gunnarthor

Sadly, I agree. I really hate this team. Sometimes they look utterly amazing, especially on offense, and I think, "Finally, they got it figured out." And then they look like a they have no idea what the situation is. I think Zimmer really will regret not having a consistent OC, although a lot of that was his fault, as well.

Wow. That's really not good.

Nice article. Made me smile.

This will be a fun case to monitor. I think MLB could very easily lose although a settlement seems more likely.

Want to see something scary? 2016 pitching WAR - 3.9 (And Berrios was way more exciting to look forward to than Ober or Ryan. And Duffy-hype might have = Ryan or Ober?) 2021 pitching WAR - -0.6 (!!) That said, there is no way the 2022 Twins will be a 100 loss team. No way. They won 73 games this year and the offense will be good. I can see ways this goes sideways and we only win 65 but that would be another total system failure but that's unlikely. This team is in that ugly 70-80 win area, where they aren't quite bad enough to get a top 5 pick but also not good enough to make the playoffs.

I think the point I was trying to make was that Maeda and Odo's success is only if you look at their small sample size with the Twins. Instead people want to focus on Maeda's 11 games in 2020 or Odo's 2019 season while ignoring their large sample sizes with the Twins. As to Cruz, I think he was a really good signing, I urged them to do it (and the Donaldson one). The main reason I wanted Cruz was I thought his RH power bat would play well at Target Field.

I think you're giving a bit too much credit to small sample sizes. Sure, Maeda had a great 11 game stretch in 2020. But that wasn't anything out of the norm for him. He had 11 game stretches like that every year with the Dodgers. He's made 32 starts for the Twins and his line is 12-6, 173 ip, 110 ERA+, 1.9 WAR. That's pretty much in line with what he's done his entire career but a bit worse than his best season (his rookie year). Same issue applies to Odorizzi. Yeah, great season in 2019 but 2018 and 2020 existed too. One solid season, a piddling season and a disaster, injury plagued season. Basically, the Twins paid nearly 34 million for 4.5 WAR spread over three seasons.

If you recall correctly, the early 90s were when Pohlad starting complaining about payroll. Shane Mack wanted 500k more and the Pohlads balked. He signed a 2/8m deal with Japan (a record at the time). Part of the reason McPhail left was because of payroll cuts. The fact that we've had three different GMs and no significant headway on payroll is a pretty good indication that this is an ownership problem, not a FO problem.

That's a good point, the other teams in the division are making real upgrades.

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 wonder if Cousins is a bit hurt? He got wacked in the head a few times in the last few weeks. Maybe he's dealing with a concussion? But he hasn't looked great for several weeks. Almost unrecognizable at some points.

Right now, with this pitching staff? Bundy, Ryan, Ober, bullpen? That might be a step down from Berrios, Pineda, Maeda. I don't think people appreciate how bad last years pitching staff was. By WAR, it was worse then both the 2012 and 2013 Twins' staffs. I figured that they can't be that bad again, it would be nearly impossible. And we won 73 games last year, so I voted 70-79. Although it's not hard to see this getting away from us and having a complete implosion.

I think the Twins are going to have a bad year, much like last year, where the offense is pretty good and we have no pitching. That should put the FO on the hotseat but, historically, the FO will usually scapegoat the manager to get more time. I could see that happening. If the FO goes, Rocco's gone as well. I think the only way he keeps his job is if the Twins exceed expectations and attendance is high.

I'm not going to worry about the offseason yet. I'd like them to win out and make the playoffs. I have no expectation that they will do that and, if they do, I'm sure we'd just get another gut punch playoff loss. But I'd rather make the playoffs then be the Bears or Lions.

I think one of the unfair knocks on the old regime was that they didn't use analytics. Of course they did. Every team did. Ryan's methods - horde young players, don't sign vets to longterm contracts, rely on youth - became, more or less, the industry standard. But he understood that before most teams and that's why we have so many trades that got us guys like Ortiz and Bartlett, etc. Gardy's use of bullpens was far ahead of most teams in the 2000s as well as our use of shifting players defensively (KLAW, of all people, mentioned this as a reason Orlando Hudson would thrive defensively for the Twins). IIRC, the Twins, under either Ryan or Smith, were one of the first teams to subscribe to MLB's strikezone mapping software that accurately measured pitch locations and bat speed. Certainly, they didn't have access to some things we have now and they didn't use analytics as much as other teams but they weren't just "scouting" everything. And, conversely, it's not fair to Falvine to say they only use analytics. They upgraded the analytic side a lot and made it easier to spread information throughout the organization. But they've added more scouts and given those scouts additional tools to use when scouting players. They've hired more coaches at each level. (They kept Molly around as manager in part because of his old-school knowledge which I thought was a mistake). Our scouting worldwide increased a lot under Bill Smith but the new FO has (and someone correct me if I'm wrong) expanded our footprint in the Dominican Republic. And I believe they've also used sports psychologists with players to get them to perform better. It's not all just computer spreadsheets for them. They understand that players perform better in good environments and have tried to make them, including increasing English language options for foreign born players.

Nagy is a really bad coach. Say what you will about Zimmer but not kicking those field goals was utter desperation.

Gads, every time this comes up, you post the same false statements and ignore things you don't want to acknowledge. It gets so freaking tiring. Stewart, Jay and Gordon . You say they were injury free but that wasn't true. Gordon missed a year and a half (although he was already not developing as was hoped) and Jay had serious shoulder injuries. And, again, while Stewart, Gordon and Jay didn't pan out as hoped, it's not that surprising considering the inherent risk of drafting, They were not bad picks. They all went roughly where they were supposed to. Finding guys like Garver and Wade, adding May and Pressly, etc showed that the FO was still acquiring talent that this FO inherited and failed to utilize correctly. But also closing the period you're looking at to only look at the failed drafts and not look at 2012 and 2016 is just dishonest. Don't worry, I'll return that favor in a paragraph or two. Why am I not more critical of those drafts? Because I understood the risk. In 2013 the Twins drafted two high upside high school arms (Stewart and Gonsalves), two solid college arms who seemed like they could fall in the long line of Duensing, Blackburn, Slowey, etc type arms (Eades and Slegers) and a slew of catchers. That only Garver turned into a solid MLer was probably pretty unlucky but the strategy was solid. 2014 was the only draft I didn't like because the Twins went back to Johnson's fireball approach (although Burdi was a valid 2nd round talent). I didn't like the approach when he did it under Smith and I didn't like it when Ryan let him do again. In 2015, because we signed Santana and b/c Cody didn't sign, we only had one pick in the top 80. Jay was a good pick. Was injured. Didn't work out. It happens. Want a bad draft strategy? How about the new FO draft strategy of drafting older 1B/DH/RF types? Cripes, Brent Rooker is not even a year younger than Buxton despite being drafted in the first round five years later. Matt Wallner, another first rounder, will be 25 and has yet to hit above A+. Sabato, another first rounder, also has yet to be above A+ but he's only 23 next year. Youngster, I guess. At least Larnich (25) will, hopefully, be on the ML roster next April. Cross your fingers. We're far into this FO's run and they've just failed to meet the basic minimum requirements of what they should have done. But they'll get another year to turn it around. I hope they do, really, I do. But I don't think they will.

How did concussion protocol not get Fields looked at?

Nice of the defense to do that thing where they let the other team back into it

This FO was hired to replicate the system that Ryan created that kept the Twins competitive from 01-10. They haven't shown the ability to do that yet. Doesn't mean that they can't. I wasn't a fan of Ryan in the late 90s but he got better. Brock's attack on Ryan are, in my opinion, unjustified. Yeah, the 13-15 drafts weren't great but the new FO has yet to come close to a draft as good as 2016 or 2012. And the 2017 and 2019 drafts look particularly ugly with four first round picks, including a number 1 overall, as well as the FO saving money to get additional first round talent such as Enlow. (Comparing how Berrios and Buxton moved through the minors with Lewis and Enlow is not kind. Lewis already has more minor league at-bats than Buxton and is far away). And while the FO didn't do great on the draft front in 13-15 (besides Garver and Wade), in those years they did add Ryan Pressly, Trevor May, Eduardo Nunez, and international signings such as Graterol, Arreaz, Ynoa, and Gil. And, as I've mentioned a number of times, the talent this new FO has let walk or get taken in one sided trades is getting pretty high. And, that they were dealt a nice hand with promise of additional payroll that the old regime never had, I think it's fair to say they've blown whatever good will they should have received. I've been low on the FO for a while now. I assume this will be their last year. I assume we're looking at another 75-80 or so win season, low attendance, a

Man, that Saints win yesterday seems to be pretty bad for the Vikes.

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.

Woah, that's not how the internet works at all. ?

Wow, this post brought me back to the good ol' ESPN forums in the mid-2000s. First, and this really isn't relevant at all, the definition of a cheater is "a person who acts dishonestly in order to gain an advantage." But that's just semantics. Essentially no one in their right mind thinks that using PEDS in 1997 or 2007 or 2017 wasn't "cheating." If you disagree with that, you're on your own island with a few brave ESPN posters from SF. Secondly, I'm really not sure what to say to someone who didn't think there was evidence Bonds cheated. In his perjury trial, his lawyers conceded to the jury that Bonds used PEDS. A decade earlier, Bonds told a grand jury that he used PEDS. As to Ortiz, beside the failed test, Ortiz continued to argue that PEDS don't make players better. He continued to argue that the PED crackdown was aimed at players from the Dominican Republic. And he continued to train with Angel Presenal, one of the few trainers that baseball banned for life because of PEDS. I'm also not sure his numbers are as great as they seem. Because he played in a high offense (PEDS) era, his numbers are somewhat inflated. But he was top 10 in position player WAR only three times (never top 5). Edgar Martinez did it 7x. His 141 OPS+ is really good but non-HOFers like Lance Berkman and Albert Belle were better, I think Ortiz gets in because of the Boston connection but he really shouldn't.