chpettit19

I don't know that it's just to increase available trade chips, but they do seem to have shifted more towards good athletes who play up the middle and aren't carried by 1 tool. That is both good for your own system and your chance to swing some trades. Agreed with the kudos. It would be fascinating to know how things went behind the scenes with Morris. Was she the driving force behind the failed offseason of marketing? But they had Laura Day in that position from 2016-2022 and weren't exactly killing it with fan base growth then either. That's back to back major hires/promotions that didn't work out all that well for whatever reasons. Which is why I put it on DSP and ownership.

True, but they did have the NFL there for much of the time I listed and they still weren't losing attendance. St Louis is a baseball town, but the team being good helps with that. The Twin Cities love the Vikings and Wild first and foremost. Those teams sell out every game no matter what basically. The Twins and Wolves (and I assume the Loons) have to be good to sell tickets. But when they are good, they sell tickets. The Twins started this offseason off by slapping their fans in the face and they paid for it in the first half by losing attendance. That attendance will likely bounce back now that they're good and the fans want to see them win a division and more playoff games. If the team can put together a stretch of 23 years with 2 losing seasons like the Cards have done I'd bet they wouldn't complain so much about attendance. They likely wouldn't be hitting 3 million, but 2.5? Quite possible.

The Cards are not a great comparison. That 2023 losing season was their 2nd losing season of the 21st century. They hit 3 million fans back in the late 80s, and outside of the strike-shortened '94 season, and the following '95 season, they've basically been in the high 2 millions for attendance every year. Arenado had a near 6 WAR season with the cards in 2022 and has been a 3 time all-star, 2 time gold glove winner, and 1 time silver slugger winner in St Louis. If that's "not performing to contract" sign me up for a bunch of guys not performing to contract. Goldschmidt has fallen off this year, but won the MVP in 2022 and had a 119 OPS+ and 3.4 bWAR last year. Again, sign me up for a bunch of guys "not performing" if that's "not performing." Those have been 2 good players until last year for Arenado and this for Goldschmidt. The Cards have built up a fanbase and had a consistently good team for decades. The Twins haven't earned that from their fans. Since the 2 teams met in the '87 World Series, the Cards have gone 3070-2694 for a winning percentage of 53.26. They've had 8 losing seasons while winning 2 titles and losing the WS 2 other times. The Twins have gone 2849-2917 for a winning percentage of 49.41. They've had 19 losing seasons while winning 1 more title and appearing in 0 other WS. They set a North American major sport record for playoff losses in a row. These franchises aren't the same. The Cards drawing well during their first losing season in 16 years, and 2nd in 23 years, is so far from comparable to the Twins situation. "Their fans come out regardless" is ignoring a whole lot of context.

Don't get the arguments about not trading away the future. If the FO is as good as we hope at developing young talent (and I think they have a really nice thing going on now) on the farm this is exactly when you trade away a few guys to give yourself the best shot possible at winning a championship. Correa, Lopez, Buxton, Kirilloff, Stewart, Ober, Jax, Ryan, Larnach, Duran, Sands, Lewis, Miranda, Julien, SWR, and all the rookies (Lee) and guys in the system all locked up through at least 2027. That's 4 rotation members and 8 position players, and the entire back-end of your pen locked up for 3 years or more. This is the exact time to risk some prospect capital for an increased shot this year when the entire core of your team is locked up for long enough to develop more prospects to replace the ones you traded. As for the Pohlads, it's their business to run as they see fit. Just don't understand at all how anyone in the business/marketing department thought anything they've done in the last 9 months was the right move. Just incredibly poor PR and marketing stuff since last November. They've tripped over themselves for nearly a year now and it doesn't seem to be getting any better. Winning is going to help, and I expect to see an increase in attendance the rest of the year as they chase the division and a playoff birth. But they need to make some real changes in how they interact with their fans if they want to have any chance of increasing revenue anytime soon.

Didn't say that. Said ignoring his PHing numbers would be a bad use of data. The nature of pinch hitting is a small sample size situation. Like relievers. If you can't excel in those small samples you shouldn't do it. He has a .149 BA in 96 pinch hitting plate appearances. A .448 OPS. He is not a good pinch hitter and it's abundantly clear. If your pinch hitter is going to OPS .448 you're losing the advantage. Twins left handed hitters have a .600 OPS against left-handed pitchers in 107 plate appearances this year. If 107 PAs of .600 OPS is enough to determine the lefties shouldn't hit lefties then 96 PAs of .448 OPS should be enough to determine Margot shouldn't pinch hit. And it took about 25 plate appearances at the start of the year to determine Wallner shouldn't have been in the majors at that point. You don't have to let someone suck for 200 PAs before you make a decision on them not being good enough.

Pinch hitting is a specific skill. Ignoring his current season and career pinch hitting numbers would be a foolish use of data. Similar to DHing. It's a different mindset and skill. Ignoring a player's numbers as a DH vs a position player would be foolish.

I used the Fangraphs Splits Leaderboards to get the info. And I'd actually argue the strategy would be even worse if the pitcher was getting flipped almost every time. Then you're giving Margot multiple shots against a righty that you know he can't hit just to miss 1 AB of a lefty on lefty and sacrificing the 2nd AB of the better hitting lefty against the back end righty reliever. I'm quite positive they'll keep using him the exact same way. Their strategies around pinch hitting and platooning are season long strategies. They don't expect to win every move, they just believe that over 162 games they'll win at least 51% of the time and that gives them a slight advantage on the margins. My problem isn't that he's not fulfilling the role they pictured for him offensively, it's that they have the role at all. I don't think anyone would argue he's been as good defensively as the team expected him to be, but he's doing about as well as they could have expected offensively. I just don't like the idea of rostering guys who have 1 skill, and that skill is very rarely used. Same problem I had with Garlick. To me, if you're going to roster a guy just to use against lefties at least get one who can be serviceable against righties. If the idea is that even an average righty can perform better against lefties than lefties can, why not get an actual average righty? They don't have to be Farmer, Margot, Garlick types who have such dramatic left/right splits. Margot is giving them everything they expected offensively (other than the 0-fer PHing). I just don't think giving a roster spot to that role is a good use of resources. And if you can't PH well against lefties you're of even less use. What would Martin's overall numbers look like if he were in that spot instead? He has an overall higher OPS already (although, still not good) while Margot is being put in the optimal position for him to thrive while Martin is getting scraps. Martin is better defensively (while still not good), on the bases, and against righties. Why give Margot that spot when Martin appears to be the better all around player? Simply because Margot is better in 106 PAs against lefties? That's my problem with the strategy. Not that Margot isn't performing mostly as expected. But that the role itself shouldn't exist.

Strong disagree. The lefty reliever that comes in is rarely being taken out for Margot and isn't being pulled any earlier because of Margot. I'd argue the opposite and say that the Twins are the ones being manipulated into taking out their better hitters in order to get Margot into the game to go 0-29. He's not putting fear into any other manager at this point. Manuel Margot has 20 PA as a pinch hitter against lefties. He is not getting the reliever out of the game. He's going 0-fer against 69% lefties and then being left in to face the righty reliever later in the game who he's hitting .184/.246/.248/.494 against.

Players already get playoff bonuses. It's part of the CBA. Players get a cut of playoff revenue.

He's definitely in a weird spot. I think AAA can still be of use for him in just refocusing his approach. Getting more aggressive, especially on "get me over" breaking balls. They may not be able to hit corners, but they'll throw him breaking stuff, and that's been his problem. He's turning into Larnach from the last couple years who was just completely useless against non-fastballs. Julien is now seeing under 50% fastballs which means he's completely hopeless against over 50% of the pitches he sees. He can work on that in AAA. .080 BA against breaking balls (37.4% of pitches seen) and .083 BA against offspeed (15% of pitches seen) is something that should be worked on in AAA. He's also a -6 in "runs" on pitches in the heart of the plate. -12 on the shadow. He's never going to work out if his swing/take in the heart of the zone is -6.

Will be fascinating to see if they release the numbers. My bet would be that they don't, but I really hope they do. The teams do everything they can to keep all their financials as far under wraps as possible. But I'd really like to see who gets money and what kind of changes we see in their spending that could possibly be tied to it.

Teams are required to use these funds "in an effort to improve performance on the field." Will be interesting to see which teams take on salary in trades next week and which ones use this money in other ways to improve their on field performance.

I hope they aren't counting on Topa for anything. I think he should be seen as a nice bonus if he finds himself this year, but you absolutely can't say "we don't need to add because Topa is coming back." He's 33 and has 1 good major league season. He's going to have spent the first 2/3 of the season on the IL. Expecting him to be a reliable division race/playoff arm is betting on a lot. I hope he's good, and he very well may be, but you can't assume he will be at this point. If there's a chance to add a nice reliever at the deadline, you can't pass on it because of Topa.

He's been playing 1B, actually. He's only started at 2B once this month. And only played there 8 times in 27 June games. He's been at 1B and DH the last couple weeks, with 1 start at 2B, and 3 in CF this month.

Except they're likely making less money than they'd planned, unless you think they were planning on losing attendance this year. They're down over 50k fans to this point year over year. That's millions of dollars lost over the course of the season in attendance based revenue. By all accounts they were counting on hitting 2 million fans this year. That would be an increase from last year. Instead they're looking at 75-85k less. Find it hard to believe they sat on a significant amount of money coming into the year and are looking to spend more when they're likely not even on target to hit their projections.

Fair. I really hope they aren't actually planning on only 4-5 innings at most out of Ryan and Ober, though. They definitely need to add somebody who can go multiple innings then if that's the case. You can't rely on half your playoff innings coming from 1 inning guys. If they don't think Ryan and Ober are good enough to be legit playoff starters (not saying they are or aren't, just what the Twins believe) they need to make a massive swing. I think we're agreeing on that. I'm not sure they don't see Ryan and Ober as more than a 4 or 5 inning arm, though. I could make a pretty solid argument that Ober is their best starter right now. If he's a twice through the order guy in the playoffs (may be, the longball scares me with all 3 of their starters) they're in trouble. The pen is good, but they can't go 3 straight playoff games having to cover 4+ innings each time.

They don't NEED 4 postseason starters, but it sure would be nice. After the wild card round you need 4 starters, or 3 with a bullpen game if you want to do that. But the same 3 guys can't start every playoff game if you're planning a deep run. And if one of Lopez, Ryan, or Ober goes down (I assume those are the 3 everyone is counting on) you're then down to 2 playoff quality starters and bullpen games from there on out. That's a real bold risk if you're planning to go deep into October. I'd say better (more reliable/trustworthy/established?) than SWR is the current bar. And it's highly unlikely they take on anyone with control because of their apparent payroll situation moving forward.

Come on. Nobody called him Big Papi. But he was a clear and definite miss. Since 2019 he's thrown 158.1 innings with a 3.18 ERA and 11.5 K/9. The Twins could have used those numbers somewhere during that time, no? He doesn't have to be Big Papi for that to have been a bad decision.

This is our point. You keep saying "they know" when in reality they don't. If they know, they would bat 1.000. They have educated guesses (far more educated than our outsider guesses), but they don't know. They think. Three teams traded or waived Brent Rooker. Did they know? Do you think Oakland knew he would do this? Nick Anderson (as used earlier) did have his initial stretch with Tampa where he K'd 17+ per 9. If the Twins knew he could do that for 1/3 of a season they would've called him up. If they knew he'd have a career 11.5 K/9 in nearly 160 innings they don't let him go. They wouldn't have traded Wade for the other Anderson reliever if they knew what they had in him. Kyle Farmer is a pretty known quantity, but they didn't know he'd be this horrid this year. Every team misses. Pretty frequently, actually. The Dodgers would've made some different choices had they known Gavin Lux couldn't play SS. Top prospects that everybody "knew" were good turn out to be bad all the time. They don't know. These same debates take place in front offices. They can't know. Because if they did there wouldn't be a debate. The front office isn't in 100% alignment on how good any player is. Some think they're ready, others think they'll never be. They don't know. It's all just educated guesses with the guys at the very top picking which argument from their staff is the most convincing.

Legit question, why would they risk Diego being lost on waivers instead of calling up Severino if they already know Diego isn't an option? If they know he isn't going to be good enough why not just call up the guy already on the 40-man? If that roster spot is doomed to fail why choose Diego?

I'm more of a tier guy instead of list. Tier 1: Jenkins, Keaschall, Lee, Matthews, Rodriguez Tier 2: Festa Tier 3: Culpepper (Kaelen), Morris, Raya, Soto That'd be my top 10.

I have no problem trading Julien. I actually wanted him to be the centerpiece for a trade for a Marlin pitcher during the offseason. But this is an awful return for him. If that's all he can bring back in a trade right now they shouldn't even think about trading him.

Yes, no way to say Judge is a better player than Santana. Totally void and illogical comparison.

Yes, veterans are often taking advice from 2nd year guys. I see your point.

I didn't say he'd been a better first baseman, I said he'd been a better overall player.