nicksaviking

"Extensively Scouting" huh? So, you need a real good look at them, and MAYBE if you like what you see you'll make an offer? Come on Philly, you're talking to Twins territory, we can run circles around you in terms of passive aggressive phrasing. Everyone in the league is familiar with these two pitchers, you already know what you're willing to give up to get them.

I don't love the Houston pick. Glove-first hitters don't tend to be more than utility players at the MLB level and the Twins desperately need offense. The guy is going to have to end up hitting, and not just singles. I like the pitchers, but if it becomes clear that they both should be relievers, I don't want the Twins farting around for years trying to force the issue as starters. Young's bat sounds like a huge boom or bust profile, but I'm all for rolling the dice.

I'm not giving Falvey a pass at all. But I suspect he only extended Baldelli because they can go year to year with him; a new manager is going to be a multi-year commitment and you can't do that with a pending ownership sale. Or at least you shouldn't. Falvey's problem is that he wants his cake and eat it too. I'm sure he WANTS to develop young players, but he doesn't want to make the sacrifices required to do so, that being taking the time, the at bats, fielding and baserunning opportunities needed to improve on a skill young players have not yet had time to master. Baldelli on the other hand I think would prefer to have a roster of league average 34-year-olds instead of schooling talented youngsters.

The wrong horse is Rocco Baldelli. And I'm not here to start a rip Rocco thread, but he clearly isn't a manager to develop young hitters despite this team cutting payroll necessitating developing young hitters. He pinch hits young guys for vets even as bad as Christian Vazquez. He will not let young left handers develop their skills hitting against left handed pitching. He is not getting any player to improve their defensive fundamentals and situational baserunning. This team has had soooooo many high end hitting prospects come through here lately and pretty much none of them have met their potential. Leaguewide, most don't, but rarely does a team have everyone miss. Gardenhire was good at this, Molitor was good at this, Baldelli isn't, and frankly, I don't think he WANTS to be good at this. He needs to manage a team with a big budget and loads of vet players he can let do their veteran things and basically let them manage themselves. Am I saying that because the Twins will never be that team? Maybe. But it's true. So to the main point of this thread: go year-by-year for all decisions going forward until a sale happens. Only give out one year deals and only trade players on expiring contracts, because I don't think there's currently leadership in place to make long term decisions and they've proven time and again there isn't leadership in place to develop young hitters.

Agreed they need to improve everywhere. But it's HIT, catch than run. The top OPS teams are always better than the top DRS teams. Plenty of overlap, and those tend to be the elite clubs. But it has to be bats over gloves because inconsistent offense gets you nowhere.

I know people love these new defensive stats, but this is way too deep into the forest to see the trees. This should sum it up: "he'll be about 5 runs worse than average". Five runs over a season?!?! Dear lord no!!!!! Way too much emphasis is placed on that side of the ball. As a hitter, if a guy scores 75 runs instead of 80, NOBODY WOULD NOTICE. For years now this team has struggled offensively and that needs to be the focus from now until they figure out that aspect of the game. If removing Correa from SS helps in that regard, go for it. I don't see the benefit to that at this point though.

Mauer is the only snub, though he did only play 10 seasons at catcher. Santana should be in the HOF, but those other guys are 1st ballot pitchers. I don't see the snub there. Nathan was great but objectively, Wagner was a hair better. Meanwhile Kimbrel and Jansen have now lapped Nathan on the all time Saves list while being just as dominant at their peaks. As for Chapman, his resurgence means he'll likely also pass Nathan on that list while also being similarly (if not more) dominant.

Outside of Kyle Stowers, who is basically Trevor Larnach, all of these players range from bad to terribly bad. Having too many below average players is how the Twins found themselves in the situation they are currently in.

Yeah, they should trade the expiring contracts. I have no illusions that a sale is coming any time soon. I've already braced for the idea of a long period utter dejection for us fans and the players.

There are few players I'd object to trading, on the other hand, I'm not sure I want this current regime making decisions about any players controlled beyond this year. No one wants to hear it, but I think there should largely be a holding (sucking) pattern until a sale occurs. These guys could mess things up more, particularly if they are making decisions based on trying save their jobs instead of winning down the road.

They signed Correa before they announced they were 'right sizing' the payroll. They also announced that immediately after their first playoff series win in two decades, so the Pohald's probably (foolishly) thought building off of that positive momentum was probably a good time to cash out high on the team, but they wanted to make sure all bidders knew they were going to lower payroll to make it look even MORE attractive. Not sure I agree with the comment about Correa's prime. If he was still in his prime, this team would probably have a few more wins. As to trading him, the Twins would have to eat salary. Would they really put that kind of dead money on the payroll when they're trying to sell the team?

Honestly, for the last decade this has probably been the healthiest rotation in the league. And for the last several years, a really good rotation. I'm giving all involved a pass with the starters this year; this was bound to happen sooner or later. Zero passes for being unable to develop enough offensive + players and continually targeting replacement level free agent bats. I am happy to dog pile on these recurring failures and call for an entire system overhaul because of it.

That was my take away too. We was a closer last year and now this year he's throwing complete games? But now in the middle of typing this post I'm looking at his stats, and he's had ten starts and thrown 37.2 innings. So a soon to-be 22-year old with the Marco Raya treatment? That doesn't sound like ENOUGH innings to me. No idea what to make of this guy, but I wouldn't make anything about a no hitter against Murray State.

I'm pretty practical, but I do think other managers would do better. Particularly managers that embrace the development of young players. I think one of the biggest issues this team has is bringing in Baldelli's preferred type of player, 'The Veteran Leader'. You probably don't need a roster made up of 22 'Veteran Leaders'. Going this route emphasizes bringing in outside players that are less talented on the field simply to put together a professional clubhouse atmosphere. And yes, I do think this is a big failure of the coaching staff. Sure vets on the team can show the young guys where to lean and squat, but this club has had an unusual amount of high end prospects that almost universally never come close to their potential. Obviously prospects largely fail, but some clubs are way better at avoiding such high bust rates. The coaching staff needed to propel better results from many of these players but never could. And suggesting that is the role of 'Veteran Leaders' Harrison Bader and Ty France is preposterous. Honestly, this is a lot like the end of Tom Kelly's run. He notoriously had no patience for developing young players at the end, despite his teams being largely uncompetitive. If this organization is no longer going to spend on quality free agents, it needs to once again find a Ron Gardenhire who embraces playing the cheap young players and specializing in getting the most out of them. There are definitely managers out there who are better at this and who don't automatically base decisions on seniority.

I'm less concerned with the safety position, simply because in this age of the NFL, and Flores' system in particular, strong safeties and nickel corners are basically interchangeable play-to-play. Harrison Smith is basically the only true safety that starts, with Ward and Jackson probably his backups. With how much Flores' disguises his coverages, the SS and NB already have to be capable of doing the same job. So the fact that they brought in more traditional CBs instead of traditional safeties probably just means they wanted depth guys for those roles who perhaps skew towards better coverage over better tackling this off season. Not that I'm ever opposed to additional upgrades.

Also, I know it's not a popular move, but this is probably a good sign that the Pohlad's are still looking to sell. Yeah, Baldelli deserves to be shown the door, but exercising his option implies it's a one year deal. Hiring a new manager will require more than a one year deal. New ownership and new regime are going to want a clean slate.

I don't think it was an announcement so much as a leak. Which probably means there's at least SOMEBODY in the organization that isn't happy about it and wanted to burn everyone by slipping this to Dan Hayes.

Using your LOOGY in the 1st inning probably wasn't the best idea for the 'opener' strategy. The guy can't even hit 90 MPH; if anything, it probably helped the Milwaukee hitters warm up. I'm all for trying new things to jump start the team. Keep cranking that key, I'll tell you when when the engine starts running. Nope, that wasn't it, keep going......

Jax threw 91-92 MPH as a starter. He couldn't strikeout anyone in the minors and had a measly 6.2 K/9 in collage. At Air Force. Pitching against weak Mountain West baseball teams. His stuff plays up because of the velocity increase. I have no interest in seeing him turn into a pitch to contact Terry Ryan special that has no business being in a 2025 MLB rotation, then watching him complain his way out of town when the team asks him to convert back to the pen. Keep him where he is. Far greater chance of disaster than reward.

You move on, even if it's just to get the bad taste out of your mouth. You can get equally terrible free agent or waiver wire catchers for the same price or cheaper, I don't understand why there'd be any draw to keep this one. I mean, he clearly can't help the team, so at MINIMUM him being on the roster will only serve to remind the remaining players that zero effort was made to search for improvement. Low team morale isn't going to help win games; at least PRETEND to make it look like you're trying something new. I'm always confused by the fear of the unknown, and I'm doubly confused by the fear of the unknown when the known is proven to be a bad decision.

Right, Baldelli doesn't care about winning because he's OK with getting fired? Jax as a starter is a terrible idea. His stuff isn't going to get guys out dropping 4 MPH off of his velocity. And prior to this year, the Twins rotation has probably been the the healthiest group of pitchers in the league going back a decade now. Depth is fine, but blowing up your bullpen to do it would have been foolish for this franchise.

Right, Baldelli doesn't care about winning because he's OK with getting fired? Jax as a starter is a terrible idea. His stuff isn't going to get guys out dropping 4 MPH off of his velocity. And prior to this year, the Twins rotation has probably been the the healthiest group of pitchers in the league going back a decade now. Depth is fine, but blowing up your bullpen to do it would have been foolish for this franchise.

I'm not trading for a catcher unless it's a top end offensive talent. And at that point, it probably gets too expensive. And I'm not trading for a backup catcher; 99% of the time that's a zero impact player in every era of the game. If there is any team that understands by now that it's a negligible difference between a below-average catcher and what's floating around on the waiver wire, it should be the Twins.

They've needed a big bat for two years now. Didn't get one last off season, didn't get one at last year's trade deadline, didn't get one the prior offseason. So basically ever since the Pohald's publicly said they are 'right sizing'. But now they're going to pay for a contract of a big bat? No team is trading a young controllable super star.

Feels like this whole season could be described as laying down a bunt.