Brock O. Lee

Is anyone as irritated as I am about the direction the McTaggart article takes? The Twins traded him back to the Astros only two weeks after the incident on the lake. He never wanted to leave Houston in the first place. It's all set up like playing for the Minnesota Twins is the real disaster, and nearly drowning is only an apt symbol for the ordeal.

I don't mind this trade in terms of value. But it's hard for this organization to add another AAAA player to its 40-man. This team is 80% MLB players who aren't quite good enough to be in the majors or prospects who aren't quite ready to be in the majors.

I think the point being made here is that not rebuilding has not worked. Each of the teams in the AL Central cannot be perennial greats because they don't have the finances to sustain it, so they have to ebb and flow and pool their talent for competitive windows separated by lean years. The Twins have certainly had lean years, arguably interrupted by competitive windows, but not obviously because of Falvey's strategy, but just because baseball is weird and sometimes you get lucky. The thing about the trade deadline deals that irked me is there I couldn't identify the year the team planned to rebound. With so many near-ready pitchers and AAAA outfielders in the mix, it would seem to be 2026, but then you can't field a competitive team with a trash heap bullpen, can you? And folks are right that Falvey has never attempted a rebuild, but the team has never been in this situation. The writing was on the wall two years ago when the payroll was "rightsized". The Pohlads had already blown their wad, realized two years later than everyone else that the commercial real estate bubble had happened, and needed to set the team on an unprecedented trajectory. The pity is that the rebuild didn't start sooner. But it certainly needs to continue now. Unless ownership can let the cash flow, this team needs to ebb.

It's a little much to credit the front office for identifying and brining in talented coaches when the front office is also responsible for firing/scapegoating many of those same coaches, especially on the hitting side. If you pick up a gold nugget and toss it back into the riverbed, you're not actually a good gold prospector.

That magic comes in the form of the ball-strike challenge system. Twins Daily wrote about the headwinds the Twins faced in getting fair ball-strike calls, and I don't think any pitcher was more impacted than Zebby. He walked 1.15 per 9 across the minors, but that number more than doubles in the majors (2.66 per 9)? I don't think the batters are that much better.

I think these trades are slightly different flavors and each trade's likelihood depends on whose needs are being met: the team's or the owner's. A Lopez trade saves $20 mil for the Pohlads (and two owners to be named later [OTBNL]); this trade happens if the owners have dictated further restrictions. A Jeffers trade saves very little money--any primary catcher you pick up in free agency will not be making a ton less than $6 mil; this trade tells me the front office is in the driver's seat and that they are fighting for a better 2027 without one arm behind their backs. Ryan sort of falls into to Jeffers boat IMO: modest cost savings but potentially an infusion of near-term talent. Cynically, I think they move Lopez for the cost savings immediately and flip the other two later as the team fails to surprise.

This class looks better if Steer is still in the organization. It's obviously hard to evaluate talent in the draft, but it's not like this organization gets any better at evaluating talent (or health) once players are in the majors. Letting Steer's entire career go for a handful of injured Mahle starts is part of a pattern that goes beyond the draft.

I know the sample size is small, so it's too soon for in depth analysis of the change, but if Correa stays hot in Houston, I wonder why that would be, and what that says about the Twins organizationally (Borgschulte, third base, vibes...)?

The revelation about wanting to move to 3rd is interesting (and convenient), but do we think the trajectory of this team is any different if the FO honored Correa's (alleged) request? Part of the Correa legacy is that, in 2023, it worked. He was good, the team was fun, they made the playoffs, broke the streak, won a series. But the team stopped spending money in April 2023 when they extended Lopez. I'm pretty sure the biggest free agent signing since Correa was $6.25 mil for Bader. They are saving more money shipping off Correa than they've spent adding to this team in the past two years. The error in this team isn't that it favored/ignored its cornerstone player, or had bad vibes. The error in this team is that they have been exuding buyer's remorse since the investments of early 2023, and obviously wanted a way out. I think the Correa era of the Twins is honestly not really about him; it's about a team that briefly chose to contend, and then--with every subsequent decision--failed to follow through with that conviction.

To call this a rebuild would indicate that there is a plan to recover. Acquiring ready-now fourth and fifth starters while trading away effective, affordable, and controllable arms (like Varland) leads me to question which season the FO plans to stage the team's comeback. This isn't a rebuild, it's a teardown.