Cap'n Piranha

Disagree. Since KOC took over, the Vikings have gone from 7th, to 10th, to 19th in yards (in Zimmer's last 3 seasons, which are not considered to be exemplars of great offensive play, they were 16th, 4th, and 12th). The true barometer of how KOC teams fare is actually TO margin; 12th in 2022 and 6th this year, but 30th last year. I don't think KOC is bad, and we certainly could have a much worse person running the offense, but he's also not great. He's not paddling backwards, but I don't know that he's paddling forwards either.

Addison has played in 5 games this year, and put up a 14/231/1 line. That's 48/785/4 over a 17 game season, which is not awful, but certainly is not what you want from your #2 receiver, and therefore not someone you're going to pick up the 5th year on. As such, if Addison doesn't get things turned around, WR has to be added to C, LG, RG, RB, DLx2, and CBx2 as positions that really need to get figured out. That's 9 players we need-Kwesi is gonna have to find a bunch more Grennards and Van Ginkels.

2 first round picks.

In the world of 21st century baseball, you can no longer staff your pen exclusively with OIOG (One Inning Only Guys)--it's just way to commonplace to need your pen to cover 12-18 leverage innings in a 48 hour period, and that's just not possible for 8 guys if they're only pitching an inning at a time, with one caveat; if all 8 are actually high leverage quality arms. Since having 8 guys you trust in high leverage situations on your MLB roster at the same time is nigh impossible, it becomes an imperative to have guys who can throw multiple innings 2-3x a week. What I would propose is to go even a step further in getting creative--move to a 4 man rotation and a 9 man bullpen. It would work as follows 4 Primaries (Lopez, Ryan, Ober, SWR) 4 Secondaries (Matthews, Festa, Varland, Paddack) 5 OIOGs (Duran, Jax, Sands, Stewart, Topa) Your Primary starts the game, with a pitch limit of 80ish--the goal is to get through 4 innings every time, and ideally 5. The Secondary comes in next, with a pitch limit of 50ish--the goal is to get through 3 innings, with 4 a huge bonus. The OIOGs come in last (if needed), and finish out the game. Your rotation goes from pitching 32/33 times a year to 40/41. However, since they are throwing fewer innings, and therefore warming up fewer times, the total number of pitches should be either equal or less (80 pitches times 40 starts is 3200 pitches, compared to 100 pitches times 32 starts is also 3200 pitches). The biggest advantage to this system is it lets you keep your rotation depth in the majors contributing, as opposed to wasting bullets in AAA. It should hopefully allow pitchers to be a little more max effort, since they don't have to throw as many pitches in an appearance. And because there are 20+ off days in every regular season, even when excluding the AS break, your primary pitcher will regularly get to pitch on 4 days rest anyways. As it stands, using my plan above allows Matthes, Festa, and Varland to all appear in the majors on opening day, taking the place of 2025's version of Jackson, Okert, and Staumont--that's a huge upgrade in my opinion.

On paper.

Given the Twins need to fill out the roster with inexpensive players, and Miranda's $800k price tag (literally the cheapest MLB contract possible), Miranda is only getting moved for an insane return (like Seattle deciding to send us Colt Emerson in some panic kneejerk attempt to fix their offense NOW), or as part of a deal to offload a bigger contract which is viewed as underwater (read--Correa, Buxton, or Vazquez). As such, Jose Miranda will 100% be on the team next year, and will split his time (in all likelihood) between 3B, 1B, and DH. I imagine some combo of Correa, Lewis, Lee, Julien, and Miranda will be the preferred option to man the 4 IF spots, and occasionally DH.

The concerns with this team arise from the last 10 quarters—D has given up 77 points, which equates to 523 in a 17 game season; that would have been worst in the league last year. The offense has scored 42 points, which is 285 for a full season; that would have been 5th worst in the league last year (ahead of only CAR, NYG, NYJ, and NE—all of whom had dreadful QBs). The next 4 games are pretty easy (6 wins across the 4 teams combined), so I’d be shocked if the Vikes are any worse than 8-2. But finishing with the Bears, Packers, Lions, Seahawks, Bears again, Falcons, and Cardinals could easily yield 4-5 losses if things don’t get fixed. A final record of 11-6 or 10-7 would be very disappointing after a 5-0 start. This team is going to make the playoffs, but the most recent version would get bounced pretty quick.

You understand the Twins aren't the only team that operates with financial restraints, right? No matter how well Correa plays, there are 20+ teams who would never trade for him, due to the contract. You can absolutely win a WS with the healthy version of Carlos Correa as your best player. You cannot trade him to any team in the league, even if he is fully healthy and producing. Lopez and Buxton are in the same boat, but potentially shallower waters (maybe only 15 teams wouldn't take their contracts?) Also, I don't think Nick's point was that the Twins should trade Ober and Ryan for 2025 payroll space. His point was that if the payroll is going to stay static for the next 2-3 years (a high likelihood), perhaps it's better to trade them now in order to maximize return IF you think there are sufficient internal options to replace them, since payroll might dictate trading them after 2025 anyways. If Falvey wants to bet on better health/performance in 2025, and deal with 2026 when it comes, I doubt he trades them. If Falvey thinks 2025 is an uphill battle to compete (what are the odds Correa and Buxton are healthier? What if the young guys don't rebound?), then taking a step back in 2025 to take 2 or 3 forward in 2026 is not a terrible strategy.

In 2022, the Twins traded for Sonny Gray, whom they paid $22M for two years, and then got a QO opportunity. They gave up a late first round pick in Chase Petty, who last year as a 21 year old had a 4.4 ERA and 1.35 WHIP while striking out about a batter/inning in AA. Both Ryan and Ober would likely command more than that, given the additional year of control, the ability to still do a QO, and the 3 year cost of maybe $30M. If Faley is confident in some combination of SWR, Matthews, Festa, Morris, and Raya (along with potentially Paddack, or another reclamation project) to fill out the rotation, he should absolutely trade at least one of the two (what if Philly agrees to give us Painter and Cabrera? The Mets have 4 pitchers in their top 11 prospects as well). Since there is almost no possibility to add impact players to the 2025 roster, the only two paths forward are the following Hope for better health, and better performance from the current roster Sell high on assets you'll need to shed prior to 2026 and 2027 anyways, and have a possibly great wave of talent in 2026 with Jenkins, Keaschall, Raya, Emma, etc.

Based on the link you shared alone, I wouldn't use Forbes as any kind of reliable source. It claims the Twins' revenue increased by $75M from 2023 to 2024. How did that happen, when we know for a fact the TV deal was substantially reduced, and attendance was down year over year? It claims the Twins' revenue was $278M in 2020. How did that happen, when they had 0 gate revenue, and hugely reduced TV revenue due to cancelling 100+ games? My suspicion is that Forbes has confused 2020 and 2021, just based on the numbers, but if they can't even put expenses and revenue in the right year, do we really trust their data? Even if the data is accurate, this report says the Twins have lost money 2 of the last 4 years, and are almost $50M in the red over that timeframe. Should we really blame business people for wanting to cut expenses on an underwater business that is about to lose even more revenue?

Until you realize that $44M put in a DJIA index fund in 1984 is worth $1.6B today. I'm also skeptical they get $1.5B, when an Orioles team with more history and a more attractive location "only" got $1.765. Even the Mets were sold for $2.4B--do we really think a team in the largest media market, by far, in the country is not worth even 2x the Twins?

On your last point, you are aware that Tampa Bay is a larger media market than MSP, right? MSP is #15, but each of the top 3 has two teams, and even a split of those markets leaves them bigger than MSP, so in reality, MSP is more like the 18th biggest market. That's closer to lower third than median. The Dakotas have about 1.6M people combined--if that's some huge factor, there are certainly adjoining states to most other markets that at least equal that, if not exceed it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_stations_in_North_America_by_media_market

A quick google search shows there are only 4 resident billionaires in MN. Of those 4, only one has a net worth greater than the (assumed) $1.5B price tag--Glen Taylor. As such, we should all prepare for the very real possibility that the next owner will not be from MN. As such, while a relocation will be tricky, it is not a complete impossibility. It should also be noted that a new owner, unless they have Steve Cohen levels of wealth (and only 45 entities in the US do), will need to recoup profit starting day 1 to make up for the 10 figure drain from their assets. Should this sale go through, it seems fairly likely the impact on spending levels will be minimal, absent incremental and sizable revenue.

Aaron and John are so caught up in payroll they’re becoming borderline unlistenable. I find it interesting that they blame payroll cuts for the entirety of the attendance drop, without considering any other factors, such as death of fans, physical inability to continue attending, changes in financial situations, relocation outside of the state, etc. Every contract gets discussed with the Pohlads. Every one. Even if they weren’t, if Falvey is operating years into the future with no line of sight to possible pullbacks in revenue, he’s awful at his job, and should be gone. You can also argue that payroll spending didn’t actually get the fans to show up in a meaningful way. From 2020 to 2023 the Twins paid significant money for Josh Donaldson, Byron Buxton, and Carlos Correa (twice) while trading for proven players like Sonny Gray, Tyler Mahle, and Pablo Lopez who also increased payroll. They still didn’t break 2M in attendance in 2023, which is significantly down from 2019 (almost 2.3M fans) despite running a payroll more than 25% higher. If I’m the Pohlads, what I learned is that the fans don’t care if I increase spend on the team (at least not enough to also increase spend), so why run deficits?

Agree with your topline. Disagree with your bottom two. I’m glad Twins Daily is a place where people can offer viewpoints from across the spectrum, no matter how much I personally disagree with the content.

With the uncertainty around TV revenue, I highly doubt multi-year commitments would have been greenlit, even if Falvey was allowed to remain flat on payroll. Jordan Montgomery (as already discussed) had a terrible ERA (FIP was better), but only 0.6 WAR. Hoskins had 0.1 WAR and a 100 wRC+ (Santana was 3 and 114); that is Santana was a better defender, by far, and a better hitter. So it’s pretty safe to say that had the Twins signed either of those players, despite a higher payroll, the team might have been even worse, and would have been only slightly better—not enough to make the playoffs—had they been better.

The Pohlads have made clear they won’t defecit spend on the Twins, and not wanting to lose money on a business is hardly a sign of moral turpitude. Further decreasing the Twins revenue guarantees only one thing—the Twins payroll will continue to decrease. So by all means, continue to act in ways that ensure the exact opposite outcome of what you profess to want. By the way, enough revenue loss also doesn’t guarantee a sale by the Pohlads. But what it might do is prompt a relocation. Seems odd to me that baseball fans think a winning strategy to get their team to spend more money is to make their market a less desirable place for a baseball team to operate. But hey, it’s your nose and your face, cut away if you so wish.

Disagree more money clearly improved playoff odds. Who would the Twins, in the months before the season have started, signed for $20M for this season only, that would have invariably improved their odds? Remember that $20M is basically what the Twins paid for JA Happ + Joey Gallo in the not too recent past. It wouldn’t have been enough for Jordan Montgomery (and interestingly, had the D-Backs just pocketed that $25M, they may have made the playoffs, instead of finishing one win short, since Montgomery pitched to a 6.43 ERA). I’m tired of the incessant whining about cut payroll by people (Gleeman is the largest culprit, as he seems incapable anymore of talking about the Twins without wailing about spending cuts) who won’t discuss specific actual practical things the Twins could have done between November 2023 and July 2024 with $30M that would have without a doubt helped. Hopefully someone on this thread will propose some, but I think most, when challenged, will have a hard time meeting the qualifications—players costing less than $30M for 2024 only.

How many games did the Pohlads attend in 2024? You seem to know it’s not many, and the only way for you to be able to know that is to know how many they attended. So do enlighten us.

No fan is concerned about the Pohlads' wealth. No one is passing the hat for the Pohlads because their asset growth is 9% (dividends have no relation to asset worth unless said dividends are immediately reinvested in said asset). Pretending otherwise is disingenuous. All I, or anyone else who agrees with me is saying, is that the Twins franchise valuation is not some incredible appreciation engine. Based simply on return rate, it is a worse option than freely available market indexes, so if franchise valuation is your proof of Pohlad greed, you are advised to find another argument. If the Pohlads are truly as greedy vis a vis accumulating assets as everyone suggests, liquidating their stake in the Twins in order to invest elsewhere would have happened years ago.

I guess I'm just a financial Cassandra.

I would assume part of why the Pohlads continue to own the Twins is because it's fun (I would think) to own a professional sports franchise. But I would guess a bigger reason is that the Pohlads are able to generate profit pretty much every year which when combined with annual asset appreciation returns more money than a simple long-term broad index investment. Even if it doesn't, they might prefer the liquidity that annual profit provides as opposed to the unrealized gains of the market. As concerns ridiculing, I'm guessing the Pohlads don't care too much about the criticism of people they don't know or interact with. When/if they feel bad, they probably just look at the Assets section of their balance sheet, and cheer up pretty quick.

I appreciate you bringing this up Chief, as it made me go back to look, and realize that I made a calculation error. At the 9.204% rate of return on the DJIA, Carl's $44M in 1984 is not worth $978M on the Dow. It's worth $1.63B. One point six three Billion dollars. So the Pohlad family's annualized return (not sure why you did quotation marks, that's a perfectly legitimate financial metric) is still lower on the Twins than it would be if they had just put it all in the Dow and taken a 40 year long collective nap.

Kudos to you on this post, there are a lot of people on the internets who will never admit fault, so I honestly and truly do applaud you for this. I think we have diametrically opposite viewpoints on this subject, so rather than going back and forth for eternity, I'll just say it was fun debating with you, and hopefully we can continue to interact in the future.

That is true. I think it says that the Twins have played unsustainably great against the dregs of the league this year (that is, if we replayed those 29 games, I doubt they go 25-4 again. Even going 20-9 would be on the improbable side). As such, I'm saying the 2024 Twins are a mediocre to bad team masquerading as a good one because the vicissitudes of baseball smiled on them at a particularly opportune moment. Like the 2022 Vikings that dramatically overachieved due to massive amounts of luck, and promptly fell apart the next season without that luck, the Twins are set up to similarly regress in 2025 in my opinion, absent some significant changes to some part of baseball ops (FO, on-field staff, roster).