nicksaviking

I didn't know I was due to get emotional today. Wish I had gotten to watch more games last year, but Dick was a broadcaster unique to only us Twins fans and he'll be missed.

That's a convincing argument for sure. Reminds me back in the day when I was jealous that Roberto Alomar got all the accolades instead of Chuck Knoblauch.

Jordan Montgomery has been good for three different teams across both leagues the last two years. Since he's come back from his injury issues three years ago, he's been about as consistently reliable as anyone in the league. He certainly would be amongst the safest bets when it comes to adding qualify pitching. Maybe not the Cy Young/#1 upside that Nola, Snell and Giolito have, but probably a safer bet not to be bust. His strikeouts are trending down though, and the Twins do like that number up.

I wouldn't mind having Sale, but I wouldn't trust him. He's not a guy I'm plugging into the #2 spot in the rotation, so the Twins still need to be looking for a top of the rotation arm in addition to him. Hopefully one that's longer-term and sustainable.

I guess 2020, 2021, 2022 and April, May and June of 2023 aren't exceptions? Three months a super-star makes I suppose.

If they're going to replace Sonny Gray, I want them to replace Sonny Gray. I like Ray, but he can't be considered a top of the rotation arm with a TBD return date, and the other guys sound more like replacing Kenta Maeda. The Arraez trade worked out great for both clubs last year, I'd hit up Miami again. Getting Luzardo or Garrett would be no less painful (and perhaps more painful) but I'd be willing to dip into that well again. Obviously there are other options if the scope was expanded to right handers as well.

Leonard Williams just got traded for a 2nd and a 5th and he's also on an expiring contract. Hunter has to be worth more than that. But as foolish as it sounds, this organization seems more likely to trade away draft picks than trade for them, even though to everyone else, the season is clearly over. I bet Kyler Murray rumors start to escalate to a nauseating level very quickly over the next 24 hours. They won't pull the trigger, but I bet we get reports that they there was internal debate and almost went ahead with a deal.

I don't know what the answer is, but it can't be Taylor again, he absolutely devastated the lineup. His 33% K rate and .278 OBP were soul crushing rally killers. I know everyone was a fan of his defense, but the Twins just can't afford to make that spot in the lineup a permanent black hole. A guy with no power but above average on base skills would be a better fit for this team.

The craziest take away from all of this, is that the Vikings defense has been so good lately, that they'll still probably win some of the next five games no matter who's behind center. My other QB takes: If the Vikings want to re-sign Jefferson, it might be good to have his take on the situation. I'd never let a player dictate how the team manages the roster, but it seems like the wrong decision could push him away. Does he want to soldier on, even if it's a lost cause, with the most capable QB, Mullins, (barf, saying that sounds ridiculous) or is he game rolling with the only upside QB, Hall, and then figuring out QB in the draft next year, should Hall not be the answer? It was a pretty good day in the NFL as far as the Vikings fighting for QBs in the draft. Will Levis looks like he'll take the Titans out of the market for an early round QB. Howell is probably close to cementing the Commanders QB job. Russell Wilson looks like he's a capable QB again; with that contract, he just has to continue to be average to make the Broncos delay replacing him. Mayfield was solid again and almost pulled off a huge comeback. There are still plenty of landing spots, but probably fewer than normal, and if AZ and Chicago go QB in the draft, Murray and Fields are probably playing in one of those places, along with Cousins. Finally, there looks to be way more reasonably exciting QB prospects next year than normal. Williams and Maye seem to be the consensus top two, but I'd bet Maye's spot at the top gets debated as we get closer to the draft. I see no prospect rankings that are remotely similar after those two. I've seen Quinn Ewers, Bo Nix, Michael Penix, Shedeur Sanders, Riley Leonard, Cameron Ward, J.J. McCarthy and Jayden Daniels pretty much everywhere from #3 to #13. Some of these guys probably won't come out, but I've seen basically everyone of these guys going in the top 40 on one mock or another. I'm less confident this organization will be able to identify the right guy, but the Vikings should be able to grab high upside QB, even if they don't get a top five pick. That doesn't happen often, but those rare seasons that see this happen often end up with a guy who falls having generational talent.

Top priority should be to replace Gray, but if they don't do that via free agency, and it would be a first if they did sign and not trade for a pitcher of that caliber, I'd advocate for spending the free agent money at 1B with Rhys Hoskins actually. He sees as many pitches as anyone in the league, which we now know is the Twins top offensive priority, but unlike half the current roster, his K% is a reasonable 24%. In other words, I'd look for a full-timer for the spot, not a part-timer. Kirilloff/Julien/Miranda would be the Solano part as far as filling in at 1B goes.

That doesn't help the Twins considering they're lucky to get one national game a month. And there isn't a reason to have 30 markets if MLB only pushes 10 markets on baseball fans to watch, and those markets already have easily accessible broadcasting. The other 20 markets are just going to continue to lose fans each year. And I'm guessing MLB does care about that. A single service streaming/TV option will never gain more fans. Never. They need the 'Not much to watch tonight, maybe the Twins are on' crowd, just like the NFL did. Those people will only watch if it's on a service they already pay for.

Not really in the way that it happened in that game. Defensive holding and pass interference gives a new first down, so the offense could run way more time off the clock with a new set of downs, than it would with the running clock. However, I suppose if there is a running clock and the offense is trying to run out the clock but find themselves in a 3rd and long situation, maybe the defense could intentionally jump offsides, take the five yard penalty and stop the clock. That's a pretty common scenario though, so it seems like that would happen all the time though if that was permissible. That must be what caveat (5) is.

How would that work? Montanans aren't just going to randomly start paying $20 per month to see if they like watching the Twins. The Twins need to put themselves in everyone's living rooms (OK, that's an archaic TV idiom, put themselves in everyone's streaming devices) and then get the money from advertising once they have enough eyeballs. The sport is going to continue to lose fans if they insist on making them pay for a TV service that ONLY shows them baseball games.

Their usage in the playoffs suggests 40% usage for Vazquez is at the high end of the estimate. Vazquez's contract stinks, but the Twins did this half a decade ago too. Garver stole Jason Castro's job and Castro bided his remaining time with the Twins in a limited fashion.

None of these are true. Especially the part about the large markets having endless money they are willing to spend, your examples, Anaheim and Boston in particular. The Angels have been getting burned by these contracts for over a decade, next to no chance they're doing it again this off season. The Red Sox are an uncompetitive old team, they are not in position to take on other team's large veteran contracts. If anything, they are going to be trying to get out from under the contracts of Sale, Story, Turner and Jensen, and they'll likely have little success. Both teams are likely taking a step back and it wouldn't be surprising if the Twins actually have a higher payroll than either this next year. But that's hardly the point. The Twins will have no interest in moving Correa.

The defense wasn't a problem last year, the offense was. The positives that Taylor brought to the table were nice, but they were a luxury that didn't outweigh the negatives, and that's because the negatives were doubling and tripling down on what the Twins were already struggling with. Even if a guy like Austin Martin struggled overall offensively, he would put up a well over .300 OPS and well under 30% K rate in his sleep, and those are the two areas this team needs to concentrate on offensively. This offense cannot function with 44% of their lineup striking out 30% of the time, and Taylor is by far the easiest of the guilty parties to part with.

Taylor's power breakout was nice, but he had a .278 OBP and a 32% K rate, and those numbers dropped to .261 and 36% in High Leverage situations. Overall he was huge offensive liability and a major contributor to the team continually failing to drive in runners in scoring position. I know he isn't one of the obvious problems, but he was secretly a big one, I think they desperately need to find another solution next year.

I'm far from the biggest Cousins supporter, but some of this national stuff is just stupid. I can't NOT read PFT, but Florio is such a clown sometimes. https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/is-kirk-cousins-currently-a-top-10-quarterback Framing the question of whether Cousins is a top 10 QB like he's paying him a complement. According to Florio, it's down to Cousins, Aaron Rodgers, Jared Goff and Dak Prescott. Rodgers wasn't a top 10 QB last year, but he would be now if he wasn't hurt? And old? Prescott hasn't been good in two years, in fact, I feel slighted for Goff, who Florio seems to think is worse than Prescott. Goff has been better for two years, speaking nothing of how much better Cousins has been. He lists eight 'consensus' top QBs, which somehow include Matt Stafford, who hasn't been good since 2021 and Trevor Lawrence who has been good for about a six game stretch in his young career. The 'ninth' top QB is Tua, who Florio also is pretty dismissive about, so I guess somehow this whole thing annoyed me into being a Cousins/Tagovailoa/Goff sympathizer. Never thought that was possible. Overall, this seems like such a passive-aggressive hack job trying to downplay what happened last night.

Nice scoop Jeremy, and a shout out on MLBTR with a link to this page to boot: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2023/10/twins-thad-levine-no-longer-a-candidate-for-red-sox-front-office-job.html

You're also missing: d) have the payroll to fit him in e) the Twins would have to not want him f) the Twins would be willing to upset fans and players to move him That's quite the parlay you're chasing there.

There seems to be up to eight guys that the draft wonks can't agree on after Williams. Maye seems to be firmly number two now, but I'm guessing the order of everyone but Williams is going to change a dozen times between now and the combine, and then another dozen times between the combine and the draft. Heck, Williams holds on to the ball way too long, and USC keeps choking, opinion may shift on him too. Anyway, a guy like Cameron Ward is going to probably test out of this world and shoot up the boards bumping some of the the more established names down. While I want the Vikings to have a pick of their choosing, Williams or Maye at this time, this draft is lining up to have more than one of the current marquee names be around in the late first to early second round. Brees, Hurts, Jackson and Rodgers had this post-hype fall due to others rising. Of course this area also sees the Bridgewater, Carr, Dalton post-hype talent level too. Best not to talk about the Brady Quinn tier, though at least if you get one of those, you cut your losses quicker. Of course, the bigger issue is, would this front office recognize a possible top end QB if one fell to them? I guess maybe it's better if they had fewer choices and fate made the call for them anyway. I think what I'm saying is, while the Vikings blew their chance at drafting at the top of the order, this ***might*** be one of those rare once-or-twice-a-decade years where they can still get a top end talent.

You had me until this part. I don't want to pair a defensive first catcher with another defensive first catcher. I don't want to intentionally make a black hole in the lineup. I'd move Jeffers, but ONLY if the team can manage to get another offensively positive catcher to replace him. Which would be tough. Not impossible, but not a guarantee. Edit with further research: There were ten catchers who had 300 PA and had an OPS +.750 last year. Eight of them played for the 12 playoff teams. I think having an offensively capable catcher is more important that it would seem. I don't think good teams intentionally give away outs in the lineup. So, you're probably not getting one of those guys, you'd likely have to get a guy who's a very good bet to rebound (Kirk?) or stick Garver behind the plate. Neither option sounds great. Barring something uber creative, I'm probably back to hanging on to Jeffers. Probably better off waiting to see if Camargo and/or Cossetti force their way onto the roster midseason and re-evaluate then.

Maybe Odorizzi if he does the Dallas Keuchel bit, but the Twins already have younger and more talented players waiting in the wings that can do what Hicks and Sano would do. And obviously I'd want none of these guys on a MLB deal. Also, I know it makes me sound like a Bah Humbug, but I don't have interest in doing the 'reunion' bit until after this team wins a championship and it's time to get all sentimental. Otherwise with the history and the organizational ties I'd be concerned they'd get much longer leashes than other free agents of the same caliber.

I mean, losing to the Giants in the playoffs no matter the score is pretty embarrassing. Surely they can repeat a similar feat again.

I disagree the free agent class is thing, there are plenty of free agents I'd be interested in; more than most years. However, when it comes to free agent starters, this front office has never addressed the front of the rotation, only the back. The trades have been aggressive so that's where I'd expect them to go again. As last winters deal went so well for both clubs, I could see them hitting up Miami again. The Marlins offense still stinks and the Twins still have tons of young hitters to offer.