Trov

It is nice to see a few possible starters at AAA that could help when injuries hit. We have 4 possible outfielders and 1 infielder I am excited to see. The rest is typical AAA filler of vets or old minor leaguers that are not really prospects. The real question is can Jenkins and E-Rod stay in the lineup to push themselves into the lineup. I wonder how much run Larnach, Outman, Wallner, Martin, and Clemons(since he played OF yesterday) will be given before calling anyone up. Assuming one of the 4 outfielders in AAA are doing well, I hope Larnach and Outman do not get a ton of run as the guys in AAA are mostly redundant left handed hitting OF. Only Jenkins is a true CF in the group in AAA. Gonzalez does provide a right hand bat possibly. I would hope if Culpepper is doing well he gets a call sooner than later for Clemons and let Lee move into the Clemons roll. Of course there will be injuries that will shake things out as well.

I would agree the roster building at the deadline, and in the off-season created a huge log jam in the OF. We do not know if Falvey had a different plan that never happened due to his leaving. I said all along Larnach should have been DFA as we had too many guys that could replace him for cheaper. For some reason he was not. Now he is getting paid and that added to the log jam. Outman was going to get a shot over Roden due to this. The problem for all three is that extra OF guys are easy to find in the open market. My guess is if Outman struggles to play well in first few weeks will be on a short rope because he will be easier to sneak through waivers if they want.

I remember when Hunter was roaming CF in the early 2000's and Web Gems was on the nightly baseball tonight. I loved watching his highlight catches, along with other players making highlights. It is entertaining. However, when players are looking lost in the OF letting balls drop, making terrible throws all over the field it is boring to watch. I do not have much faith in this defense as it stands.

I agree, it is possible to have a non-base stealer in your lead off, and still steal bases generally on the team. However, what my point is that if you are putting a "slugger" that will hit HR or walk as your main leadoff guy, then it will tell more about the team philosophy as a whole. There are times, you will not be seeking a to have the lead off guy steal, due to having them not on the bases for your middle of line up. However, if they are slow plodding guys that will not even do first to third, they will clog the bases as well for the 2 hitter and 3 hitter. It would make sense that Carrol would steal more as the 3 hitter than the lead off, because if he reaches with 2 outs you want him to steal second to increase the chance he scores in first inning. However, he still is a guy that can steal, will go extra bases. I am not saying the lead off guy has to be a guy that will steal a ton of bases, but if you put just an on-base guy that will not take extra bases generally, then your team is most likely a team that will look to hit HR for scores over finding other ways to score. Is it 100% that way, no just as in anything there will be outliers, but I believe we will be able to glean a bit from who Shelton puts in the lead off spot on how he will generally manage. Will this be day 1, of course not we will need to see a couple of weeks of games to see the trends.

When I was writing a comment on another post I was thinking about how constructing your line up tells a lot about what you think about base running as a whole. In particular base stealing. In the old days the lead off guy was generally one of your fastest guys that could steal a ton of bases. You did not care how he got on, because odds were he was going to be at second quickly in the next at bat. Maybe it did not always work out that way that was the plan. Now, the new thought is was want our best on base guy, regardless of speed, and if possible a big bat leading us off to get that quick HR or at least on base for the guys down the line up. Kyle Schwarber is one of the most famous new style lead off guys. He has 516 games at lead off in his career, with only 16 stolen bases. He has hit 46 HR to start a game in his career, with 17 doubles and 1 triple. He does get on base at about a .350 clip to start games. (this is not his career states in the 1 whole just in first at bats of games) He has struck out at about a 30% clip as well. I do not know what kind of base runner he is in terms of a 1st to third type, but when you have a guy like that leading off, you are saying we are looking to get guys on and hope for the big blast to bring him in, if he did not do it himself. There is no plans to steal, advance a guy and get a run in by getting ball in play. To me, if you are setting your line up like that, you are not looking to take the extra bases, stealing, or trying to do the little things to help you win. I am all for having power guys, but when your whole plan is to always hit HR to score, you are leaving a lot of chances on the table. That was one thing I never liked about Rocco was he was the big HR is the best way to win. Sure, when it works, but when you are hitting the long balls you need to find other ways to win. Having a mix of guys, some that can steal bases, get the first to third, advance on balls in dirt that were not very wild, or just be aggressive to draw throws can help the team a ton. When you plan to play 90 feet at a time, it makes it hard for offenses to win unless you get the big extra base hits. Back in the day, there were guys that were not big extra base hit guys, but they still did not need to string 4 hits together to score, they took their extra bases other ways. Extra bases are the keys to winning, because getting 4 singles/walks, to score 1 run is not viable offense, but there more other ways to get the extra bases that are not just on hits. Stealing bases, hitting the ball to RF with runner on first to get 1st to 3rd. Getting a guy over to 3rd with less than 2 outs and getting them in by making contact. Do you want all 9 guys to be that way, most likely not? But having 9 3 true outcome guys is just as bad in my opinion.

I am not predicting who, as I have not watched any spring games this year, but it will be telling on what kind of manager Shelton is depending on who he picks. If we see Wallner or Jeffers we know he is very heavy analytics and we can expect basically Rocco type moves most of the time. Maybe not always, but we will see a lot of that. If it is more Lee or Keashall or Martin then we can see more old school type manager. I am not saying either is better, personally I like a hybrid, a mix of both old school feel, and new data driven. It might also be a reflection on how important base stealing will be to Shelton. If you got Jeffers against lefties leading off, like Rocco did, you are saying stolen bases mean nothing, I want the guy that can get on base hoping Buck will hit a bomb later that inning.

I never take any stalk in spring numbers when it comes to vets, even more so vet pitchers. They normally spend the spring working on new pitch or just getting back into season mode. They are never going to look to bear down to get a strike out or something like that.

Jenkins has now a hamstring strain, grade 1, so the least serious, but still will be shut down for a period of time, and these can linger. This is now three years in a row that the kid has been injured in spring. I am wondering what is he doing in the off season that he is getting injured in spring with soft tissue issues. In 2024 he had quad strain, last year ankle, and this year hamstring. Ankle is not soft tissue, but it kept him out a long time too. I am not concerned he is not developing as much as I am concerned he will be another top guy that just cannot stay on the field. Just like Buck and Lewis have. The hype is there, but if he cannot stay on the filed it will not matter.

I believe Santana will get in on the vets committee one year. He should have been voted in. The reason he did not was because he did not have the three cy youngs as noted, and did not have a wins used to be required. I have long compared him to Koufax as their numbers are nearly identical over their careers. Santana actually had higher WAR according to baseball reference. Santana threw 300 innings less so over a season worth, even based on the era of Koufax, who only topped 300 1 time. They each pitch in part of 12 seasons. They each had 4 dominate seasons There are 3 big differences to point out. Koufax ended is career on a high note, and it ended due to injury. Santana tried to come back from injury and his last few seasons he was a shell of his top self. Koufax started off his career bad, like really bad, but when he hit is prime he crushed. Two, Koufax won WS, Santana could not get his team passed the first round. Three Koufax pitched in LA, and Santana's prime was in Minnesota. I fully believe when the vet committee votes for Santana's era, they will get him in where he deserves to be.

Molitor by far was not known for his fielding. He spent the first half his career at 2b and 3b but was average defender at best. He then moved to 1B and DH the second half his career. What he could really help guys with would be base running. Despite not being a speed guy he was one of the best base stealers of his time. He was 79% success rate, with over 600 attempts. Ricky Henderson, the all time leader was 81% success rate, at like 3 times as many attempts. Lou Brock number 2 all time was only 75%. Overall Molitor was great at base running for not being a speed guy. He could really pass that along to this team, that speed is not the only thing you need to steal bases, but picking the right spots and getting the right jumps.

This is not about the Twins in specific, but all middle of the road payroll teams, and the half in half out plans many seam to run with. The recent letting go of Falvey got me thinking about it though. First, with baseball being uncapped and no floor each team can pay whatever they feel comfortable with. Before the 1995 strike most teams resigned their free agents if they were star players, and really it was the mid level guys or vets that still wanted to play a couple more years that did much movement. Rarely did you see a star leave the team that drafted them for a big contract. That is in part because owners had an unwritten rule they would not try to sign them like that. Then the strike happened, and the gloves came off. Then big time free agents started getting record deals over and over. The Yankees had many of them, but many teams stepped up. The Rangers, Red Sox, Seattle, and many others would make splashes. Gone were the draft, international signings, and trades to build your teams, the superstar free agents were the wave. You can debate if that worked out well or not, I normally argue it has not. However, it lead to the "rebuilding" for small and mid-market teams overall. The big market teams would keep throwing money at their roster holes each year, but the small and mid-market teams started to do the "playoff window" rebuild routes. You would see teams lose for several years, some even on purpose (Houston) to build up draft classes and international signing pools to then say "all-in" when the time was right. KC did to success, Houston did it too(despite not being a small or mid-market team). Oakland would pop up from time to time, Tampa was floating on finding the diamonds in the rough and fleecing bad GM's in trades, Bill Smith of Twins being one of them. The Twins had an approach that they wanted to be relevant year after year and not go the "rebuild" to "all-in" approach as some smaller to mid-market teams doing. This led to playoff loss after playoff loss and never having a team people thought would win it all. Then Falvey came in and it was more of the same, one foot in and one foot out. He would try to sign some bigger names, that never worked out all that well in the long run, he made some big trades and would trade the vet for prospects and then prospects for vets shifting pieces all around. He never did a full all in, or full rebuild. I think that was the plan keep them relevant but do not over risk. So that brings me to the question on the title, can a mid-payroll team win it all? Can a team not committed to going all in or full rebuild really make a run? We saw in years past the Marlins do the all in, spend huge for one year be a big splash and then sell off guys to try and do it again the future. We saw KC win it all after doing a long rebuild then went all in to try and get one more title, only to lead to another long rebuild. I would say if you can make the playoffs anything can happen, even more so in baseball, but constantly not drafting top talents leads to blah teams. I do not think the half in measures will ever lead to big success in seasons, and I personally prefer the ups and downs of rebuilding waves. Sure you have a couple of bad years, but it can lead to excitement when all the young kids come up through the system together and win at the same time. Then frustration when it gets tore down to the studs again. Is that better than seeing late season collapses? I guess it is up to your preference. Either way, I do not think a team can have long term success sitting in the middle. Either spend on the FA to stay relevant, or go full youth movement with low payroll for awhile.

The timing of this move suggests the new owners, and new leader from the Pohlad family gave a mandate to Falvey to do something, most likely continue the fire sale that started last year, and he pushed back on it. I think it is the new owners that did most of the pushing. If Pohlad family planned on doing this you do at end of season, not have him hire the new manager, go through winter meetings, arb process, and most of the off-season, spring training is coming up in a couple of weeks. Say what you will about Falvey and his moves, he always appeared to try to keep the team relevant even when trading established players away he would trade prospects to bring in established players. It was a lot of shuffling with no all in or full rebuild. Not sure if that was how Twins wanted it or he did. I think it is how he wanted it, because it is how Cleveland, where he came from, has done it, and Tampa Bay as well to some extent. I think he knew that he was near the end, and did not want to make any major moves based on mandates of owners that could affect his future with other teams.

In all the duel cities teams have been around long enough that fans will have picked their team. Rarely will a fan be a passive fan of their other city team. Under the hypo that both Yankees and Mets for example win a division it would not increase any viewership or fandom than if they were fighting for a single division race, as it would still be likely they are fighting for wild card too. Sure, there could be limited seasons where they would be fighting for division and wild card is not an option, and the losing team fan base will not be happy and not follow playoffs. However, in that situation it would be unlikely that the other team would have won the other division, being they would not have had a good enough record to be a wild card, so they for sure would have been worse than the division leader of the other division, unless the very rare case that on of the other remaining divisions would have the wild card spots. I just do not see how keeping them in different divisions would be all that important in a geography based division. I mean in NBA Clipper fans are Clipper fans, and Laker fans are Laker fans. There are times that celebs will go to both games, they are the rare situation, and not all of them do that. NBA has "divisions" but they mean nothing now as top 6 make playoffs, and remaining top 10 make play in. I would propose if you do geography based conferences, you just do similar top 6 make playoffs, top 2 get byes. Why break it down by division, if you are trying to get to play each team. Back in the day when you had weight to division play it made sense, but now that it is more equal, and you could make almost fully equal, who cares about divisions then?

I have held there was more going on behind the scene with Varland. On the surface it clearly makes little sense to give up a back of pen guy with that many years of control. However, if the FO has some issues with him, then it makes sense. I am not saying Varland is a bad guy or anything, but when he was flopped to pen in 23, he was not happy with it. He then failed as starter in 24, and was moved full time pen in 25. Based on his age and years of control his earning potential is greatly decreased now. He would have slotted right into the closer roll, increasing her earning potential, and my guess he would have wanted to recoup that lost value in his arb years, assuming he stayed "closer". That would have led to bigger fights.

I can see why the Twins will fight over such a small amount. If they cave and give into player request every time then they lose their leverage in trying to get a good contract in their opinion. However, I fully agree fighting over this small amount for a guy that has greatly out earned his contracts over the years sours that relationship. To me, this increase the expectation he will get traded this year as no way will he sign long term with Twins after this.

How does making sure the New Yorks, Chicagos, and LA teams in different divisions(assuming you go east and west conferences/leagues) maximize baseball interest in large markets? The teams are so well established you are a fan of one or the other. Could you explain the risk of having Yankees and Mets in same division would reduce New Yorks interest baseball, versus they being in different divisions? The fact that if you go East and West they would never play in the World Series already has that affect. So being in different divisions would help? Personally, I think if they go the route of East and West, they should do away with divisions, as they already are playing every team at least once, and do like what NBA does straight up top 6 teams make it on each side. Top 2 get byes with top ranked teams getting home field. I personally would love to keep the NL AL aspect and have divisions still split up like they do, I think that keeps more interest and then no worries about having same cities same league even.

There is talks about baseball expanding two teams. This would lead to some realignment. For nearly 100 years MLB had the NL and AL and the two sides never crossed until the world series. They had their east and west divisions, each having one winner to meet for their league championship. Then in the 90's baseball said we need to make some changes to engage fans after the strike. So they realigned some teams moved from AL to NL and divisions were made. The leagues, after the expansion of Marlins and Rockies had 14 in AL and 16 in NL. The divisions were not equal in numbers. AL west had 4 teams, and NL central had 6 teams. Then as interleague play developed MLB took Houston out of NL to even up the leagues and divisions. Playoffs over the years have expanded again, but still had NL and AL. In recent article shared on the main page here from diamondcentric suggest a radical change. A part of that change would also hose the Twins for geography based division, not uncommon for MN teams. I wanted to first touch base on the idea of getting rid of AL and NL. Personally, I do not care about it being the rules are uniform now and you play each team at least 1 series every year anyways. It is more about the history of the two leagues. The history of Yankees or Boston in AL and Dodgers in NL. The fact that you can have a "subway" series for world series, or the bay area world series(not possible now with Oakland leaving) but the point is you can have world series that has a city or state rivalry built in. That will go away. You can still have playoffs that do that, but not for the whole thing. Personally, that is where I would be a little upset. The other thing I wanted to comment on is the fact that suggest divisions put Twins in division with Rockies, Rangers, and Astros. We have no close ties to any of them, and really there are better options in my opinion for the sport. What is interesting is they split up the Chicago teams into East and West, how does that make sense? Assuming the World Series would be east versus west you could still have a chi-town throw down. For some odd reason the New Yorks are not in same division either. I would flop Mets and Baltimore is it lines up more with geography anyways. I get the writer wanted to keep some "rivalries" but why not make new ones if you are blowing up the whole thing? You already have the rivalry weekend with interleague play. It will be interesting to see with expansion how much of a blow up of the divisions and league there will be. I think it will be hard to sell some fans on getting rid of AL NL. I mean I get it is not what it once was, but to scrap it all together would be something Manfred would do in a push to the future, but will really get upset a lot of fans too. https://diamondcentric.net/news-rumors/diamondcentric/heres-how-mlb-realignment-should-look-after-expansion-r5407/

Since he is a catcher, I assume the team will more care about that side of the ball first and foremost over the offense. Yes, offense is important, but I remember when we had an 18 year old catcher with hype and the team said if he was not a catcher we could look to have him hit at MLB level soon/now, but catching is where he needs to improve. Catcher are at an interesting cross-roads too with defense. We have the challenge system in place now, and I will assume the full ABS in next 5 years. Framing is a skill of past and will play no roll in catcher in the future. What I think will be the big things now calling games, and controlling the run game. Part of the reason MLB went challenge versus full ABS is because catchers that got deals based on framing, also to ease it into the old heads that are opposed to it.

I personally hate using up a roster spot for a guy that will hopefully help like 50 to 75 at bats a season.

Sometimes I wonder how much of all this advanced swing, and pitching, stuff gets into some players heads too much that it works against them. I am all for more info the better, and trying to figure out how to play better, but I feel with baseball, the head game plays such a roll that when you start thinking a ton about every little thing, that you start to try to change what worked for you all the years you played. Your mind and body loses the muscle memory and then you fail. I like to point to Buxton as one guy I feel like all the adjustments they tried with him early in his career really held him back. Eventually he get settled in and mostly, to what he did all his life. Are there some guys that will really benefit from this type of stuff, yeah, but not all will. Sometimes you just need to let the kids hit and make adjustments without going into the lab.

I would agree Lewis would be biggest need, as we thought he was the future and he had terrible year last year. As for Wallner, he is one that when he is on he is huge for us, but he really is just a platoon guy. He cannot hit lefties in his history, but actually last year he did well when he got a chance against them. Very small sample size, 97 PA but improved over his prior numbers, which was unplayable with nearly same amount of PA. Maybe new manager will allow him to try to hit lefties this year. As for Lee, I agree he is not a key to the line up. If he can improve to what we thought he would be that will help, but he was never going to be a middle of line up type guy most likely.

Ranking international prospects is no different than throwing darts at a board. Very rarely is the "top" prospect ending up being the best player in their class. Normally it is some guy in the 20 to 30's. You can look at just about any of the class. Go back to 2015 class Juan Soto was ranked 25th, Tatis Jr. 30th. Vlad Jr. was 7th. May of the other top guys never made majors or are pen guys. There are times yes, the top few guys end up being the best in the group, but year after year that is not the case. When you are projecting these kids it is like pulling names out of a hat for rankings.

I remember when Cuddy walked the FO was ripped for not getting anything for him, but as this article points out, they did actually get something for him.

The crazy thing about Harper is that he was a negative WAR player until he came to Twins. He also was back to negative after he left. I would agree that the FA that helped win the ships, Morris, Davis, and Harper, should all be above Cruz. Cruz was great, and was flipped for even more value, but he did not bring in even a playoff win.

For some fans the only way he can win them back is by dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into players, and hope they win. Even if the team does win without doing that some fans will not care, they will demand trades for players and signing every top free agent and who cares how much money it costs. I would hope most fans could be brought back by simply trying to win and not clearly dumping payroll. The CC trade was done for that, despite him clearly not living up to his pay, but if that is not reinvested back into payroll then fans will be upset. Now, I am not one who says teams should spend just to spend, because that is how you get mid-level vets getting big time money just because you spend because you have it. However, if we do not retain our top FA that we think will be helpful that becomes and issue. Some years the FA crop is just not worth major dollars, and if you pass on it one year with intent to spend more the next I am okay with that, but if you just keep coasting by on cheap contracts hoping to hit on the low cost deals they do not always pan out. We have seen that many times where they do not, and some times they do. We have seen the big FA not work out as well. I personally like spending big on retaining your own guys if you think they are worth it.