Overall, it's not hard to be excited about the Twins in 2020 given a 101 win season in 2019. The ending certainly wasn't ideal, but 2019 showed us that our window is open and it should be for a few years. Cleveland remains the only real competition in the central. Chicago is up and coming, but they are likely another year or two away before they can have a realistic shot of competing. KC and Detroit are dumpster fires right now. So with that in mind, it's up to Falvey and Levine to construct a r
This is my second installment tracking all of the FA relievers. This was a personal nit to pick with the front office given the team's need and the plethora of available options. At the quarter pole though, the results were not as good as I'd have liked personally. At this point, the sample sizes are large enough that we should be able to get a feel for who was worth it, or if FA relievers really are just a crap shoot. The cream of the Crop: Kelvin Herrera - Herrera signed a 2/17 deal with
103. That's truly a terrible number, and it's been some time since the Twins have been able to earn the top pick overall. This season was an abomination, especially given the high hopes that Twins fans had coming in. There's no need to really go over what went wrong.There's a number of things, but pitching most definitely tops the list. It finished second and third as well. Falvey and the new GM (presumably Levine at this point) will likely have their hands full as they tackle what will be an
It has been an ugly year in Minnesota so far, as this team is in the race for the number one overall pick next season, and unfortunately they seem to be doing everything possible to bungle it up. The DFA of Arcia has really kind of irked me as he's the type of young talent I would think this team would be wanting to grow with, and to be honest this is probably the last straw from my end. I'm hoping for some serious organizational change given the total system failure that has been the 2016 Minne
I like doing prospect lists sometime after the draft and after some rookie ball has been played. In part because it's a bit of a slow time of the year in the minor league forums and in the last few years, it's been relatively slow in the major league forums. This is a link to my top 25 from last season. Most of these guys are still in the system, and that has a lot to do with the fact that they were mostly excelling at the lower levels. That has changed with a lot of guys showing good results in
Now that the season has wound down and the Twins have finished their fourth consecutive 90 loss season, it's time to start looking at a plan for 2015. While the 2014 season did not look so great in the record book, there were some very nice building blocks for the team. For one, the offense did quite well. This is especially noteworthy given that at the beginning of the season, the offense was, to put it mildly, horrid. The improvement was generated by seeing a healthy Joe Mauer return to the te
Last year, I decided to put together a top 20 list that became a top 21 list (b/c I forgot to include Kepler) towards the end of the season in large part b/c the product on the field was pretty bad and b/c I wanted something to talk about. It seems like it could be a fairly fun tradition to maintain, so I'm doing it again this year. I've expanded it out a bit more, and this is in large part due to the fact that the system has gotten stronger. The results from many of the 2012/13 drafts have been
A lot of ink has been spilled on the abomination of a season that encompassed the Twins 2013 year, and there are certainly differences of opinions as to what should happen next. Looking at the season in the rear view mirror, there were some good things to come from it. The most notable was the emergence of Brian Dozier at 2nd. Behind that was a pen that far exceeded expectations, especially given how bad the starting rotation was. The upcoming season is going to be an interesting one for
In light of John's recent suggestion, I went ahead and compiled the results of the 2013 free agent pitching market. I excluded pitchers that ended up as relievers, and I excluded pitchers such as baseballs version of Gandolf the Gray (Jamie Moyer) who did not sign. The results were surprisingly better than I thought they'd be, but I'm not so certain that we at Twins Daily would have gotten them right. I'm too lazy to look up all of the suggestions from last winter, but the names that I rem
It's no secret as to where the Twins struggled last season. Starting pitching was by far the worst, but the Twins were left lacking up the middle as well as in the pen. The good news is that from a hitting standpoint, the Twins look fairly set going forward. Rochester's OF should consist of 3 decent prospects in Arcia, Hicks, and Benson (though Benson's stock has fallen a bit), and one of them should be ready if/when someone goes down or is traded. The higher minors are bereft of pitching ta
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 🙂