chpettit19

Zebby threw 134.2 innings this year. 97 in the minors and 37.2 for the Twins. He should be able to 160 this year, but if he's in the majors all, or most of the, year I'd lower it to a 140 goal. Should be more than doable. They have come a long ways from the Shoemaker, Happ, etc. days. And that is very nice to see.

It will be interesting to see how they manage their innings. Zebby is a big boy and I'd like to think he can do 140 innings next year. But I'd bet we see a lot of quick hook complaints early next year whether those guys are in AAA or with the Twins. I actually like the collection of arms they have. Their hurdle is going to be managing workloads for everyone while putting them in the best roles for them to succeed. I don't like the typical long reliever role of sitting around for 2 weeks before coming in during a blowout. Think it's a waste of a roster spot. But if you can get 2 or 3 guys in your pen that can go 2 innings every 4 days you can really manage your entire staff pretty well. Or at least in my head you can. I think Paddack has a role on this team. It's just a question of what that role is.

I don't disagree on him having stuff and he was good in most of his starts last year. I just don't think he can hold up. If he is Stewart in the pen and can't hold up there either then just get as many starts out of him as you can. But if he could throw the entire season out of the pen and get you 70-90 innings that way I'd prefer that over 15 starts and a 60-day IL trip. They do/should have enough good arms in the pen to start the year so I am not totally against not putting him there, but I think it's time to lean on the kids in the rotation. They're going to need them moving forward and it's time to start getting them experience. Ryan, Lopez, Ober, SWR and a fight between Festa and Zebby with the other taking the #6 spot in St Paul would be my plan. But I certainly don't think Festa and Zebby both in St Paul with Paddack in the 5 spot is outrageous. Morris, Raya, and Lewis all starting the year at AAA gives me more hope for the youngsters to start taking over. But having all 5 of those guys in St Paul isn't a bad place to be with Paddack in Minneapolis. I just want to turn the games into 5 inning games whenever one of those guys start. And I think Paddack, Varland, and Sands as 2 inning monsters once or twice a week each makes it pretty realistic that the Twins could say the game is over if they have the lead after 5 most nights. As odd as it feels to say right now, I think there's real reason to expect the Twins pitching to be very good in 2025. The offense on the other hand...I have some real concerns.

If you're just looking at 2024, MLB batters preferred to face Dobnak. Dobnak K% was 15.6 compared to Paddack's 20.6. Dobnak's BB% was 11.1 compared to Paddack's 5.5. Insanely small sample size, but Dobnak wasn't good in his 9.2 innings pitched last year. I don't want either in the rotation, but Paddack has the better stuff and coming out of the pen could be a real weapon, I think.

If they think he can hold up for an entire season and be dominant in the bullpen that's what they should do with him. If Duran, Jax, Sands, Paddack, Alcala (in 1 inning stints only), and Topa can form the core of a Cleveland level bullpen that should be their move. Add 1 lefty or Varland (or Stewart when he's actually healthy) and a long guy and win games with your pen instead of having Paddack start 15 mediocre to bad games and get hurt. If him and Sands (and/or Varland) can each be 2 inning guys twice a week you can shorten some starts for the young guys while letting Lopez, Ober, and Ryan go 6 more often than not and have a really nice pitching staff. The problem is the Twins will clutch their pearls at the idea of paying a reliever 7.5 mil. But the Twins have the makings of an absolute monster pen if Paddack can be dominant there. That's how I'd do it. Duran for saves, Jax for the 8th, and an army of flame throwers for the 6th (when needed) and 7th. Teams better score in the first 5 or the game is over. No more Jay Jackson types. Give me Duran, Jax, Sands, Paddack, Alcala, Topa, Varland and a long guy (Winder?) to start the year. And, yes, I know those are all righties. I don't care about lefties in the pen if all my righties are shutdown guys.

I think the big question with all of them is who are their replacements? Ownership may not care about winning, but I promise you Falvey and Rocco do. Their jobs are on the line. Or, at least, should be. They aren't going to be given financial resources to improve the team, but they can't let it go backwards if they want to stay in MN. There's no replacement for Duran so I'd think he's a pretty easy decision. They traded for Topa because of the extra control so I doubt he's going anywhere. Kiriloff and Castro comes down to whether or not they'll trust rookies. They haven't shown much willingness at all to open a season with a rookie on their opening day roster. Lee is the only one I remember as even being talked about as a possibility. If they aren't going to trust rookies the replacement for those 2 would be more flawed veterans. How flawed do the veterans have to be to sign them to a combined 7 or 8 million? Santana for 5 and a utility type for 3? A different veteran for 7 and Martin for darn near minimum? The pitchers seem like easy decisions, but the hitters are a tougher call depending on their willingness to go young to start a season.

Still having an option left may be the deciding factor. The Twins still seem to believe in his talent as he tends to hit in the top 3 spots in the lineup. And I can see why they'd believe, because he has stretches where he looks fully healthy and locked in and mashes. But can you trust him to be healthy? I think it's 50/50 he'll be back. And I'm not sure which way I'd go. Depends on what the rest of my lineup looks like.

Interesting. Nowhere left to hide for Falvey and Rocco. Will be interesting to see if there's any drastic changes in strategy next year.

Falvey said they're not making anymore changes to the baseball ops department. No new GM. It's all on Falvey now.

What a difference a year makes, huh?

That's a no win situation then. That's not an outside hire vs internal promotion discussion, that's just Falvey being a bad leader and who takes the spot doesn't matter at all because Falvey isn't going to listen to any ideas anyways.

Very true. But who's voice is going to be louder? Does the promoted GM have the same ideas and follow the same philosophies as Falvey but the replacement assistant GM has the different ideas? That isn't a situation I'm interested in as the assistant GM's vote doesn't count as much as the GM's. I want new ideas with as much power as possible. If the assistant GM is promoted because they don't see things the same way and have the chance to implement some new strategies, great! But putting somebody with the same ideas and philosophies in Levine's spot doesn't help improve things.

I really hope the replacement comes from outside the organization. No offense to any of the internal options listed here, but I want a new voice with some new ideas in the room.

December 2026 is when the current CBA runs out. That's when we really get to see what this league (MLB and MLBPA) is capable of. The 2027 season already feels like a long shot. Unless they start really putting work into what the future of this league looks like soon.

Contraction would be quite the turnabout from their openly stated plans to expand in the coming years. They've been pretty open about their plans to add 2 new teams once Oakland and Tampa figure out their stadiums. Both of those teams have figured out their stadiums. We're likely getting 2 new MLB teams in the next 5 years. It's another example of them wanting the money right now as the expansion fees for new owners will be substantial. But contraction isn't something on the horizon right now. Always a chance they screw this whole thing up so bad it happens, but teams are still selling for billions of dollars and plenty of billionaires still want to get their own team so there's got to be some sustainability seen by these people.

I think the idea that the Twins move minor leaguers around defensively is widely overblown. They didn't move Lewis around until it was clear he wasn't their SS of the future because they had Correa. Miranda and Severino moved down the defensive spectrum as it was clear they couldn't field those other positions. Every team does that. The Twins actually kept Martin at SS way, way, way too long trying for "defense excellence" when it was clear his future was going to be more about "position flexibility." Lee didn't move off SS until well after he should have knowing he wasn't supplanting Correa. Larnach was always a cOF. Same with Wallner. Julien got tested at different spots early to see where he had the best chance to succeed and then was planted at 2B. Kirilloff was always a cOF/1B. The guys they move around (Prato, Helman, etc.) are guys who's only hope at an MLB future relies on them being able to fill in at multiple spots. I don't know where the storyline comes from that the Twins are moving their guys around a ton. It isn't true. The problem is more about the disconnect between not moving guys around in the minors but then moving them in the majors. They needed to move Martin, Lewis, and Lee off SS because it wasn't their future spot. They move guys too little, not too much.

Shane Mack played his prime years in Minnesota and his numbers were slightly better than his career numbers, but not significantly so. I'm sorry if your memories don't match the actual results. I'm never going to convince you that Kelly wasn't some amazing manager. I gave you his career managerial numbers. If having 10 of 15 seasons be losing seasons is him getting "more out of his troops with less talent" it's hard to image the incredible lack of talent those teams had. If getting more still leads to a losing season they must have had basically no talent. Maybe that's true. But probably shouldn't praise McPhail if that's the case. Can't have it both ways. Either they lacked talent and that's why they lost even though Kelly was maximizing them which means McPhail was not good at building rosters or Kelly wasn't anything special and he didn't really improve "marginal players" like you claim. Enjoy your memories. The 91 World Series were some of my earliest life memories. It was awesome. But your memories aren't more accurate than the actual results. I'm sorry that the actual results don't match your memories.

If this is their plan why hasn't he been removed already? The other 2 corners of the triangle of power have been locked in as staying and they're making personnel decisions on the people under Levine. If they were moving on from Levine why wouldn't they have fired him yesterday with everyone else and started their search for a new GM? If it's going to happen it should happen today.

There's a few of us who'd be ok with it, but not many. I'm not someone who thinks you need to go stop by stop through the minors with guys. Michael Harris in Atlanta skipped AAA, too. Not for opening day, but didn't spend a whole year at AA. It'd actually excite me if the Twins saw a player in their system they believed is a star and just got them up to give it a go. Jackson Chourio struggled a bunch the first half of the year after getting paid before ever stepping on a major league field, but the Brewers didn't demote him, they let him learn and he just carried them to a playoff win last night. I'd love to see the Twins do that with Jenkins or Emma (if he could stay healthy).

Their playoff roster is about 20 mil.

Fans of 3 teams already are paying $20/month for nothing but baseball.

They don't need a continual pipeline now. They have a lot of their guys locked up or controlled for long enough to get more guys ready. Their infield has 3 guys (Machado, Bogaerts, Cronenworth) under control through at least 2030. Kim and Arraez are still there next year. No need to replace anyone on the infield next year, and Kim and/or Arraez wouldn't break the bank. The outfield loses Profar after this year, but has Merrill through 2029 and Tatis through 2034. So they have the core of their lineup locked up through 2029. If they can't produce more prospects in 6 years they're in trouble anyways. Musgrove controlled through 2027, Darvish 2028. Cease and King for next year still. Waldron through 2029. Nobody ever has enough pitching, and that's definitely where they're going to need to do their work, but that's a pretty nice starting point for a staff. They are going to really struggle to pivot if a bunch of their core falls apart, but that's true of every team. But they don't need to produce a ton of high end talent for a handful of years. And they have an elite prospect at catcher on his way soon. They've given themselves a pretty decent pillow to develop more talent while also competing for titles.

Yeah, next time you want to be this condescending and blame customers for clearly poor business plans maybe at least know what you're talking about. Your belief is that Ballys signed an exclusive distribution rights deal with the Twins that barred the Twins from streaming home games only? You can't stream any game that the Twins are playing in if you live in their home market. Whether they're playing at Target Field or in Antarctica. That's what "exclusive" means.

What service gets you coverage of exactly half the games?

It will be interesting to see how the coaching staff shakes out. Feels like a bit of a cop out to me, but it really isn't surprising to see them making some moves. The offense was elite for most of the season so it's interesting they'd remove that segment of the coaching staff over "6 bad weeks" but won't make changes to those above them over "6 bad weeks." Not saying it's the wrong decision, just an interesting look at their decision making. I fully agree there seems to be nothing from an outside perspective to make me believe Dave St Peter is the answer on the business side of things. The more I see how Joe is running things the more I think St Peter is still employed because the rest of the family wants him there as a security blanket for the new Pohlad in charge. They trust him to at least not let little Joe tank the entire thing. But St Peter has dropped the ball left and right. Really mind blowing to me that he's still in charge. Their business decisions seem to be getting worse and worse. Do they even have a PR department? How are these guys out there putting their foot in their mouth time after time? If they do have a PR department they need to fire them because it's just a waste of money at this point. The people at the top don't seem to have any real idea how to bring the business side of the Twins into the current media and entertainment marketplace. They've modernized the baseball side with the hiring of young(ish) execs. It feels like it's beyond time to do that on the business side.