Richie the Rally Goat

Elvis Andrus would be willing to take a short contract to backfill Royce in ‘23. i couldn’t stand seeing Kyle Garlick in the lineup anymore, so Pinder seemed like a relatively better option for a similar role. Christian Vazquez is the backup C because I’m too lazy to re-type out who’s in what role. Prolly a 50/50 time share anyways. the big acquisition is Carlos Rodon, not sure 25/year does it this go around…. Re-signed Fulmer Ober to the pen getting converted to short/middle relief Winder is the swing man. C: Ryan Jeffers ($0.70M) 1B: Luis Arraez ($4.50M) 2B: Jorge Polanco ($7.50M) 3B: Gio Urshela ($9.00M) SS: Elvis Andrus ($12.00M) LF: Alex Kirilloff ($0.70M) CF: Byron Buxton ($15.00M) RF: Trevor Larnach ($0.70M) DH: Jose Miranda ($0.70M) 4th OF: Chad Pinder ($2.0M) Utility: Nick Gordon ($0.70M) Utility: Gilberto Celestino ($0.70M) Backup C: Christian Vázquez ($5.00M) 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: Bailey Ober ($0.7M) RP: Michael Fulmer ($5.0M) RP: Josh Winder ($0.7M) Payroll is 8.79% under budget

T&R, I liked your thoughts and suggestions. The dollars seem pretty realistic. really creative moves that did a good job filling the holes. no way they happen, but I hope they do

That’s it? I think Lewis playing SS 8 months after ACL surgery seems like the most likely of the transactions listed. I liked all of the concepts, but don’t see them happening

Hopefully Correa re-signs

The willingness/probability of something like this to actually happen depends on if you saw the Donaldson trade as a planned and causal move specifically to sign Correa, or if you saw the moves independently and Correa just fell into the Twins’ lap. I think the FO was offloading Donaldson independently and Correa just fell in their lap.

Randball Stu on a Sunday, how did we get so lucky for such hilarity twice in one week?!

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).

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.

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.

Seriously?

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?

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

Comparing anyone to Cal “Iron Man and MLB record holder” Ripken is not fair. Agreed, fleecing is just as nonsensical as Iron Man. Injuries are going to happen, it’s the nature of the game. I think it makes sense to experiment with different tactics to try to improve player availability. One season with Buxton does not a trend make. I hope the FO continues to try, and hopefully succeed to a greater extent next year. If they don’t, the apparent market inefficiency they think they found, will sure be their demise.

That’s not really how stretch goals work. If you sandbag it, you frequently meet your goals, but never achieve excellence. If you set stretch goals, you accomplish greater achievements, but rarely meet your goals. I guess I sandbag my fandom. I volunteer here as a moderator, but keep very open-ended expectations of the team as I don’t have any control over them.

I watched the first episode and struggled. Does it get in the second ep?

Winning 101 games doesn’t count as winning, but winning 85 and World Series does? If the only thing you care about is winning a World Series, good luck!

December 1, 2021 every team in baseball has a plan to sign as many starting pitchers as they can… every team except the Twins, who sign Dylan Bundy, apparently shocked at the hording of premium assets leading up to the lockout. it gets worse from there…

Ads lately have been popping up faster than my phone/browser can handle. It glitched 7 times in the time it took me to write this post

This! At least on the pitching side, FO planned on short starts and traded for already injured starters, but didn’t build a bullpen to fill out the rest of the innings. on the hitting side, I can see a case for the injuries piling up, but not pitching. That is straight up FO fail

death spiral is about right.

100% this! Strategy only works as well as the execution