chpettit19

The odds of Sasaki coming to MN are miniscule. And, by the way, he'd have to stay in Japan for 2 more years to get Yamamoto's (show the man some respect and at least get his name close to correct) deal, and the idea that the only way to make money in sports is through your contract is incredibly naive. The difference in endorsement money Sasaki can make depending on the market he goes to is massive. Comparing your experience in a foreign country to a professional athlete's is also not very useful. Roki will come for spring training and spend the next 9 months with the same group of people traveling the country (and Canada) half the time. And once the season is over he flies back to Japan. Of course the city he goes to matters, but it's not at all the same thing as any of us moving to a new country. Sasaki's agent is doing the smart thing and keeping all his options open. He's giving him the entire spread of major league baseball. Japanese and Korean stars have picked a number of different locations across the league. What's really holding the Twins back is that their ownership and thus their organization and front office in general are in flux. There's very little chance he wants to sign with a team that may have an entirely new set of people in charge of it 1 year into his deal. The sales pitch the Twins can put together will not be anywhere near as impressive as any other team's for that reason alone. Sasaki isn't coming here.

This is absolutely not a make or break year for Falvey's career in baseball. He'd get another job in an instant if he was fired here. The Twins front office is regularly voted amongst the top 10 in baseball in anonymous executive polls. He's very well regarded.

These are fun exercises, but this is a tough time to be predicting the Twins future. The Twins future ownership is in question which puts the future FO in question which puts the future roster in question. The Twins have a number of players whose contracts will be up before the 2028 season so you're expecting extensions, and they have a number of expensive veterans during a questionable payroll time so you're expecting them to not be traded. I enjoy looking ahead and seeing what things could be like in the future, but this is a real tough year to be predicting. I'd guess: C: Not in the system currently 1B: Not in the system currently 2B: Eeles 3B: Lewis SS: Not in the system currently LF: Jenkins CF: Emma RF: Wallner DH/Utility: Keaschall

Brooks Lee?! The guy who just put up -.2 bWAR and -.3 fWAR while carrying a 64 OPS+ and 62 wRC+ bat around? That Brooks Lee? Yeah, I'm going to change my answer to not having Correa and filling in his spot with Brooks Lee would be an absolutely massive loss for the Twins. Well Correa put up 3.7 bWAR in 86 games last year. And 5.3 in 136 in 2022. 7.2 in 148 in 2021. 3.7 in 75 in 2019. You get the picture. You've picked his 1 outlier year and decided to make that his performance norm. His per 162 bWAR is 6.5. His average season bWAR for his 10 year career is 4.4. 2018 and 2023 are the only seasons he's been remotely close to the type of player you're trying to describe. You're not trying to be nuanced or have a thoughtful discussion; you're just trying to be doom and gloom. Enjoy. Not worth the back and forth anymore.

If the payroll situation were different, I'd agree this would be the time to buy out a year or 2 of free agency. But with the current payroll situation and team sale possibility this doesn't feel like the time they're going to be looking to lock themselves in to more future deals. I'd actually wager it's more likely Ober is traded before his last arb year than he's extended before his last arb year unless a new owner takes over.

It wasn't included because it didn't fit your narrative, but you can go with the contract thing or the "he broke down at the age of 27" thing if you want. I'm going to disagree that Correa is completely incapable of having his plantar fasciitis healed despite your doom and gloom outlook. If the Twins single biggest concern is operating income (not even disagreeing that it is) then his contract is probably worth more to the Twins because his name recognition brings in more fans than the random collection of Gallo, Margot, and Farmers they'd replace him with. So, the best way to maximize their income is to have a big name star and not spread that money out over random platoon bats that would lead to less income since your argument isn't for the Pohlads pocketing the extra money but for payroll flexibility to spend it elsewhere. Who's the player that projects as a 2-2.5 WAR SS as we speak? Castro? Yeah, I'm going to say that having Castro at SS instead of Correa and then having 2B wide open would hurt the team a lot. But I'm also of the belief that Correa isn't doomed to playing 85 games a year like you seem to be arguing with your 3.5-4 WAR argument. Since I think 140ish and 5 WAR is more than reasonable I think it's a massive drop off to have half the WAR and leave another starting spot wide open. Losing 2.5-3+ WAR at SS and having no 2B feels like a pretty big loss to me, but I guess it's possible he just never tops 85 games ever again.

Convenient that you leave out his first year here. Don't want that 5.3 bWAR to get in the way of the narrative? According to fangraphs he was worth more than his 33.3 million in payroll cost last year (they had him at 4.3 WAR and 34.2 mill in value). Just like every other penny pinching team, they also can't afford to not pay him and also compete. Bit of a rock and a hard place situation. We know the answer to the question of spreading his money out over numerous lesser players. It's having no shot. What realistic moves are the Twins going to make without Correa and his money on this team that are going to have everyone jumping for joy because now they're World Series contenders? No matter what moves you make the success of the team is still going to come down to the young guys succeeding and question marks coming up positive more than negative. Clearing his money and creating the biggest hole yet on the roster in the name of payroll flexibility doesn't give them some clear path to obvious success. The same holes exist, you've created the biggest one yet, and you don't have near enough money to fill them so you're still staring at the same question marks and holes to fill just with 25 mil to spend and no Correa.

I don't think the Twins have near enough to get Lawlar. He's a top-10 global prospect who's ready for the majors. I don't see any reasonable package the Twins could put together for him. I think there's always deals to be made, but I think if the argument is that the Twins young guys aren't very good you can't argue that they'd bring back other good young guys or if you think their vets are overpaid you can't argue they'd bring back big time, MLB ready players. If you're looking to move the Keaschall, Rodriguez, Jenkins type level of prospects you're talking a different level of move than I think most around here are talking. You know I'm on board trading Lee for an MLB ready prospect at a different position like catcher, but outside of him are people ready to move the AAA arms for position players? Outside of them I don't know that the Twins have much ammo to make truly difference making moves. Just a lot more "winning on the edges" type moves is all I see. But I'm happy to be surprised. And ready to be upset if they start selling off big pieces for nothing.

It's fascinating that people do the "are they the 2023 version or 2024 version," you just can't trust this team thing and then name Profar as an answer. He'd never topped a 114 OPS+ in the first 10 MLB seasons of his career. Then he went off for a 134 in his 11th season and that's the stable answer to solve the left field question? Wallner's been over 134 each of the last 2 years but we can't trust him? Miranda was at 112 this year and 114 his rookie year (gives him a better 2 season combo than Profar had in his first 10 years). People were calling for Tyler O'Neill as an answer despite him having been a sub-100 OPS+ bat in 4 of his first 7 seasons and having played fewer than 100 games in 5 of his first 7 years. He has Buxton's health record without his performance. The Twins can't be trusted but all these outside players with worse track records are the answers? I get that the last month+ of the season was horrid, but recency bias seems to have thrown us way off here. We want to count on 1 year wonder spike years from guys who've either performed that way 1 other time (O'Neill had 1 other crazy good year) but never stayed healthy (he also only played 113 games last year) or flat out never performed that way before (Profar, as I said before, never had a season better than Miranda's rookie year or basically what Miranda did last year). Those are our trustworthy, now we've solved the 2025 Twins options but the guys in house who've done the same or better are just too volatile and the team is doomed? There's a reason Profar signed for $1 million last year. He's never touched that kind of performance. I don't get talking about HOPE and then throwing around spike year extreme outliers as some obvious solution. Trading Correa for prospects and bringing in veterans off outlier seasons is no less hopeful than trusting what the Twins already have on hand.

I remember when the Twins were the biggest fools in the world for having let this guy slip through their fingers. Nice enough minor league depth to add. If he can get back to what he was when the world was on fire because the Twins were foolish enough to trade him this will be a very nice little nothing pickup on December 10th for a cash strapped Twins squad.

Pretty much all the beat writers are reporting that their sources are saying that the "no further reduction in payroll" was in reference to what it was last year and that the team intends to have the payroll be what it was last year at about 130. I would think they'd be smart enough to word things as a payroll increase if they're willing/able to move up to 140ish this year, but that hasn't been the messaging at all. That may be giving them too much credit, but since it'd very clearly be an increase I'd hope somebody around there would get that messaging out instead of having another offseason of fan moral being very openly negative about payroll being around 130.

Good ground ball pitchers fit well everywhere. The key word there is GOOD. Dobnak is not good. He's not an asset just because you want him to be. The Twins can't call Colorado and tell them they should have groundball pitchers so take a non-MLB caliber pitcher for 3 million and have them just say "ok." No, we wouldn't offer Jenkins with Dobnak, but the Rockies wouldn't buy a nothing prospect for 3 million. That's the point. You had to dig for Glasnow and Margot to prove your point but you think the Twins can just dump Dobnak with some random minor leaguer to get out of 3 million. It took Glasnow to get rid of Margot in your example, but it takes a random minor leaguer to dump Dobnak? Nonsense. That's not how it works. If the Rockies wanted Dobnak for 3 million they could've taken him multiple times over the last couple years when the Twins have DFA'd him and worked out a deal. They didn't. Because he's not an MLB caliber pitcher and there's no prospect the Twins reasonably put with him that the Rockies would want for 3 million. $3 million buys you a late first round draft pick. That's the level of prospect you're talking to dump Dobnak. Are you willing to trade Kaelen Culpepper or Kyle DeBarge to dump Dobnak? Cuz that's what it'd take. That's an absolutely awful trade for the Twins. The rule 5 is a good example to prove my point. Hardly any players are taken in it, and even fewer are actually kept. 6 total prospects kept last year. Because teams aren't just overflowing with MLB talent. Guessing which player you need because the other guy at their position is going to succeed is a fools errand. Thus there's no redundant prospects. I never said prospects shouldn't be traded. In fact I actively said that wasn't the case. What I said was that in order to get out from under 3 million for Dobnak you're going to have to give up a much better prospect than would make it worth it. It wouldn't be some low-level flier lotto ticket. It would be a legit prospect. And that is awful team management. Because that prospect isn't "insignificant." Your misevaluation of Dobnak is skewing what you think he's worth. No team would put him on their 26-man roster. He had a nearly 1.5 WHIP in AAA last year after having a 1.65 WHIP the year before. He'd be pitching in Japan or Korea now if it wasn't for the horrible extension they signed him to. Colorado has no use for him.

First off, there's no such thing as a redundant prospect. Prospects fail at far too high a rate to think the Twins, or any team, have redundant prospects. If the Twins had redundant prospects they wouldn't need to worry about anything because they'd winning constantly by just replacing each injured or struggling player with the next prospect sitting around waiting to succeed because they have so many redundant prospects. People have been talking about log jams and too many infielders and outfielders around here for years. It wasn't true then and it isn't true now. There's no such thing as a bloated farm system. Moving prospects just to clear Dobnak's 3 mil off the payroll this year is an awful idea. Second, Dobnak isn't a major league quality player. Colorado couldn't use him. Could they be "incentivized?" Sure, by giving them a legitimate prospect. Trading a legitimate prospect to get off 1 year of Dobnak's contract is horrible asset management. Giving up legitimate prospects to save money you can't spend on legitimate help for the 2025 team defeats the purpose of trading Dobnak because all you've accomplished is weakening the system without improving anything. Margot is a bad player, but still better than Dobnak, and who's the Glasnow type player the Twins are trading away with Dobnak in this scenario? You keep talking about not breaking up the core of the team, but now they're attaching somebody of that caliber to Dobnak just to get out of the "albatross" that is his 3 million in 2025? A Glasnow level prospect is Jenkins, Rodriguez, or Keaschall. You dropping a top-100 prospect to save 3 mil in 2025? That's the kind of proactive creative you want Falvey to be? The Twins need their prospects. They're their life blood. Should they never trade them? Of course not. But are they overflowing with them so much that they should be moving them to drop 3 mil of a non-MLB caliber pitcher? Absolutely not. Paying a prospect premium to get out from the last year of Dobnak's deal would be awful asset management. What a waste of a prospect.

How good do you think he can be? Is he your #1 or your #4? If you think he can slot in at the top of your rotation and be a Crochet, Lugo, Lopez, or King then I think you do it without thinking twice. If he's slotting in behind Lopez, Ryan, and Ober and you're expecting him to be Littell or Hicks then I think you just leave him where he is. An ace is more valuable than a reliever. But a mid- or back-end rotation arm isn't more valuable than an elite reliever so you don't take the risk. So, do you think he can be the same pitcher but over 140ish innings instead of 70ish? Then give it a shot and see what he can do. But if you think he's going to be your 4th best starter then just keep him as a shutdown guy at the end of games and trust in SWR, Festa, et al to fill in those 4th and 5th spots.

I provided the innings they've each pitched. Paddack has thrown more since 2019 than Boyd has. Huge upside based on 40 innings? He's 34 and has never performed like that over a full season. You're arguing that a 34-year-old who hasn't thrown a full season's worth of innings in 6 seasons has huge upside despite him never having done it even when he was younger. Yeah, sorry, going to go ahead and disagree with that. His 10.4 K/9 is the 2nd highest of his career. At age 33. And, again, it was in 8 starts and 39.2 innings. Nothing about his career says that's sustainable over a full season. Nothing. In 2019 he had a complete outlier of a season with an 11.6 K/9 but still a 4.56 ERA and 4.32 FIP. Other than that he was a 7.5 to 8.5 K/9 pitcher. Do you have a lot of other pitchers you can tell us about who went from 8 K/9 to 10.5 in their mid-30s after missing the majority of 6 straight seasons? None of that is to say Paddack has huge upside. But Boyd doesn't either. It's why they're comparable.

It's not my money so as far as I'm concerned the payroll should 160+ million. But everything I've seen is that the Pohlads say it has to be 130ish. So, what is gained by trading him is that it gets you to your payroll mark. That's not exciting or encouraging for us fans, but it's important for the people whose jobs it is to hit their payroll mark. No, they wouldn't bring back anything more than a low-level flier, but this is the situation they've placed themselves in. Or the Pohlads have depending on what your belief is on what Falvey knew about future payrolls when he signed Buxton, Correa, and Lopez to their deals.

I'd use him as a 2 inning pen guy if I didn't have a good use for his money by trading him. If clearing his money just leads to a Margot 2.0 type signing I'd put him in the pen. If it could lead to a real addition to the position player side I'd trade Paddack. But if he's on my roster I'd put him in the pen.

Provide some Boyd context to his stats. That was in 39.2 innings last year. 8 starts. He hasn't thrown over 78.2 innings since 2019. Hasn't made more than 15 starts since 2019. Don't say people are living on the 2019 version of Chris Paddack and then bring up a bunch of innings pitched numbers for Boyd that are 2019 and earlier. Paddack has thrown 283 regular season innings since 2019. Boyd has thrown 263. Teams should, and do, question Paddack's ability to hold up. But they should, and do, question Boyd's as well. His "upside" in 2023 looked like a 5.45 ERA and 4.35 FIP in 71 innings with 9.3 K/9. That's in the same realm as Paddack. And the season before that was 13.1 relief innings. You left out all context when talking about Boyd. And his performance before 2019 had a bunch of 4+ ERAs and FIPs. His career ERA is 4.85 and his FIP is 4.58. His career K/9 is 8.8. Paddack? 4.38, 3.98 and 8.9. Boyd has had 2 seasons with K/9 over 10 and 2 others over 9. They're actually quite comparable when you don't ignore all context and just look at incredibly small sample sizes that include 1 season that was 13.1 innings of relief work and another that was an entire 8 starts. In 2023 when Paddack threw in relief his K/9 was 14.4.

Nobody is trading for Randy Dobnak. Unless you're advocating for the Twins to throw in prospects or money to get rid of him which would defeat the purpose. Every team has passed on multiple opportunities to take him for nothing. Nobody is trading for him.

Yeah, Story's contract year with his 102 OPS+ brought his numbers way down, but his 3 seasons before that were all 120 or above. Kim's best has been a 107. Teams could dream on Story getting back to a 120 OPS+. Nobody is dreaming on Kim touching 120. Correa put up multiple 130+ OPS+ seasons before his pillow contract. Swanson is the only guy you've mentioned that Kim is even slightly comparable to when it comes to peak offensive performance. We'll see where he lands, I already said it may be 20 instead of 15, but I don't think it's fair to put him in the same category as Story and Correa offensively. Not the same sort of talent his agents can be selling teams on at all. I'll be absolutely shocked if he gets a $25 mil pillow deal considering he's going to miss the first month of the season. 15-20 seems awfully reasonable based on all the information we have.

Lee for a catcher is intriguing. I'd do it. But I've been one of the lower people on Lee for a long time. I don't think Julien has much value at all on the market. Unless a team thinks they can rework his swing path. If he were 21 or 22 that'd be one thing, but he'll be 26 next season and teams don't typically give up much for 26 year olds who don't play defense and who's swings need to be overhauled. He's a talented kid, but when your swing is that steep it makes it really hard to hit breaking stuff. He learned that in front of our eyes last year. His approach isn't his problem like people say, it's his inability to hit breaking pitches because of his swing path. Teams aren't going to give up much for the chance to find out if they're the ones who can teach him to hit those pitches. I think there's deals the Twins could swing that'd trade future for present or present for future, but those aren't really things I'm that interested in. I think the pitching is good enough to win now. I don't think they're loaded with a ton of #1 arms, but I think their top 3 are good and they have enough young arms on the cusp to survive the inevitable pitching injuries. And I think the pen can be great. I didn't think it was last year when they were looking to run out 1-year-wonder vets like Jackson, but with Varland and Sands and other young flame throwers with legit high octane stuff I think they can produce a really good pen that's deeper than usual and can sustain through the year. But I don't know how they fix the position player side easily. I want nothing to do with the washed up 1 year rental vets. You know I'm all in on Emma opening day assuming he looks solid in spring. But you can't trade your mediocre players for good players. I don't see any positions with too many players, I see the opposite. I don't think the Twins have many guys with real value to make real improvements. If they had that we wouldn't be so worried about the talent level of the team.

While I agree the Twins aren't taking on 15 mil a year over multiple years right now, Larnach would move to DH if they brought in Suzuki. Pretty easy solution there. They need another bat for the DH spot. This wouldn't displace Larnach or Wallner from the lineup.

I thought about the Correa to 3B thing, too. If Kim's shoulder is back to what it was and he's 100% it's a conversation I'd have and it'd just be about setting up the best defensive infield alignment I can. If that's Lewis at 2B with Correa and Kim on the left side I'm good with that. Not locked into those positions, but I wouldn't approach Correa about a position change until I see Kim in spring training throwing. Yeah, Kim may be more in the 20 range than 15. I do think Story and Swanson were paid to be 115-120 OPS+/wRC+ bats instead of the 100-105 bat that Kim is likely expected to be, though. That's not what they've been, and they maybe shouldn't have been paid that way, but I think that's what Chicago and Boston were hoping for/expecting. I don't think they paid them to be league average bats. I think Boston was very much expecting Story to bounce back to a 120 or better bat once he got to Fenway and that's what they paid him for. Kim has always been a step below those other 2 in terms of peak performance with the bat. None of this really matters as the Twins aren't going to sign Kim. He's likely going to get a multi-year deal and the Twins aren't taking on that kind of financial commitment while they try to sell the team and are in this payroll crunch. The only way we see significant changes to the roster is if they swing a number of trades. It's more than likely going to be a very boring offseason and the Twins are going to be forced to trust their young guys and hope they can step up. Still fun to mess around with some ideas, though.

I thought Miranda looked improved at 3B last year compared to his rookie year. I don't expect him to ever be a great defender, but if he can be average at 1B I'll be happy. I hope the Twins have told him he's not going to see anymore time at 3B unless things have gone pretty bad. Lewis, Lee, Castro, hopefully Keaschall all ahead of him. Just give him a 1B glove and let him go to work to get as good as he can. Lewis, I think, just needs to figure out how to throw a baseball. I've never seen such a gifted athlete look so uncomfortable throwing a ball. I think his glove works fine at 3B if they can fix his throwing motion. But he's here for his bat. You're not going to field an entire team of guys good with both the glove and the bat. The Dodgers don't and they won the World Series. Same with the Rangers before them. If Lewis hits like we hope, I'll survive with his glove if I have 2 gold glove quality guys up the middle with Buxton behind them and Emma in left. That's a solid defensive team the pitchers would be pretty comfortable throwing in front of, in my opinion. Spotting me a 3 run lead helps me feel comfortable on the mound, too.

Your roster isn't realistic. Roki Sasaki isn't coming here. There's not a single rumor out there that the Twins have even talked to him. He isn't chasing pool money if he's chasing money, he's chasing endorsement money, and MN isn't where he's getting that. Laureano signed that deal with Atlanta on May 29th, 2024 after he hit .143/.265/.229/.494 for Cleveland for the first 31 games of the year. It was a minor league deal. That 740k isn't even a contract he could sign for 2025 because the minimum salary in Major League Baseball next year is $760,000. The only reason you want to sign him is because he hit .296/.327/.505/.832 for Atlanta after signing that 740k deal. He's going to get about the same amount as Hays for 2025. You're using 1 projection to say Profar is 3/39 and you overpaid at 15. The Athletic has him at 3/48 so you actually underpaid him according to them. I didn't say anything because the 15 is good enough for a rough estimate. But your 740k for Laureano is not an actual 2025 contract so your math is off by about $4 million. And, yes, there absolutely is a way the Pohlads will squash a 134-136 payroll if their limit is 130. They're not eating 4-6 million while they try to sell the team. The problem is your payroll, like I said in the beginning, is actually more like 140 because Ramon Laureano isn't signing for league minimum or a minor league deal in 2025. And they're definitely squashing a payroll 10 million over budget.