nicksaviking

Yeah, if they won’t clarify, (and to be clear, they absolutely owe us zero additional information) that’s where the mind wanders.

Leonard was Notre Dame's noodle armed, dink and dunk passer from their runner-up finish last year. Prior to that he was Duke's noodle armed, dink and dunk passer. Anthony Richardson mysteriously broke his eye socket in the locker room a few weeks back.

Considering the records of the two teams, this would probably be the most beneficial game to lose the rest of the season. So Vikings win 48-0.

That was shocking, and a 1v2 game shouldn’t be. OSU has been dominant, but everyone kind of missed how dominant IUs defense has been all year.

Why is it that all of our bigger Twins bits this offseason, have come from NEW YORK?!? This is basically my only tin-foil hat topic, but OK, here it goes: The Pohlad family rolls over their real estate losses on to the Twins to play funny tax games -- The Pohlads decide to sell the team for liquidity to pay off unrelated debts -- No one bites due to the funny tax games debt -- The Twins decide they'll get some liquidity for selling PART of the Twins -- A hedge fund licks it's lips, winks and says, "Oh yeah, we love businesses with losses; after our sister accounts short them" double wink and a lip pucker -- The Pohlads whisper to each other, "Is this legal, I feel dirty" -- A Pohlad advisor says, "Yeah, this looks real bad, you can't do this in public" -- A second well-liked and very attractive local investor knocks on the door and in a sultry voice, asks if they could buy a slice of the team -- The Pohlad advisor says, "OK, maybe you can do this in public, but no guarantees. And you guys have to keep your mouths shut and pretend you don't exist for four months." Meanwhile in a secret lair lined with the skulls of lost arbitration victims: Joe Pohlad presents the new investors to the rest of the league -- Crickets -- Joe explains that with these investors, it will help the other billionaire owners, as it will make the Twins a more solvent team -- John W Henry asks Joe, "Do you know what the word solvent means?" -- Crickets -- Steve Cohen asks, "OK, can you at least tell us how this new ownership will lesson your burden on us in terms of revenue sharing?" -- Joe says, "Well your revenue sharing money will now be paying off less debt from our other businesses, like we've been having you do since COVID but forgot to tell you about. -- Crickets -- "And then we won't have to sell our team below market, which would lower the bar for all the rest of you -- Rob Manfred finally steps in and with a terrible James Cagney accent says, "We can't let these mooks shave dimes off of your teams' values, we'll approve these wise-guys" He then turns to Joe, "But you ain't passing off another IOU onto the rest of the owners and we're done with youse trying to rig the game, you're at least going back to top 20 in payola." -- After the Pohlads confer, Jim Pohlad tells the rest, "Our fans are already expecting a 60M payroll, plus all the East Coast reporters have already started reporting about our player sell off" -- Rob Manfred looks down at his boots and says, "Ken, stop shining, I have a story for you to write" I mean, is there any doubt this is exactly what happened?!?!

I’d let another team buy into a breakout season for a 30-year-old. Who couldn’t stay on the field BTW. And I’m done with platoons. It’s first base for Pete’s sake. Get someone who doesn’t have to come off of the field. If you can’t or won’t find a free agent or trade target like that, throw a dart at the under-25 internal options and tell one of them it’s their job. Whether they like it or not.

Yeah, I'd hope every GM has learned that lesson by now. Seems we have seen these players slide the last couple of years while the wonks on TV are incredulous that they are still on the board.

If the Mets are telling Heyman that they are interested in Ryan, then they're probably also the ones floating the idea of Tong. So Tong is going towards the bottom of my list of top Mets prospects.

According to my teenagers, yes.

Well said Cody, but I'm afraid you put in an extraordinary amount of extra work. I'm sorry to say it, but you already had achieved unanimous fan agreement simply by typing the headline.

I don't want quantity, I want quality. I just want that quality to be AA and AAA players. So yeah, give me the best prospects AND the prospects that are closest to the majors; because I think they are largely the same thing. I understand that's a bigger ask than most teams will part with, but that's why I have much less interest in trading for prospects than I did a decade ago. This isn't turn of the century Terry Ryan baseball anymore, the team buying the good MLB player wins the trade just about every time these days. So if push comes to shove and the Twins must trade, while I wasn't as interested in the return for the Duran trade as most, Abel was the significantly better get in my book. An A ball catcher with thus far only modest offensive production? The evaluators can drool all they want, that seems like a major long shot at being a top end MLB player. That far away there are so many more ways for things to fall apart. I'm fine that others feel different about this.

Martin got traded mid season between rankings though. While the Blue Jays surely sold the Twins on his lofty rankings, the ranking wonks just as surely were already kicking him down their lists as it had already become clear he was only a station-to-station slap hitter.

While I agree with the sentiment that this team isn't terribly close to competing, I personally would hardly ever rank players in A ball in any top 50 list; mostly just the cream of the crop from the most recent draft. My lists would almost exclusively be AA and AAA players who everyone has a significantly better idea about.

And even if that money didn't buy the prospects, it did buy the best PoBO and supporting front office personnel and likely the best scouts, MiLB instructors and facilities in the league. And of course it paid for the best PR team to hype those players onto such lists, if one were to believe in such conspiracies.......

Honestly, I'm probably less convinced than many that he'll completely bust. But two years is all I'm giving him or any rookie QB. I know, he was hurt, but it's not fair to the fans or the rest of the organization to wait on JJ any further than that. This team just has to try again, otherwise they are aimless and acting out of desperation. And I won't be butt hurt when he turns his career around with another team a few years down the road; that's been the trend lately and it's part of what you need to accept when drafting a young QB.

Right, the Twins traded half of their team last July and didn't net a single consensus top 100 prospect. I'm not sure what a super farm looks like, but the Twins certainly aren't going to be able to trade for one.

A conversation about having hope is what I most fear. If there isn't either near consensus conviction or accepted resignation, we as Viking fans are once again looking at an unclear path forward. A third year of playing 'Is he or Isn't he?' is the worst case scenario.

As a Twins fan I hope the Twins get lucky with the draft lottery. As a baseball fan and a rational and objective human being, the franchise and the Pohlads absolutely do not deserve to further benefit from the financial shenanigans and incompetent organizational management they've been operating under for the last several seasons.

And is there anything McCarthy can do at this point that would make us all say, OK, he should be starting next year? I don't want to cheer against him, but at this point, ambiguity is the most disastrous outcome for this team. So I think this team is better off if it continues to be obvious that he's going to need to take a backseat and hope to revive his career in another location.

I don't remember, but looks like Lane was born in 1975 so he would have spent the later part of his childhood tied to the Vikings as his dad was a long time coach during the Burns and Green years. So yeah, if he had a favorite team growing up, it was almost certainly the Vikings.

I don't know, maybe I'm low on my expectations for Hoskins' salary in 2026 but what is he going to get? 10M? 10M free agents tend to be a waste of payroll and roster spots, but Hoskins would be an upgrade to Julien and Clemens. Unlike them, at least he can still get on base even if we're not sold on his power. 1B is kind of the black hole spot, is there a different player at 1B the Twins should be looking at? Obviously I'd like Alonso, but we all know better than that. I don't think there's a 10M free agent at any other position I'd want starting every day. And spreading out that money to two or three or four even worse players who are taking up roster spots is my biggest pet peeve with this organization.

Any or all of them may still be good, but unless we only look at Abel's last start for the Twins, I don't see how it could be considered a good debut. I'm not sure how Tait's sub .700 OPS is a trend in the right direction either. I'm not writing anyone off, I'm just saying if we are doing a retro-active review after only four months, hardly any of these guys have actually improved their stock.

If we're doing an evaluation today, instead of say last August, I don't know how anyone can claim the Twins won. I'm fine pinning a big TBD on the fire sale, but just about every one of the players the Twins got back face planted at whatever level they were placed at. Henry Mendez looks like he continued his trajectory, but doesn't just about everyone else look worse now than they did when the Twins acquired them?

They seem to have some really talented young players though, along with a patient owner. That's going to be a really desirable landing spot for whomever is next year's hot available coach.

I hope he does, but he'd have to become less stubborn about what kind of offense he runs. You can't win while being a ball-control, run heavy team with a statue pocket passer in this league any longer. You either have to have a high-flying passing attack, or you need a stud O-line and a QB that's as dangerous on the ground as the RB. Based on his track record, Tomlin wants nothing to do with either approach.