nicksaviking

I think the bottom line is that Kepler has been here eight years, and has hit below expectations in seven of them. Few players get that kind of leash. If the team is looking to upgrade the offense, his spot in the starting lineup is by far the easiest to replace because of the options behind him. Even if Wallner doesn't pan out, they literally have a half dozen options in the high minors they can cycle through to see which ones will.

Speaking nothing of the return the Twins got, had they extended Berrios, I'd be fairly uncomfortable at the moment. Last year was obviously a disaster, but while he's turned things around this year, his strikeouts are down from his heyday despite strikeouts being up league-wide the last couple of years. That's not the end of the world if the results hold, but it's usually a big indicator that the pitcher will not age well. Most of the good grey-beards who keep their production into their 30's don't lose the ability to miss bats.

Yeah, I mean you’d have to REALLY care about the uniform design.

Firing them now would risk whichever internal replacement getting and keeping the job if the team turns the corner, regardless if that person had anything to do with it. I think I’d rather let them all sink rather than appoint a captain who’ll steer the ship on the same course.

Completely agree. I’m not trying to dis Arraez, but this team is missing all around good hitters. They need to START with a Jose Rameriz, Mookie Betts or Paul Goldschmidt type.

Well there's almost certainly no way to replace the front office midseason unless you're just going to promote from within. As for replacing everyone in the offseason, I'm on board with that. But my fear is that these things tend to pendulum, and I 100% do NOT want the organization to think they have to go with 'old school' hires. The failure isn't implementing modern baseball within the organization, it's a failure to do it as well or better than the other 29 teams. As for the manager, he could be replaced midseason, that happens with varying degrees of success all the time. Some times to great success. But I don't think a reasonable replacement is already in house. And bringing an outside hire in midseason sounds like a disaster, especially if the front office is on the hot seat. Not that I'd want either here for more than the end of the year, but Paul Molitor and Ron Gardenhire are still Twins-tangent enough that they'd have enough familiarity to make a smoother transition. Plus it would be a good amount of fan service I'm sure ownership is desperate for (maybe not TD fan service, but certainly casual fans who like the good ol' days). Obviously, neither are ideal and they were already behind on the times when they were originally dismissed, so bringing either in would really just be a dart throw trying to create the missing spark. Though I would say that Ron Gardenhire's best skill was getting the young players to buy into the system while somehow simultaneously forcing them into the leadership spotlight. I'm not sure if that was something he was trying to do, and it was usually done out of necessity because the team didn't spend on free agent veterans back then, but it regularly worked and it was why he succeeded with young guys when Tom Kelly didn't. (Don't kill me, I still love TK). And that's something this club needs to happen ASAP.

Yeah, it's almost become predictable how the critical and fan support goes these days. Collectively society finds a great new show. Then depending on how big it is, either season two or season three people turn on it even if it doesn't really deviate from the season one formula. In a world of hot takes, arm-chair analysts with zero credentials and trends that don't last longer than a week, people seem to be afraid they'll be the last person on the bandwagon and their reputation will be ruined. It's always better to be a hip contrarian as that's going to be edgier.

And three HR, he needs help creating runs. He'd still be standing on third when the inning ended more often than not. I mean, no doubt he'd be helpful, but he'd be mostly adding to the times everyone turns off the TV because they leave runners stranded. I don't think he'd be increasing the win percentage by as much as people think.

I'm not writing this trade off yet. Even if it turns into a 'win' for the Marlins, Lopez and his extension also provides a historical need for this team in rotation stability. But even if the Twins had kept Arraez, they might have a couple more wins, but I can guarantee the level of frustration with this club would actually be even higher, than it is now. Arraez ONLY hits singles, and he'd be batting at the top of the order. This team continues to demonstrate a historically inept inability to drive runners in to score. Even if he was hitting in the high .300's, he doesn't get extra base hits or steal bases; the Twins would just be stranding more baserunners, which is what drives everyone crazy. The extra runs the team would score with Arraez would likely be the few RBI he gets hitting at the top of the order, which wouldn't be many considering Michael Taylor's .258 OBP.

Injury or not, Correa, Buxton and Polanco historically are streaky hitters. Gallo and Vazquez are also streaky. Kepler's not streaky because he's pretty consistently bad always. A roster full of streaky hitters probably wasn't a great idea. I do put most of this on the front office. Thad Levine in particular, because unless they're going to disclose otherwise, he is the GM and assumedly the guy making the trade, free agent and roster decisions. I know everyone likes to lump Levine and Falvey together but if Falvey was the architect and in charge of modernizing the organization and creating personnel hierarchies and whatnot, he's done a decent job. If he too has a heavy hand in player evaluations, then he's missed the mark too. But I really dislike counting the two people as one like they're Laverne and Shirley. Wow, just realized while I was typing how phonetically close those duos names are. Can we get a photoshop please:

Yeah, I’m a bit tired of the Baldelli complaints. I could care less if he’s replaced, heck, I hope he is, but he wouldn’t have gotten an extension if wasn’t doing exactly what his bosses wanted him to do.

I only mentioned it because you asked why players would be dumb enough to do it. I wasn't being snarky with you, just the situation. I dealt blackjack for half a decade in my early 20's. Different form of gambling for sure, but man, watching the same regulars come in every day and watching their world shatter with every hand made me sick to my stomach. They truly just couldn't stop.

The offense on this roster is just so stale; you toss the old stuff first when things get stale. And just do it now. What's the hold up? Are we really going to go into 2024 only giving the young guys a months-long audition at a time before a demotion to defer to the vets? What will we learn about them? This team will be in the exact same situation they were last off season when they didn't know enough about these guys.

Almost like gambling can be addictive. Maybe if someone told the owners this, they'd sever ties with the industry and fund PSAs about the dangers and consequences.

Surely. This front office has been pretty aggressive with free agents and trades. Perhaps we'll get lucky and they'll get aggressive with the prospects here shortly. Like ASAP shortly. The fear would be that they wouldn't be able to understand doing so IS the aggressive move. Though taking a few minutes to think about this, if I was going to go with the full-blown youth movement, it might actually be better to do so AFTER Cleveland takes over the division lead. I think the young guys would feel less pressure and have more blood-thirsty energy if they were charging the gates, rather than defending them. Not that I in anyway think that the front office is sly enough to come to that conclusion. If that occurred, it would certainly be coincidence.

Probably pretty hard for Larnach to lead from St. Paul. But I completely agree. This team needs they young guys to be the leaders, but there's too many 'leader' vets in the way. The young guys aren't going to step on the toes of Kepler or Gallo or Vazquez, they need to have the floor cleared so they are FORCED to step up. This team needs an earth rattling wakeup call. I know the organization would think a big shakeup would look like throwing in the towel, but unexpected moves often lead to the energy missing. It's happened in every sport, so many times. Correa can keep short. Buxton to the IL. Castro, Taylor, Vazquez and Farmer can be the rotational guys and every other batter on the roster should be made up of guys with only a couple years of experience and every one of them starting. Throw them in the deep end. And maybe to give them some level of familiarity, bring Nate Spears over from St. Paul as hitting coach. Did I just bury the lede there?

I'm more than happy to hold veteran players accountable, but the team K% has gone from 22% to 27% and pretty much everyone has seen an increase in whiffs despite the leaguewide K% only going up .8%. There's no way that this is a coincidence, this has to be some kind of organizational (?mis?)calculation. Which is not surprising because even though fans like to complain about the same-old, same-old Twins, this organization is actually constantly changing their approach and style of play. Lately, quite unsuccessfully. Except for the starting pitching. I'm happy to give them that.

Sounds like more gambling suspensions coming. Of course it's at a time the NFL is still trying to rake in as much gambling revenue as possible. How do they get away with never having to answer to the owners' and commissioner's flagrant and constant hypocrisy and greed? Seriously, they like never have to face the media unless it's a prepared and meatball one-on-one session.

More likely than not, #2-4 are going to be the kinds of trades where you don't regret giving up the prospects, but you wonder who you could have gotten instead. Ugh, Sam Dyson and that stupid sinker with the Twins awful infield defense that year? That should have been enough to give them zero interest even without knowing his injury or off field issues. But they felt they had to make SOME move that year. #5 could end up bad, but it's way too early. Probably years away, but we've all seen Arraez's second have regression to the mean before so it's even possible that one swings back into the win column by the end of the year. Not that it has to be a win. If the Twins traded Mark Grace for Charles Nagy, that wouldn't be the worst move in the world (no idea why I pulled those names out of my butt). #1 Yeah, gross. Steer's first three months have already topped any possible return the Twins could get. I have a hard time complaining about this one though as I was all on board getting Mahle here and thought (think) CEH's strikeouts wouldn't translate to the MLB level and the Twins had multiple prospects who'd make rostering Steer redundant. I really liked Steer though, and would gladly have him as a building block.

The Twins non-elite prospects that do well in the upper levels seem to pan out just as often if not more than the elite prospects. I really hope the team starts making tough decisions with the vets and starts giving guys like Keirsey, Williams, Camargo and Severino a chance. And obviously that's in addition to the better known prospects.

Yeah, radio has been my only option. I listened to quite a few games on the back deck early on, but lately listening has become weather (and mosquito) dependent. And while game threads are difficult but not impossible on the mobile app, back-deck listening invites company, and I try to make it a point not to stare at my phone while hanging out with neighbors our my wife.

They've made it near impossible to watch games, so that naturally has caused me to decrease my interest significantly.

I think you two are on the same page, in disputing the notion that Cleveland had much of a pitching pipeline. They typically got their pitchers by trading for near-MLB ready young arms, or still very controllable MLB arms. Which obviously is an easier point to identify talent than it is in the draft or trading for A ball players. Same thing the Twins have been doing, with the level of control being the only difference. It's pretty much been the same plan, except with the Twins, they've been willing spend more in dollars and player equity. And that's likely more a product of Cleveland being a more fiscally conservative team.

I'm frustrated by the lack of communication and clarity here too, and usually we do get more information than is being provided to us fans. But at the same time, Byron Buxton does not owe us his private medical history. It's not the expectation we as fans have, but he doesn't have to share any details he doesn't wish to share. And the Twins seem to run a pretty tight ship, we don't get many secrets spilled with this organization.

I hope so, but Keuchel seems like the kind of pitcher who'd take a MiLB deal only if he thought he'd get a call up. And the Twins already have Aaron Sanchez basically filling the same role. Neither of whom I'd want getting a promotion in anything other than a one-off start that doesn't mesh with Varland's schedule. I'd rather they dip down to Wichita to get Enlow up anyway. Though, I can't imagine Keuchel would have any trade value at the deadline.