Richie the Rally Goat

I was way more down on the Twins in the late 90s. Puckett…contraction… the next wave looked far off and Pohlad wasn’t going to give Ryan two nickels to rub together. those were dark days. today is easy-peasy by comparison

I don’t think “the plan” is the issue as much as having healthy and durable pitchers capable of pitching 30 starts of 6+ innings or a deep enough bullpen to overcome the deficient rotation. Coming into the season, Bundy, Archer, Gray, Ober and Ryan weren’t going to get you to 750 to 1000 innings. If you want your rotation to get you that 750+ injings, they still need to acquire 4 more arms that can do that. Right now it’s Ryan that’ll get you 150+ next year and that’s it…

Baldelli and his coaching staff need to emphasize the fundamentals. So too must all levels of the minor league coaching staffs. The FO needs to be working with each level on comprehensive plans to improve players’ ability to do the basics. Hold coaches accountable for failures in executing last offseason’s plans. There may need to be some changes made. Acquire better pitching. The plan to acquire pitching failed miserably last offseason. It better be comprehensive plan and executed flawlessly this off-season. Acquire or develop better position player depth. A lot of the challenges with staying on the field, will persist next season too. Kiriloff, Larnach, Buxton, Arraez, will all be back next year, likely Kepler and Polanco too. Need to have better options and greater flexibility when the inevitable injuries happen. Competently backfill Correa (or keep/resign/extend him).

Agreed, there’s no evidence to believe Wes had other reasons, and several plausibility’s to believe Wes’ reason for making the decision he did. it’s fun to speculate, but the simple explanation is the likely one considering what a grind that job is for relatively less pay.

60 day IL is Pitchers and Catchers report to Spring Training through World Series. Players cannot be added to the 60 day after the conclusion of the regular season. Paddack has to be added to the 40 man shortly after the conclusion of the WS. Historically that’s around Nov 1, but with the new format looking to be a bit later.

Great work!

1) 100% agreed, however this isn’t 100% on Baldelli and his staff. The players get 12 to 18 years of coaching before Baldelli gets his hands on them. You can’t undo a decade in one spring training. 2) again 100% agreed, but I think you may weight this one more than I do. See 8 3) 100% agreed 4) go back to 2019 and I think you saw a 100 win team that over achieved during the season against better teams. They ran out of gas in the post season, but during they absolutely played it up. 5) Agreed 6) Im skeptical that Baldelli had free reign to hire his staff and am certain he had little to no say on the medical staff. I don’t think this gets attributed to Rocco at all. 7) if you acknowledge not knowing the clubhouse, how can you presume to know this one? 8 ) Agreed, however I can’t imagine he has much room to be “creative” either. Look at the roster he was handed… zero flexibility. His pitchers were all short inning options. All injuries waiting to happen. What kind of lineup could he reasonably construct against a lefty? Most importantly, have you worked in a matrixed decision making company before? There is nothing more micro-managed stifling than the never ending barrage of cross functional team meetings. ”what happened during the 6th inning Rocco? Why didn’t you stick to plan?” While I agree with you on most every point, I don’t come to the same conclusion. I don’t love the manager. He’s fine. I don’t know of any better options reasonably available and I don’t think there are significant things in Baldelli’s control that could make a big change in how fans view him.

1) that’s not the point. 2) Baldelli doesn’t manage the roster. The GM manages the roster. Baldelli manages the lineup and the bullpen/rotation. I get that you don’t care about who does what. That’s the point. The vast majority of Twins fans don’t care about the difference, they know that they don’t like how the Twins are holistically managed and want it to change. There’s nothing Baldelli can do about that.

This post typifies, what I see in anti-Rocco posts. Attributing things to Rocco, that the fan doesn’t like about the front office. Rocco doesn’t get to choose the scouting or medical staffs. He doesn’t sign free agents, or set the roster. the only thing Rocco could do to make Twins fans happy, is not be Rocco Baldelli.

Go Twins!

Seriously?

I couldn’t let the game thread be only one page

Agreed Stringerbell! Great post. I think one of the challenges that will carry over from ‘22, is there’s a ton of quality players, but many have been injured (some frequently) and the efforts made to keep them on the field might not do enough. how do the Twins keep enough depth to avoid another death spiral?

Will Falvey and Levine’s brand of Dumpster Diving, signing or trading for high quality but oft-injured players, continue in ‘23? Will contingency plans improve?

Good questions!

Agreed, Bally has been a disaster and I gotta think “out of sight, out of mind” in terms of TV broadcast added to, 2021 being a terrible team, put the ticket sales in a significant deficit before the season started. WCCO has streamed the radio broadcast free this season (in radio area only) which helped my enjoyment a lot. Ultimately, ending this season at or below .500 after being 10 games above .500, wasting a strong division lead and signing Correa cements the narrative that was started in ‘21….. this is a bad team. season ticket sales are going to tank harder yet this offseason. We’ve seen DSP put his foot in his mouth like this before, looking forward to a repeat of this article next year.

Yes edit: ninja’d

Go Twins!

Great job filling in!

Yeah, fan blaming/shaming is not a good look.

The facts the plan was to have Buxton play 100 games this season. Buxton appeared in 92 and according to Ash, he only played 43 complete games in CF, and something like 79 complete games total. They came up short to plan. I don’t think this is necessarily a “failure” though. 2022 was tied for second most games played in Buxton’s career. 3rd in fWAR, 2nd in wRC+, 1rst in hits, 1rst in HR, 1rst in K/BB. Buxton had a very successful season compared to his career, even if he didn’t get the desired durability from “the plan” it was still a significant incremental improvement

SS has such a steep drop off, and a long term deal for Correa likely would be significantly less than 35m per year. would 10 years 275m get it done for Correa? By the end of it he won’t be a SS anymore, but at 27 or 28, he’s got a decent chance to be a good fielding SS for maybe half the contract. Vs spreading that out over multiple players, but none would be SS. the quality delta between Correa and Freddy Galvis is HUGE for and incremental 17 to 20 m. The quality delta between Galvis and Palacios is much smaller for an incremental 10m.

Johnny “The Juice” Cueto

But I knew it was the Montreal Expos “elb” agreed, I too HATED the m