The Great Hambino

Wow, that is a rough stat

Is Julio Rodriguez bringing raising the roof back?

The embarrassment is why it would be a good idea! Also, the quality of the 3 seed can swing so wildly - sometimes they're essentially equal to the 2 seed, sometimes they're significantly worse than the 5 seed - because the worst division winner sometimes stinks. But I'd be perfectly fine with simple re-seeding. Or determining second-round matchups by record. Anything other than the status quo of the top seed getting an opponent with a record 7 games better than the 2 seed's opponent.

Pretty fair list, I'd say If I had a quibble I'd flip the Nats and Twins. I think the farm system ranking discrepancy isn't as great as it appears on paper since Washington's best prospects have been ones to recently lose prospect status while the Twins' best ones will be (hopefully) losing that status in the near future. Between that and the implied security that working with a brand new GM brings (relative to the hot seat Falvey should be on) I think tips the scales toward Washington

Very interesting stuff. Have other MLB pitchers used botox to treat this? How did things turn out for them?

No follow-up on that in the article. The author was more interested in Joe playing Goldeneye on N64 and starring in Breck's production of "West Side Story" The overall goal of it seemed to be to paint him as not your typical spoiled billionaire heir - that he's humble and worked for the position he has. Which is a little strange, considering it also describes him as "adrift and unemployed" after a few jobs didn't work out coming out of college and includes passages like: "For a spell he led the Twins' flagship radio station; the family later sold that media company at a steep loss." So he's a nice enough guy and seems well-liked by his friends, but would more likely be managing a Gamestop than running a billion-dollar company if his last name wasn't Pohlad

Now that the divisional round is set, once again we see the top-seeded Blue Jays dealt a more difficult opponent than the 2 seed. Should there be re-seeding after the Wild Card round? I can't think of a good reason why not. All the teams are on the same schedule and there's at least one built-in off day to handle logistics. There doesn't seem to be a problem staging a Wild Card round with one built-in off day and even more potential matchup permutations leading up to it. Personally, I think the top seed should get to choose their opponent. Could be done right after the conclusion of the final series. That could be pretty juicy. But even simple re-seeding just makes too much sense to me

How can someone with a marketing background have such a hard time delivering a coherent message to his customers? To lack even a basic understanding of what they think and what they want? The comments about 2023's excitement coming from a team with baseball's 11th-best record should illustrate that the bar really isn't that high. It doesn't take that much to make us happy. This shouldn't be that difficult.

Yet another expense that would typically be added back for business valuation purposes

A nil-nil draw would be quite the proper gift for the London crowd

You know what's a good sac bunt? The kind you beat out for a hit. Well done, Parker Meadows

Absolutely, the timing of the right-sizing needs to be considered when determining what kind of payroll they're really functionally working with. The 2025 opening day payroll was $142MM, or 18th highest in the league. But since $58MM of that was being spent on two players, they were also functionally working with a payroll of $84MM on all but two players. Compare that to the Guardians, for example. Their opening day payroll $100MM, but removing their two top salaries puts them at $69MM, which really shrinks the perceived gap between the available resources between the two teams. (Ironically, one of those top-two contracts was Carlos Santana, who signed with Cleveland in part because the Twins couldn't afford to keep him). Doing the same adjustment with the Tigers and Royals puts the Twins below them in terms of bottom-24 spending. That kind of lopsided payroll is incredibly irresponsible considering the Pohlads greenlit that long-term spending, reversed course months later (effectively drastically reducing their future flexibility and ability to pivot), and showed enough approval of Falvey's performance to grant him more power since then. You can certainly question the wisdom of many of Falvey's decisions, but I can't put the blame for the lopsidedness of the payroll on him.

As a shady accountant myself, I can think of a few ways to make this plausible (at least on paper, on a non-GAAP basis): - Expensing instead of capitalizing all your capital improvements, like the 2022-23 Target Field makeover). This would create big losses that year that could be used to claim average losses of whatever per year over whatever time frame suits their argument - Paying exorbitant management fees to a related party. Are there any other Pohlad companies that needed cash infusions over the last few years? Also allows them to tell the technical truth but functional lie that they don't take any money out of the business for themselves (read: an equity distribution) even though a management fee to yourself (which reduces income) and an equity distribution (which doesn't reduce income) are functionally the exact same thing. - Paying exorbitant executive compensation (this one should be self-explanatory) to people with a name that rhymes with "Schmolad" - Funding all of the above by racking up debt at Twins Baseball LLC. It's a slimy way of borrowing against the Twins to fund other enterprises without borrowing against the Twins to fund other enterprises They can technically do all this. The SEC doesn't care since they're not publicly traded. The IRS doesn't care since the management fees/executive comp are income-neutral activities (the Twins are a partnership and any deduction by the Twins is picked up as income somewhere else by the Pohlads). Their lenders aren't really gonna care since they know the MLB isn't going to allow a franchise to go belly up (it's guaranteed, even if not explicitly), plus the fact that they're likely showing their lenders GAAP-compliant financials that show a better, more honest financial picture of the franchise. The best part? All of the above would be added back to income as normalizing adjustments when earnings are being used to place a valuation on the business for, say, the purchase of said business (this is why MLB doesn't really care, even if you could argue that they probably should) So they can claim poverty when justifying spending cuts while enriching themselves and still maintaining the highest franchise valuation possible. All while being able to tell whatever tale suits them without technically lying. Dishonest truth-telling, brought to you by the magic of accounting

That's a pretty solid ranking. I see them in tiers like this: Braves Orioles/Rangers/Giants Nationals/Twins/Angels And then there's the Rockies: the abysmal organization that really has no business being that abysmal. They get much better attendance than they have any right to get, and ownership, for all its faults, is at least willing to spend. Their run of ineptitude was recently laid out in The Athletic: entirely insular, loyalty trumping talent, a strange aversion to trades, nearly a decade of drafting in the top 10 without anything to show for it, an analytics infrastructure about 20 years behind the times (for all you anti-analytics folks, this should be your favorite team). But it also was filled with quotes and comments from rival executives about the untapped potential of the market as well as the possible ways the unique environment of Coors Field could be leveraged to establish "the greatest home-field advantage in professional sports," according to one exec. This whole article sprung from their GM stepping down and the owner's son/executive VP (sound familiar?) stating that they're opening the search outside of the organization for "fresh ideas." Depending on who ends up in that seat, this job could rocket up the rankings in terms of attractiveness. Or it could be more of the status quo and remain in a tier of its own miles below the Nationals/Twins/Angels. It could be pretty interesting to see how this all plays out.

Agreed. Spending top dollar on the bullpen - a position group that seems to be the least reliable year to year in the FA market - given all the other needs of this team would be an incredibly inefficient use of limited resources. The bullpen that was nuked at the deadline took multiple years to build. Duran didn't become a closer overnight. Jax and Varland took a lot of trial and error before they settled in to what they became. Thinking that Festa or Abel or Prielipp can show up and be reliable high leverage options immediately is nonsensical - and that's what it would take to have a competitive bullpen next year. They are truly starting from scratch - Sands and Funderburk should be at best secondary options in a good bullpen, not the cornerstones they'll have to be. I hope their precious little tank was worth the marginal improvement in odds in the biggest crapshoot in all of professional sports drafts, because it damaged the bullpen to the point that rebuilding it within the remaining time they have with Ryan and Lopez is a bit of a longshot, especially if significant time is missed in 2027. And that's just the bullpen. This tank provided nothing in the way of meaningful immediate help to the lineup, which is relying heavily on historically inconsistent players like Lee and Lewis and Wallner suddenly figuring it out and staying that way, as well as guys like Jenkins and Culpepper being reliable contributors while having nothing more than a cup of coffee at best past AA. Expecting it all to click into place immediately, or at least early enough in the season to make a difference (games in April count in the standings just as much as games in August, after all), just isn't realistic.

I don't think anyone knows what the owners are going to do because I'm not sure if the owners know what the owners are going to do. Nothing they have done over the past two years has shown any indication of an actual cohesive plan. Would they be in a position to run a billion dollar operation if their last name wasn't Pohlad? I have my doubts

I can't imagine why anyone would think the playoffs are too watered down

Every NL 6 seed (all, uh, three of them) has won at least two playoff series under this format. I think that streak comes to an end here

This was a 110 loss team post-deadline. They are not a decent bullpen (which apparently you can just rebuild on the fly by throwing a couple coins in a fountain - they're completely starting from scratch here) and a single position player away from contending. Unless you're counting on winning a dozen coin flips in player development and assuming unproven starters can transition immediately to high-leverage bullpen roles without a transition period, contention in 2026 is a pipe dream. And with all the Falvey word salad we've been forced to ingest over the last year, this passage: "Those guys [López and Ryan] are part of it, right? So that's my vision, that's my hope. That's my expectation as we sit here. It still requires some ongoing conversations with ownership and what that looks like. And ultimately, my hope is that we could build around that group. That would be my hope.” reads to me like Falvey providing cover for himself when they're inevitably sent off to the highest bidder. "I wanted to keep them but I just didn't have the budget. It's not my fault!" That combined with Rod and Todd Pohlad talking about "short-term pain" and "investing when the time is right" have me completely convinced that this is going to get worse before it gets better.

This Ohtani guy might have a future in baseball

There's no way they fired him for the team's performance over the last two months, so the decision to let him go must've been made at the trade deadline. The pivot on the sale happened after the trade deadline. Ergo, the pivot did not affect Rocco's job status

Maybe if I was blazin’

Skubal was on fire. Coulda maybe had a shot at a complete game shutout if he could cleanly field a ground ball

Not to mention the high profile whiff Provus had when he assured us that blackouts were a thing of the past in the 2023-24 offseason

I'd be shocked if Bochy ended up anywhere other than San Francisco