Richie the Rally Goat

no returns, no exceptions

Hence The Big Short reference. Ash was dead-on.

I would do Sands, Balazovich and Kepler for Jansen in a heartbeat. Guessing too low, but a start

Well, the stats I quoted were ‘22 and career, so clearly last year isn’t all I care about. How’d Eovaldi do in ‘16, ‘17, ‘19? He’s had 2 very good seasons, 2 ok seasons, and several bad and injured ones.

Just ask Selena

Agreed 100% on the risks associated with buying high on a pitcher. The challenge is the Twins have not shown capability to buy low on a starting pitcher and get excess value. Chris Archer, Dylan Bundy, Martin Perez etc, etc…. Bad before becoming Twins, bad as Twins. While Nathan Eovaldi is a fine pitcher, he’s not better than Sonny Gray, and probably a touch below. Gray career - ERA 3.56, FIP 3.67, ‘22 - 3.08/3.41. Eovaldi career 4.16/3.83 ‘22 - 3.87/4.30. The Twins have tons of depth that’s all mid-rotation very similar to Nathan Eovaldi. What they don’t have is a front of the rotation starter, which Eovaldi is not. More importantly they don’t have innings. Last offseason the FO knew they weren’t getting traditional starter workload, but they still weren’t capable of executing a non-traditional pitching workload to get to 1500 innings, and Nathan Eovaldi exacerbates that deficit greatly. He’s pitched greater than 150 innings twice in his career. The Twins can’t rely on Eovaldi to be a traditional high quality 150-200 inning starting pitcher who also doesn’t move the needle on the front of the rotation. Go big, or develop internally

Correa fired his old agent for a reason. Stating you’re dragging it out, and actually dragging it out too long, are very different things.

Farmer 91 wRC+ and 1.4 fWAR Andrus 105 wRC+ and 3.5 fWAR Andrus produced much more value than Farmer. I’m not certain Urshela was a salary dump as much as a roster spot opener. Time will tell if that was a salary dump, and some of the things DSP said in his late season interview suggested it could be. If that were the case, would we expect a better record than 2022? I would not.

He’s insurance. I don’t mind him as an insurance policy, but I’d rather see Andrus at SS with Farmer still the insurance policy. Past 5 or 6, then go get another utility guy to platoon w/ Farmer and throw a crap-ton of money at outfield. This team needs to score more runs and black hole at SS makes that harder

Option A isn’t cheap depth. Option A is cheap starter with no depth. im a fan of cheap depth. Not a fan of cheap starter no depth.

I forgot to offload Kepler to make room! @stringer bell now that you mention it, agreed. if I were to do this again, trade Kep, Larnach Left, Wallner Right. About 5% under budget

I love your optimism

In the words of the great Steven Tyler: “Once is enough”

Ugh… do we have to talk about Pagan? I was planning on pretending this was a nightmare through the offseason….

calibrating recent moves in Miss out on C4 but land Bogarts on a creative 4 year 88 plus incentives to push it over 100m with MVPs Sign Rodon to a 4 year 100m deal sign Narvaez to a 1 year 5m deal I want to do more w/ outfield. Needs more hitting, but couldn’t keep it in the realm of possibility and still get a SS and starting pitcher. As I’m typing this, it dawned on me that much of the language from DYP and the FO sounds like they’re not prioritizing SP, but that would lead to a very similar pitching situation that we saw in 22…. Yuck C: Ryan Jeffers ($0.70M) 1B: Luis Arraez ($4.50M) 2B: Jorge Polanco ($7.50M) 3B: Jose Miranda ($0.7M) SS: Xander Bogarts ($22.0M) LF: Matt Wallner ($0.7M) CF: Byron Buxton ($15.00M) RF: Max Kepler ($8.50M) DH: Alex Kirilloff ($.7M) 4th OF: Kyle Garlick ($0.70M) Utility: Nick Gordon ($0.70M) Utility: Kyle Farmer ($6.0M) Backup C: Omar Narvaez ($5.0M) SP1: Sonny Gray ($12.00M) SP2: Tyler Mahle ($8.00M) SP3: Kenta Maeda ($9.00M) SP4: Joe Ryan ($0.70M) SP5: Carlos Rodon ($25.0M) RP: Jhoan Duran ($0.70M) RP: Jorge Lopez ($3.00M) RP: Griffin Jax ($0.70M) RP: Jorge Alcala ($1.00M) RP: Caleb Thielbar ($2.00M) RP: Jovanni Moran ($0.7M) RP: Bailey Ober ($0.7M) RP: Emilio Pagan ($4.5M) Payroll is 0.50% over budget

I hope you are wrong, in that in most of the scenarios, the Twins suck the season following the breakout and said player gets traded away. Instead, let’s hope the lineage ends with Duran who retires as a Twin after a long run of being the best reliever in baseball and bringing multiple World Series Champion banners to Target Field.

Could also be C4 insurance

This!

22.5% of the 40 man roster occupied by AAAA fringe major leaguers who took too long to progress would not bode well for a successful major league season. that would leave 5 players on the 40 but not on the 26 that weren’t a part of the rule 5 protection, meaning players you want on the 40 because they are actually prospects close to MLR.

Larnach and Wallner strike out a bunch, but Gordon, Kepler and Kirilloff don’t. One of those 5 would need to go to make room for Gallo. I assume it would be Kep. they would also still need an improvement at RH 4th OF that can play CF. I could still get behind a Gallo signing.

Over the last decade, the most players selected was 18, and the most frequent results were in the 12-15 players selected range. the average mlb team loses half a player to the rule 5. Not sure what the fret is about. The Twins lost 2 or 3 in a season, but if the Twins can’t find a spot for them, who can? that I can see in the last decade, the Twins lost and not returned Stuart Turner, Akil Baddoo, Luke Bard, Nick Burdi and Tyler Wells.

I like this a lot, especially the outfield. Pollock declined a 13m option, is $6m realistic? If he’d sign that, awesome. lots of fun to dream on this

Great work Seth! Rootin’ for you Andrew! Go get ‘em!

Neither May nor Rogers are remotely close to multi-inning pitchers, especially Rogers who I recall being awful in his 4th hitter faced, and worse in back to back games.