The Great Hambino

I had to right-size my editorial department to cover the cost of today's 3-year-old birthday party

A nice rare (I assume) 2 non-hit RBI day for Buxton As in, 2 RBI that were generated without a hit. I'm aware that he's not hitless on the day

Outman ... if you can't get a bunt down ... what is it you do here?

I could see Larnach fetching a lotto ticket, sorta like the Kyle Farmer trade in reverse. He was likely to get nontendered and still got the Reds the #27 prospect from the Twins. Better than nothing

Given enough time, the White Sox will still ... uh, White Sock

Heh, that is pretty funny, good point Aside from all the aforementioned cons that nuking the traditional AL/NL alignment would bring, I think we've learned from the Wolves and Wild that being a central time zone team in the Western Conference is not a fun place to be. I'm not a fan of 8:30 starts for playoff home games, which they could be potentially looking at if they end up in the Western Conference. I know the proposal above doesn't put them there, but I have serious doubts that they'll put together an absolutely loaded division like the Yankees-Mets-Red Sox-Phillies would be without either major economic reform or some really stupid weighted playoff qualification rules

On the position player side, I don't think there's a single position other than CF that we can look at and say, "nope, no upgrade needed at all, we're definitely all set for the future." What we have are over a dozen ifs that, if most of them hit, then maybe they might have an outside shot at contention next year. IF Lee can maintain his recent run, IF Keaschall's arm isn't permanently ruined and he can stick at 2B, IF prospects like Jenkins and Culpepper can come up and produce immediately without the usual setbacks, IF Outman and Roden aren't a couple of lemons, IF Lewis can put it all together for more than three weeks at a time, IF catching depth can materialize from somewhere, etc. etc. And this is just the lineup. There's a whole lot of ifs needed to break your way to convert a pile of fringey starter prospects into a full rotation and bullpen in less than a season's time. Because that's what also needs to happen if they plan on contenting next year. So who should be getting targeted in trade? Any bats (well, maybe not LH hitting corner outfielders) that could be contributing at the major league level by the end of 2026. If you're relying on ifs to get by, then you need as many ifs as you can get your hands on. If they're not making painful 40-man decisions, then they don't have too many prospects. They are not making painful 40-man decisions at this time.

That was a mighty fine catch for Buck

Looks like Bradley still struggling to keep the fastball below eye level

I found 4 other seasons of 20/20 with no caught stealing - including Trevor Story this year. 30/30 with no CS would be unprecedented. This might not be fully accurate as I'm not sure how far back full caught stealing info goes on Baseball Reference

Thought experiment: How many future Twins HOFers are currently on the roster? There’s only two locks in Buxton and Keaschall*. If you put the over/under at 3.5, what would you take? *Kidding. Kind of

Fun game to see in person. It was nice to see the Twins pounce on an opponent’s mistake to bust the game open. Feels like we’ve been on the other ends of these too often

If you recall, there was no mechanism to make the bad actors actually spend their redistributions, so of course the players rejected it, They would have been profoundly stupid if they hadn’t I reject the premise completely that revenue parity can’t happen since the other three major leagues prove that it can. If the owners want a salary cap, then they’re delusional if they think they’re getting one without making some major concessions in those negotiations

I assume any salary floor would come hand in hand with increased revenue sharing. Players have resisted increased revenue sharing in the past because they had no reason to trust the owners to reinvest their revenue sharing funds into the roster. In fact, it's salary suppression because it takes funds from those willing to spend and gives it to those that aren't. If I'm the players, as long as you have a cap pegged to our acceptable % of revenue and a floor at our acceptable % of the cap, then share revenue however you please to make that happen. There would no longer be a reason to oppose it. I also assume a floor would come along with complete reform of the pre-free agency salary structure - higher minimums, fewer arb or pre-arb years, mechanisms to get rid of service time manipulation. In reality, I could see this end up settling on a soft cap. Both sides would be able to claim victory to some degree - the players fought off a hard cap, the owners won a cap of some kind. Hopefully, both sides recognize the damage that lost games would do to their impending TV rights negotiations in 2028

There is no team entering the season in the NFL knowing they have no chance to compete due to their revenue and payroll imbalance. There are teams that have no chance, but those reasons have nothing to do with their market size. One thing the players should think about: there already is a salary cap in place for about two-thirds of the league - they just call it a luxury tax threshold. And this is with no floor other than the sum of minimum salaries and the occasional empty threat of a grievance. Might be time to AGGRESSIVELY push for a floor. And I mean an actual floor like the NFL, not whatever pathetic non-offer offer the owners made that wouldn't have affected team behavior in any meaningful way

Oh, so this time they mean it, for realsies? Did he pinky swear? Cross his heart and hope to die?

"This was a move to get better on defense" - Jerry Jones It's starting to look really weird that Jerruh is in the hall of fame while Robert Kraft isn't

I'll give Lindsey this: he's not afraid to rip it into tight windows. He can really sling it, but the Bulls left at least a couple interceptions out there. He's gonna put up a stinker on occasion because of this, but he could be really good once he develops a more discerning eye for those windows and tightens up his timing

The Great 2025 Matt Wallner RBI Logic Puzzle Above are his RBI totals and his RBI opportunities relative to league average. His OPS+ is 122 - or 22% better than average. If his RBI production matched that proportionally, we'd expect him to have about 44 RBI - 36 * 122%. That looks bad. However, if we call RISP his RBI opportunities*, then he's only had 74 opportunities versus a league average of 95 - or 22% worse than average. Based on that, we'd expect him to have about 28 RBI - 36 * 78%. That looks good. If we expect him to have an RBI total in proportion to his OPS+ given his opportunities, I come up with 34 RBI - 28 * 122%. Which basically brings us right back to his actual RBI total. He really has been a human inkblot test this year. Whether you think he's coming up short of the run production a player of his caliber should be having, there's plenty of evidence of that. If you think he's being suppressed by lack of opportunity, there's evidence of that as well. Anyone can draw the conclusion they want from examining his season. He's an interesting case study of the kind of statistical profile you can have when traits are pushed to the extreme. From looking at his Savant profile, it seems like he could greatly improve that 1st-percentile whiff rate without sacrificing too much of his immense power traits by reducing that chase rate - 41st percentile leaves quite a bit of room for improvement. If he can do that, as the great Carl Weathers once said, "Baby, we got a stew goin" That potential alone makes him more valuable than Larnach, who is a puddle of meh pretty much across the board. Tack on age and cost, and it's no contest. Roden gets to be the puddle of meh next year while Larnach plies his trade elsewhere. *Before you say it - yes, I know this isn't really a fully accurate picture of his RBI opportunities. A true calculation would take the expected number of RBI from each plate appearance - say, 0.4 for runners on 2nd and 3rd and nobody out, 0.06 for bases empty, etc (these figures are just for illustration, I'm both unwilling and unable to figure or find the actuals right now), sum them up, then compare that to his actual RBI total to really know how well he's doing given his opportunities.

"Given Rutschman's going to get more expensive next season" I think that takes him off the board for the Twins. I think they're more likely to shed salary in trade next offseason than add. And even if they are trying to be competitive next year and are willing to add salary, they're not adding that much. Assuming everyone important is retained - including Jeffers - then those limited dollars are much better spent places like 1B and the bullpen than a position they already have covered, at least from a starting standpoint. The only way dealing Jeffers and acquiring Rutschmann makes sense would be if Rutschmann were cheaper than Jeffers. Projecting arbitration is sorta murky, but Rutschmann made $1MM more than Jeffers this year. I'd pass on Adley

They said it can easily be rebuilt. They didn't say it would be good

I wasn't fully paying attention, but did Denard just say a high pitch was the perfect pitch to steal on?

Way to go Fundy, rallying to get Springer after that blistering double from Gimenez

I can think of a few solutions, each equally likely to happen (read: not happening) 1. Ban sliders. Even crappy relievers have filthy stuff that's unlike anything hitters in the past have had to face. 2. Lower the cap on pitchers on a roster to 10. Pitchers would have to pace themselves more, velocity would decrease, breaking stuff wouldn't be quite as sharp 3. Move the mound back a couple feet. This one feels just wrong for reasons I can't fully articulate

If you don't trust the front office to get good value in trading Lopez and Ryan, how do you trust them to effectively retool on the fly to a degree that makes the team legitimately competitive while Lopez and Ryan are under contract?