Cris E

The recent American players you listed grew up in a wildly different baseball world than those of 20, 30 or 40 years ago. They play year round, drilling in cages far away from fields way more than anyone did a generation ago. There are fewer games for the guys who go to college so they play less than guys drafted out of high school. Buxton, Lewis and Miranda played over 120 games at 19 and 20, whereas college guys like Larnach, Lee, Wallner and Julien don't see 100 games until maybe age 22. Martin still hasn't been in 100 games in a season yet and he's 26. And pretty much every one of those old timers listed above hit 100 games by 20 except Puckett, and his baseball schedule was skewed by poverty and his father's death. (Knobber and Gaetti were 21.) The game experience that comes from playing daily in the Dominican academies or 110 dates at Quad Cities at age 19 (Mauer) or 125 games across three levels at 19 (Buxton) are different from the weeks of drilling and 50-60 games that you get in the NCAA. Larnach got 59 PA in 28 games at 19 and batted .157 as a pinch hitter and DH (only 6 games in RF.) Few freshmen are going to get the chances that a raw fieldhand in A ball sees. And to make the lack of game-time worse, there is more "analytic" baseball being played at lower and lower levels every year, where platooning, numerous relief pitchers and Three True Outcomes strategies are more common. That removes a lot of the decision making and adjusting from players and puts it in the hands of managers. One big difference between the guys that started young and the other names are that poor performance usually gets you out of the game before you turn 21, whereas college guys don't hit the grind until far later and seem like bigger disappointments when they fail at 23 or 24. I'm not one of those "Back In My Day" geezers shaking my fist at clouds, but when you skip college and head to the minors you are making the game your job and you do more of it earlier. That playing time brings the opportunities to see in-game pitcher adjustments and counter them, or to feel the effects of a fifth or sixth game in a row, or playing the same team a fifth or tenth time in a season. It's harder, and the earlier you encounter that and struggle with it the better your chances of overcoming it.

Absolutely this. His 2024 avg was .320 (.511 slg) through July 28 and .217 (.311 slg) after, and his woes in 2025 are stated above. There was never much discussion about concussion or long term effects of this, but those brain injuries can take years to recover from. Mauer got his concussion in 2013 and never hit like that again. Morneau had his in 2010 and didn't hit for average again (ie close to .300) until 2014. Not sure if that's a case in favor of working with Miranda or cutting him loose until he shows that he's recovered, but it's quite clear that no one is saying this out loud.

I can't see anyone taking a flyer on some of the1 current 40 man residents. McCusker and Gasper, for example, can be set on the shelf with a handshake offer for an invite to spring training. Neither is likely to be signed as anything more than organizational filler and those deals aren't cut until spring. Also, the calculus of losing players needs to be more sophisticated than Chance Of Losing. You need to gauge the actual value of these guys you might be clinging to and the chances that one actually gets picked up. As pointed out above, it's almost 0% for most young non-pitchers, particularly those without any defensive value. McCusker is a one dimensional guy with no defensive value who hasn't shown he can touch good pitching, and hoping that he learns to hit at age 28 is not nearly as interesting or likely as seeing if one of the younger guys develops his skills. He got a look last year and his minor league 30-40% K rate went over 50% with the Twins. There's no situation where he should be the chosen future option given the number of new faces needing a look (and all the guys like Wallner who might need another place to stand between ABs.) Gaspar is similar except for the fact that he's a weak catcher with a great mustache. Those are a dime a dozen rather than a penny a long ton. If they honestly think highly enough of Olivar that there's a chance that someone could grab him as a backup catcher, then run that same risk that we might be that team and leave Gaspar free until the dust settles. It creates a problem on the 40 man in the short term, but you're more likely to get McCusker over-looked now than in March when teams are actively trying to complete the back half of their AAA rosters.

There are plenty of Pirates fans who were tired of the sloppy play, the separate rules for stars and the "players' manager" attitude that Shelton displayed. He's saying a lot of nice things now just as he did on March 31 in the clip above, but he's the first to start walking this walk. Hawkins in the bullpen might be able to help with the bad cop role, but fundamentals are a top down attitude that has to be stressed all year. I agree with@old nurse above when he points out that Nick got a very different vibe from that presser. But I push back a bit on claims that all those nice ideals come from the players. They are not personality traits, but team traits that guys buy into. "If this is what we do then that's what I have to do." It's the sort of thing that redd*ss players in the dugout enforce. The manager sets that tone and its success depends on how well it's executed and if enough guys buy in. EDIT: Here's a comment from a Pirates blogger: https://rumbunter.com/twins-are-about-to-learn-the-hard-derek-shelton-truth-that-crushed-pirates-hope This one is even rougher: https://operations-lab.com/blog/derek-sheltons-pirates-tenure-a-1761864040686

If that's the case then move Lopez and shift the cash to cover more holes. May and Hoskins, however, are not the answer to any question a $95m payroll team should be asking.

Colby Suggs has a good reputation but has just been displaced in the bullpen, so we may be losing another shortly. EDIT: it may be that this org needs a scapegoat every year and those consequences rarely reach the levels they ought. The poorly built 2022 team with no bench led to a training staff purge. Bad hitting means a new coach. Trade away the bullpen and fire that coach. Some of this should have been Falvey's problem, but more should be laid at the door of ownership and its perennial shrug when a flat investment of 47% of revenue (or whatever the formula is) doesn't allow them to keep up with the market.

It was in direct response to an article trying to draw parallels between these two. It's a dumb point to raise because the two teams were so utterly different that lessons drawn will not reflect much on the managers. What's your point? You've just called out two posters for not having an opinion, which does not add value. Write about Shelton.

Derek Shelton <> Terry Francona EDIT: To clarify, I am not saying they are in any way interchangeable. Rather that these are not at all alike. This situation has a few differences from Franona's second gig with the 2004 Boston Red Sox roster, for example.

The MLB Trade Rumors article on trade candidates listed Heim from Texas in their top 40. He was good two years ago but then regressed, but some of the lost value was in framing and that might cease to be a valuable skill once the lasers arrive. He makes the same as Jeffers but his market value is probably lower so getting him would take less than what they'd get for Jeffers. OTOH he might be worse for the same money and we still wouldn't have a backup. Whatever, dumping Jeffers is a dumb trade unless they get some Wonka-grade prize in return.

I love this point. Teams just don't do these trades because a player with two years left that's worth a ton in trade is probably better than most of the prospects that you'd get back. There are exceptions like Juan Soto, but he returned a ton because he was a guy that never comes along rather than a guy who never comes up in trade talks. Joe Ryan is a good starting pitcher, but he's no ace. The Twins need a starting SS or C and most teams won't make that trade for a #2 or #3.

I think the whole thing comes down to money, not strategy. Without money they will lose in any situation, and with some money they can get back on track within a year or two. With some spending they could be close to .500 right away. If they trade away these players the resulting short-term bridge team will lose until new talent comes aboard. But if they rely on the system providing a new SS, a new catcher, a bullpen, a new 3b (once Lewis proves he can't be trusted) all at one time they will lose because those parts are not all in their minor leagues today. At some point they will need to spend and the day that starts happening is the day they'll regain fans and make some money. Losing games is losing money, and as bad as the current TV contract is, it's made worse by fielding a bad team. So it all comes down to Pohlad fortitude. I am sad, for they are soulless and weak. That puts Falvey on the spot to decide how to go about saving money. That means a choice to add something rather than a choice to dump something. The monster return for these guys is a MLB-ready starting catcher and/or shortstop. That 18 year old catcher we got from PHI may be terrific, but he's exactly 42 light years away from relevance. He just won't contribute in 2027. Maybe we get a SS from BAL or that young catcher from LAD, but it only works as a blockbuster for talent rather than away from payroll. And it entails a commitment from ownership to start spending again in the not-too-distant future. Getting great players is swell, but great means they're more mature, and thus probably close to arb dollars. There aren't enough top rookie players to run a payroll on them not being paid, so the Pohlads will need to spend enough to keep 15-20 of them around long enough to win, whether it be 85 games or a world series (and then be able to sell the team for $8 billion dollars and be free of this tedious nightmare of MLB ownership!) I'm only kind of laughing, because saying you want to tear it down and build something great sort of implies that you still want to own it when it's great, and that'll cost money. I guess this is a plea to stave off the destruction and work towards a sale, which is now more possible given the debt pay-down.

That was one season where Sonny was coming off a lot of injuries. The next year he earned longer outings and got them, improving from 119 innings in 24 starts (just under 5 IP/start) to 184 innings in 32 starts (5.75 innings/start) and finished second in CY voting. The idea that Rocco held him back was not a real thing.

This is crazy. Who is questioning the group that put the last outstanding bullpen on the field? That group is mostly still here and they should be promoting from within to maintain continuity with a very successful program. The coaches that brought you youngsters like Varland and Funderburke (and Jax and Duran in previous years) as well as injury reclamations like Stewart and Coulombe are still here. They already were handling the vibes and moods and personal angles quite well and they deserve the chance to continue that work. Latroy is doing very well in the booth and there's no need to stir things up by questioning the part of the pitching pipeline that was working.

A couple things: @Alex BoxwellWhat are your thoughts about the number of rookies on this team that might still be developing their routine and learning who they are at the MLB level (eg Keashall, Lee maybe, Martin, half the pitching staff after Aug 1)? Does coaching matter more to them than usual, or do mentor players make a bigger difference? Also, even replacing Falvey wouldn't make much difference this year if the parameters of the budget don't change. If Pohlads want to lay in some money for the cold winter coming next year there's nothing to do but watch the Twins lose 100 or go to Saints games and see who is going to on the field in 2027. No manager or GM can win in the current game with a $80-90m payroll.

Wallner has the power that most of the rest of the roster is missing and it has to be kept until one of the prospects proves himself at the top level. We don't have a better DH candidate right now so he can hang out there, but if Buxton gets hurt or we need to rest Jeffers he'll need to play OF at times. He's not terrible so that's not the end of the world, it's just not his first position. Maybe he plays 1B OK in the future, but I'd rather he worked on his OF skills this spring. Roden feels like the improved Martin from September (with a better OF glove) but Martin in no way feels like Castro. His IF defense just doesn't play aside from innings ending in "teenth". Once Roden establishes himself I don;t know what happens to Austin. Royce Lewis has to improve or go, as his flirty relationship with power has become tiresome. I'm glad he improved his throwing and range last winter, but this year it's time to get back in the cage and figure some stuff out. Health plays such huge a role in his story that maybe he needs to hang out with Byron B to get some insights into taking care of himself. As far as the rest of the roster, they need a future catcher and a real SS to push Lee, another bat from any source to put at first or DH or whateever, and a hundred bullpen arms. Some are in the minors already, but a lot rests on how ready the owners are to play in the big leagues.

OK, I read all of those words and I think I know what they all mean but I still have no idea why Mikulski was included. Did he piss someone in Houston off? Was he caught in a bad stalking situation and they were doing him a favor? Is he dating Falvey's niece? They sent that other Lopez to Miami a few years ago to be near his kid's doctors, but this one comes with no backstory.

This is a big deal, especially given this organization's lack of catching depth. With Jeffers' appearances behind the plate being managed tightly the team had an incredibly long run of not needing a third catcher. Both stayed healthy, and if Vasquez had managed to hit anywhere near his career norms it would have been heralded as a triumph. Normal catchers get hurt all the time, and the success at keeping ours in the lineup so effectively for years should have been appreciated while watching Mickey Gasper filling in like an NHL Third Goalie.

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I posted this elsewhere, but the Twins ALWAYS go with the inexperienced manager. The last time they hired a manager with MLB experience was Gene Mauch in 1976. Seriously, that’s 50 years. And of those eight hires since 1976 the only two that weren’t promoted from within the organization were Mauch and Rocco Baldelli. When Rocco was hired it was good to see horizons raised above the level of the staff Christmas party list. This time they may actually accept that previous MLB experience might be more than expensive. One can hope...

I think he was hurt early, lost confidence in his body, developed some bad habits trying to hit without using his gimpy leg and then got healthy without making all the adjustments his recovery allowed. When he did get better it took him a while to trust his legs' health, but eventually he started running out more grounders, taking extra bases and stealing when the team was unleashed in August. Alas he did not make any changes to his swing when his health returned so he kept dancing in the box and flicking his bat at things without conviction through the end of the year. I think a lot of the negatives with him come down to the fact that he doesn't like making changes mid-season. He sounded like a brat for not wanting to learn 2B in the midst of a pennant race. He held off on improving his throwing until last offseason. He didn't re-work his swing during the season this year. The good news is that his throwing did improve a lot coming into this year, so maybe if he gets a healthy winter he can regain his old form in the box. But the inflexibility between March and October is something coaches are going to have to work on with him.

Well that's not true at all, or it's obviously true all the time. "What he's worth" is a bogus phrase that hides all the possibilities of injury, positional scarcity, budget games and a host of other factors and also ignore point of view. Polanco wasn't "worth" $10m to them but he was to you, so who is wrong? If the budget is smaller than you'd like then you can't have Polanco and a new 1B, so how does worth get calculated if Polanco doesn't play first? Meanwhile they've paid a bunch of guys in recent years. You may not like the outcomes, but they have tried to pay for performance as evidenced by the number of expensive deals they've inked. They went and got Sonny Grey but didn't want to re-up him for top dollar, which I believe was the right move based on what STL got from him over the past couple years. They kept Lopez and he's been injured but good. Buxton was signed for good money adjusted for his limited playing time, which was fair to both sides. Correa was an aspirational signing, but they threw down for him and paid a lot of money for almost four years. Donaldson was a colossal *ss but he hit homeruns so they paid him (until he was just too awful to keep, and then they magically got the Yankees to pay him.) You're frustrated and it's leading to over-broad generalizations that just aren't true. Complain about the budget decisions rather than the outcomes of them. That's rooted in truth.

Polanco's value ended at the end of his contract in 2024. At that point anything he did was available to any team that wrote him the $7m check, and it could have been the Twins. That original deal was a lot of money going to a guy that was battling a lot of injuries and not fielding well at all. Not much value needed to be realized for shedding the $10.5m spent on 118 games of 92 OPS+ to be a good idea. But even if the immediate dump of Polanco's salary was breakeven it was a win because it provided them with the freedom to afford the rest of the roster. You want to evaluate the rest of the transactions separately that's fine, but then you do all of them in a big bowl since none of them can be separated and the $6-7m or whatever was saved gets its own line item. It mattered a lot in the bigger picture of that off-season.

Also, there's a lot of mention that these outsiders are going to be bringing in their own guys, but the staffs they are on are not theirs. We're not going to be getting a lot of MIL or CLE coaches as those guys are already working with playoff rosters. That said, we have hired some really good position coaches the last few years as evidenced by how well they performed elsewhere right after leaving MN. Think of James Rowson (NYY) or David Popkins (TOR) before thinking that no one here knows what they're doing. Coaching at the MLB level is much more than just reminding guys to stay still or open their hips a little. There's some psychology, more physiology, some analytics, and a lot of trust involved. Rowson showed up at Byron Buxton's big contract signing even though he wasn't in the organization anymore just because they had developed such a bond. Sometimes coaches are a problem, but often there's way more involved when player performance dips or doesn't evolve and they get used a scapegoats.

Baldelli was the only one that didn't come from within, so as much as the "new blood" sounds good it's mostly a case of the Cs: Cheap and Continuity.

I kind of get what you're saying, but you're kind of ignoring some prominent counter examples like Pablo Lopez (VEN), Carlos Correa (PR), Willi Castro (PR), Christian Vasquez (PR), Johan Duran (DR) and so on. The fact that we traded a bunch of these guys away has more to do with their value/cost than our affinity for Latin American baseball. And our best kids feature some Latin roots as well: ERod (DR), Tait (PAN) and Rojas (CUB) are in our top 5. It's a feeling but it's mostly an artifact of the deadline fire remaking the roster.