Richie the Rally Goat

I had the Twins moving on from Sano in my off-season plan too. Universal DH seems to be a likelihood in the new CBA which increases the value Sano’s affordable 9.2 mil contract could return in trade.

three items 1) well written 2) lots of fun on a goofy story 3) It wasn’t a story about Eddie Rosario Excellent work!

There’s a metric for everything https://worldhappiness.report

I think the Twins will not have a full time DH, Donaldson, Arraez and Rooker will all have significant DH time

In this scenario the new CBA adopts universal DH. Because of the higher demand for DH, Cruz out price’s the Twins budget. This also makes Sano’s 9 mil and some change contract valuable in trade. Twins trade Sano and his full salary to an NL team for prospects. 130 is a hard budget, no wiggle, including prospects called up and mid-season trades. 2020 and 2021 were challenging for cash flow with much fewer in-person attendees at Target Field. There’s only 1.7 available, it’ll be snug. If something goes really right, they may not be able to swing a trade for a higher end reliever at the deadline. Buxton is extended at 10 mil per season, I pulled that from the salary AAV from reports. Honestly I’m not sure how the escalators work, I may not have enough budget for bonuses, but we’ll pretend there’s a separate budget line for that. Pineda signed two years 16 mil. He hasn’t been healthy at all, but has been effective. I think that calls for a discount, and Jax/Dobnak/et al, can fill in the gaps. im not exactly thrilled with the lineup, but this team is so starved for pitching I had to cheap out on SS. There’ll be some continued growing pains with Larnach and Kirilloff in the every day lineup, with Celestino and Gordon playing frequently as well. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQeRoMg6FEz3LDRWteFLPY7Wkk32DtRgehe_12K5hShNKk9gyVMpJ0TxKgE9tQl4Vlbrh4pN8Hpy_Sv/pubhtml

Eddie Rosario, in left field for the expansion Las Vegas Gamblers in 2067, scrambling with his walker to a roller down the line…. Over throws the cutoff man and manages to gun down a potential inside the park home run… Immediately dies of a heart attack as he lets the ball go with a smile on his face. in spring training 2068 the Gamblers plant his urn in the left center lawn

Loved Cruz while he was here, but every nickel of budget and every millisecond of effort by the FO should be spent on pitching and maybe SS. If right before ST there’s some budget left and they filled all the other needs and Cruz is still out there, sign him up.

Gordon had a few stretches batting that tantalized among long stretches of futility and didn’t field well enough. I’d think he earned enough to not get DFA’d until the spring and compete to be a super-utility player, but not enough that I’d be willing to consider him in a starting role in ‘22. He would not be a 26 man lock for me at this point.

The 40 is still rather full, managing a crisp fielding team was a challenge in 2021, there's a bunch of players on the cusp needing rule 5 protection, and the Twins need to add like 3 starting pitchers. There will be several (5 or 6 maybe?) more players coming off the 40 man to protect Rule 5 prospects and make room for free agents of which 3-4 should be pitchers. On the DH question, would a 40 man move that included trading away/removing one of the glut of bat first players like Sano and/or Rooker be a leading indicator? What might that tell us about plans going forward?

I’m finally getting bored with Fortnite. It had a good run for me (3+ years). Looking for PS4 suggestions I don’t have the patience for Fallout or other such open world games. I typically play for 20 to 30 minutes so the battle royale type is fun and I can feel like I “accomplished something” I’m with Brock, not willing to spend on next gen yet. Maybe ‘23 or ‘24

Indeed! If you could sign story to a Simmons/Galvis 2 years 10 mil per I’d be all about Story as a good glove/poor hit SS. The problem is you pay for Coors field as much as you pay for the road part of the splits. I’ve been on the sign Galvis and throw money at pitching bandwagon, but that wasn’t an option in the OP

Story and the Home/Road splits scares me off. Aging off of SS, as long as the FO thinks it will be a couple years in the future would be my preferred course of action. Getting a monster hitter who fields a decent SS for a couple years will be a 4-5 year contract, hopefully Lewis takes over at SS in year 2 or 3 and said monster hitter can slide to 2nd, 3rd, LF or DH.

I can’t wait for the World Series so I can get started on my Twins off-season blueprint

If Maeda and/or Enlow pitches next year, it’ll be very late in the season. After a season that saw 9 players on the 60 day IL, are you really keeping 3 players on the 40 that are not going to pitch in 2022 while not protecting additional rule 5 eligible minor leaguers?

In terms of trading away high velo pitchers, doesn’t it take two to tango? You need to give value to get value. With the number of pitchers the FO needs to acquire this off-season, I hope we see significant evidence to the contrary that the FO is velo-averse.

Go Brewers (post season only)!

To further your point, Rocco instituted mandatory pregame drills mid-season. He saw the issues we all saw, and took action with the coaching staff to improve fielding challenges. this is the same manager who preaches rest as a part of the regimen. I give Baldelli a lot of credit for this team not giving up as the season got out of hand. I do agree, this season sucked. That has to fall on the players, the FO and the manager/coaching staff. The players and FO are 80% of the failure. Players need to play the game, the FO acquires the players. Baldelli and the coaching staff earned 20% of the failure too.

I'm arguing this like I love Rooker. I don't, and if he were DFA'd or traded, life would move on... but it seems like there's a contingent forgetting that Rooker hasn't hit arbitration yet and still has 2 options. He's cheap and can go to AAA. As a comparison to how expensive he is: Rooker Sano 2022 Salary 570k 9.25M 2023 Salary Arb 1 14M MiLB Options 2 (after 2021) 0 2021 fwar -0.1 0.3 2021 OPS 0.691 0.773 k% 32.50% 34.40% BB% 7.60% 11.20% wRC+ 91 109 Sano is better than Rooker, no doubt, but Rooker could be as good, or better than Sano in 2022 and 2023, for $8.5 million to 13 million less. Floating him on waivers to see if he passes to free up a 40 man spot, when there are 10 other players on the 40 man coming off already guarantees that in 2023 the team is spending $10-14m on DH rather than pitching.

I don’t think Wade is a good comp. In AA/AAA Wade never hit like Rooker. Wade has been a 100-ish wRC+ sporting mixed results as a fielder and maybe miscast as a CF. Rooker on the other hand has been 140s to 160s wRC+ and is a decidedly negative UZR150. there wasn’t much shown with the bat for Wade to have predicted a 125 wRC+ in the bigs in 2021, but he’s a good enough fielder to stick (like Cave). Rooker on the other hand has a big league bat if his eye at the plate continues to improve. The question is no longer how many no hit mediocre fielding 4th outfielders can a team carry? The question is: how many DHs can a team carry, and which one sticks?

might I suggest urban dictionary? Your Mileage May Vary every car commercial had that phrase when quoting fuel efficiency because consumers would complain that they never got the states mileage. It has now become “everyone has their own opinions”

Agreed with these lines of thought. Rooker has an option. I would not extend Sano, and we just watched this team hobble through a season where only Polanco stayed healthy the whole season. I would like to keep some depth for 2022, and look to 2023 as well. there’s room on the 40 for Rooker, but the FO would have some challenging rule 5 decisions to make, in order to do so. There is only so much room for defensively challenged players, so I get parting ways with Rooker. The same case could be made for Astudillo

With Ober, Ryan pretty much chiseled in stone for the opening rotation and a likely Gant as well, Depth in AAA as well as at least one swing man is going to be critical. I’d release Thorpe but the rest should be kept in the organization

How about Elon Musk? We'd get tweets about it for months. About how strong of an arm he has, how good he'll be at it, without any details of when, or what game, and then we'd just stop hearing about it, possibly finding out after that fact that he backed out the day of, for unexplained reasons.

Why would you make your team worse only because you don’t think you’ll have many saves to earn? or do you mean trade him at the next trade deadline? The OP was to start the season?

While mowing the lawn… thoughts… in my youth, I was much more aggressive, and I could still afford to be. I have another 20+ years of work in front of me. I wonder if the healthcare debt, where no one could tell us what anything cost, and my wife was actively dying with a low chance for survival prognosis (she did indeed survive a very aggressive chemo cocktail, but at the time…) where we had no control, and massive debt at the end… I wonder if that period influenced my risk tolerance going forward.