Cris E

Houston is miles away, so put that talk on a shelf somewhere. Culpepper could be the future, but first we'll have to see how he does with longer exposure at AA and the even larger challenges of AAA. He was good at AA, not outstanding. Lee is going to get a half season at least, barring injury. And even if he does get hurt I'm still not sure Culpepper gets more than a week or two before August.

And this problem means this juncture was a particularly rough time to lose Castro. He was at least a credible stopgap SS in ways that the rest of the roster is not.

Bryce Harper has a defense problem: he really can't throw. If we trade away our 4th OF and get back a guy who can't play CF we'll be looking at a 70-92 season and we may as well trade everyone. (But I do like that Harper could be another third catcher, like Mickey G. That's got value.) /S in case it isn't clear that most things I write need a /s

Pretty sweet post-game work by the radio engineering team. Crowd noise instead of interviews is innovative and challenging, but mostly for the serious fan.

Lower velo? Seriously? Last year this was maybe a thing, but his avg 4 seam is over 100 this year. He's learning to pitch, and oh by the way he's fixed the FB too. This is a fine article about a broadened repertoire, but it seems to use the lower velocity aspect as clickbait. Let the good work stand on its own and resist the temptation to hunt for views. Thx.

Bader just has to hang on until Walner comes back and then he can go sit down and wait for defensive spots and the odd tough leftie. He got off to a really good start (for him) and is now regressing to his old self. Not a concern (unless Falvey really thought April Bader was what he was going to get all year.) Castro was hurt and then didn't even get a rehab game. Settle down. Jax and Stewart concern me. A lot more depends on them than middle relief guy Varland.

You know he didn't go up on a mountain to have God hand him game logs on stone tablets. You can do this yourself.

My favorite Mow 'Em Down Inning was way back when Bert Blyleven was on the mound. He gave up two HR, a couple walks but got three strikeouts. Yay, I guess?

Tony La Russa looks old. EDIT: I mean a lot of these players are my age and they look paunchy old, but TLR looks deathlike.

We do have Gasper for that vital third catcher duty...

A series? I do not agree with this at all, it's a huge overreach. Bullpens can be managed to shield some guys from being exposed most of the time.

Nick, what's your opinion on Castellano? Your depth chart includes Topa and your first depth piece is Tonkin so there may be a place for him. Do they try to keep him? Should they? This is the bullpen piece, take a swing.

I think @USAFChief is playing semantic games and every roster has guys on it that you'd rather not be tossing important innings. You play the cards in your hand at the moment and go from there, and Castellano looks like someone who can hang around the back of the pen and not embarrass the team when his name is called. Example of how little these guys need to work to own a spot: Cole Sands in 2023. That's a year the Twins were competing and a guy they like, a guy who was effective, but he only appeared once a week and only his last two games were closer than three runs. 3/31-4/14 two appearances 5/13-6/4 five appearances 7/5-7/28 three appearances, 12 BF 8/12-9/4 five appearances (but only 2 batters in the first ten days) There was a DL trip in June and a couple rotations to get a fresh arm up, so he only missed six weeks he could have been pitching. More to the point he had one bad game coming back from injury where he gave up 6 of his 9 ER for the year, but the balance was quite good and he still only got out there once a week. All told he threw 21 innings of 3.74 ERA in 15 appearances, and only two were tight games that occurred after he'd proven his ability. There are ways to shield young pitchers from important innings, even in competitive years, and Castellano could be managed similarly regardless of what he's called.

I think the Twins are still living in the shadow of 2022 where they had a huge number of injuries, didn't provide a sufficient number of backups and didn't have any real players left by August. Some of those late-season outfields would have embaressed St Paul. So finding a guy that was a proven CF to cover for Buxton's inevitable 100 game outage was important. Remember that Rocco described Kiersey's D as greatly improved after a lot of work, meaning that it wasn't always this good. And a year ago he had not had any MLB experience yet so they didn't want to find out his hitting game did not translate while knowing that they needed a half season of CF work from that roster spot. I can see the decision going either way for most teams, but after 2022 the Twins are always going to have a proven MLB baseline on the roster at every position. Doubly so for spots with proven injury risk like Buxton, Correa and pitching in general.

You are correct, he did play elsewhere. (Fangraphs doesn't sort their fielding numbers by year, which was pretty unexpected.) He may well be up in three months, but not until then. And he's still only got 267 PA above A+ ball and they were not outstanding. He's essentially Brooks Lee from a couple years ago and we've already got one looking for a spot.

My whole point is that I agree with your hypothetical but they don't have the players for that and have to make do in the 1.0 WAR bin until the kids step up. The complaints I was addressing were very concrete lists of names and the answer to them is equally concrete.

How did you get that far down your list and miss the broadcast revenue problem? That's #1 with a bullet, given how they held back on the announcement of the sale until there was no longer any chance of hanging on to the old model. Here's what a guy from San Diego wrote about their first year outside the RSN tent. Keep in mind that the old contract was for about $60m per year, which is more than the Twins' $54m deal. Losing half or more of your broadcast revenue is a big deal. And the fact that there are another handful of teams in the same boat means that the pool of shared 48% of revenue is going to be smaller too. It's a fact that the new owners are not going to enjoy the margins that the Pohlads are getting today.

Seriously who? Actual names. See my note above, but they didn't have anyone ready last year. They don't have anyone ready now, If you'd thrown the keys to Julien last year it would have failed. Kirilloff would still have been injured. If you move Jeffers you need to play Camargo and that's a terrible trade. Who? This isn't hypothetical team building, they only have this list of names to work with. Who?

Show me the guy hitting so well he needs to shoulder his way past everyone else to claim ABs. Kirilloff might have been one, but his body failed and he's out of the picture. Did you not see who was playing 1B in St Paul last year? Severino? Williams? Isola? Does anyone else have a better 3B glove that makes you need to move Lewis? If Miranda's hitting starts demanding a spot in the lineup his glove is making the case for 1b, not 3b. Keaschall hasn't fielded in a year and needs to go down to the minors to solidify his hitting. Remember he's only got 267 AB in AA (where he only slugged .439) and nothing higher so far. Julien and Martin are both slow to come into focus, but either could at any time and neither is a great fielder that would belong anywhere but 1B. I get your point, but you need to have these good young guys before you move away from one year veteran filler guys, and we simply haven't had those kids step up yet. Maybe by the end of this year, certainly some for next year, but not yet. Not even close.

You've got it backwards. These guys are not leading away from good young players and towards more filler, They're only there until our own good young kids show up, which is what's been pointed out is already happening in the rotation. The goal is always to be developing your own guys to fill holes long-term, but while you're waiting for them, signing a series of mediocre veterans is not a bad plan. What an actual bad plan looks like is signing someone mediocre or old to a long-term deal. Settling for three or four years of a Rhys Hoskins, Gio Urshela or even Ty France slams the door shut in the face of the eventual emergence of Miranda or Julien or Larnach or Keaschall or Gasper or Eeles or whoever. Gallo was around until there were better options. Margot is gone. Farmer was pushed out by the youngster Lee. This is what it should look like. (And since no one is perfect, there's always room for some improvement. In our case it is mostly around when to cut bait on a failed spin of the wheel.)

Amen Rodcarew . I'm not sure who is supposed to be harshing on Randy, but I think it's more a strawman than a real problem. He's got value in St Paul as a solid source of innings, a good clubhouse presence and a pillar of the community. He's got value to the Twins as an insurance policy. But he was signed to a deal that over-pays him for more years than his current output would warrant so he's going to be harder to trade. The best situation for everyone is him accepting his role, accepting that there are better players passing him by and getting shots ahead of him, and him continuing to pitch to his potential and being a positive force whereever he's playing. He could complain, he could give up, he could get injured and be completely worthless, but he's not and no one is saying that at all. He's just making more as insurance than most guys in the role. The idea that anyone is playing high school favorites or there's some conspiracy to prevent this 91 mph heater from dominating MLB is preposterous. He's a guy caught in a bit of a Faustian bargain, where he's getting his money but it's coming at the cost of easy mobility between organizations and a low bar to changing hands. But honestly if you had a chance to offer a 19 year old Dobnak a couple decent MLB years followed by injury and $10m as a AAA starter into his 30s he'd grab it again and not look back.

If we hang on to him as a Rule V and he excels then he's pitching well for us in MLB and that's awesome. If he does not excel then his value will be lower than it is today and it might be easier to move him through whatever channels are required. If there are some guys like Tonkin that don't have options then we may lose them, but the injury bug has bitten enough folks that we can delay that choice via the IL.

I think how the radar guns measured speed changed somewhere around the early 90s. Here's a great story from baseball America on the subject. "A 90 mph pitch on a Speedgun could register at 92 on a JUGS gun and 93-94 mph on a Stalker." It's still not 97, but they weren't blowing out shoulders and elbows every other year either. https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/the-measure-of-a-fastball-has-changed-over-the-years/

Agree, except it's more likely he gets to be The Guy in St Paul until Stewart blows up on May 5. Then he can be the 7th inning guy until Jax and Duran get tired/hurt in mid-summer. But the experience working late and without a net will prep him for the big innings when the top two guys inevitably falter.

I don't think anyone knows anything and there's been a LOT of speculation around this process so far. I believe: - The team was put on the market once the TV revenue picture was clarified and it became certain that the spice would not flow as it had in the past. Between that and the spike in payrolls in recent years the family was not ready to lean into this expensive and less profitable world. - They announced it as "exploring a sale" simply because that's what you say in case you don't find a market for your product. The goal is selling, not dumping, and they'll pull back if the price isn't high enough. (But I think they will eventually find someone at a lower price once the new TV money stabilizes and it's clear how much poorer the franchise is.) - The Ishibas probably were fine with the team and stadium and even the TV deal and would have settled on a price in good time. What likely broke that deal had far more to do with the chance to own the White Sox. It's got more future real estate value and potential broadcast money than the Twins, and it's silly to pretend that $200m is some insurmountable barrier. - I think the big money vs little money brawl coming with the next CBA deal might get solved by using expansion cash to buy out some of the lost future revenues that would be shared in a new formula. That is, if they find a new formula that makes teams like LAD and NYY share more that could also be the basis for distributing expansion fees (eg percent of total MLB value rather than 30 equal shares.) It won't really offset it, but if they were going to lose the fight anyway (especially since all the new owners are going to be a on the wrong end of new media deals rather than signing huge old-school cable deals.) EDIT: I put this here because any new owner is going to have to know where they'll stand in that fight before they write a check. It's incredibly important to anyone who wants to win. - Because they don't have another pre-approved buyer on the line there's little chance this team gets sold before the end of this season.