gunnarthor

If we had a healthy post-season rotation of Santana, Liriano and Radke (he pitched with a torn labrum!) in 2006, we would have won the World Series. No question at all in my mind, even though the bats didn't show up against the A's.

Here's the 2022 schedule - https://gophersports.com/sports/football/schedule/2022 At Michigan State, Penn State, and Wisconsin. Hopefully they can steal one of those. The home games should all be wins. A 9-3 or 10-2 season is actually kind of possible.

While Falvey was "saddled" with Molly, it's worth remembering that he resigned Molly to a three year contract and fired him a year later. I think your top five is basically right, but Cruz should be higher.

Depends on what we get back but I expect that the Twins will trade either him or Polanco this offseason. It just makes too much sense.

Of the three, I think Sevirino is the most likely to have a Miranda like break out but that's partly because Martin is already so highly regarded. But Sevirino has always been a hit first prospect and I think the game is changing back to that. (I honestly think some team will roll the dice on him in the rule v). He finished the year pretty well at Cedar Rapids.

I'm not a fan of this FO but I can't believe they are done addressing pitching yet. They must have a trade in store. We have 30+ years of Pohlad ownership so I'll never blame the FO on payroll issues, which is what I think is stopping them from going after many of these arms. Falvey was hired to build a pitching pipeline, not rely on free agents. That's exactly why the Pohlad's hired him. We'll see if he can create one.

Your grades are fine. Of this group, I'm most confident in Kiriloff. He'll be a solid bat, occasional all-star, for us. Just a solid hitter. I think Rortvedt ends up with a very long MLB career, like most glove-first catchers. But, man, his bat was so bad. He has to get better. I suspect he will. (Seriously, Kiriloff, Rortvedt, Baddoo, Miranda, Jax, Balazovic all in the first 5 rounds of the 2016 draft. Nice draft). I'm not usually the type to worry about Larnich. Rookies struggle, he's a slugger, he'll be ok. But he's a bit older than I'd want (COVID probably affected his and Gordon's career the most). Ideally, he's a middle of the order bat and, at times, looked it. But I'd also consider trading him before all the shine wears off his prospect status for some pitching. I was impressed with Gordon's defense, speed, and versatility. But his bat was poor. He has to improve to be Nick Punto. Good bench player, perhaps, but certainly not a future all-star at short that we had envisioned. I think Ryan is a legit starting pitcher. I'm not sure how the Twins will use him - 5 inning games, 130 inning season? Or will they let him develop into a more traditional pitcher? But he had a great rookie season for us and no reason to kill any optimism toward him. Ober is probably more a bullpen-game type pitcher where he doesn't get exposed. Solid rookie season but I don't think we should expect much more from him.

Nice article. Made me smile.

Always enjoy your lists. As a request, could you put the players age next to their name going forward? Of these five, Holland is the one that excites me the most. IIRC, he was targeted as a potential first round pick going into his junior season but had a pretty bad year. Getting him in the 5th was a nice get. There is some talent there, we just need to unlock it. He'll be 24 this year so it's getting a bit late but let's hope he breaks out. He finished last year really strong.

I don't like articles like this that much for two reasons. One, the Twins shouldn't be in rebuild mode, they should be contending for the central and the FO has already completely failed in that regard. We shouldn't allow them to move the goalposts to "building a staff from within". Second, and tied to the first, they don't have guys like Ryan, Woods-Richardson, Strotman unless they had utterly failed in the first part and had to trade off talent, so I don't think they should get a lot of 'credit' for having those arms as part of their half-decade strategy. That, after five years, the best starting pitching prospect that we have was obtained by the prior front office should be a huge mark against this FO. The reason the Twins don't go hard after FA starters is because it's extremely tricky. Mostly, the most successful FA pitchers are the most expensive ones, which the Twins won't go after. Mid-tier FA pitchers aren't usually worth it. So they are left doing dumpster diving for guys like Pineda, Bundy (who I liked), Happ and Homer Bailey types.

Good article. Tons of players struggle when they get up to the majors. Not really surprising. I don't think he's going to be a game changing batter like, say, Morneau was but he could be a Cuddyer-type player for a few years.

I'm not a fan of this FO but I will say both the Buxton and Bundy signings made me pleasantly surprised. They have more work to do in getting a pitching staff together but for now I'll give them an incomplete.

Yeah, I'm enjoying it more than WandaVision. Really fun show.

So, I'm not a fan of this FO but I will say that I love this signing. I've been pushing for this to happen for years. Even if he fails, I won't blame Falvine.

I'm very glad the Twins got this done. I really didn't think they would. Good for us to have the most exciting player east of California locked up. Kudos to the FO on this move.

8-4, and it feels like we under achieved. Not bad.

Obviously, he'd fit here but the Twins aren't going to be spending that kind of money.

None of this should really surprise us. For 30 years, no matter who is the GM, the Pohlads have had a tight control of payroll. Falvey and Levine were hired to duplicate the success the Twins managed from 01-10, where they turned over the roster several times and remained competitive. That's really hard to do and these two haven't shown the ability to do it. If the Twins were really committed to being competitive next year (and they're not), they wouldn't have traded Berrios. They would be in on guys like Gausman, Ray, Rodon, Thor, etc. They're not. They would sign at least three top end pitchers. They won't. The money Rodriguez got must terrify the Twins. Instead, they're going to build an ugly pitching staff where no one will hit 140 innings next year and fans will probably see 30+ pitchers throw for us. Again. At TT, someone wrote an interesting article that the Pohlads will resign Buxton and use him as the new Mauer - the reason they can't spend more money anymore. I'm not even that optimistic but I can see his point. When Falvey and Levine took over, they wanted to rebuild and tried to trade their best player and then screwed up the trade deadline. At the same time the players went out and demonstrated they were actually pretty good and made the playoffs. Since then, the FO's job was to supplement and support the core and extend the window of contention. They failed. Now they get to do a rebuild, even if no one will say it out loud. There's not a lot of reason for optimism that they can do that but the Pohlads will let them try.

Sadly, I think it's pretty clear that the FO is going to go with a fulltime bullpen pitching staff approach. Comments from a few weeks ago suggests they are looking at multiple inning relievers. It'll be boring baseball and bad baseball. Great for the fans.

This is a serious question - do the Minnesota Twins pay TwinsDaily writers? The Twins had arguable their worst pitching staff in decades and we're claiming they're ahead of the curve because of one silly definition of a pitch? We're so behind the curve, the curve is a dot to us.

If the Twins think his bat is going to stay around a 79 OPS+ bat, then they should move on. I like what else he gives us but his bat needs to improve. He really struggled in July and August (limited at-bats) but his bat heated up a bit at the end of the year, with more consistent playing time. With 26 man benches, his speed and versatility makes sense but you have to be Nick Punto to get away with such a low OPS+.

Been thinking about that one. Looks depressing but amazing cast. Speaking of HBO, because I now have HBO MAX, I'm watching "Carnival" from the early 2000s. Surprisingly good, so far.

Michael Cuddyer. Solid pro.

Ryan - he's 26 next year. Generally, you know what you have with a 26 year old. Now, COVID changed things and he was a nice get, but he's likely a backend starter, at best. That's not really his "low-end potential." I like Ryan a lot but my guess is that the Twins will move annoyingly slow with him next year - he pitched only 90 or so innings last year (not counting the Olympics) and the Twins will probably aim for him to pitch somewhere near 130-150 next year. That's not really a front-line starter. My guess is the Twins would happily take a 30 start, 135ip 105-110 ERA+, 2 WAR season from him next year and call it a win. I do think Jax can be a solid relief pitcher but not an elite one. He gives up to many HR but at an inning or less at a time, he could be an arm. Kiriloff - I think this is the most likely of the ones but still not likely. I think (barring injury) he'll be a solid middle of the order bat and occasional all-star. MVP contender might be a bit much but he'll be a big offensive weapon for us. Lewis - he's missed two years of baseball and struggled with the bat. His minor league numbers are just bad. He had trouble getting an OBP over .300 in A+. I'm really surprised prospect gurus ranked him as high as they do. Hopefully they are right and I'm wrong but I think the Twins would be crazy to rely on Lewis at all next year.

I think it's two different questions but generally, no, the Central doesn't have a problem. The Sox did ok, as most good teams do, against other good teams and beat up really bad teams. That's pretty usual. I think the Sox don't stack up well against Houston in particular but that has more to do with those rosters. I do think that playing a generally soft schedule (like Chicago got this year b/c of how bad the central was) isn't good for a team over the course of the year but it probably doesn't impact the final records that much.