The_Phantom

Salary caps don't work. NFL has a cap and has horrendous championship parity. A lot of that has to do with salary cap manipulation. Much like the deal Ohtani took being luxury tax manipulation, he would do something similar to play for the dodgers if a cap were in place. He can get money elsewhere from endorsements. It happens all the time. And players taking below market value to get championships that will get them endorsements also won't go to small market teams. They want eyes on them

No, it's not the beginning of the end. That was weeks ago.

This is the closest to funny that any of these "parody" sketches have been. But, if you ever take an acting class one of the first things you learn is that Spoof acting/parody/physical humor is only funny if your character doesn't know they're in a spoof. Once the actor starts knowing theyre in a spoof, it just turns into cringe. But if you are committed and your character is just saying ridiculous things or doing silly stuff that seems totally normal to your character that's what makes it funny. All that to say, this would have been so much funnier without all the "you goobers" and "you weirdos" and "you sickos" and "you freaks". Way, way too heavy handed. It would have been far funnier if it led with the "The source says the team is relishing the challenge to make even more marginal moves, just to see how much coverage they can get." and then all the "quotes" from the team reps played it somewhat seriously, not name calling, name calling, name calling, name calling, name calling, name calling. Subtlety goes a long way, even in parody

Buxton has sold out for the long ball, which is why is hard hit rate is still pretty good. But for a player with his skillset, I don't know that that is actually a positive. He still has elite speed, but he's become a 3-true-outcome type player either because they don't want him on the basepath much, or there's just a lack of understanding that his biggest asset is his speed. Of course with the continual injury concerns he's just become a "well let's get whatever we can out of him and you have to be happy about it" type player.

Pretty solid article. But winning in 87 and 91 is winning twice in five seasons, not four

He was underwhelmingly average for most of that contract and pretty much all of those years were dark years for the Twins - losing nearly 100 games. He seems to be a nice guy, but it's hard to make an argument that the extension really helped the team

Yeahhhhhhh that's not what happened at all. You became the resident bully and literally made a slew of people leave that site, because if they didn't also bash Mauer you personally attacked them. And any time your "Joe Mauer is a problem" thread went further than halfway down the front page, you bumped it to make sure the confrontational thread stayed at the top of the page.

Hm, I have actually been contemplating taking my kids up to see one of the games in Philly this weekend

... that it's not appropriate or very funny when the opinions you're satirizing are blatantly correct? FTFY I fully understand it's supposed to be satire. But it's satirizing the wrong side. EDIT - Maybe I've been on Twins Reddit too much, but most of Twins nation will die on the hill that Twins can do-no-wrong. IMO that's what is satire worthy, not being able to actually acknowledge that they flubbed the trade...

I know everyone has been saying it, but it's time to stop pretending like Buxton batting third at DH is the solution. He's just swinging hard and praying for a miracle. He's 15 for his last 112 with only 12 walks. And that includes a stretch where he went 5 for 9 with 3 homers and a double. When he doesn't go on an accidental hot streak, he's an absolute disaster. Hell, he's been a disaster with that mini hot streak included.

You forgot to mention: Twins rank: 24th in average 23rd in OBP 30th in strikeouts (on pace to obliterate the MLB record) 21st in runs scored 20th in OPS And they don't have ONE SINGLE OFFENSIVE PLAYER in the top 100 position player WAR in the league. But sure, let's make a "funny" article about how Twins didn't lose the Arraez trade in every single facet, because hey Pablo threw a complete game this week!

This is far and away the least invested I've ever been since being a fan. I live a couple hours from Baltimore and I go to the Twins games in Baltimore every single year (unless they're in April - work conflict). This year it didn't even cross my mind to go. Even with it being on a weekend and a weekend that I have nothing else going on - and I'm not working Monday. I checked out mostly in the off-season when I disagreed with pretty much every move they made. It's gonna take a pretty solid shakeup for me to get back into this team the way I used to be.

In my friend group chat I was calling over and over for the twins to sign Kiermaier because the writing was on the wall they needed a top shelf defensive center fielder. instead of opening up the wallet they traded a high prospect reliever for a far lesser hitter in MAT. this front office makes blunder after blunder

It’s amazing how many people slaughtered me (especially on Reddit) for saying it’s crazy to trade Urshela for peanuts with the justification that Miranda is ready to go. You can never assume a second year is going to replicate a decent first year, and his defense was always bad

Not sure where you’re getting that number from, Gray’s OPS against went down the 3rd time through the order last year

It’s not a red herring. Only 6 teams including the twins had no one meet the “era title” threshold. (And they’re all picking in the top 8 draft picks) also the twins had the second fewest batters faced by starters in the league.

“Will this be the year Byron Buxton shakes off his perpetual injury woes and puts forth something approximating a full season?” no.

70/15/15 is an absolute pipe dream. last year they were incredibly cautious to “avoid injury time” and it was 31%CF/22%DH/47%Off day. Well I guess 43% off day and 4% late game substitution. To think you’re gonna go from 31/22/47 to 75/15/15 is crazy

Considering this article is about how good the outfield defense will be, it’s disingenuous to say Buxton played in 92 games last year. Buxton played 51 games in centerfield last year. He started in 86 games last year (pinch hit in 6) and he was designated hitter in 35 of those games.

Why are so many twins fans so eager to point out Arraez may have potential injury issues, yet don’t mention the fact that Pablo Lopez missed almost half of 2019 and half of 2021 with shoulder/rotator cuff strains

Anyone worried about how he got here, or what anyone said along the way (whether “doomers” or “super homers”) is ridiculous. He was chasing the most money, the twins didn’t offer it, but they stayed in the hunt enough to have the competitive offer when all the pieces fell. Be glad the twins made a solid move in the right direction. now if they’d only make a real attempt to fix the bullpen

I left only the parts I wanted to respond to. 1. There’s a plethora of evidence that efforts aren’t made. Other teams miss out on deals and then we hear these huge offers they made , or we at least hear a legitimate reason the deal fell through. Most of the time after a player signs we just hear “the twins were never really close” or in the case of Correa we DID see an actual offer and the numbers weren’t close. 2. this is redundant for 1. 3. Nobody is assuming that. Nobody. I don’t know a single person who thought the twins should legitimately go after Aaron Judge or Bryce Harper. Why? We have outfielders, and at the type of Harper also had DH types. Those are mega contract guys at positions the twins didn’t need. People DO think twins should spend more when it’s an obvious position of need, and there is plenty of space in the payroll. 4. This is 1000000% not a problem. The problem is the opposite, actually. I have lost track of how many times the twins miss on a free agent that signed a reasonable deal and the twins fanbase copium is “free agents don’t want to come to Minnesota…” “it’s too cold here for guys to want to come” “it’s not a well known city” it is ALWAYS the excuse that Minnesota isn’t where guys want to go. If that’s true it’s because Minnesota doesn’t spend money and, whether you want to see it or not, has no direction. Minneapolis is gorgeous and has fantastic summer weather. Stop playing the victim card, it’s the most overused thing by this fanbase. And the reason everyone says there’s no plan is there is no plan. The evidence, again, is abundant. You sign a guy like Correa who everyone fully admits they knew was a one year deal with injury safety nets… and yet after signing that you trade for two injured starting pitchers and Emilio pagan, and call it a day. Who, by the way, nobody talks about the fact that the paddack and pagan deal fell into the twins lap every single bit as much as Carlos Correa did. The Mets were offered literally the exact same deal, and turned it down because of injury issues. And so the padres called up the twins and they said “sure!” the pitching situation also undeniably proves there is no plan. You make a blanket policy to pull pitchers early (even though there is a lot of reason that’s a bad idea which I’m not going to go into now… I’m just gonna say whether you agree with it or not, pitchers don’t go deep in ballgames) but their entire bullpen is built on guys that they sign on minor league deals and just pray to the baseball gods that one of them turns into a miracle. They make random moves that don’t help anything, and even worse they wait until the last minute and do it via trade. Trading depletes your farm system, and now that the twins have traded for so many injured or mediocre players, becuase they had 2 years of control left, the twins have a bottom 10 farm system. the reason everyone is upset with this team is that they’re in disaster mode, top to bottom. If you don’t want to see comments and articles like this anymore, realize the twins desperately need a new front office with vision and direction. Not just a couple guys who think they’re smart than the game (who hired a manager with the same mentality)

Since his call up he’s played in 52.4% of twins games. In 2022 he started in 85 games, which is 52.4%. 2022 was not any banner year for playtime. I’d love for him to be an every day regular but there’s just nothing to indicate that’ll happen

Part of the issue is this team is just not fun. Youll never see a pitching gem because Rocco has to pull them early. You see a lot of guys striking out a lot and going through the motions but not playing hard nose baseball. Even the bad teams of the late 90s and early 2000s and the bad teams of the 10s at least had some fire once in a while. And why commit to driving to the ballpark Saturday night when Buxton and Correa will just be on unannounced, scheduled days off anyway. They can’t commit to you, so why commit to them. They should always be playing at home even if it means never playing on the road. Sounds like the stadium is doing a lot right for the fans but the team isn’t.