How confident are you in the FO to turn this around?

[Brock Beauchamp]

39 minutes ago, Linus said:

when do we stop blaming people that haven’t been around for 5 years?

When people realize how long it takes to build a pitching pipeline, especially during a time when most of MiLB lost an entire season to a pandemic. This front office first drafted in 2017. Here are the rWAR pitching leaders from the first five rounds of that draft (I'm including any pitcher with >1 career rWAR):

1st Rd:
Trevor Rogers - 3.0 rWAR
Tanner Houck - 2.0 rWAR

2nd Rd:
Griffin Canning - 2.6 rWAR

3rd Rd:
Keegan Thompson - 1.2 rWAR

4th Rd:
none

5th Rd:
Josh Fleming - 1.2 rWAR

That's it. Five pitchers with >1 career rWAR in the first five rounds of the 2017 draft.

Has this front office done a good job developing pitching? I'd argue definitely not... but people are acting as if they should have an entire rotation and bullpen of good pitchers because they've "been here five years" but no one wants to acknowledge that the entire combined MLB has not developed a good rotation and bullpen from that first draft.

So, yeah, the old regime still gets some blame for completely missing on three consecutive top six draft picks from 2013-2015 because those failures are still impacting today's on-field pitching performances in Minnesota.

How different would 2019-present look if Kohl Stewart was a Berríos calibre pitcher instead of flopping out? Or what about Tyler Jay? Neither one even turned into a decent reliever.

[TwinsDr2021]

27 minutes ago, Dman said:

I don't think that was me but I get your point.

Yes, sorry, I fixed the previous message and explained I quoted the wrong person.

[Major League Ready]

45 minutes ago, Linus said:

A lot of comments on the poor pitching this FO inherited. If memory serves they inherited Berrios Gibson May Duffy Preslly Rodgers and I might be missing one. Doesn’t sound like nothing to me. 
 

when do we stop blaming people that haven’t been around for 5 years?

Gibson was a nice steady 4 and Berrios a 2.  They did have a couple of good RPs.  That's a long way from a staff that is going to contend.  I would add the previous administration blew several high 1st round picks and we are most definitely paying for that today.  

That said, I am not all that excited by the current administration's picks either.  Larnach would have been fine had they not just taken Kirilloff and Rooker in the previous years.  Cavaco was a reach which is not the worst thing but needs to be taken into account in the big picture.  I hated the Sabato pick especially given the type of players chosen the last few years.

[TwinsDr2021]

11 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

When people realize how long it takes to build a pitching pipeline. This front office first drafted in 2017. Here are the rWAR pitching leaders from the first five rounds of that draft (including any pitcher with >1 career rWAR):

1st Rd:
Trevor Rogers - 3.0 rWAR
Tanner Houck - 2.0 rWAR

2nd Rd:
Griffin Canning - 2.6 rWAR

3rd Rd:
Keegan Thompson - 1.2 rWAR

4th Rd:
none

5th Rd:
Josh Fleming - 1.2 rWAR

That's it. Five pitchers with >1 career rWAR in the first five rounds of the 2017 draft.

Has this front office done a good job developing pitching? I'd argue definitely not... but people are acting as if they should have an entire rotation and bullpen of good pitchers because they've "been here five years" but no one wants to acknowledge that the entire combined MLB has not developed a good rotation and bullpen from that first draft.

So, yeah, the old regime still gets some blame for completely missing on three consecutive top six draft picks from 2013-2015 because those failures are still impacting today's on-field pitching performances in Minnesota.

How different would 2019-present look if Kohl Stewart was a Berríos calibre pitcher instead of flopping out? Or what about Tyler Jay? Neither one even turned into a decent reliever.

You are not wrong, but a bunch of the pitchers (2017) selected (in the first) have or are pitching in the majors from that draft, most just have been terrible or not good. Would people feel better if they would have drafted one of them and are seeing them in the majors now, or still on the hope for Lewis in late 2022 or 2023. I don't know that answer.

2013-2015 - just me looking at the first rounds looks like they were kind of terrible years for pitching it would have been nice if they would have stayed away from it, But hey at least we have Burrows from 2015 draft.

In total hindsight I wish they would have take Walker Buehler in 2015 (24th pick)

Stewart if making the majors is a plus for him, since high school pitchers seem to flame out, Gordon hurts since it has taken so long and really doesn't project to be a starter, and Jay was a terrible pick and I believe that was widely considered a terrible pick.

 

 

[Dman]

17 minutes ago, Linus said:

A lot of comments on the poor pitching this FO inherited. If memory serves they inherited Berrios Gibson May Duffy Preslly Rodgers and I might be missing one. Doesn’t sound like nothing to me. 
 

when do we stop blaming people that haven’t been around for 5 years?

I think most people are commenting on the fact the Twins rotations were always at the bottom of the league and the missed number 1 picks on Stewart and Jay with Gordon sandwiched in.  There wasn't much for pitching depth in the minors either. So the new FO weren't in great shape to start a "pitching pipeline".  I don't think that is blaming the old FO just stating where things were at when they came in.

The other issue is does this FO get credit for developing those guys or the other FO for picking them.  Pretty much every pitcher you named pitched better while under this FO so it is the chicken and egg analogy.  Berrios wasn't chump change but his 8.02 ERA in 2016 didn't exactly prove he was going to be a good starter.  Duffey was coming off of a 6.43 ERA in 2016 and May had 5.27 ERA in 2016.  Rogers was OK with a 3.96 ERA but he got much better after the new FO took over.  Yeah most of those guys were young and bound to improve some but they likely benefited from the changes in approach the new FO brought in.  Would they have been better under the old FO and coaches? Seems unlikely. The proof would seem to be that the 2019 and 2020 pitching staffs were in the upper half of baseball instead of the bottom. If this current FO is really bad at developing pitching shouldn't those numbers have stayed rock bottom? 

I am not sure what happened to the pitching staffs this year but there is virtually no way to defend how bad they have been at the MLB level.  Berrios being the lone exception and maybe Pineda can turn things around yet but hard to say right now.  Maeda has been better as of late but it is too little too late now.  Still I somewhat blame COVID and the team just not having their players ready to start this season in top form. I think\hope next year will be different but with so many open holes in the rotation and pen it is impossible to know at this point.

So yeah sure this FO inherited some good players but not all of them have worked out and given what we have for stats they seem to be improving players for the most part. I don't think anyone is really blaming the old FO just pointing out the facts as they see them.

[Brock Beauchamp]

6 minutes ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

You are not wrong, but a bunch of the pitchers (2017) selected (in the first) have or are pitching in the majors from that draft, most just have been terrible or not good. Would people feel better if they would have drafted one of them and are seeing them in the majors now, or still on the hope for Lewis in late 2022 or 2023. I don't know that answer.

2013-2015 - just me looking at the first rounds looks like they were kind of terrible years for pitching it would have been nice if they would have stayed away from it, But hey at least we have Burrows from 2015 draft.

In total hindsight I wish they would have take Walker Buehler in 2015 (24th pick)

Stewart if making the majors is a plus for him, since high school pitchers seem to flame out, Gordon hurts since it has taken so long and really doesn't project to be a starter, and Jay was a terrible pick and I believe that was widely considered a terrible pick.

For sure, I'm not even defending the front office, I'm only making the counter-point that we simply don't know if they're capable at developing pitching yet. Right now, things look pretty bad for them and the fact they haven't developed a capable reliever is quite a black mark on their short record.

But almost no one from that 2017 draft has become an impact arm yet.

In 2018, they had one season to work with their draft picks before the pandemic hit.

In 2019, they had zero seasons to work with their draft picks before the pandemic hit.

Never mind that we haven't even talked about the international signings, which are still a few years from being developed. The timeline on those is absurdly long.

I entered this season ready to be really critical of the front office based on how their pipeline started (or failed to start) developing. Then the wave of injuries swept across baseball, which is still muddying the situation. So far, color me mostly unimpressed with the pipeline but also open to the fact that I could be very wrong based on the swath of injuries and the limited amount of playing time so far in 2021.

[howeda7]

I'm not. None of the pitching they've drafted has popped. The prospects they acquired at the 2018 deadline have mostly flopped, which doesn't give hope for the ones we just acquired. The free agents they chose last off season could hardly have been worse. And the solid players they've lost for nothing (Anderson, Wade, Badoo, Latell) is now way too long a list to ignore. They waited too long and were too cheap to get Berrios or Buxton signed long term. And last but most important, when they had a shot to go for it in 2019 at the trade deadline they choked and punted, clinging to their precious, precious prospects instead.

They did OK on the Polanco extension. Their drafting of position players has been decent. The Odo trade worked out OK. That's about the extent of the positive. It's awfully one-sided.

[Brock Beauchamp]

10 minutes ago, howeda7 said:

I'm not. None of the pitching they've drafted has popped. The prospects they acquired at the 2018 deadline have mostly flopped, which doesn't give hope for the ones we just acquired. The free agents they chose last off season could hardly have been worse. And the solid players they've lost for nothing (Anderson, Wade, Badoo, Latell) is now way too long a list to ignore. They waited too long and were too cheap to get Berrios or Buxton signed long term. And last but most important, when they had a shot to go for it in 2019 at the trade deadline they choked and punted, clinging to their precious, precious prospects instead.

They did OK on the Polanco extension. Their drafting of position players has been decent. The Odo trade worked out OK. That's about the extent of the positive. It's awfully one-sided.

You're being exceptionally negative in your analysis. The Odorizzi trade worked out "OK"? They literally traded a guy they now have back in their system for Odorizzi, who posted a 4.3 fWAR season in 2019.

Trades don't really get any better than that.

[Linus]

Regarding my earlier post there are many ways to develop pitching that don’t take 5 years. Hell they had a very good staff last year. While there is no question that the prior FO made some horrendous pitching choices it has nothing to do with the current state of our pitching. 

[Mike Sixel]

4 hours ago, Linus said:

Regarding my earlier post there are many ways to develop pitching that don’t take 5 years. Hell they had a very good staff last year. While there is no question that the prior FO made some horrendous pitching choices it has nothing to do with the current state of our pitching. 

Having zero minor league pitchers in the pipeline that they inherited has nothing to do with the current staff? 

[Linus]

Just now, Mike Sixel said:

Having zero minor league pitchers in the pipeline that they inherited has nothing to do with the current staff? 

They were good last year so no. There are many ways to acquire pitching. This year’s hideous pitching has nothing to do with people that were let go 5 years ago. 

[Twodogs]

On 8/4/2021 at 3:25 PM, gunnarthor said:

Generally, low although I'm willing to admit that "FO" is a bit vague. I have almost no confidence in Levine but I'm not as sure about Falvey.  I'm not quite as diplomatic as Mike is. This FO simply failed in their first go around and I don't think we need too much longer to pull the plug.

I'm not sure we need to go over every move over five years but the bad overwhelms the good, in my opinion. The Twins have a -3.5 WAR from their pitching staff this year. Nearly 8 WAR worse than the second worst team. That's insane. And it'll probably be a lot worse by the end of the season.

Wow! That is bad.

[Twodogs]

On 8/4/2021 at 5:20 PM, Squirrel said:

I'm not sure. More confident than under Ryan, which doesn't say much, but not sure Falvey/Levine are the answer either. I think there definitely needs to be some changes on the development side or we'll get more of the same. Maybe one more off-season will have me landing definitively on my opinion of where we are and can we 'right the ship' next year.

Yeah I know we all were so happy when they got rid of Ryan.  But........ As a Monday morning QB, I mean most of the guys like Buxton, Berrios, Polanco, Sano, Kepler, Garver etc.... All were brought in by Ryan? Right?  I mean I think we all knew that the Twins had some real good position players coming up out of the minors when Ryan was let go, and the new guys were going to add pitching to those position players?  Right?  So I mean the hitter were already here and they haven't brought in any pitching?

[gunnarthor]

8 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

When people realize how long it takes to build a pitching pipeline, especially during a time when most of MiLB lost an entire season to a pandemic. This front office first drafted in 2017. Here are the rWAR pitching leaders from the first five rounds of that draft (I'm including any pitcher with >1 career rWAR):

1st Rd:
Trevor Rogers - 3.0 rWAR
Tanner Houck - 2.0 rWAR

2nd Rd:
Griffin Canning - 2.6 rWAR

3rd Rd:
Keegan Thompson - 1.2 rWAR

4th Rd:
none

5th Rd:
Josh Fleming - 1.2 rWAR

That's it. Five pitchers with >1 career rWAR in the first five rounds of the 2017 draft.

Has this front office done a good job developing pitching? I'd argue definitely not... but people are acting as if they should have an entire rotation and bullpen of good pitchers because they've "been here five years" but no one wants to acknowledge that the entire combined MLB has not developed a good rotation and bullpen from that first draft.

So, yeah, the old regime still gets some blame for completely missing on three consecutive top six draft picks from 2013-2015 because those failures are still impacting today's on-field pitching performances in Minnesota.

How different would 2019-present look if Kohl Stewart was a Berríos calibre pitcher instead of flopping out? Or what about Tyler Jay? Neither one even turned into a decent reliever.

Yes, the Twins missed on some draft picks. That's the nature of the beast. There are other ways to build up pitching other than the draft. Look at the Twins from 01-10. They missed on the draft in those years too but were able to put together good pitching staffs by other means. They traded for Mays (146 starts and 10.5 WAR for Roberto Kelly), Milton (165 starts and 15 WAR in the Knobby trade), Lohse (162 starts and 6.5 WAR for Aggie), Reed (65 starts and 3.5 WAR for Lawton), Silva (124 starts and 9 WAR for Milton), Liriano (141 starts and 9 WAR for AJ), Boof (60 starts, 0 WAR for AJ). And they also picked up Santana in the rule v although that was technically a trade for Camp.

This FO threw in the towel in 17 to acquire Enns, Littell, Watson. In 18 they traded for Duran, Alcala, Rijo, De Jong and Smeltzer. Not a lot to like there. They also lost Ynoa, Gil, Rodriguez, Wells, Anderson and Chargois in that period.

One might ask "how different would 2019-present look if we had kept Ynoa and Gil for our rotation and Anderson, Wells, and Chargois for our pen?"

[KirbyDome89]

21 hours ago, wsnydes said:

I'm in limbo.  I'm not confident, nor not confident.  As others have said, this past offseason really stunted any momentum they really had.  So far though, that has been the outlier. 

2017: Matt Belisle?

2018: Lance Lynn, Addison Reed, Michael Pineda, Fernando Rodney

2019: Martin Perez, Blake Parker

2020: Pineda, Odo, Rich Hill, Homer Bailey, Tyler Clippard, Sergio Romo

2021: Happ, Shoemaker, Colome, Robles

Off the top of my head those are the "memorable," FA signings by year. They've had better results with position players, Cruz being one of the best signings in team history, but that group of arms is uninspiring at best. I didn't bother to look through the laundry list of failed minor league contracts/waiver claims that found their way onto the major league roster and bombed. The downright atrociousness of this season might be an outlier, but the struggles in FA, as far as pitching is concerned ,seems like a pattern to me. 

[beckmt]

3 hours ago, gunnarthor said:

Yes, the Twins missed on some draft picks. That's the nature of the beast. There are other ways to build up pitching other than the draft. Look at the Twins from 01-10. They missed on the draft in those years too but were able to put together good pitching staffs by other means. They traded for Mays (146 starts and 10.5 WAR for Roberto Kelly), Milton (165 starts and 15 WAR in the Knobby trade), Lohse (162 starts and 6.5 WAR for Aggie), Reed (65 starts and 3.5 WAR for Lawton), Silva (124 starts and 9 WAR for Milton), Liriano (141 starts and 9 WAR for AJ), Boof (60 starts, 0 WAR for AJ). And they also picked up Santana in the rule v although that was technically a trade for Camp.

This FO threw in the towel in 17 to acquire Enns, Littell, Watson. In 18 they traded for Duran, Alcala, Rijo, De Jong and Smeltzer. Not a lot to like there. They also lost Ynoa, Gil, Rodriguez, Wells, Anderson and Chargois in that period.

One might ask "how different would 2019-present look if we had kept Ynoa and Gil for our rotation and Anderson, Wells, and Chargois for our pen?"

Duran and Alcala may still become important pieces and you are asking to hang them on their first two years, where they were still learning the players.  What do you think of the FO that let Santana become a rule 5 draft pick.  You don't know.  Next year will be difficult due to the number of prospects that need to be protected.   We have some players (smeltzer, Thorpe for example who will not need 40 man spots, along with probably Gordon, Cave, maybe Garlick for more examples).  We probably will get burned on one of them (just the law of odds).  After next year we will probably have a much better idea if they have acquired and developed pitching talent or just punted.  If after 2023 things don't change, they will have had their chance and time to move on.

[KirbyDome89]

The most glaring issue in the organization when this FO took over was pitching. They were brought over specifically to fix that. We're 5 years in, the big league staff is as bad if not worse, the FA pitching signings have been a borderline disaster overall, we've seen two impactful trades & each crashed back down to earth (as of now), there has been essentially zero impact from arms that were drafted or acquired in that time, and now we're staring at a minimum of one more year of subpar pitching with the hope that at least one (we need 2) of the more highly regarded pitching prospects are able to stay healthy and show they can stick near the front of the rotation. 

Yeesh

I agree with some of the posters above, there are places other than an empty cupboard to find food. 

[wsnydes]

2 hours ago, KirbyDome89 said:

2017: Matt Belisle?

2018: Lance Lynn, Addison Reed, Michael Pineda, Fernando Rodney

2019: Martin Perez, Blake Parker

2020: Pineda, Odo, Rich Hill, Homer Bailey, Tyler Clippard, Sergio Romo

2021: Happ, Shoemaker, Colome, Robles

Off the top of my head those are the "memorable," FA signings by year. They've had better results with position players, Cruz being one of the best signings in team history, but that group of arms is uninspiring at best. I didn't bother to look through the laundry list of failed minor league contracts/waiver claims that found their way onto the major league roster and bombed. The downright atrociousness of this season might be an outlier, but the struggles in FA, as far as pitching is concerned ,seems like a pattern to me. 

While I don't disagree with your greater point, I'm not going to write off 2019 and 2020 as failures for pitching when the staffs had the 9th and 4th best ERA in the game respectively.  Those staffs had their warts, no doubt, but I can't consider them failures.  Up to this season, they had improved the pitching overall.

That said, the FO has struggled with finding pitching to make the team truly competitive.  That's been my issue.  

[Brock Beauchamp]

6 hours ago, gunnarthor said:

Yes, the Twins missed on some draft picks. That's the nature of the beast. There are other ways to build up pitching other than the draft. Look at the Twins from 01-10. They missed on the draft in those years too but were able to put together good pitching staffs by other means. They traded for Mays (146 starts and 10.5 WAR for Roberto Kelly), Milton (165 starts and 15 WAR in the Knobby trade), Lohse (162 starts and 6.5 WAR for Aggie), Reed (65 starts and 3.5 WAR for Lawton), Silva (124 starts and 9 WAR for Milton), Liriano (141 starts and 9 WAR for AJ), Boof (60 starts, 0 WAR for AJ). And they also picked up Santana in the rule v although that was technically a trade for Camp.

This FO threw in the towel in 17 to acquire Enns, Littell, Watson. In 18 they traded for Duran, Alcala, Rijo, De Jong and Smeltzer. Not a lot to like there. They also lost Ynoa, Gil, Rodriguez, Wells, Anderson and Chargois in that period.

One might ask "how different would 2019-present look if we had kept Ynoa and Gil for our rotation and Anderson, Wells, and Chargois for our pen?"

Oh sure, I'm not absolving this front office from their own bad decisions. But this line of conversation started with the statement that this front office inherited a great farm system, to which I pointed out the lack of pitching, which still exists today.

And it takes a really long time to rebuild a pitching-rich organization. What doesn't shorten that timeline is a front office shooting itself in the foot repeatedly by making bad decisions on the fringes of their organization, which this one has done a few times in the past several years.

[gunnarthor]

5 hours ago, beckmt said:

Duran and Alcala may still become important pieces and you are asking to hang them on their first two years, where they were still learning the players. 

This is quite true although Alcala is probably the most underrated disappointment this year. 43 games and negative WAR from both B-R and fangraphs. Not sure what happened there. I thought he might have had a chance to be a power starter and now he's just a really bad bullpen arm. Shocking.

[Brock Beauchamp]

2 minutes ago, gunnarthor said:

This is quite true although Alcala is probably the most underrated disappointment this year. 43 games and negative WAR from both B-R and fangraphs. Not sure what happened there. I thought he might have had a chance to be a power starter and now he's just a really bad bullpen arm. Shocking.

Alcala's 2021 season is, to me, emblematic of the entire Twins season. He's probably my biggest disappointment, as I expected him to step forward into a 7th/8th inning role and instead he floundered badly.

Other guys can point to injuries or other reasons to be disappointing, Alcala really doesn't have any such excuse.

[bean5302]

Honestly, the most successful Twins teams since the 1991 World Series were run by Bill Smith in my opinion. He inherited a team in an absolutely critical state and made a ton of important extensions to keep the core competitive. His staff also drafted well enough and his free agent signings were solid, too. Unfortunately, his trades were awful. Smith only had 4 years as the Twins' GM and presided over 2 division championships.

Aaron Hicks, Kyle Gibson, Brian Dozier, Eddie Rosario, Max Kepler, Jorge Polanco, Miguel Sano. They all came out of the Bill Smith drafts/signings. Not an astonishing run of success, but better than anything we've seen since. 4 All Stars in 4 years. It does tend to take about 6-10 years to see peak performance from drafts, but it's not unreasable to start taking stock in what you have in 4-5 years. Usually, the cream rises to the top quickly.

In any case, Falvey and Levine will be fighting for their jobs next year and they won't have a leash longer than mid-2023 if things don't start panning out.

[chpettit19]

17 hours ago, Linus said:

Regarding my earlier post there are many ways to develop pitching that don’t take 5 years. Hell they had a very good staff last year. While there is no question that the prior FO made some horrendous pitching choices it has nothing to do with the current state of our pitching. 

 

13 hours ago, Linus said:

They were good last year so no. There are many ways to acquire pitching. This year’s hideous pitching has nothing to do with people that were let go 5 years ago. 

Developing pitching and acquiring pitching are 2 different things. Developing pitching is acquiring minor league arms and turning them into major league arms. Acquiring pitching (based on your comment there you're talking about building a competitive major league staff) is bringing in guys who can succeed at the major league level.

The Twins had the 9th and 4th best ERA in baseball the last 2 years, and had seen their MLB staff ERAs improve every year since they'd taken over. This year they were obviously a complete bust and they failed miserably. But overall I'd say they've shown an ability to acquire ML pitching. They may not be elite at it, but 2021 is the outlier, not the norm in following with their trend the previous 4 years.

The big question, and the one that will/should determine their fate, is their ability to develop pitching. Having good, young pitching on cheap deals is an absolute necessity for the Twins (and every team really, like Buehler, May, Gray, Gonsolin, etc. with the Dodgers). They have yet to show they can do that. But they have their main stockpile of arms at AA and AAA now so the answer should become apparent soon. If none of their tops arms produce in 2022 or 2023 then we can say they likely aren't the answer and bring in somebody else who can produce that pipeline. But their previous 4 years of building MLB pitching staffs show they have the ability to do that.

[KirbyDome89]

7 hours ago, wsnydes said:

While I don't disagree with your greater point, I'm not going to write off 2019 and 2020 as failures for pitching when the staffs had the 9th and 4th best ERA in the game respectively.  Those staffs had their warts, no doubt, but I can't consider them failures.  Up to this season, they had improved the pitching overall.

That said, the FO has struggled with finding pitching to make the team truly competitive.  That's been my issue.  

Me neither, if the post came off that way it wasn't my intention. I'm a little leery to assign much value to '20, good or bad. I think that '19 staff was top heavy and buoyed by guys having career years but that's far from failure. 

It's my main issue as well. They've had enough time to at least bridge the gap and instead we're likely going to watch a lost season in '22 with the potential for things to get much worse depending on pitching prospect health/production. 

[wsnydes]

18 minutes ago, KirbyDome89 said:

Me neither, if the post came off that way it wasn't my intention. I'm a little leery to assign much value to '20, good or bad. I think that '19 staff was top heavy and buoyed by guys having career years but that's far from failure. 

It's my main issue as well. They've had enough time to at least bridge the gap and instead we're likely going to watch a lost season in '22 with the potential for things to get much worse depending on pitching prospect health/production. 

I agree on '20.  It's not really apples to apples across the league, but worth noting in this context I think.  They certainly weren't terrible.  It doesn't sound like we disagree on that either though.

'22 should be the beginning of this FO's pitching pipeline.  I'm anxious to see whether it bears fruit or not.

[jctwins]

On 8/5/2021 at 12:58 PM, bean5302 said:

I have absolutely no confidence in the front office to turn this around because I have no confidence in the ownership. That said, I fully believe the Twins could compete next year if they wanted to.

BINGO.

With owners that have their heads in the clouds or buried in the sand, and consistently maintain a culture of dumping the responsibility on their leadership, while letting a culture of "fiscal responsibility" consistently be a part of every decision, this team won't be able to consistently put a first class club on the field. 

 

 

 

 

[twinkiesfan11]

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for another season. There are several of the first wave of arms drafted and/or mostly developed by this administration on the cusp of call up. The jury is still out on notable early position player draft picks Rooker, Larnach and Jeffers but they'll all get plenty of opportunity to play the rest of 2021. Royce Lewis would probably be right there with them if it weren't for an oblique injury followed by a pandemic followed by a freak accident. 

The track record with free agent signings and fringe prospects on the margins is really frustrating and needs to be addressed as these trends have been present for the majority of their tenure. The offense really nosedived in 2020 but seems to be in better shape in 2021. Pitching at the major league level was exceptional in 2020 and a train wreck in 2021. The inconsistency is odd and and can only partially be explained away by injuries. Adjustments need to be made from the top down but there do seem to be reasons to be optimistic about the future. 

[dbminn]

I'm slightly pessimistic. I have a few concerns:

The FO has forced themselves into 40-man roster decisions that didn't have to happen. They could've bolstered the MLB roster through trades of prospects. Instead, they have signed several bargain-basement RP to the 40-man roster at the expense of younger players. This cost them an athletic player in Baddoo. The FO knew him as a person and had monitored his progress but still let him go. Nobody could have guessed he'd already be playing well in the big leagues but they completely missed on his potential.

They left Baldelli without a bench coach in 2021. Not that this would've changed the season, but there is so much going on these days that a veteran right-hand man should be there. This includes spring training as well as the regular season.

Like Brock said, they have failed to develop pitchers at the upper levels, including the majors. They have been successful at increasing velo and altering pitch mixes. They haven't improved command/control and in some cases, the pitchers have fallen back. The only success was Odorizzi, who gained a little velocity and kept the rest of his stuff intact.

OTOH, I liked locking up Polanco, Kepler and Sano to long-term deals. They give the team a chance to retool instead of rebuild. They've also done a good job developing catchers.

Hard to say if they have been successful in the drafts. There have been injuries and a year off due to covid. I think the 2017 draft looks solid. Time will tell but I think the FO can defend their 2017 choices. The Sabato choice left me shaking my head and Cavaco was a reach. Who knows? Maybe they both become all-stars.

In any case, the honeymoon is over. 2022 is going to show if Falvey and Levine have what it takes. They will need to be aggressive and set a clear plan for the future, whether to retool or completely rebuild. We'll also see if their system has developed prospects into major league SP.

 

[Battle ur tail off]

On 8/5/2021 at 7:37 AM, TwinsDr2021 said:

Correct me if I am wrong but didn't they inherit some top pitching in 16? Jay, Gonsalves, Stewart, Romero, Mejia, Thorpe, Jorge, Wells Jax, Graterol. The problem I have with the players you mentioned is age, injuries and/or command.

Winder - 25 when next season starts, has an ERA of 4.67 in St. Paul averaging just over 4 innings a start.

Duran - Injuries will be 24 when next season starts and has a 5.06 ERA in St. Paul, with 13 walks in 16 innings.

Balazovic - will be 24 when the season starts, nothing really to complain about other than he has never pitched more than 93.2 innings in the minors so there should be no real expectation that he is going to pitch 150 innings in the majors for a few years.

Canteriono - will be 24 when the season starts, is injured and the highest he has pitched is high A.

Sands - will be 25 next July in AA, like Balazovic has never pitched more than 97.1 innings (College) and he is back down to averaging less than 5 innings per start.

Vallimont - Will be 25 in March, has walked 36 guys in 59.1 innings in AA.

Strotman - Turns 25 in less than a month, 33 walks in 58.1 innings (AAA TB), seems like a guy they Twins should have up since he is on the 40 and might be somebody they have to let go over the winter.

Ryan- 25, projects as a relief pitcher from what I have heard.

Woods-Richardson - love him is a real prospect being that he turns 21 shortly and in AA, big K's low walks

IMO most of these guys are too old to be considered real prospects (that doesn't mean that can't and won't be good to great) and in another post a few weeks ago, I pointed out that most top of the rotation guys have already been in the majors and performing by this age. For example Berrios was an All Star in his age 24 season and had been in the majors for parts of three years.

 

 

I am 100% with you. If these guys are gonna be aces, meaning true bonafide aces. They are in the show at 21-22. We don't have ANY of those types of arms. We have guys that were drafted low, etc. We had our chances to take top pitching the last 10 years and always want to try and get SS and CFers around here. 

There isn't a pitching prospect in the Twins system that rates out as an Ace type. It is the same exact thing it always is. Guys that profile into that 3-5 starter role or long relief man. 

We need guys in this day and age with hammer offspeed pitches or guys that run the gun up toward 95-99 mph with movement and command. Those are aces.

You have to take chances, both in your drafting, trading and international signings though if you want those kinds of pitchers. Twins have always played it safe and continue to do so. 

 

Even as good as this kid from Toronto seems to be. IMO, that trade needed to be centered on the very best pitching prospect you could get. We already have Lewis and Buxton to tantalize us with athleticm. And to be honest, neither one of them has done a hell of alot for the team yet either. 

 

 

[Battle ur tail off]

22 hours ago, Linus said:

Regarding my earlier post there are many ways to develop pitching that don’t take 5 years. Hell they had a very good staff last year. While there is no question that the prior FO made some horrendous pitching choices it has nothing to do with the current state of our pitching. 

Not the type of pitching that is needed to win in the playoffs. There are only 2 ways to get that. Draft or trade for and develop. Or trade or sign it and give up all kinds of money or prospects. Twins have done neither since Santana...