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Cris E

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Everything posted by Cris E

  1. Cris E
    Well sure, spending. But the Pohlads have taken $400m out of the organization, like real professional bankers, and they did it without any external motivations like "wanting to win before the owner dies of cancer."
  2. Cris E
    I think they really were in on Valdez and the other famous big expensive talented out of reach names, as reported by Ken R and the rest. But I think it was only going to happen for one of those short one year deals. And I think it was only going to happen if Lopez and his $21m salary was out the door in under an hour. But I do think that was possible. Boston would like a front of rotation guy and you might get an OF from them for Lopez plus or minus some minor league talent. We've got young arms to offer and they have a deep pen to trade from, so things could be worked out. BAL might have been able to put together a C or 1B package, and if we got a catcher then they could have moved Jeffers too. I'm not at all in favor of weakening the rotation, so all of this is predicated on adding first, but it could have happened if they stumbled into one of those top arms. (And that top arm could have been moved in July if the situation warranted it and that guy approved.) Whatever, I would still try to get HOU or AZ interested in Larnach. Both need some OF help. Maybe try for a young 1B from someone, Mayo in BAL maybe? (Not for an OF obviously.)
  3. Cris E
    It would be worth sending some money with Larnach to get a better return for him. A team with arms but no money who could use a better OF corner bat might bite if $2.5m brought down his cost. Send him to AZ while Gurriel is out, and maybe throw in an arm and get back Lawle, or add a big arm and get Lawler and a reliever.
  4. Cris E
    Their best uniform ever was the 2010 cream with navy pinstripes that they introduced for the new stadium. That was a great look. This may be the last sign we see of Joe Pohlad's work.
  5. Cris E
    If I were a prospect I'd be pushing to add a new position every spring. I can maybe see not wanting to change course mid-season, but in the offseason, why not? If all you want to do is play then give yourself as many paths to the lineup as possible.
  6. Cris E
    Completely agree, especially given the number of better OF in AA and AAA banging on the door already. The line behind Bell, Clemens and the ghost of Ty France indicate a much easier path to the 26 man.
  7. Cris E
    I am confused about one thing: this article doesn't have "pipeline" in the title and yet it speaks of moving around who might play a position in the future.
  8. Cris E
    "It's easy. Tell 'em Wash." "It's incredibly hard."
  9. Cris E
    Don't get hung up on the word Prospect any more than the Pipeline mirage. Finding arms that you can get good use out of is the goal, and purity tests for sources are a distraction. Traded for at 21 vs 25, already reached A+ or AAA, original round drafted in, it's probably best to not have a single source so that if anything happens (like Wes Johnson getting hired away) you won't miss a beat.
  10. Cris E
    Is the pitching better overall compared to nine years ago? Again, it's good when you produce your own guys, but most teams don't and being able to find arms from all sources is the game at hand. Very few teams do what you are dreaming of here, and ignoring the actual performance at the major league level is baffling.
  11. Cris E
    Name an organization that produces enough of their own starters to meet your definition of successful. You get Cleveland, but after that the closest I can find is PIT or possibly SEA.Go through the rest of baseball and let me know who the third might be. The ultimate models that everyone says we should be following, MIL and TAM, are constantly churning pitching prospects to keep the roster full of talent. It's what well-run programs do. EDIT: It's worth pointing out that the Twins are just like those three squads in other respects, in that they've had trouble assembling enough offense and three of the four have had sporadic playoff appearances with little success.
  12. Cris E
    Taj Bradley was in the majors after that.
  13. Cris E
    So what? A one year grade of the farm teams is no measure for nine years of history. Many of the best pitching moves Falvey made were never prospects (eg Grey, Stewart, Lopez) plus Law is talking about 2025 so that excludes everyone that's ever graduated to the majors (Ryan, Duran, Jax, Ober, etc.)
  14. Cris E
    @RiverbrianMy point is that they are in a very uncharacteristic space because of Skenes, one that's quite different from MN and possibly quite different from what Shelton might normally do, so there might not be many lessons to be drawn. Playing a backup catcher must happen everywhere, just as most teams have at least one roster hole. If you want to hold Shelton accountable for not having better CF options go ahead, but I'm not sure it's instructive.
  15. Cris E
    Bonkers. You measure the outcomes from all sources because people don't develop on schedules and injuries happen when they happen and you still need to field a team year after year. There's no trophy for best minor league pitching pipeline except among the prospect hounds, and no one cares about it anyway. Quick, without looking it up, who had the best minor league pitching pipeline in 2022? 2012?
  16. Cris E
    This isn't 1985 Whitey Herzog, managers do not have carte blanche to do whatever they want with the players. And while I can't speak to that organization in general, that was a small payroll team was in win-now mode to try to exploit Paul Skenes while he was still in Pittsburgh. That's hardly a scenario for best practices and far horizon thinking.
  17. Cris E
    Or, and this may be crazy but hear me out, maybe he was injured and might recover.
  18. Cris E
    This word pipeline is a bunch of distracting crap. it's a bad metaphor that doesn't reflect how staffing any organization really works. You get the best people you can from where ever you can, and if you can teach them things to get better that's good too. Forcibly remove the image of raw materials being manufactured into hall of fame pitchers because that mostly doesn't happen for anyone. Sure, you see a Cy Young grade Skubal or Skenes every once in a while, but the best most teams hope for is Joe Ryan. Hey look, we got Joe Ryan. To evaluate an organization's strength in procuring pitching you have to weigh drafting AND trading AND dumpster diving AND instruction AND preventing injuries AND recovering from injuries AND proper usage/roles and finally if they spend the money to maintain what they build. That's a lot of people doing a lot of different things, it's not a pipe with an In and an Out end. The organization is much better at this than it used to be. I don't believe you need a True Ace to be successful because there are a very finite number of them, but our rotation has been highly ranked at the MLB level for years (and it's been led by Lopez and Grey and Ryan -- good pitchers), we built an excellent bullpen without spending much on free agents (and they're going to try it again), and our guys miss time with injuries but not nearly at the rate of someone like the Dodgers. We even usually spend our big dollars on our top arm, Correa notwithstanding. Anyway, it's not something that you complete.
  19. Cris E
    Similarly, if you are going to try to slide a guy through waivers I'll take the guy with control problems and an 8 ERA.
  20. Cris E
    Hey look, Ben Rortvedt just hit waivers. You know what, this 26 man would look sweeeet with four catchers...
  21. Cris E
    They better be seeing Clemens for his glove, because a bunch of his value comes from a hot 3 HR game in September. If you swap three singles for those three HR his OPS+ drops from 96 to about 92 or 93 (raw OPS goes from .725 to .697, right around JJ Bleday and Brooks Baldwin.) That's not a 1B bat.
  22. Cris E
    This was not a Falvey failure. He wasn't doing the business side until well after these decisions were made, he just went with what was promised. If you're going to ding him for this then what was the right move here? He somehow had to know that the budget wasn't sustainable next year and not spend it? He had to only sign one year deals? He gave a contract with a ton of player opt-outs, without a series of long painful tail end years, with some triggers that would have offered the team outs in the event of serious injury. That was not a bad deal for a potentially injured player on a $150m payroll. Ownership takes risks and makes commitments. If they aren't going to stand behind decisions then they hang their people out to take unnecessary abuse. Go ahead and yell at Falvey, but this one says more about you than him.
  23. Cris E
    Talk about blocking the kids, you go directly to the only part of the team that's above average, with the longest line of prospects on the verge of graduating to the bigs and want to spend a ton of money. Clickbait.
  24. Cris E
    This isn't something that happened in the past decade since I'm not sure they ever bothered making any excuses in 40 years. There was some spending to get a new stadium, of course, and a couple years ago crazy cousin Joe got into dad's liquor cabinet and bought a Correa, but mostly they've always said "We spend 47% of the money we make and if we win that's great, but golly the system is rigged against the little guys from MN." The press writes it down, the locals rail against the Yankees or the Dodgers and then the family takes a giant slice of the pie home with them for fall. They make some changes every once in a while, but only when it looks like things are ready to turn anyway. Back in 1987 you think Tom Kelly was the reason they won the World Series, or was the waiting over and the kids finally ready for prime time? Same with Gardy: he had to suffer for years, and when things looked ready they threw the keys to Molitor, and Rocco got a playoff in his first year too. They don't care about excuses and scape goats, but when it's time to cash in they want a fresh face to help sell the future. If they hadn't thrown away the entire bullpen and hacked off the payroll, if they'd just gone and gotten the outside money in 2023 or 2024 and held their ground on the baseball side, then things could be pretty solid right now. If the budget had more room there's no way that Bell is in MN this spring, for example. Falvey might have ticked some folks off in the details, but he was building a solid organization.
  25. Cris E
    I don't think it's as clean as Tom vs Derek. I think Joe was spend spend spend until until the end of 2023 and then he got cold feet. Falvey was on a path of building and was coaxing him along through the collapse in 2024 and the tepid start to 2025, but by the deadline in 2025 Joe made him burn it down. I think Tom came in when the huge debt made the team unsellable. I can't speak to who dug that hole, but it pre-dates the end of the RSN contract and there's never been a Padres-like run for the title so it had to be a business-side stripping of resources. Regardless, he stepped into the baseball side after the season and started saying We Can Win out loud but wouldn't commit to a budget increase. I think Falvey has a long term, very Cleveland-like plan to build the franchise. It starts with getting the pitching development going via draft and trades, and then he's got a pile of position players on the verge that look pretty good too although there hasn't been as much in the way of player development on that side of things. The other half of winning is to spending what he can to augment major league roster to fill in around the development organization he's built. Looking at the team at the end of 2025 they were regularly playing Jeffers, Lewis, Lee, Keaschall, Wallner, Buxton and Larnach, all of whom they drafted. I wish there was a real 1B to be had, and Bader had to take over a bunch of OF playing time because the corners were pretty weak against LH pitching, but the bones were there to field average guys around the field and replace them with better when possible. The pitching was good, sourced from whereever, with a bunch more youth on the way. Going into 2026 Tom felt a need to win to sell tickets and streaming subs, but Falvey mostly felt a giant pain in his bullpen area. If you have good pitching, both rotation and a deep bullpen, you can mark time waiting for the next set of youth to mature. But cutting the bullpen loose meant that they'd have to outscore the other teams to win, and that can't happen with this group. Tom keeps talking big because he needs them to win to make some money, and Derek knew it can't happen right now, so they split.
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