Cris E

They didn't sell the names because they need to sell some tickets after a couple really bad years. They didn't sell back to the bare studs because then you'd need to trade something to get two more front of rotation starters just like the ones they have now. They didn't sell everything because you can get to the playoffs with a fairly pedestrian team in the AL Central. If the second and third year guys improve then they can compete, and if they don't then they will not be ready to compete in 2027 either. Lewis and Lee/Culpepper and Keashcal and some young pitching needs to establish in 2026 for anything to work in under 3-4 years. But if it does work then they can certainly hang with this division. There's some bizarre notion around these parts that the only acceptable goal is a World Series, and that's just wildly untrue. It's even less true when you're a couple years away and waiting on kids to make things possible. Ownership (especially the new non-Pohlads) knows that getting into a playoff hunt is winning, that excitement is winning, and positive energy on your way to a top team is winning. Doing a bad job of winning a little bit more is bad, but they aren't blocking the kids and they aren't trading away the future for mediocre parts of a .500 team they can afford. They can't afford to win more than .500 via free agents, so raising your own top prospects must happen and they are working on it.

Maybe KC wants an OF bat, but there's no way they work in the division, or take on any money, and especially for a marginal improvement.

I had not heard this before. Those are going to be tough tickets to sell.

Rogers is valuable because even if he's dog average but retains some platoon advantage it frees Funderburk to be used as a good reliever, not simply as a lefty. It's a solid move. I don't think the bullpen will be settled this year, since even the best rosters have lots of churn at the back end. But Shelton should be able to get the first six or seven arms identified by June even if the roles aren't quite set it stone. Older guys like Topa and Rogers (and Hawkins) may offer some guidance, but mostly they need to pitch to hold a spot. This is a season of tryouts and learning so they need to actively sift to select the ones that are working and remove the ones that are not.

Stewart was traded for a lottery ticket named Outman. He can still come through this spring, but if he hasn't righted the ship and claimed a spot by Opening Day he's mostly AAA roster filler and they should leave him in St Paul or send him away. Larger picture 2026 is a year of seeing what they have, so I think a bunch of these 27 year old prospects need to move up or out in the next 12 weeks. I believe that's been implied pretty clearly, and the proof will be in the pudding, but culling the herd of placeholders has to happen as the top youngsters are reaching ripeness soon. Roster building looks sloppy when you're holding several spots for guys that are only a year away. They don't want to block the coming SS or OF kids even though what they have is not great and there's no guarantee of Culpepper or Jenkins or ERod or whoever being ready for Mpls this summer. Picking up faltering prospects like Outman is just like gathering pitchers to fix, a lottery game that teams like MN and MIL and Tampa Bay have to play. It may well be the case that he doesn't make the team and he is lost through waivers, but that's what a losing lottery ticket looks like.

Prices come down when you wait for the stale smell of flop sweat from the unsigned two weeks before Spring Training. When you know you have no money then you go to Dollar General early to get the best look at the remainders. That's the difference between Falvey and Ryan under the evolving Pohlad ownership. There are a few guys out there unsigned and useful looking, and the opportunities are there in MN for vets who want innings rather than to wait for a starter to break down. There will likely be a deal for one or two of them, just as someone else will tire of their OF options by March 7 and make a deal for Larnach. It's not perfect, but it's a pattern.

He doesn't look much like James Outman. What's the goal here?

I don't think Julien has any value at all right now. It's been a while since he was effective, and he was well and truly lost last year even in St Paul. Miranda was picked up because they could see a specific cause of his drop-off (concussion) and guess at a recovery timeline, but I'm not not certain Eddie would get as much interest. If he hasn't figured things out by the end of March he could just be released. (Edit: I forgot he found his way to first base more regularly last year, but he's been caught by the emerging youth and he still won't have a roster spot in April if he doesn't improve a lot.)

Yes because layoffs chances are based on who is at backup catcher. There are a lot of parts to a team, and while they aren't all of equal importance you still need to tend to your knitting up and down the roster. There was a crater at 1B and it's got a Bell in it now. They've stabilized catcher for a couple years. They couldn't do better at SS so they'll let Lee make his claim and see what the minors bring. It's not a Bond villain style plan, but it's steps in a direction. They still have some questions to answer, like what to do with all the corner OF and who else is getting a spot in the pen. But there appears to be more money available than back in Nov so grabbing Siranthony makes a lot of sense and maybe moving Larnach for one more piece will put us at Truck Day in Feb.

You should definitely start including MLB players who need a position change on these. Wallner might be OK here, or Lewis maybe, plus usual the Keaschall and Julien types.

No, of course not. He has exactly one appearance from the pen since high school, he wasn't all that good in St Paul last year, and even in AA his WHIP was still 1.5 with a 3.65 ERA. He needs time to mature, to add some velocity, to learn to pitch at a higher level. This is ridiculous.

Shifting young starters into relief roles is a constant in every organization and in every season dating back to the 50s. This is not a problem, it's a process. If a guy is good enough you hope he develops as a starter so you get more out of him, but as his effectiveness or health wanes you slide him into the pen to see if he gets better. Some guys with injury concerns or who came to pitching later in their careers may debut in the pen, but all the way back to high school ball it's how things work.

This isn't really a Falvey thing, it's a tale is as old as the franchise in Calvin Griffiths' days. We won't have the revenues of the big dogs and we never seem to have the confidence of the little ones so we wallow in the middle. And in recent years the Pohlads got into the cookie jar a little too deep and the money got even tighter. Falvey has spent what he gets, and when it whipsaws from Correa to a burn-down to No Half Measures in two years you're not going to have any coherence in the plans. It's been chaos and expecting him to stay the course is unreasonable. That said, @DocBauerraises some fair points. His notion of targeting specific talented guys early was torpedoed by the late date of the coup, but other moves like cashing in Larnach or spending a little bit of actual money on one quality bullpen arm or the utility guy all make sense within the budget numbers kicked around in November. There was time and payroll room to move some guys around without blocking the important work of getting the kids on the field in Minneapolis.

I think the team knows they can turn the knob and they'll get some relievers to fall out, so Festa and Preippe and Rojas and Adams and Ohl are going to get a chance to make the jump. But I think they know it isn't automatic. Adams and Ohl were developed using that four day appearance cycle and it only sort of worked out at the MLB level. They did not cut loose and suddenly start throwing 99mph, they did not drop all their weaker secondary pitches, and they were not great in their debuts. To be fair most pitchers are not, and that's going to be part of any youngster's journey. They will probably have some trouble because it's new and difficult, not because of their role. (See Winder, Balazovic, et al.)

It's a personality thing, not a job title. If Bell is a good guy that likes to get to know his teammates and offer advice then that's who he is. Some guys talk golf and others go home at every opportunity and others are toxic a-holes that don't accept laziness or complacency without a challenge, and all have their places in a modern locker room. You don't need to be a great player to tell stories of how former teammates like Trout or Verlander prepared for games, or to push back on ideas like "change is only for the off-season." Now I don't think it makes a huge difference in most clubhouses because most players are fairly mature and know what works for them by the time they reach MLB. But when you've got a ton of callow youth in your lineup, or even a couple specific ones you want to ensure grow up right, then it may be worth investing in. Bell should be evaluated for his on-field work, not his camp counselor value.

Well they did have more development success than just those three stories. Jax, Duran and to a lesser extent Varland were best case scenarios of rolling your own relievers. Just because they were traded doesn't mean they didn't happen. But it's also fair to say that just because they happened that the team can crank out three more next year. Things looked very different in 2023. If ownership learned anything from the missteps of the past couple years then this might not be that long a walk in the desert. Quite a lot depends on how the CBA goes, and this winter more teams are stepping back than investing. But Pohlads were spending and investing before 2024, and they recapitalized in order to straighten the financial mess that had developed, so it's not like we're waiting for John Fisher to see the light. One thing in favor of a better 2026 is the youth that was always going to be a part of the plans. A lot of guys are no the verge of coming to Mpls like Jenkins, ERod, and all the pitchers. Those guys paired with Lewis and Lee either figuring things out of getting out of the way should help a lot. You can say it hasn't happened yet, but the downside to youth is not having a guaranteed maturation schedule. Some of these guys are going to get better, some won't and others will get hurt. You just don't know until hindsight clues you in.

This. When people were suggesting taking a weak-armed 2B to left field I wanted to say "Hey, we're already doing that." Let's finish that one before discarding another infielder. It's not like there's a better 2B queued behind LK.

This is laughable. Only ten Twins had over 300 AB last season. Assigning 1000 to these four guys is a wild over-reach. Jackson -may- get 300, last year all non-Jeffers catcher ABs only totaled 314, but he was not terrible. I'm not expecting 111 OPS+ again, but even if he were around 80 he'd be about par for backup catchers, and very few teams avoid giving 300 AB to a weak hitting catcher. Kreidler and Arcia will get 300 AB between them, mostly at SS. Lee will play SS until he's injured or so bad they throw the keys to Culpepper. Clemons will be soaking up a bunch of those utility innings, especially at 2b and 3b. Julien and Martin will get chances at 2B before these two just to see if they're ever allowed near it again. Wagamon will only get as many AB as he earns, and since all Josh Bell's value is derived from hitting against RH there won't be many chances against those for the youngster. But again, if he hits LH pitching like he has been it may not be the end of the world for him to get 300. You can catastrophize if that's what makes you happy, but "the worst hitters in MLB" are not here to start, or even play a lot. They include a backup catcher and some infield contingency plans. This is about what replacement level players in these roles look like. We had great luck with Castro, but many teams accept holes in the lineup and work to fill them over time. Have you seen Cleveland's middle infield? Schneeman and Arias neatly matched around 130 games and 76 OPS+ with Rochio backing them up with his 75 OPS+ in 115 games. In DET Sweeney led their SS with 118 games of 53 OPS+ and his backup was Baez with a wildly sucessful 87 OPS+ that marked a complete win for him. It's tough out there, but when you trade away your starting SS on short notice there's going to be a period of pain while you get something better in place. Culpepper is close.

If things go well most of these guys won't play much at all. Jackson will get some reps to rest Jeffers and Wags may get some ABs on the short side of a platoon. But Arcia won't play unless Lee completely breaks down and Culpepper fails as his replacement, and even then he may be fighting with Kreidler for time. 2026 is a year to see what they have, so they're playing what they have. If they did go sign someone there'd be complaining about blocking the kids, so they get some backups and a couple lotto tickets in case things fall apart. I swear the people on this site just love to hate.

It looked for all the world like he was having leg problems that led to this terrible swing. It was as if he couldn't push off, didn't see the pitch well and was guessing with a hurried stride to get out there for the fastball. I'm no mechanics guy, so I'm happy to accept this reading of the numbers to explain what was happening. But none of these interpretations matter as much as how Lewis and his coaches respond to it. He looked bad last year, even after he started looking healthy and athletic. Too bad he didn't want to make changes during the season, but now is the time to fix things. Five weeks to see how it went.

The BB trade simulator is a bad way to evaluate players. It is measuring excess value vs contract, not the value of the player himself, not the state of the payroll or luxury tax, and it thus leads to idiocy. Exhibit 1: Ryan with two years remaining being three times as valuable as Byron Buxton on a $15m deal with four years remaining! Exhibit 2: Wallner after a down year being worth more than Buxton. This series sort of does the same thing, but it tries to accommodate things like positional scarcity within the organization. It's got some issues, but Nick knows who will and won't be traded, where the holes in the org are and which prospects are nearly worth what the projections say.

You're working kind of hard to pretend that they never went out and got Correa. They have gone out and filled holes just as you asked, and then people complain about how that went, so when they dump that guy you get to complain that we never make any moves. I get that you're talking more generally than one specific position, that Bell and Arcia were signed because we don't have kids ready for the spots. But honestly you're complaining baselessly about a lot of veteran fringe, backup guys that Falvey has had decent luck with. You really need to get on Royce and Wallner and Larnach for not doing anything with the full years they were granted in 2025. They're not young and they didn't have to share time that much and they proved to be mostly average.

It's odd that positional scarcity is cited in the intro and then Jeffers appears at #19. He's the poster child for positional scarcity, as both within the org and across baseball there are just not enough starting catchers that can hit at all. I'd have him much higher because he's got a ton of value either as trade bait or because it would be nearly impossible to replace him.

(oops, double)

You need someone to play the games and not look like the scorched remains of 2022. People who are complaining about Bell (who is here on a 1 year deal) were the same ones complaining about Bader and Taylor and tons of old arms like Coloumbe who took a spot and left. Those guys were there to hold down roles that our 26 year old youngsters were not able to fill. Remember that without Bell, Kody and Edouard were slated to take their massive histories of outstanding awesomeness into 2026. Every team has some Bondo guys that you never dream on but fill in when someone gets hurt, or forgets how to hit, or just doesn't develop. You need them because the kids do not just drop through the system and into roles, on plan and covered in unicorn sparkles. If Bell was here on a 2-3 year deal, or they went out and got Kwan to decay in place for four years while we tried to sift through our kids in St Paul then you'd have a point. But that is not what they're doing. Which 30-something on a multi-year deal most upset the progress of what prospect? Be specific, because it's been a while since we had a 1B,C, SS prospect to block, Paddack was out for a year when acquired, and Correa was planted in the hole at SS, so are we back to Gallo again? He only had 330 PAs, so half time and he was a 100 OPS+. Not awesome, but not a full season of crap like Andrelton Simmons.