nicksaviking

Not to mention a pitcher not giving it his all because he hates his team isn't exactly going to compel another team to trade for him. Or pay him his next contract, presuming that's important to said pitcher.

Royce seems to go in the tank when the team as a whole goes in the tank, and he lights up the box score when the team is playing well. One could argue if there is a correlation, but history suggests that if he goes in the tank again, that means the team has already folded up shop for the year and it won't matter.

Yeah, I'd happily accept Pablo reclaiming his spot atop the rotation. The Zebby/Rojas situation is one of the most frustrating things right now. Zebby absolutely has to be in the pen, and I think he'll be great there. Rojas is BARELY on pace to match his innings total from last year. I don't in any way want to take the fun out of 2026 for anyone, but the rotation is on tilt and the young hitters who will need to fill out the middle of the lineup need reps, and I also think they need to experience an exciting but ultimately fruitless end to the season to be ready for next year. And some of those young hitters are still sitting in St. Paul. I'm not going to be happy if they continue to make decisions this year that are going to negatively impact next year when next year looks like they could be legit.

They shouldn't trade him. This team is soooooo under budget right now and have very few holes to fill despite what their record says. Use the current player equity to go trade for another top of the rotation arm, like they did with Lopez, Gray, Maeda and Odorizzi. The 2027 rotation of Ryan, New ****Good**** starter, Bradley, Lopez, plus one upside Prielipp/Rojas/Abel would make the rotation as formidable as it's been in a long time. The team would have both depth in AAA and in the pen to ease off Ryan for the stretch run if needed.

Hope it's not a Trevor Rogers prove 'em wrong game. I presume the Twins just as easily could have acquired Rogers, but for some reason valued Kremer's extra year of control.

LOL, half an I Told You So post!

Monday seems like the right day to be annoying with an 'I told ya so' post:

I like all of your takes. With the first one in particular, I think people have blinders on. I do think Drake Maye is really good, but his season was pretty flukey, and I doubt it's repeatable because of the offense he is in. He threw for almost 4400 yards, but it was due to an unbelievably high completion percentage on deep balls. He put up those yards and threw for 31 TDs on less than 500 pass attempts, which makes sense because Mike Vrabel doesn't want to throw the ball. I will say, that if Maye is legit that good on deep balls and can hold a 72% completion percentage on 9 Yards per Attempt and 9.5 Air Yards per Attempt for his career, he's going to be better than Manning, Brady and Brees and Vrabel is going to waste his talent. As for Williams, he did improve last year, but only because they got him to cut his sacks down by 2/3rds. How is nobody noticing that he went from a pretty poor 62% completion percentage in his rookie year to what should be very concerning 58% last year? His reads are still slow too and it shows as he went from a 3.03 second average throw time in his rookie year to 3.25 seconds last year. I'm guessing like KOC, Ben Johnson has some longer developing plays, but any 'improvement' Williams showed had to be almost entirely due to the improved offensive line. And the Packers are the least talented team in the division. They've been playing above their skill level for a few years though. I think once they all acknowledge that they no longer have a generational QB leading them, the house of cards will collapse and they'll be bottom dwellers for a decent spell*. *Sigh, probably just wishful thinking

Walker JenkinsVahn LackeyKaelen CulpepperMarek HoustonEmmanuel RodriguezHendry MendezRiley QuickGabriel GonzalezKhadim DiawBrandon WinokurYovanny DuranCJ CulpepperEthan WachsmannBrett RenfrowRicardo OlivarCarson TinneyEduardo TaitCharlee SotoYasser MercedesJames Ellwanger

I wouldn't have made the deal. But if I was the Angels, I also wouldn't have done the deal for a Culpepper package. I'm excited to see both Jenkins and Culpepper, but I don't think we look at prospects realistically. The odds that any MLB top 20 prospect is better than Zach Neto is way less than 50%. So while I'd have said no as a Twins fan, I understand the ask. It's why players like Neto with three years of control rarely get traded.

Ha. That typo seems like it should be more common in these threads than I recall!

I truly forget how great he was until September of 2024. It was legit MVP production for most of 2024. I’d been thinking it was the fantastic start in 2023 then the inconsistency. Last week I was on board with trading him in a package, now I’m thinking I want to see if second half 2026 can be repeated or improved in 2027. Maybe he’s just guy who plays well when there’s a winning atmosphere and falls asleep when it’s a losing atmosphere? That’s kind of damning, but I expect wining next year.

I’m fully expecting to see round two of Wentz at some point due to those questions. In any case, at the end of the season it should be clear to everyone that this team needs to once again take a swing at finding a new franchise QB.

Agreed. I was just trying to suggest this offense seems to still be at least somewhat functional with even the bare minimum at QB.

I was just going back through the game logs, and maybe I'm the only one, but I forgot that this time in 2024 Lewis had an OPS over 1.000. His decline at the end of 2024 and through 2025 are basically a perfect match to the Twins team as a whole going in the tank. I know the guy can be a handful, and he's been unbearably inconsistent since the end of 2024, but now that I recall (?realize?) he was a legit MVP contender back when the Twins were actually still playing good baseball, I want to give him a long enough leash to see if he can do it again should the Twins ever again find themselves playing good baseball.

I think Culpepper is going to be a good reliever, but it looked like he hit a wall about a month ago. Seems kind of odd and maybe irresponsible to have him start and go three innings. Probably needs to be a one inning guy through the rest of the season.

I'd be willing to split the difference with you two and call up the left handed Hendry Mendez instead.

Yeah, but if they want the glove, they'd believe in Jackson over Caratini. At this point, I'm not very sold on Caratini's bat either.

Jackson is cheap so I'm with you, he'd get claimed. Caratini's contract isn't exactly attractive though so I could see any team interested gambling that nobody else will claim him and then being able to sign him on the Twins dime. But I'd still be Ok with that.

Yeah, I think it's been bad load management regarding Rojas. Looks like he's at 51 innings pitched across MLB/AAA this year, and he threw 69 innings last year. You'd like to think he was going to be pushed to 100+ innings and he's not going to get anywhere close. But mostly, I want to get Matthews in the pen and experienced for the role before next year. It often doesn't go very smoothly when these guys are only told they're no longer starters when they report to camp.

The Twins added another lefty in Minter to the pen, I don't get why Matthews is still in the rotation over Rojas. And I'm seriously not giving up on Matthews, I REALLY want to see what he looks like in late inning relief. I think he's this team's future closer; he can drop his changeup which doesn't work and his four seamer is going to be touching 99 MPH once he's a one inning guy.

Seems like a given that if the Twins go back to two catchers, Jackson is the odd man out, but should he? Typically the 2nd catcher is the defensive specialist, and that's not Caratini. Caratini has the flexibility of playing 1B, but when he does, it seems more like they are trying to find ABs for him. The Twins missed the boat trying to trade either, but the Yankees still need a catcher and now the Dodgers are down their top two catchers; if the Twins were looking to get out of Caratini's salary in 2027, now would be the time to try (and fingers crossed, fail) to pass him through waivers. This team really shouldn't be carrying three catchers, and I'm guessing they won't want to lose Jackson for nothing considering he's playing pretty well. Obviously the Twins shouldn't worry about 7M in 2027, but they will, and if they're paying Caratini that amount, they'll once again feel compelled to use him as more than just a 2nd catcher, regardless of who the primary catcher is next year.

I think the offense will be fine. Maybe not elite, but they'll move the ball. I presume everyone here thinks Murray is better than Wentz? The Vikings averaged 24 point a game last year under Wentz even with that San Diego sack-fest debacle. And that included playing the excellent Browns and Eagles defenses too. And during that non-McCarthy stretch, Jefferson was on pace for 115 catches on 170 targets for 1600 yards. So at minimum, I'm looking forward to the return of the original JJ.

Should be fun. Calling up prospects when the veterans on the team feel they are chasing a playoff spot always seems to be a better atmosphere for the rookies than when the team is just going through the motions trying to play out another lost season.

It's Princess Leia's home planet, duh.