PopRiveter

Comment of the week! Made me laugh out loud.

Wow, what an offense. I have been so disinterested in the style of this year’s team, that this was just the second game I watched. It certainly didn’t make me a fan. I sure miss having a Twins team that gives you hope they will put the ball in play and string together some hits. With this group, it’s hope for a couple solo home runs. When the first run scored almost immediately, I joked “There went the game.” Turned out, that was the winning run.

I appreciate your response, and your view is clearly in line with the path the Twins have chosen, so it will have an outcome that proves it’s value while the “could’ve beens” will remain unprovable. My gameplan for the season would not have put Rooker on the team anyway. My offense would have retained Arraez’s multitude of hits, but would have subtracted Gallo’s home runs. In the offseason, my dreams of 2023 baseball centered on Arraez’s bat and Buxton’s glove. The FO removed both from the equation and I’m just not into what’s left. It’s made me more of an ex-Twins fan than a Twins fan, so I find myself following the storylines of ex-Twins, thus Rooker caught my attention. I wouldn’t have seen it coming either.

Respectfully disagree. He'd take his spot from either Kepler or Larnach. It would make it even more difficult to rationalize keeping Buxton out of the outfield. This all would require the unfair presumption that they should've foreseen Rooker's production. I don't blame them for failing to predict his bat would flourish like this, but I am disgusted by the offense that's shown up this year.

I'm definitely overreacting. When they traded Arraez, I lost all my interest in this offense and took a break from watching games. I've been taking their pulse from a distance about once a week and it looks putrid from this vantage point. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to actually watch this offense flounder inning after inning with such strong starting pitching. They haven't made me regret my use of time yet. I'll come back onboard when they prioritize hits and OBP. I know it isn't fair and Pablo Lopez is a positive asset, but Luis Arraez has 31 hits! and a .506 OBP! The Twins leaders are Miranda with 21 hits (in 12 more plate appearances) and Christian Vasquez with a .377 OBP. Might've been fun to have a thriving hitter in his prime lifting this embarrassing offense. Oh well. Small sample size. Blah, blah, blah. I'm goin' fishing. See you next week!

I’m admittedly pretty out-of-touch so far this season, but every bit of coverage I see seems to match the record. It has all been positive. The twins are 11th (of 15 AL teams) in both ops and runs-per-game. I am choking on this lousy offense. My kingdom for someone who can make contact.

Thanks for a fun read, Seth

“Expected Injuries: Royce Lewis, Chris Paddack” I think I would have written Expected Injuries: Byron Buxton …because we all expect that right?

I miss Arraez so much that I’ve not watched any baseball yet this year. He’d made me love baseball again but here we are. The idea of Gallo potentially batting leadoff is astonishing to me as a baseball fan. It’s not how the game I loved was played. If that actually happens, I may just check out on the Twins entirely until a new F.O. takes over. On the current roster, Buxton makes the most sense from my vantage point. He can actually get on base and once there, he disrupts. Just. Not. Gallo.

I love high avg, high obp, frequent contact baseball. Action. Balls in play. Arraez was my favorite 2022 Twin by a wide margin. Gallo is the the worst of the worst when it comes to the player types I want to watch. This trade-out was so disheartening and offensive to me that I haven’t watched (or listened to) an inning of ball in 2023. Skipped all ST and don’t really know when I’ll feel the urge to catch a game. I’ve gotten a lot more projects done around the house, so his $11m is paying off for my wife.

I absolutely care. I’m right there with you. I hate how it is currently structured and I’ve been holding my breath so long awaiting a solution that I’ve mostly transitioned from “overly hungry for baseball” to “kinda checked out on the team.” I entered the cord cutting era as a diehard, lifelong Twins fan and I’m now a guy whose read 3 or 4 articles this spring and hasn’t even listened to a spring game on the radio or watched a postgame highlight. It will be nice to come back to mlb whenever they figure it out.

I’m done. This sucks. Every offseason, they dump the player I care most about. Every single offseason. I find another. I buy back in. They do it again. being a Twins fan is not fun anymore. I give up.

It was nice to read this condensed history, but a few things jump out at me. This FO pushed a load of chips in on the pursuit of Shohei Ohtani in the off-season before the 2018 season and didn’t land him. If they’d been successful, the subsequent planning would have been built around him (and his contract) as a centerpiece. They have made a number of fruitless FA pursuits and some in-house candidates failed to qualify for potential big contracts (looking at you Sano.) Eventually, you have to spend money on some star player and to get a CC quality player with this level of financial risk is a huge win from my perspective.

Correa is a huge asset, but my most recent TD comment was to express I wouldn’t want him at 13yr/$350m A lot happened since then. I checked out for awhile and to me the whole Mets things wasn’t worth a comment. But now this contract. I’m psyched. This won’t weigh down the franchise to its detriment. It will pay a star player to be a star player. This is a winner for a MN fan.

I think the big loser is the franchise stuck with ANY player with a 13yr, $350m commitment. At 10yr, $285m I would have felt mixed emotions with at least some buyer’s remorse, but I won’t for one minute feel jealous of SF fans today. I hope the team can redirect some resources to improve their pitching situation.

I was quoted as saying something similar. "When I go to Mills Fleet Farm and I go to the fishing lure clearance bin and I want something, I do some math to determine the price minus the color-coded percentage discount. But I usually decide it still costs more than I want to pay. So if you're a cheap enough guy, you can pass on just about anything. I'm the product here, and not especially good at baseball, so..."

Everything I've read from every commenter has been reasonable and well-founded. Unfortunately, the overwhelming conclusion it leads to means there is no reason for me to stick around any longer. I think I'm done watching baseball this year. Evil won. Oh well. Baseball was fun through most of the summer anyway. Get outdoors and enjoy some beautiful weather. I'll see y'all next year!

This is all about feelings, and feelings aren't right or wrong so no judgement please. The events of the second half of this Twins season have drained me of enthusiasm and interest. Beyond my ambivalent feelings overall toward my Twins, I have a deep and abiding hatred for the Yankees. That never wanes. MLB is no fun to watch when the teams who pay 2-3x the payroll of their competitors are just beating up on the rest of the league. I especially root against Aaron Judge. It is not fair to him and I'll admit that, but he is exactly what I picture when I read accounts of the Nephilim or Goliath. His success brings nothing but pain. I would have already moved on 100% to football season, but Luis Arraez is my favorite current Twin and he still has a chance to play spoiler. In honesty, this will be a near impossible hill to climb. With Judge this close to the triple-crown, the mandate is in and you can see it every day on the field. MLB wants the huge east-coast storyline. For the rest of the season, many of the away crowds will be rooting against Arraez. More importantly, the umps will be skewing the field against him. The strike-zones will be pinched when he bats. Close calls will go against him. Judge is the recipient of every possible advantage right now and it's moved him just ahead in the race. If the numbers keep trending this way, I'll be checking out until spring. But if Luis can resurge and has a real chance to play spoiler, I'll still have one solitary reason to care about these otherwise worthless games. It's Arraez vs. Evil. Here's hoping!

The purpose of the season is to determine which teams belong in the playoffs. That has been accomplished. There can be no question. Our 2022 Twins just don't belong.

I'm an idiot.

This has the workings of a nice rally. I'm somehow still hoping for the best

Just set their new record for the most pitchers used in a single season? I'm beaming with pride. Now I can remember the 2022 Twins fondly as the "record-setting 2022 Twins"

Man. This team. I should've brought some whiskey to the office today.

I'm with her too. You'd whine too if ya knew what's good for ya! ?

I am right there with him. This is no fun.