chpettit19

Strong disagree. Teams are interested in Correa. Just like teams are interested in Seattle pitching. There will always be media rumors and it's the media's jobs to ask the questions. It's what they're paid to do. Falvey's answer was very different than Dipoto's. Falvey should care. Especially with his new promotion. DSP didn't care and it was a massive reason for the team's struggles to connect with the fan base. No matter what you think about the media and the questions they ask the fans care about the team and the answers they give. Falvey needs to care. He kicked off the firestorm of payroll blowback last year and he's kicked off the Correa trade concerns this year. He doesn't get to not care. His words matter. The Pohlads don't speak often (for good reason) so he's the top official we hear from. New owners aren't here yet. And there's nothing mind blowing guaranteed with them. In fact, they were smart enough to meet their fans where they were and put Suns games on over the air TV instead of telling their fans to just quit being morons. Continuing to lose customers because you demand they adapt to you instead of you adapting to them is not smart.

He didn't have to give that answer. He could have said "we're not trading Carlos Correa." There's no rules saying he can't say "people call on every player, but I tell them we're not trading any of our stars, including Carlos." Dipoto says "we're not trading from our rotation." Or "trading from our rotation is plan Z." And things like that all the time. The media says "team X is interested in pitcher Y from Seattle" and Dipoto again says "we're not trading from our rotation." Do I think Falvey is shopping Correa? No. Did he say that stuff only because he was asked a question? Yes. Is it likely Correa is traded? Only if they get a killer return. But Falvey shouldn't have given an answer that so easily lead to "the Twins are listening on Correa" headlines. Falvey is yet another Twins representative that needs a PR seminar. Or 5. He didn't need to openly state they were slashing payroll last year and he didn't need to give that answer on Correa. "We get calls on everyone, every team does, but Correa is our shortstop and we have no plans to trade him. Next question."

Oh, for sure. But there's usual instability, then there's actively trying to sell the team instability. There's understood risk as a professional athlete that you may be traded, that your teammates may be traded, that any number of your bosses may be fired on a whim, etc. But then there's ownership change mixed with public payroll cutting/concerns instability. That's a different beast that changes the equation for a 23-year-old moving to a new country.

"I think that there’s an argument to be made that a smaller, mid-market team might be more beneficial for him as a soft landing coming from Japan, given what he’s been through and not having an enjoyable experience with the media. It might be — I’m not saying it will be — I don’t know how he’s going to view it but it might be beneficial for him to be in a smaller market. I really don’t know how he looks at it yet because I haven’t had a chance to really sit down and discuss it with him in great detail.” And there's the full quote about the smaller market thing, by the way. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for smaller markets. They haven't even discussed it yet. It's just something people have been saying because the Japanese media has been brutal towards him and his family for leaving at such a young age. Emphasis on the word might was from the agent. The biggest thing from the media scrum with the agent is that he hasn't even had a real discussion with Roki about his thoughts on any of this yet. It's all just agent speak covering all his bases.

From the claim that if hes chasing money he'd wait until he can get it in his contract. I mean you directly stated (incorrectly) that if he wanted money he'd stay in Japan another year and get Yamamoto's deal. Ted doesn't have an inside source with Roki. He can say whatever he wants about him. He has no source with him. He's a blogger. He's you and me who happens to get paid to write things about the Twins. Why would I care what Ted says the chances are of Roki signing here are? And, by the way, he says the chances of him signing here aren't good. "Don’t let me kill your optimsm, but it’s still highly unlikely the Minnesota Twins actually land Roki Sasaki, in the end." The Twins should talk to Roki. Of course they should. But you should be realistic about the situation. The Pohlads are trying to sell the team. The new owners will want to reassess the entire organization. There's instability up and down the roster and front office from the very top down. People want to know who they're signing up to work with. If Roki doesn't know if Falvey will be in charge next year why would he want to sign on with Falvey? If he doesn't know if Pablo, Correa, Buxton, Royce, and the rest of the squad will even be here next year why would he want to sign here? The instability of the sale of the team is a major hurdle that is nearly impossible to overcome. Then you add in numerous other very nice other options for him and the odds of him coming here are miniscule. Oh, and Ted also left out all the quotes about Roki not being afraid of big markets and being more than happy to go to New York or LA. His agent just spit out a whole bunch of nice stuff that covered every market in MLB like he should so he didn't close any doors. Falvey should call Roki's agent, but Roki isn't coming here.

It mattered to 1 team, and that's all it takes cuz it got him paid. And Profar's will get him paid. O'Neill's got him paid. Outlier platform years get guys paid all the time. And those contracts got bad all the time. But if you're going to bash Paddack for his lack of innings and performance since 2019 and call out the people on this site for having faith in Paddack based on the 2019 version while ignoring everything since then throw Matthew Boyd out as the rebuttal their lines since 2019 shouldn't look like this: Boyd: 263 innings 4.65 ERA, 4.38 FIP, 8.9 K/9 Paddack: 283 innings 4.90 ERA, 3.99 FIP, 8.4 K/9 Boyd went on a heater for 8 starts and got himself paid. Good for him. You threw around a bunch of pre-2020 Boyd numbers while bashing other posters for their Paddack stances then got mad at me for pointing out that you were using pre-2020 Boyd numbers. Boyd got paid for 8 starts. I hope it works out for the Cubs and he has his first full season of starts ever with an ERA under 4.39 or FIP under 4.32. Cuz if it was a Twins pitcher putting up those numbers you'd be calling them a number 5 starter, not telling us they have "huge upside."

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.