from certainly true to more my opinion: Well, they had a series of bad drafts. Whether there were other players available or not, they had a series of drafts that produced nothing. That hurts. They made some bad trades. Their top prospects have SO FAR failed to produce at a consistent, high, level. They signed some bad FA contracts. Something isn't right in the minors in terms of teaching base stealing / running, and fielding, imo. The fundamentals just don't seem to be there the last 5-7 years like they seemed to be in the past. Maybe that's nostalgia, but I'm not alone in typing that here. They hired a manager that had never managed before, who is, imo, over his head tactically. Now, we can't see what he does off the field, and I think off the field is super important.....but since we can't see that, I can only judge him on what I can see.... They got stale in their thinking and were slow to adjust. IMO, this largely comes from (until a couple years ago) not bringing in many outside voices. Groupthink is a thing, and it is a thing I think they used to struggle with. I think that is less an issue now, but it takes years to recover from cultural mistakes. They are putting guys in positions not to succeed, like Sano in RF, and not having Polanco play any other positions than 2B recently in the minors, even though Dozier is here. They thought they were contenders and signed a 29 year old free agent DH, when they had Sano, Plouffe, Mauer, Vargas, and Arcia. I think their resource allocation has been off for some time.