Mike Sixel

Who hits if you deal them? Who plays SS? I can't see Lee getting dealt. Imagine the backup SS being WORSE than Lee and Farmer at everything for 50 games......They aren't signing any decent hitters, I have no idea how anyone can think this team is better dealing hitters.

It was a rough year for a lot of rookies that were "sure things" across the league (hitter edition). I'm not going to worry about this rough start.

I think they aren't disparging the WS teams, but this idea that the teams were even close to good most years they didn't win the WS. This site would have been calling for everyone's head after 1990..... This idea that Kelly was awesome is odd, given he had more losing than winning seasons. And Rocco has the highest winning percentage of any Twin's manager, if results matter....

Not replacing him? Money, money, money. Not to mention Falvey likely was told he's fully in charge, prove it. My guesses, of course...

You don't write off a guy after this little time, not if you want to win long term. Seriously.

Agreed with the last part. Likely the first also.

I think Festa can be quite good. Matthews? I think his ceiling is lower, but he will eventually be no worse than an innings eater, but could be more . And I think he will be. The future is bright pitching wise.

Well, this team has added real budget once maybe twice at the deadline under this ownership, so I'm not shocked. One should expect mistakes to be made when changing a culture, ripping them for every one is ridiculous, not that you do that. As for winning it all? I didn't expect that to happen, so I'm not really disappointed when it doesn't.

I have no idea what happened to the budget after signing CC and Pablo ...I have no idea the constraints..... And I'm not going to defend many of the decisions on free agents.... But people are forgetting how truly awful this organization was before this FO arrived. Truly awful.

You quoted a guy talking about the playoff roster. Nothing sinister or whatever about my comment. Lighten up francis

Their playoff payroll is much, much, lower

Imagine Kirk with a defense

I think he's the starting 2b until one of two minor league players come up. However, it might be Lee, who is the only real backup SS on the 40 man.... With Castro playing second when Lee spells CC. Not what I'd do...

A tiny percent of all prospects work out, I'm not sure your point, other than coming into a celebration thread with this question....

Zero chance Jenkins starts in August. He's going to be saved for teh beginning of the year so they might have a ROY winner (which is a huge downside of the new rules). IMO, of course. I hope to be wrong, as i think he might be ready next fall (so I'm thinking April 26 he starts).

I think the mediocre veterans will continue to get squeezed by most teams. Overall? I don't think so, but it's possible.

They aren't selling it for 3B if they are losing money every year.....

Kelly had a losing record. Rocco has the highest winning percentage of any manager of the Twins. I'm not here to defend Rocco, but I'm not sure how to make those statements add up.

I'm not worried about Lee long term. The others? I don't get what happened to Martin as a "get on base" kind of player, and this article doesn't even touch on his awful defense..... I don't think the Twins think the others have any future.

What does a floor really do? Should the white Sox sign a bunch of mediocre veterans and block young players, just to spend? They'll still be terrible. But make no progress to being better long term. I really don't know the answer....

MLB tried to buy the Fox regionals before diamond outbid them. They'll definitely try to take this in house somehow.

I can almost guarantee that another level of the minors is gone.... Especially with college baseball increasing. The owners will want someone else to pay four development. No idea if the bubble is finally bursting, but people have been saying the sports bubble will burst for years and years... I'll believe it when I see it.

Craig's amazing

I got permission to copy paste this form Craig Calcaterra's newsletter today....it talks about the Giants and Mariners and sustainable teams, and applies to the Twins. Which is why I don't think they'll ever win with this ownership group, IMO, they won't get permission to go for it at the deadline (or even the offseason). Screw “sustainable” Yesterday Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer spoke to the press about the just-concluded season and the winter ahead. In the course of his comments he said something you hear from most baseball executives these days: ". . . The goal is to build something that's sustainable." "Sustainable" in this context is almost always a euphemism for "we want to turn a nice profit with a roster that is not too expensive, but we don’t want to be so bad that we catch a lot of hell for it.” The word, often paired with the concept of “financial flexibility,” is almost always deployed as a means of dodging a direct question about payroll and its use strongly implies that the team doesn’t want to shoot for 100 wins or anything approaching dominance, because doing such a thing would be inefficient. Sometimes it’s not just implied. Here was Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto, infamously stating that goal in explicit terms a little under a year ago: "If you go back and you look in a decade, those teams that win 54% of the time always wind up in the postseason. And they, more often than not, wind up in the World Series. So there's your bigger picture process. Nobody wants to hear the goal this year is, 'We're going to win 54% of the time.' Because sometimes 54% is -- one year, you're going to win 60%, another year you're going to win 50%. It's whatever it is. But over time, that type of mindset gets you there ... If what you're doing is focusing year-to-year on, 'what do we have to do to win the World Series this year?' You might be one of the teams that's laying in the mud and can't get up for another decade." He added, "We're actually doing the fanbase a favor in asking for their patience to win the World Series while we continue to build a sustainably good roster." First off: do you think any fan actually thinks they’re being “done a favor” by being told by the team’s GM that he does not plan to go all-out in an effort to win? I sure as hell don’t. The Mariners have existed for pushing 50 years now and are the only team in baseball which has never been to the World Series. I feel like they’ve exercised plenty of patience by now, don’t you? While most other executives are not stupid enough to explicitly say “we’re shooting for 87 wins and asking for more is unreasonable,” most of them basically behave that way. They do so by deploying that word Dipoto deployed last year and Hoyer did yesterday: “sustainable.” The idea of sustainability, when a GM says it, is an exercise in expectation-reduction. It’s a means of conditioning fans not to expect anything more than just Wild Card contention. If they make it, great, we fulfilled expectations! If they fall short, hey, at least they continued to be financially prudent. These efforts at fan conditioning have been greatly aided by 20+ years of “Moneyball’s” influence which has convinced a great many in and around the game to equate wanting to aggressively improve a baseball team with stupidity or recklessness. This idea was perfectly captured by Craig Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus nine years ago: Whatever the current breed of baseball executive, their media surrogates, and a small core of sabermetrically or ownership-oriented fans want to believe, most fans just want to watch a winner. It doesn't even have to be every year. They just want the GM and everyone who works for him to ****ing try harder, to stop hiding behind quant-speak, and to make protecting the billionaire owner’s checkbook less of a priority. This is especially true for the Chicago Cubs who almost literally print money. Most of us have to approach life in a sustainable manner because if we don’t we’re gonna go broke and be in deep ****. No professional sports team is in that boat and even if some claim otherwise, the Chicago Cubs sure as hell aren’t. So spare me, Jed Hoyer, about your and your ownership group's desire to turn a consistent, predictable profit. That’s not why anyone roots for the Cubs.

I'd consider making the lesser team win 2 games, and the better team only 1, but that still doesn't solve your problem .....