chpettit19

Yeah, I don't think they are playing any better than I expected. I guess I can't speak for anyone else, but they've been a super hot and cold offense, their bullpen has been a disaster, and the starting pitching has been mostly good. It's what the majority of us said was going to be the case all offseason. I think what you mean to say is that they're playing better baseball than you expected. Because they are playing exactly how I expected.

Yeah, I should've worded that differently. The point was that they agreed to a contract amount beyond this season. Which took discussion about Ryan's future with the team. And they didn't go beyond the team control.

I knew which Culpepper you meant and my answer remains the same. Cash considerations is the only thing I'd give up to buy anyone for this year. This team is not good enough to sacrifice any player who has even the slimmest of chances of contributing in the future when the team may actually be real contenders. I appreciate the optimism, but this team has been exactly what most of us predicted so far. Aroldis Chapman isn't turning them into an 85-90 win team.

They're on pace for a win total in the mid-70s. Isn't that almost exactly what the majority of people on here said they'd do all offseason? I think it's been essentially exactly what I expected. Mostly good starting pitching. Horrid bullpen. Hot and cold offense. All leading to a team winning somewhere between 72 and 78 games. They are who most of us thought they were.

You want the Twins to trade any piece that may have a shot at being helpful for 6 years in order to get a 38 year old reliever on a team that is still 4 games below .500 despite being on a 4 game winning streak? A team with a negative run differential? A team that's gone 11-20 against teams over .500? It's hard for me to imagine this, but I may legitimately end my fandom of the Twins if they are trading guys like Gonzales and Culpepper for a Chapman rental.

The Twins should be making every effort to move Ryan and Jeffers. It's like nobody remembers why Pablo Lopez isn't currently pitching for the MN Twins and that he's the exact reason you trade Ryan. Oh, and Ryan's 100% success rate of fading in the 2nd half of seasons. Assuming he makes it to the deadline healthy, he will never have more value and the risk of injury to MLB starting pitchers is incredibly high. You can't just assume you'll be able to trade him later. Same thing many of us said about both him and Lopez this offseason. There is risk in holding pitchers. You risk getting nothing for them. The Twins did a partial extension with Ryan this offseason. He has a 2027 contract with them. It's a mutual option for 13 mil with a 100k buyout. The Twins can certainly be incredibly incompetent, but I'd have to imagine the idea of a longer extension was brought up during those talks. If he wanted to be here longer, I'd guess he'd have told them that and tried to work out a deal beyond his team control years. Trade Joe Ryan for 2 top 100 prospects plus. Ryan Jeffers isn't going to sign an extension this close to free agency. Trade him. If you want him back, offer him a deal in the offseason. Only way the Twins or anyone else gets him to sign now is by throwing major dollars at him. His value is going to be lower than it would've been because of the injury (and just coming back to play after a hamate injury doesn't mean he's going to be the same, and every team knows that hamate injuries notoriously diminish power well after the player returns), but he should still be able to bring back a couple of legitimate prospects. I forget who brought Cruz up in the other thread, but a Cruz type return is the kind of deal they should be looking for. Nobody else on the Twins is worth anything anyone around here would be impressed by or happy with. They have 2 trade chips. Move them both. The most important thing a front office, or owner, can do is be realistic about the state of their team. This team isn't good enough. Finish what you started last year and give yourself the best chance to be good enough in the future. Trade Ryan and Jeffers.

Yeah, I'm not going to concern myself over 40 vs 45 and which source ranked them as which. Neither Ryan nor Strotman were viewed as anything special. There is absolutely variance between systems, and they're not all created equal, but once you get outside the top 20ish and then 100ish you're getting into incredibly deep and wide pools of prospects. Fangraphs had Ryan as a multi-inning reliever for the start of the 2022 season. Strotman was down to a 40FV. The point is that the Twins aren't getting any of the Yankees (or any team's) top guys for Jeffers. They're going to get people like Ryan and Strotman. Guys who aren't taking top 5 spots in our system when they get here. 40 and 45 FV grades for minor leaguers are not that big of distinctions. And they vary by source. If people here are expecting to recognize the names that come back, they're going to be disappointed. Cunnigham and Hampton may drop and others may go up. The job of the FO is to find the best pile of middle-ground guys that they can. Then build one up to be more than 40 or 45 graded guys in the future.

Me too. Get 2 well thought of arms and do your best to turn them into MLBers.

Cruz is probably a pretty good comp in terms of value. I wouldn't consider Ryan and Strotman "highly rated" starting pitchers, though. They were ranked in the 10-20 range in terms of system rankings. That's probably what the Twins, and fans, should be expecting for Jeffers. 2 guys in the 10-20 range of the Yankees system. Kyle Carr, Brock Selvidge, Cade Smith, Jace Avina, Rory Fox, Chase Hampton, Brendan Beck. These are probably the names Twins fans should start looking at in the Yankee system if they're expecting a Jeffers to Yankees deal. Ryan being about a 10th ranked system guy when that trade went down is a good reminder to people that it doesn't have to all end up doom and gloom just because they didn't get a guy on the lists we all look at.

Yes, 23 mil for a catcher is a bad 1-year deal. What's the goal with that? You wouldn't be able to trade him on that deal, and you can't improve your team when you're paying Jeffers and Caratini 30 mil combined. Spending that much on catchers would be awful resource management. There are so many better ways to spend 30 mil on any payroll the Twins could reasonably be expected to have next year. And, no, you don't have to get at least the value of the comp pick because other teams wouldn't believe you're actually going to QO a catcher for 23 million. And catchers are not guys who get 50+ mil deals so the comp pick would be an early 3rd anyways. The Twins are not getting any name anyone is going to be impressed with on the surface. He simply isn't worth that much in trade as an injured rental.

I would be absolutely floored if the Twins got a top 100 prospect back for a Jeffers rental. Especially a Jeffers coming off injury rental. Especially an injury known to destroy a player's power well past the time they return. I'd guess you're looking at more like a prospect in the 8-10 range of most systems.

The Dodgers currently have Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki, Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and some guy named Ohtani in their organization. They're running Emmet Sheehan, Eric Lauer, and Justin Wrobleski out in their rotation currently. There's never been a team in the history of organized sports that had too much talent. There is no such thing as a log jam. There's no such thing as somebody being blocked. There's no such thing as having "too many position X" players in your organization. There's never a dilemma. You can have up to 13 pitchers on your major league roster. Until somebody has the 14 best arms in baseball all on their team and all healthy at the same time, there's no dilemma. Too much talent has never been a dilemma, problem, or anything else for anybody. Ever. And the names we're throwing around aren't exactly Glasnow, Sasaki, Snell, Yamamoto, and Ohtani.

Interesting. Super small sample sizes, but not unreasonable. Although, I believe he played with Team USA in 2025, not the Cape league.

Why?

My sister lives in Milwaukee so I get to a couple of their games a year. Usually a pretty fun team. But I have too many Brewer fan friends so I have to root against them in the name of competitive friendship law.