terrydactyls

For "decision makers" people listed Zoll, scouts, and other front office types. But no one mentioned the manager. Does Shelton get any say in who he gets to work with?

One comment in the article really stood out. "Kalk is now an assistant general manager with the Twins, and his relationship with Reith should help the team get the messages they feel need to be relayed from the front office out to the mound more smoothly than ever." Why is the front office relaying messages to the mound? Is the front office now part of the pitching coach staff????

I fail to see how an impending lockout by the owners could impact the qualifying offer. As I understand it (and that is very questionable), the QO must be offered and signed before the current agreement ends. If Jeffers accepts the QO, he then would have a legally binding work agreement for the 2027 season. If the new agreement does NOT include a QO, it would have to come into play after the 2027 season. I don't believe there is any legal way to make the QO situation effective for contracts signed before December 1, 2026. And if the new CBA continues but with significant changes to the QO, those changes can't be used on existing contracts.

I give Zoll a D- based solely on his trade deadline decision that the Twins were a competitive team and he chose to be a buyer.

Switched metrics to try to "prove" your theory? Good strategy.

So I guess it doesn't make any difference who is playing along side you as long as your 1B has an OPS of not less than .800? I continue to believe that is nonsense. Added: Just for laughs, I went to MLB.com and looked up the OPS of all the 1B in the majors with more than 150 ABs. There were 14 out of 41 that were at or above .800. 34%. I guess a lot of teams have a big problem at 1B. And of the four teams still playing, there are 8 1B with at least 150 ABs. Only 1 (Luis Garcia - NYY) has an OPS over .800. Even the talent-deprived Dodgers don't have one.

Insisting that a player has to fit a position profile is asinine. Cal Ripken didn't fit the "profile" of a shortstop when he started his career. Now he is considered a prototype (see Bobby Witt, Jr.). If the Twins have players at 3B, SS, and 2B who all can hit 20+ homeruns, why does a 1B have to be a power hitter? It would be nice, but is it mandatory?

This article was very informative about the stupidity of the hitting philosophy of the Twins. Why do they want players to focus their swings on the pitches between mid-thigh and the belly button? Any non-pitcher who makes to the major leagues already knows how to handle a meatball pitch. The coaches need to focus their "instructions" on hitting pitches that are not right down the middle. One such area would be to work with Royce Lewis on how to handle pitches that are low and away. He will never be able to hit a pitch like that if he continues to attempt to pull the ball. "Instruct" him to try to hit those pitches to right field.

This comment makes getting old more palatable. I won't have to read this statement that randomly appears in almost every article at Twins Daily regardess of the topic. This article was about the apparent inability of Twins' coaches to fully develop the innate talent of young pitchers. Trading Varland has nothing to do with the development of of young pitchers. I get it. The Varland trade still pisses you off. It still pisses off a lot of Twins' fans. But it's a done deal and no amount of random bitching is going to change that fact. Wait for an article about bad trades by the front office and then jump in. I realize that you will probably write back that it's your right to say whatever you want - and you're correct. But my intent with this comment is that I won't have to listen to it for that many more years.

With no owners and a significant number of players exterminated, there will no need for a lockout.

Leopold brought in Bill Guerin to be the general manager. If he took over the Twins, I would expect his first move would be to hire a Guerin-like baseball person to be the general manager. That would be a major upgrade.

I understand. I'm only pointing out that the article itself said preliminary discussions of "details" are useless until after negotiations have begun.

None of us should spend any time fretting over potential spending because AI is going to exterminate all human life in the next six months. 😇

These two articles were written five months ago. The only thing I got out of them was at the end of the second one. In the summary it said that the specifics of both proposals are not worth getting into because it will all change when negotiations actually begin.

We're you imbibing in copious amounts of alcohol when you wrote this? It doesn't make any sense.