chpettit19

I agree. I'm not saying this report is a sign he wants out or anything like that. I'm simply saying that if it gets to the point where he's waiving his no trade I believe it's because he actively wants out. I believe he's meant every word he's said publicly about wanting to be here his whole career, but I also believe that if he knows this team is going to be a joke for the rest of his career he'd be willing to reconsider that stance and he'd want to go to a contender. And, if thats the case, I don't think he's then going to turn around and make a bunch of extravagant demands that make it harder to trade him. I just think that if it gets to the point that he's being traded its because he actively wants out and he'll prefer picking his destination to making demands on a new contract.

Santana was on an expiring deal. That's not the same thing as adding 10 mil a year to an existing deal. I don't doubt Buxton could ask for something, I just don't see him going from pounding the table that he won't waive the no trade to then turning it into a straight up cash grab. And I'm not saying he'll be traded or that this report is any kind of proof of anything. I'm just speaking in what I think it looks like if he were to waive it. I think he only waives it if he's convinced this team is going to be a complete joke and then he wants to go chase a ring. If that's the situation I don't see him making it harder to trade him.

Wouldn't him being willing to waive the no trade be a pretty good sign he actively wants to be traded? I can't imagine he's waiving it for any reason other than he is essentially demanding a trade. If that's the case, why would he turn around and make it more difficult to trade him? Are there a lot of examples of guys waiving no trade clauses and then adding 10 mil a year more to their contracts before the trade? There's certainly some small changes that guys make, but something that big? I don't remember anything like that, but I'm getting old so the memory isn't what it used to be.

That is a wildly high price to pay. Juan Soto (and Josh Bell) returned Luke Voit, C.J. Abrams, Robert Hassell, James Wood, MacKenzie Gore, and Jarlin Susana. Voit and Bell are essentially a wash, I think, so I'd call it Soto for Abrams, Hassell, Wood, Gore, and Susana. Gore and Abrams had already graduated so they're a little tough to gage in terms of prospect rankings, but the shine had come off Gore to where he was off most top 100 lists all together before his debut, but Abrams was a top 10-15 global prospect going into that 2022 season. Hassell was a top 50 guy then and Wood was a top 100 guy. Susana was a very low-level flier (looking quite good these days). So, I'd say 23-year-old Juan Soto didn't even bring back 3 top 50 guys. He brough back 3 top 100 guys and 2 other very well thought of guys, but not 3 top 50. Getting three top 50 prospects for Byron Buxton should win Falvey the executive of the year award the second that deal is approved by the league.

There's no such thing as a logjam of talent. There's never been a team in the history of baseball that has said "well gosh darn, we just have too many good players." Never. Not once. And never will be. There is definitely no such thing as a logjam that includes Kody Clemens and James Outman. Wilyer Abreu would be the 2nd best outfielder on this roster behind only Byron Buxton if they got him. That's why you spend resources on someone like him. It's never a waste of resources to improve your talent. Rodriguez has used 2 option years playing a combined 59 AAA games. Do we need to see what he can do? Absolutely. But odds are very long that he's anywhere near the player Abreu is. Neither Wallner nor Larnach are as good of overall players as Abreu. Roden very likely doesn't have that kind of ceiling. They're already starting to transition Mendez to 1B. Walker Jenkins is hopefully a star. That's 1 guy who should stop us from going after someone like Abreu. People have gotten so accustomed to the mediocrity that is the Twins it's effecting our judgement. Kepler and Larnach types constantly hitting at the top of this lineup has lead people to believe that that's how it should be. It isn't. Those guys aren't top 4 hitters on actually good teams. Abreu isn't either, but he's a marked improvement from what they've been running out there. A gold glove defender who's consistently 15-20% better than the average hitter is absolutely somebody they should be happy to add. Jenkins is the only guy in this supposed "logjam" that has a real chance to be better than that. The Twins just need to improve their talent. Anywhere and everywhere on the roster. Get the best players you can and adjust from there.

They should. My stance has always been that they should pick a lane and go all in. Either try to compete or do a true rebuild, not both. I don't think they have the financial resources to try to truly compete the next 2 years so I hope they blow it up and give themselves the best chance to compete in 3+ instead.

Because they've determined that they won't be competitive while he's here and it's more valuable to have assets that may be useful when the team is competitive again.

If the Twins get two top 100 prospects for Buxton, people are going to have to apologize to Falvey for saying he doesn't know how to trade. It's much like the deadline when people were throwing out trades that had the Twins returning top 100 guys left and right for the obvious trade candidates. Garret Crochet with 2 years of control left only returned 2 top 100 guys. Buxton isn't bringing back 2. Maybe 1.

Too late by then. Falvey would have already traded away all your valuable pieces. That is the most important part of the rebuild. Falvey is dictating the next 5-10 years of Twins baseball right now. Has been since the deadline.

I don't know who this account is, but they credit Nightengale so I assume there's a little something there. But if you combine this with Passan's tweet, this doesn't seem good. Reduce the debt? I thought that's what the minority owners were here for? Or are they not happening now? If you trade one of these guys, trade them all. Bye bye Ryan, Lopez, Buxton, and Jeffers. No reason to keep any of them.

No, he hit well in AAA before he was hurt. In July he hit .243/.379/.314/.694 after returning from injury on the 26th of June.

Martin is a Falvey guy, too. He traded for him. It was his own injuries last year that stopped him from getting a chance earlier in the season. He played more games in the majors than the minors last year because he was hurt for half the year so wasn't playing at all. He wasn't left to rot in AAA, he was on the IL.

I think the handedness of these 2 hitters plays into the desire to have one and not the other. I'm not overly interested in either one, but Player A fits the roster better, in my opinion.

On the exact same page.

I miss having a reason to feel optimistic. I was never being blindly optimistic, and I never want to be. I saw real reasons for optimism. I try to take as realistic of a view as I can. I think (hope?) we all do. But looking at the 40-man today doesn't give me a sense of optimism. The steps laid out here don't change that at all. Paul Goldschmidt is toast. If that's part of a "perfect" offseason I don't see any reason to be optimistic about their chances in 2026. What would give me optimism is any sense at all that Falvey and the FO have picked a lane. That they aren't going to try to compete this year while rebuilding on the side. Either truly invest in the 2026 team or blow it up and fully dive into a rebuild. Trying to do both is how you end up with eternal rebuilds. But nothing he has done in the last 6 months suggest to me that he's going to do anything other than try to win with Goldschmidt type signings for 2026 instead of stockpiling as many high-end prospects as humanly possible. He's been crossing his fingers that a dozen huge "ifs" go his way every season for years. That never happens. And now he's hoping even more, bigger "ifs" go his way in 2026 instead of giving the team more chances at real success in 2027 and beyond. So, yes, I did change my outlook because the team changed and the outlook I'm seeing now with Kody Clemens as your starting 1B, Brooks Lee as your starting SS, Alex freaking Jackson as your co-catcher, Trevor Larnach as a top 3 or 4 hitter in the lineup, and a 40-man full of guys like Julien, Gasper, Outman, and Kreidler is much different than what I saw before. There are definitely some intriguing names in the minors, but most prospects fail. Even the top 100 variety. I'm excited to see the kids at some point, but they need more. Because you can go look at the predicted 2026 lineup from a few years ago and see a whole bunch of names we were excited about then that not many have any desire to have in an MLB lineup now. Expecting all these guys to succeed at all, let alone immediately, doesn't seem wise. I'd love to be wrong in the opposite way I have been the last couple offseasons. But I don't see it. I'm happy for those who do. But I don't.

No offense taken as I'm guessing you have no idea what my posts during the last few offseasons were. For example, I predicted between 82 and 87 wins for the Twins last year. That was wildly optimistic and I was way off. As of today I'm predicting 65 to 70 wins next year. I'd love to be wrong again and have them win 85-90. I know what those words mean and you're welcome to go back through my posts the last few offseasons and see me defending the team and predicting far more success than they actually had.

"Here are five steps the Twins could take to push toward contending again next year." Are we just using some technicality speak here to suggest these 5 moves slightly improve the team so they'd technically "push toward contending?" Paul Goldschmidt? Based on his trajectory over the last couple seasons he'll be a below average hitter next year, but that's supposed to be the bat we're missing at first? @Major League Ready called this a 75-win team, at best. @ashbury said that was a little higher than their estimate. I'll say it's about a 65–70-win team. This article starts from a premise I simply don't agree with in saying "they are talented enough to compete." They aren't. Did you not watch the last 2 months of the season? These 5 moves don't move them meaningfully closer to contention. I'm usually one of the more positive posters around here during the offseason, but I just don't get how people are looking at this roster and seeing any real shot at contention. I've been mostly wrong about my optimism in recent years so maybe I'll continue my streak of being wrong and this roster will have a dozen guys outplay any reasonable projection.

If you are a betting man and can get an O/U of 81.5 wins on the 2026 Twins, bet every dollar you have on the under.

Came to say almost the exact same thing. I'd actually have DeBarge's arrow pointing down, but not straight down by any means. That wRC+ number is quite deceiving. Him not moving up a level says a lot more, in my opinion. He got overwhelmed by pitching the second half of last year. He wasn't good enough for a promotion, and, as a college guy, that's a downward arrow on his stock. The glove and speed are there, and the Twins certainly need more athleticism, but if he doesn't figure out the bat relatively significantly, he isn't making it out of AA. Will be interesting to see where they start him this year.

You're confusing "young" and "inexperienced." The Twins have very few actually young guys on their current roster but have many inexperienced ones. They aren't the same thing. Austin Martin is not young, he'll be 27 next season. Allen Roden is not young, he'll be 26 next year. Keaschall is young, and you can argue Brooks Lee is borderline. They are the only "young" position players on the roster. This is why some of us have been complaining. Because the guys you're trying to call young are actually just inexperienced because they weren’t called up until their mid-20s. The pitching staff is too far from being set to know what that situation will be. But people call Ryan and Ober young when they're essentially the same age as Lopez. The difference is that they were called up so much later they're still in arbitration while Lopez is making over 20 mil a year.

Winter League stats are much like Spring Training stats in that they shouldn't be used as evidence of much. I don't expect Emma to be on the opening day roster because I think Falvey is trying to compete in 2026 instead of rebuilding. But I think he should be on the opening day roster. This is his last option year. The Twins need to see what he can do. 2026 is a lost season unless numerous kids step up and do very unlikely things. So put the kids in there and see if they can do those unlikely things. Emma is very much a boom or bust prospect because of his swing and miss. If somebody values him as a top 100 or top 50 prospect and you can spin him into a similarly ranked young catcher, I'd be good with that outcome, too. But he has a ton of potential, for sure. The injuries are a massive concern just like the swing and miss. He'll be interesting to follow in the bigs, but he needs to be there now. If he's still on the Twins come opening day (I fully expect him to be) then he needs to be with the Twins and not the Saints on opening day. You can't let all 3 option years go by without getting a real feel for him and being able to send him back down if he struggles in his initial go.

Oh, I'm certainly not suggesting this is some doomsday trade. Eeles isn't likely a real piece to a winning team, but he has a real shot to make the majors. When you're in the position the Twins are in that's more valuable than any random catcher you need simply to fill out the roster for a year or 2. When you lack as much talent as the Twins do, I much prefer to keep any possible MLB piece with control. Prospects are a numbers game. More fail than succeed so you need as many as you can to give yourself the best shot at building a winning team. I believe the Twins should be in a full rebuild. That means trading Jeffers, not trading for a guy to back him up. That means trading Ryan this offseason and Pablo and Ober at the deadline or next offseason. I don't think the Twins have any plans to do that, and I think this is another sign of that. If all you're doing is filling a backup catcher role on a team you aren't trying to win with, you don't trade for them, you claim or sign them. You claim Ben Rortvedt if you have no intention of winning because you don't care if he's slightly worse than Alex Jackson because all you want is a glove that can legitimately catch at the MLB level. You're not trying to squeeze out a little more value for 2026 because 2026 doesn't matter. You trade for specific guys when you care about the marginal gains you think they provide. I said in my first post that this is a fine trade value wise. But the Twins traded Dobnak last year in order to not have to pay his buyout this year. 1.8 mil matters to them right now. My concern is that Falvey is trying to win in 2026 with a roster that has no real shot at it and it's going to put the Twins in a worse situation down the road by not bringing in as many high upside prospects as humanly possible. Trying to play both sides of the fence is how you end up with eternal rebuilds. It's an awful strategy that is going to hurt the Twins now and later.

If he is their preferred "backup" that speaks to bigger plans. The Twins haven't done "backup" catchers since 2018 when they first paired Jason Castro and Mitch Garver, I don't get why people keep calling him a backup. Unless they think it's revealing that the Twins plan to change their catching philosophy in a pretty big way. Every move is revealing. Or the front office is completely and utterly incompetent and just making random moves with no larger plan whatsoever in place to have the moves fit together in a meaningful way. There's plenty of people that would make that argument about Falvey. But trading away guys who have legit chances of making the majors and still have 6 years of control is absolutely telling. The only discussion is about what it's telling us.

Sure, super possible result. And I could make a more than reasonable argument along these lines that Alex Jackson has 0 years of control because he should be cut to make room for someone else.

I didn't say it was a smart belief for him to have...