laloesch

Abel will be in the running for a rotation spot. His stuff is too good to discount him.

Yeah he’ll decline it. This is his big chance to cash in and I don’t blame him. The Yankees are waiting with a big cash offer. Twins should have traded him last season long before the deadline. Now they only get a compensation pick instead of multiple lottery pick prospects. Either way they missed their chance to maximize a return. Shakes head.

Here's the problem, baseball analytics WIDELY consider OPS THE gold standard on judging a hitter. Whether or not a game is a blowout is irrelevant to the value of OPS. OPS is the rate at which a player gets on base, be it a hit, walk, hit by a pitch + their slugging percentage (hit for power). If a player has a lousy OPS that generally means they just aren't that good of a hitter and or don't have any power. While I agree it shouldn't be the only metric to judge a hitter, it does tell a story about the player if their OPS is mediocre. We can debate the threshold of good vs. mediocre for any given position, but the fact is that Martin's OPS is.....not good. For an outfielder he should be around .750-.800. His career average is .680 and this season he slumped to .655. His slugging percentage is not good obviously. Simply put, Martin has no power, that fact is undeniable. Here are some examples of other Twin's hitters and the contrast. Buxton .829, Jeffers .814, Larnach .788, Keaschall .781, Clemens .758, Jackson .748, Bell .738, Lee .728, Lewis, .667, Kreidler .665, Wallner. 551 (yikes!). The rest of your post that drifts into homeruns, I get it that homeruns can be a deceiving stat and pad OPS and SLG percentages, but he's hit 5 over the course of 3 seasons with the Twins, that's not good enough for an outfielder. We can cherry pick and debate the value of different analytic offensive stats or the value of defense offsetting a player's offensive deficiencies, but the fact remains that the Twins have better options in the outfield then Martin.

my vote is SWR followed by Lewis. SWR absolutely cratered and never recovered. He was no different with the Jays after they acquired him.

Jeffers is going to explore free agency, I think that's a given. The Twins SHOULD make him a qualifying offer (so they can at least get the draft pick as compensation), but I doubt he accepts it and instead goes for free agency. The Yankees are gonna pay him big money so he's likely played his last game as a Twin already. They made a big mistake not trading him last season before the deadline. Could have gotten multiple good prospects for him. They are making the same mistake with Joe Ryan, who's likely gone after 2027. He too should have been traded by now. All that said, we know the Twins are not likely to give Jeffers a 4 or 5 year deal in excess of 100 million (20+ million a year), which the Yankees will.

THIS. I was never impressed with either player to be honest. SWR had his moments in 2024 & 2025. Martin had his moments in 2025, but even in that season his OPS was .740, and in 2024 & 2026 he dipped sub .700. His WAR has never been more than 0.7. I just don't see the fascination with him.

he's definitely on the radar of the Yankees. Their fans are all saying sign him. I think he gets a big offer from them

I think a big need is 1st base. If they are gonna spend or make a trade, ideally they grab one.

THIS is one guys the Twins need to extend and spend money on. Extend him 4-6 years

They wouldn't have been in that tight of a squeeze if they hadn't piled all their commercial real-estate debt on the Twins prior to the sale. The collapse of their TV broadcasts and lack of a streaming platform hurt their revenues too. This all complicated a potential sale and why they had to bring in other investors to prop the team up. Simply put, the mismanagement of the Pohlads despite getting a new stadium had run the team into the ground. The official narrative is that it was operating expenses since covid (they did keep staff on during covid) and scoreboard upgrades that caused most of that debt. I don't buy that excuse at all. A scoreboard upgrade and staff that by and large make less than 40k a year does not add up to 400 million in 3 or 4 years. That's absurd.

Yes. That would have been huge.

I agree. This has backfired so frequently on the Twins it's hard to count how many times we've seen it happen.

Definitely something positive something positive to build on next season. Fingers crossed he continues to avoid the injury bug that plagued him earlier in his career.

The Twins have long put Buxton up on a pedestal as the unheralded leader of the franchise. The truth is he simply doesn't play enough games each season to warrant that designation. One only has to look at his stats and put aside the emotions. He's played in approximately 57% of the regular season games over the course of 12 years (this does account for his 2015 rookie year and the Covid shortened 2020 season of 60 games). Is he a good player when he's healthy? Absolutely. Is he a perennial all-star? Not with the all the time he misses. Should the Twins continue to market him as the cornerstone of the franchise despite him being 32 years old, hurt all the time, and aging rapidly? At this point no. It's time for new blood and thankfully ERod and Jenkins are waiting at the doorstep. It's really too bad he won't drop his no trade clause. Atlanta would have loved to have had him and he might have gotten a world series chip out of it. With as much money as these players make, the ultimate achievement is a world series win and mvp trophies. He has neither. Perhaps he's just content and there's nothing wrong with that, but the Buxton, "being the face of the franchise" ship sailed long ago no matter how much he's glorified as such on this site. Falvey, Zoll, and Pohlad made a critical mistake this season. They should have moved Jeffers when they had the chance. Perhaps the offers were not great that they did receive at the deadline, but they should have unloaded him before it was the 9th hour. The same can be said of Ryan. They were fielding offers for him early in the season and last season if I remember correctly. He's under contract for 2027, but they should have traded him already as we know they aren't going to resign him or Jeffers. The longer they wait the more time they waste.

The Twins have a number of issues. Losing Lopez for the season did not help, but the continued lack luster play from Lewis did not help matters either. Buxton not being 100% again for a season also did not help. The Twins need to stop relying on Buxton as the foundation stone for this offense. He just can't stay healthy. Josh Bell just does not cut it as the fulltime 1st basemen, and I doubt he's brought back. I don't think moving Lewis to 1st is the answer either, but I think the Twins will try to get him to stick at 1st. This team needs to spend some money at that position. The rest of the infield (outside of catcher) will take care of itself. Culpepper at short or 2nd, Lee at 3rd, and eventually Marek Houston at short. That's a solid infield beyond the glaring hole at 1st. The outfield will take care of itself. Erod in LF, Jenkins in Center (eventually), Buxton in RF (eventually). Roden 4th outfielder. Keaschall at DH / 4th/5th outfielder. Catcher is a question mark. Ryan Jeffers is almost assuredly gone (thought the Twins should do everything they can to keep him around for at least 3 or 4 more seasons in my opinion). That leaves them with Victor Caratini and Alex Jackson.