Entering July 24th 2017, the Minnesota Twins were 49-48 coming off a 9-6 loss to the Detroit Tigers the night before. The Twins now stood 2.5 games back of Cleveland, and ready to make a push towards claiming the AL Central crown for the first time in 7 years. "Falvine" decided to push the button, making their first major trade during their Twins tenure, and acquire Atlanta Braves starter, Jaime García . Finally, after years of purely terrible baseball, the Twins were back, and the Front Office
The 2021 Minnesota Twins have a very bad, beyond terrible, no-good bullpen. We all know that. Let's take a break from the 2021 Minnesota Twins Dumpsterfire Bullpen, and talk about something closely related, the Ryan Pressly trade. As part 1 in a series where we'll take a look back at trades "Falvine" made early in their tenure, and re-evaluate them, what's more fitting for right now than this deal that has an impact on Twins' bullpens of past, present, and future?
The Trade:
Houston As
It's a new day in the United States, Joe Biden is now the President. It's also a new day for the back of the Minnesota Twins' rotation, J.A. Happ is now the number 4 starter. 38 year old J.A. (pronounced like "jay" not "j" "a") Happ has signed an $8 Million, 1 year deal to pitch in Minnesota. Happ isn't a particularly sexy signing, but he has been a productive middle/back of the rotation starter for several playoff teams throughout his career. Happ has accumulated 21.3 fWAR throughout his car
Per Dan Hayes the Twins have signed Homer Bailey and Rich Hill. Homer Bailey will be an interesting project 5th starter and Rich Hill will be really solid, when he’s healthy and that won’t be until July at best. These signings don’t fit Falvey’s “impact pitching” he said he’d go get, a quote he probably is wishing he never said now. Homer Bailey Coming off his best year since 2013, Homer Bailey pitched about league average with the Royals and A’s totaling 163 and a third innings with a FI
During this year's trade deadline, a lot of Twins fans, myself included, thought it was necessary to add a clear No. 2 starting pitcher behind Jose Berrios to bolster our rotation for the playoffs and next year. Odorizzi since coming back from injury has fallen off of a cliff, Gibson and Perez have also had significant struggles, but Pineda has quietly been very good dating back to the beginning of May. While the concern that there's holes in the rotation stands, the Twins have a 1-2 punch that'
I really hold back what I would like to say about then payroll arguments here. The fact that people don't accept the amount taken in dictates the amount going out requires one of two things. Extreme financial ignorance or fanatical bias that prevents the acceptance of something some basic. I did not change the argument. It's the same idiocy over and over. Do you really want to be on the side that suggests revenues does not determine spending capacity?
At this point in the pre-season, I’m just so happy to be seeing games again, I don’t care about the Twins record in 2023. I think they’ll win it all, unrealistically speaking 🙂