nicksaviking

Where is this quote? I'd truly like to read that article or interview.

Absolutely. This was the problem with the last regime. It was an old boys club always promoting from within and the whole thing felt inbred, never learning new things and always being at the back of the pack in league trends. But I'd guess an internal promotion may be cheaper than an external hire.....

Since Falvey and Levine (lovingly referred to as Falvine by many), Do they though? Honestly, I'm happy to put an end to this, they're different people with different responsibilities as evidenced by the disparity in job titles and pay. I know Levine wasn't near the top of most people's replacement list, but he was near the top of mine. Maybe he's faultless and a scapegoat, but if he's the one who continues to identify these low ceiling castoff players to put on the 26-man roster, I'm happy to try someone new. Whoever is after these guys seems to think veteran players have a safe floor, but this is baseball, everyone has a low floor, there are hardly ANY safe players.

I'm not sure about adding extra content as that assumedly would add extra costs to the subscribers, and probably 95% of Twins fans would only want to watch the Twins. Any extra costs is going to mean fewer subscribers. This stuff all still sounds like half-measures. Until/Unless these teams can find their way onto the major streamers, where there will be exponentially more eyes, the product is going to continue to decrease in popularity.

That defense is not good despite Raheem Morris being their new HC. And that was the first game that both Pitts and London actually came to play. And what the heck are they doing with Bijan Robinson? Is he actually not that good, or do they just have no desire to use him?

Sure, but what happens when you swap out an owner that has 2-3B in equity for one that has zero equity? This is Minnesota, not New York, this team is more likely to get a Derek Jeter type ownership group than a Steve Cohen. The Pohlad's either need to just bit the bullet and pony up to make the team better, or figure out how to become competent enough at marketing and televising their product to increase their profits. I don't think people understand that it's possible to make the situation worse with a new owner. Sure, we can risk it, but it's a real and serious risk. John Fisher? John Nutting? These kinds of owners are very real and very possible.

If the MLB hadn't been negligent and kept the sports popularity where it was 25 or so years ago, they'd have Amazon, Hulu, Youtube and Netflix all fighting to foot that bill right now.

Right, even if MLBPA hates it, it's still the better option for them than losing a bunch of organizations. Large market owners? Maybe they'd rather contract, but if they're in the minority, they should get out voted.

And they've spent the better part of two decades neglecting this, yet they act like they will solve it over night. If they can do it at all, it will take decades to repair.

MLB has already lost a generation of fans by only being concerned with short term profits. It's going to take years for them to build back up, if they can do it at all. And if they can't get the yearly dividends that they used to from TV deals, I'm guessing there will be a lot of owners selling and cashing out on the huge equity they've gotten in the decades since they bought the teams. But new owners now without the decades of equity and smaller profits will just mean smaller and smaller payrolls. At some point, the non-major market owners are going to have to tell the large market owners and the MLBPA, that there's three options. Near complete revenue sharing like every other pro league, contract all the non-major markets or boot the major markets from the league. If there's a fourth option that keeps things as they are, I haven't heard anybody suggest it yet.

Can't agree with this. The revenue from sports betting is insane, the billionaire's would happily take this income regardless of the health of their sport. The NFL owners are thriving and they're the ones pushing the sports betting the hardest.

The only one of the three listed that is inexperienced is Cruz. And why would anyone hire an employee who doesn't do what the boss asks of him?

Because it's not Popkins? And how are these guys like Popkins exactly? It's a hitting coach, I'm curious what exactly there is or is not to like about them without seeing the results?

Sure, but as I said in my first post, guys with a rare gift can't exactly teach it if the students don't also posses it. I think a good coach would be someone who can see an individual flawed swing or approach and have an individual solution for it. As far as I ever saw, Joe only knew or cared about one way. But I do apologize, my original post was harsh and there's no need to bring up old Mauer criticisms.

Disagree. The top five list of Twins that hit like minor leaguers: Farmer, Martin, Margot, Julien and Vazquez. Ooooooh, I see. Yes, I like the OP list much better.

Joe Mauer only knew one way to hit, and he refused to change it even after teams started pitching and fielding to stop him. I actually think he'd make a really poor hitting coach. Can't have a whole team of singles hitters.

Other than saying, 'Well he coached player X and HE turned out pretty good', I don't have the faintest idea how you evaluate a hitting coach without being able to drill down into the minutia about mechanics and plate approaches. I will say, as much as I'd love Nelson Cruz to be around the club again, I'm always skeptical about hitting or pitching coaches that were all time greats. You can't teach a skill that you were singularly blessed with. Michael Jordan can't teach you how to dunk from the free throw line, Bob Dylan can't teach you to write lyrics like him and Freddie Mercury can't teach you how to hit his high notes.

That's why I was wondering if it's out of the question to sub in a better run blocker for just those situations. Even if it's a tackle or a guard. No team seems to do that, but outside of practicing the snap, I'm not sure why.

I think I can solve their budget problem. I count 41 members of the 'Ticket Sales and Service' team and another seven under 'Ticket Operations'. Those departments probably only need like one employee next season.

I haven't heard either of those things. Just that they put together a more functional group of people who can use analytical data than they used to. And even if they did, Baldelli isn't going to memorize 100 points of data every game. Like I said, most he's going to do is take the surface level info.

What cuss word were these ellipsis replacing?

Agree, that Baldelli isn't really using analytics. His decisions may be from a data set, but that data set clearly doesn't ever update and it clearly isn't a deep dive into individual at bats, matchups or situations. Young lefties bat X against left handed pitchers. Pinch runners are X amount more likely to score than the better hitter they are replacing. Young pitchers perform X against hitters the third time through the order. Manny Margot is a capable pinch hitter. If he's managing via computer these are all surface level evaluations and they are clearly not accounting for current data (if it did, it would say Manny Margot should never pinch hit some time around June). And he's clearly not analyzing if maybe Matt Wallner SHOULD stay in and hit with X amount of outs, against this particular pitcher, in this particular inning, in this particular stadium, in this particular month, etc, etc.

No, I think the premise of the article was that ownership lacks long term vision and can't/won't/isn't capable of forecasting outside of 12 months. Which means it's poorly run.

I'm not arguing about what the payroll will be or who will be on it. I'm arguing against the idea that the BAM money had anything to do with it, because if that was the reason for the bump, and it was supposed to be a one time deal, they wouldn't have given out those other long term deals. I'll be honest, I'm stewing right now after listening to this podcast: https://www.skornorth.com/episode/minnesota-twins-are-tone-deaf-addressing-their-2024-season-collapse/ As provided by another one of our posters: I was in the minority, I LIKDED Jim Pohlad, at least as far as owners go. I thought he was the best this organization ever had so I did not like Joe Pohlad getting the gig. I had no clue about Joe's business background, which is frightening to say the least. The family gave him a 28M radio station to run and then they had to turn around and sell it for 2M a couple years later? He was given ANOTHER radio station to run and they had to sell it for ***$1*** soon after? Jim Pohlad says that his door is open and he's willing and able to help and give advice to Joe but Joe has never once reached out to him? This all sounds like a kid given $500 and a Robinhood account to play penny stocks. This is troubling and embarrassing, but mostly just troubling. The swift change in philosophy seems much less likely to be due to unforeseen financial changes (TV money? BAM money? how could these things be unforeseen?!?) than it does due to someone wholly unqualified to running the show.

Maybe because most of the other teams didn't also reduce their payroll by 30M due to the BAM money that was a one time earning? If that was a consideration, why would they have given the front office the green light to sign Correa, Buxton and Lopez to MULTI year deals? Wouldn't they instead have said, 'This is a one time situation, go ahead and sign one one guy to a 1 year 30M deal'?