MeleMouth

The Twins have almost always regretted big buck and even medium buck free agents, and in fact many Twins fans almost come to hate some of the players signed to the biggest contracts, so I would hope they step only lightly into free agency, but there actually will be some very good players available.

Hey! Arraez could play 2B and Vazquez could be the back-up C! At 1B, Jake Bauers is going to get paid.

You need to look at the earlier part of this exchange, where I was criticized for not looking at Zebby's season in the aggregate and for not paying attention to Royce's warm streaks. The criticism also included a "Royce is better than Clemens" theme. Now, you are criticizing me for responding to those criticisms. You should especially look at the earlier exchanges before calling a comment "weird," which, for the sake of site quality, is a type of personal comment I would encourage commenters never to do in any situation. As far as trading Royce, I'm guessing the Rays are hoping for exactly that, so they can turn him into a version of Caminero, who will probably be less successful than Caminero but more successful than 2026 Royce. Nobody thinks Clemens is the centerpiece of a championship club, but he's been a surprising useful 2 WAR player this year, while actually having relatively bad luck. Sabato? No, no way. I think Lewis is OK, but not great like others do, but in any event Lewis is a much much much better hitter than Sabato and probably a much better fielder, also. It would be a huge mistake to save maybe $4 million to replace Lewis with Sabato. Similarly, neither Gabby nor Mendez have shown anything in AAA this year that suggests they would anywhere as good as Royce, with Mendez having the additional problem of continuing the roster's left-handed tilt.

I would note that the ChiSox learned that, if they remove expensive contracts from an underperforming roster, they have the budget room to add a difference-maker like Munetaka and make a deadline trade to get an expensive pitcher like Castillo.

This lineup is reasonable based on who's on the team now. However, if Buxton needs hip surgery, as I believe he does, he will need at least six months of rehab to play baseball. Depending on when he has surgery and how long any work stoppage takes, that could affect his availability at the beginning of the season. They should also add in time for him to get up to speed, because his swing, which always requires practice to get the timing right, will take even longer to adjust if he gets hip surgery.

OK, look at Zebby's results for the season. The Twins have the 23rd ranked pitching staff in the league. Of 17 pitchers on the Twins with at least 20 IPs, Zebby's FIP is 15th on the Twins, with only Paredes and SWR below him. League-wide, of 108 pitchers with more than 100 IP, he's 95th in FIP. Again, I like Zebby, but this hasn't been a stellar year for him. Boy, you really defend Royce, despite the fact that his wRC+ just since his return would tie him for 18th among qualifying 1B on a full-year basis. To compare him to Clemens, between Aug 13-29, Royce's OPS is .392, while Clemens, whom you said is "ice cold," has an .853 OPS. It seems reasonable that this .450+ OPS advantage for Clemens over the last two weeks could be a factor in batting order today. Yes, since Royce came back, his OPS is a decent .763, versus a slightly lower .743 for Clemens, but much of the "S" in Royce's OPS came in June. You say that since Royce came back he's been "one of our top hitters," but his OPS is 5th out of 11 players with more than 100 PAs, which is decent, but being in the middle is not really being "one of our top hitters." Also, we shouldn't act as if Royce's awful start to the season didn't occur and shouldn't be taken into account when deciding batting order, particularly when his hitting is awful once again and he has a history of struggling to turn around slumps. Not to defend Clemens too much, but Royce's stats are mostly comparable to the "ice cold" Clemens and Clemens actually exceeds Lewis in several areas. Finally and most importantly, the target for Royce's offense is supposed to be much higher than Kody Clemens, whom, we must also recognize, contributes much more on defense.

I like Zebby and he got great results today, but we should go a little slower on projecting anything for him from this game, because the Sox hit him pretty hard. Royce was en fuego the first half of August, then his great luck on batted balls flipped to bad in the second half of the month and the league started pitching him a little differently. His results for the last two weeks are probably somewhat bad luck, but his actual OPS for August 13-29 (not including today's 0-3) is .392 and even if he had normal luck it would be below .550. Historically, he has struggled to make adjustments. It's going to be an interesting September for him. I'd also go slow on writing off Culpepper at SS. He's a great athlete and a smart guy; what we're seeing now might just be growing pains. He's also by far the most likely of all known candidates to start at SS when the 2027 season begins, so he's going to get more learning opportunities.

This is correct. The Walker Jenkins of today would have been helpful a month ago. But the Walker Jenkins of a month ago wouldn't. A new gear was opened at the Futures Game and he spent the next few weeks solidifying.

Calling up Jenkins in 2026 one second before he was clearly ready for the majors at the possible expense of his long-term development would have compounded the category error the Twins made by trying to treat 2026 as a competitive year. It would be one more "let's pivot from our long-term plan to meet some short-term need." If they can't stick with a long-term plan even for their best prospect in 10-20 years, then they'll never win anything.

This, except I think Sprock (132 wRC+ as a catcher at age 21 in Hi A) could also become a legit prospect who was traded for someone who will be superfluous to future teams and is almost superfluous now.

The Twins went with this "play competitive baseball in September" story as a way to maintain fan interest, but right now they are 26th in MLB attendance, the lowest they have been in the 21st Century, ahead of only Athletics, Miami, Tampa, and Kansas City.

Is this a bit or are you just trying to go on record with long-shot predictions in case they happen, so you can say you were the first? Can't he just be a good, developing pitcher, which he is, and let the future take care of itself?

This would be the best strategy for the rest of 2026.

I've been down on Young, but today I saw this note about his being drafted by the Twins from FanGraphs: "To have the opportunity to snag a prospect with the power/hit upside of Young in the 50s is a fine gamble even if he has maybe as much hit tool risk as anyone in the class."

Oh, hey, you persuaded me with your logic of calling it "moronic." Data isn't needed in the face of the far superior logic of making insults and repeating slogans. And I guess the long-standing concept of working on pitches in the minors is irrelevant. I'd have to say that you mischaracterize my argument. I'm not saying that he shouldn't be in the majors; I'm just saying that expecting him to have command of all of his pitches and to pitch a full slate of innings is unrealistic, and that giving him the mixed message of (1) develop yourself in the majors and (2) pitch like a key starter for a team trying to make the playoffs in the majors is contradictory.

Comments about Royce? Royce has woefully underperformed while carrying himself like he's a gift, and has been notoriously resistant to taking feedback. Harsh comments were probably needed to get through to him. Even then, Royce lived at Correa's house this past winter and trained with him, so he probably didn't take them as hard as you seem to be doing.

This is interesting. How did Correa damage the clubhouse? By pushing people to up their games, in contrast to the amazingly placid Rocco?

Jenkins really wasn't ready until earlier this month. His presence wouldn't have stopped the reversion to the mean of so many other players. Absolute best case scenario is that his presence would have changed two losses to wins, so they'd now be 66-70, which really is about the same place they are today. And if they brought him up before he was ready, it definitely could have hurt.

It wasn't going to and it hasn't. That has nothing to do with Jenkins, unless people thought he was going to come up and hit 2 HRs a couple of games every week.

You don't have to like Correa, but the Twins don't win their 2023 playoff series (only playoff series win since 2002) without him.

It was expectations and unexpected early success. This roster is worse than 2025's. Lost in the elimination of the entire bullpen is that Correa and Bader were their second and third best position players at the time they were traded.

The core of their earlier success was relatively great health from Buxton, traditional first half health from Ryan, Lewis looking like he figured it out, completely unexpected bullpen success from Morris and Gomez, and the best years of their careers from Larnach, Jeffers, and Clemens. Nearly all of those things have reverted to the mean.

These are great stats and he's doing it without batted ball luck. FanGraphs says he has "main character energy" on the field. Maybe he'll turn into Big Yapi.

If they can get something good for Lewis, take it, even though you may regret it later. Except if it's Tampa: they will fix his approach and you'll really really regret it. Keaschall at first, though? That could be scary.

He was hitting stuff on the inside well, so pitchers went back to throwing him on the outside of the plate.