't think "they won't cuz they haven't" really holds up.

What if this is how we learn that he's been left-handed this entire time? Get ready for JJ to unleash hell!

I never claimed anything close to saying that they were $500M in the operating hole to create the debt. Capital improvements at Target Field are a not insignificant part of that number that doesn't factor into their operating income, and almost all teams carry some level of debt on their books. There's a level of debt that is responsible to carry on the books of a healthy business as it improves cash flow and accelerates investment. But they did exactly what you suggest in increasing their payroll over their usual levels with Correa, Donaldson, Lopez, etc and that did not translate into huge profits, if there were any profits at all. They tried it and it didn't work. Regarding the rest of their portfolio: if their other businesses are suffering to a degree that required leveraging the baseball team into the spot they're in (which I think is true to a certain degree), then this cash infusion the Twins received isn't solving those problems. It's a temporary patch, not a cure. Their commercial real estate portfolio is just as sickly as it was before the limited partners' capital infusion. Given that, they're not going to start pouring money into the baseball team just to have to turn around and leverage it to support their other businesses again, especially since it's not just their money anymore. And if the limited partners thought the Pohlads were going to continue to use the Twins as a piggybank to keep their other businesses afloat, they wouldn't be investing in the first place. You're right, the limited partners don't want to invest in their commercial real estate, but they might as well be if they're going to continue to use the Twins in this way. You can't separate the Twins franchise from the Pohlad's other businesses if they're still using one to prop up the other. So profitability is a must, and that is guaranteed by slashing payroll short term Think about this: if they really do intend to go right back to the payroll levels they've been at, then why are they being so coy about it? They need a PR win in the worst way, and I'm sure they can see how season ticket renewals are going (I can't imagine they're doing gangbusters right now). Per Gleeman, around 80% of ticket sales for the year take place before the season starts. They'd have no reason not to be out front with it, unless there's some uncertainty around limited partner approval, which would open up a whole new set of problems. Either way, I see no evidence beyond wishful thinking that the payroll will be anywhere near recent levels, at least in the short term. I hope I'm wrong because I want them to win.

Well, they've apparently been losing money while trying to be a continual competitor in the postseason already for the last half decade. If that was working, they wouldn't have brought in limited partners in the first place. It's possible these limited partners threw a bunch of money at them and said "keep doing what you're doing!" but I just don't think that's likely. Anything they're saving in debt service now potentially has to be paid out as a return on limited partner investments, so I don't see some massive cash influx coming in that way. Long term, there is certainly more upside to be a continual contender. But short term it is a risk. They could very easily lose money if things don't work out. Going Nutting on the operation guarantees a positive return. Putting myself in the shoes of a limited partner, I see the potential for a very big return in the form of appreciation in the value of my investment if the CBA and resulting media deals break favorably for small/mid market teams. Appreciating franchise value is the most attractive aspect to owning a sports franchise from an investment perspective. But that is also not a guarantee to materialize. So in the meantime, I want my guaranteed return now until the landscape potentially shifts in a couple years