Reusse Straight Talk on Twins and FO

[sjunisu]

Reusse podcast discussing Twins and the FO moves Reusse on words you don't want to hear about the Twins and Vikings - StarTribune.com

I think Pat is spot on with his take.  He has more baseball knowledge than probably anyone on this site and doesn't beat around the bush here (especially about attendance and next year's season tickets).  Hard hitting and well done.

[Mike Sixel]

Attendance is mostly driven (non-pandemic years, according to years of data) by last year's record. That's set in stone at this point. I'm not sure what can be said about that that is interesting or important.

[Thegrin]

Reusse has been a negative writer from the beginning. Even back to his Pioneer Press days.  When he is talking negative he is at his best (or worst) depending on your viewpoint.

[bighat]

Who ya got for Turkey of the Year? Falvey? Levine? Baldelli? I'm pretty sure a member of the Twins is taking the award home this November.

[terrydactyls]

The current pitching staff can definitely compete without any additions to it.  It can easily stand up against any High-A or Low-A teams.  

[Sousy]

6 hours ago, sjunisu said:

I think Pat is spot on with his take.  He has more baseball knowledge than probably anyone on this site and doesn't beat around the bush here (especially about attendance and next year's season tickets). 

He sure went hard into gloom and doom.  This situation in 2021 is nowhere near the 'bad old days' where years of last place attendance in the AL when MLB wanted to just fold the franchise. There's going to be a lot of disappointment, of course, but things are not that bad. 

[Rosterman]

They are actually drawing rather decently considering that Minnesota followed the rules for Covid reopening protocalls. What surprises me more is that there are tickets available at every Saints game.

 

We also forget the Twins did good in the short 2020 season.

 

And, budget wise, they paid ALL their minor league players for the season, although they gave walking players to some 30 right at the end of last September.

[Brock Beauchamp]

6 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

Attendance is mostly driven (non-pandemic years, according to years of data) by last year's record. That's set in stone at this point. I'm not sure what can be said about that that is interesting or important.

That's mostly true, though there's a fair amount of wiggle room as the season winds down as excitement either ramps up or drops off.

But in the end, the overall numbers don't move that much based on those 4-6 weeks and walk-up tickets.

[Brock Beauchamp]

13 hours ago, sjunisu said:

Reusse podcast discussing Twins and the FO moves Reusse on words you don't want to hear about the Twins and Vikings - StarTribune.com

I think Pat is spot on with his take.  He has more baseball knowledge than probably anyone on this site and doesn't beat around the bush here (especially about attendance and next year's season tickets).  Hard hitting and well done.

Oh god, if Reusse could stop living in 1985 so fervently, he could have real points here. All he could talk about forever is innings pitched by starters and then later he props up Tampa and how great they do with a small payroll. And then LITERALLY IN THE NEXT BREATH he rips the Twins for not letting starters pitch through difficulty,  entirely unaware of the irony of that conversation thread.

Sigh. He literally does not understand modern baseball. This entire audio clip, while it has some merit superficially, the analysis is pure trash and based in outmoded ideas but then propped up by naming teams who are the MOST against what Reusse is talking about.

Blech. Hot take garbage. Which is too bad because if someone approached those same problems without being stuck in the thinking of the mid-80s, there may be some salient points to be gathered there.

[Rick Blaine]

Does everyone here subscribe to the Star Tribune, or is there a a way around their login request?

[Brock Beauchamp]

3 minutes ago, Rick Blaine said:

Does everyone here subscribe to the Star Tribune, or is there a a way around their login request?

We ask that people do not share paywall content or how to get around it, though a common one in the case of newspapers is to go to incognito mode. I'm not sure if that works anymore, though.

[bean5302]

I didn't find much of value in his take, either. Mostly catering to the angry mob. I'm sure it will be a popular podcast, but it doesn't provide a lot of value.

I know everybody uses Tampa Bay as some sort of model of awesomeness, but nobody actually wants to follow the Tampa Bay model. In the Tampa model, the Twins don't even offer Buxton a contract and I guarantee they traded him. Tampa Bay does not hang onto expensive star players, ever. Tampa Bay has 11 4th or 5th place finishes in the AL East in the past 20 years. They're on pace to finish 1st for the 4th time in the past 20 years. They've never won 100 games, ever. Tampa Bay has no loyalty whatsoever and started their rise to competitive baseball with 10 consecutive 90+ loss seasons to build a farm system. If you have favorite players and want to keep them, you're not going to like the Tampa Bay model. Tampa Bay uses the model because it's their only choice. Nobody attends their games for multiple reasons. 

[RpR]

Reusse has view on sports, all sports, and it does not change, and I generally do not like his take.

At that he has forgotten more about Baseball than any one here will ever know.

[tony&rodney]

I'm not sure how Tampa Bay accomplishes all that they do right now, but they might have the best team in baseball and are also sitting on some good prospects as well.

Reusse knows baseball, as previously mentioned, but he can over-react when irritated. 

[Sousy]

10 hours ago, Rosterman said:

What surprises me more is that there are tickets available at every Saints game.

 

That is something of a shock. Hard to say if it’s pandemic related or some after effect of turning the entire team over when joining the minors. Anecdotally, flipping through a number of minor league games on MILB.tv it looks like it has been a rough year for minor league ticket sales.

(The Iowa Cubs - my local AAA affiliate - also closed grandstand seats in the left / right outfield to sales. It looks like no one was buying, and they didn’t want to bother trying to staff those sections with ushers.)

[Dodecahedron]

I think it's interesting that the foundation of the conversation in the podcast is that Baldelli used the "R" word (rebuild).

He used that word, sure, but the context was ignored.  Baldelli said that successful small market teams are in a constant rebuild.  This is true, and this is what Tampa does well.  What's more interesting that Baldelli said he knew he would have to rebuild someday, but he hasn't done it yet.  It could be said that he knew the right path to walk, but he wasn't walking it.

I disagree with the points made that the Twins situation is dire financially and with attendance, at least from this.  The pandemic remains the big risk at the moment.  It took about five years of rubbish on the field to truly tank attendance the last time around.

[Number3]

I didn't even read the article but the fact is that baseball fandom is different than most any other sport. A true fan has to be able to enjoy a competitive team and realize that every team can't win the World Series and 162 games is a lot of games. A simple truth is that for every win there has to be a loss. Unfortunately, fans today expect their team to be a playoff team every year which is a mathematical and logical impossibility. Sloppy play, poor decisions and lack of effort should not be tolerated and that includes the entire organization not just the players. Look at the Mets situation with Baez who gave fans a thumbs down because they booed. I saw the game on TV that precipitated that after he had a very lackadaisical at bat. The Nats announcers said to just pitch the ball anywhere and Baez would swing at it which Baez did and walked back to the dugout as if he could not have cared less. The Twins seem to be playing well overall now and if fans can't simply appreciate that then they aren't real fans.

[Brock Beauchamp]

21 minutes ago, Number3 said:

I saw the game on TV that precipitated that after he had a very lackadaisical at bat.

I find this unlikely, as the Mets players have been doing the thumbs down sign for a couple of weeks but only in the past few days did anyone ask why they were doing it.

[nicksaviking]

Reusse is a great sports historian, but that doesn't exactly translate to the always changing current game of baseball.

The Tampa logic is just mind bogglingly dumb; like it's easily or at all repeatable and not infused with a nice heap of good fortune. Why aren't the also minimally spending Pirates following their model? Heck, Tampa has finished ahead of the Yankees the last two seasons. Wouldn't it make more sense for the Yankees to do what Tampa does, win MORE games and pocket 150M or so? It's just nonsense disguised as a hot take and inspired by everyone's collective frustration.

Also, how does he not see that the TB model is extremely similar to the 2000-2010 Twins model? TB has just been smart enough to trade players before their wheels fell off or they hit free agency.

[MABB1959]

12 hours ago, Sousy said:

He sure went hard into gloom and doom.  This situation in 2021 is nowhere near the 'bad old days' where years of last place attendance in the AL when MLB wanted to just fold the franchise. There's going to be a lot of disappointment, of course, but things are not that bad. 

It depends on how you look at it.  It has been disappointment since we moved to Target Field, the stadium that would allow us to field a competitive team.  I think we all suffered from 2011 to 2018 to some degree. We may have won a few division titles but never got out of the first round of the play-offs.  I don't count the Wild Card game as making the play-offs because they lost the game.  What make this doom and gloom and possibly the worst ever is these are the years we are/were supposed to be ready to contend.  No where near that now and now it sounds like a total rebuild that we just endured from 2011 to 2019.  It is hard to look forward to another 8 years of rebuilding.  The "Target Field Experience" is long gone.  They blew it the last few years play-offs and all.  I don't think we have any Game 7's to look forward to for a long time.  

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

1 hour ago, nicksaviking said:

Reusse is a great sports historian, but that doesn't exactly translate to the always changing current game of baseball.

The Tampa logic is just mind bogglingly dumb; like it's easily or at all repeatable and not infused with a nice heap of good fortune. Why aren't the also minimally spending Pirates following their model? Heck, Tampa has finished ahead of the Yankees the last two seasons. Wouldn't it make more sense for the Yankees to do what Tampa does, win MORE games and pocket 150M or so? It's just nonsense disguised as a hot take and inspired by everyone's collective frustration.

Also, how does he not see that the TB model is extremely similar to the 2000-2010 Twins model? TB has just been smart enough to trade players before their wheels fell off or they hit free agency.

But how much does he really say about Tampa? What does he say about the Twins and the front office here, and do you agree or disagree with that, and why? 

[Sousy]

I'll tack on an observation that might trigger the downvotes...

I made my first trip to Target Field at the beginning of the month; had a great time at Target Field for two games against the Rays. One loss, one win - but both pretty fun games in all honesty.  I left Minneapolis on a pretty good vibe.

On the way out of town, I stopped off I-35 in Lakeville at a Kwik Trip to fill up and grab a cup of coffee / snacks for kids on the road.  I filled the tank and went inside to pay wearing my Twins baseball cap.  This was apparently a conversation point with the Lakeville locals on a Sunday morning. Conversations went something like this:

"I'm glad you're still wearing the hat - it's been a tough season."

"Yeah - it's been tough, but there have been a few good moments here and there. This weekend at Target Field was pretty fun."

"Oh, it will never be as fun as it was in 1991.  At least we've had Vikings football to look forward to."

Me:

[RpR]

Viking Football  LOL -- ??

[Longdistancetwins]

Thanks for this!  I’m not in Minnesota and don’t follow Reusse regularly, but I love him.  I know I’m in the minority, but there, I said it.  

[Yawn Gardenhose]

On 8/30/2021 at 7:15 PM, Sousy said:

He sure went hard into gloom and doom.  This situation in 2021 is nowhere near the 'bad old days' where years of last place attendance in the AL when MLB wanted the Pohlads volunteered to just fold the franchise. There's going to be a lot of disappointment, of course, but things are not that bad. 

Fixed that for you. 

[wabene]

Reusse is a columnist who's job is to opine on all sports. Therefore he cannot have the intimate knowledge of a geek like Gleeman who obsesses over baseball. I have tried to listen to Reusse on podcasts before (didn't bother this time) and his takes are always ill informed and off-base in my opinion. His personality can be entertaining in small doses, but what he says usually erases that quickly.

 

Don't want to be a bobo here but if you want a good baseball podcast it is Gleeman and the Geek hands down. Nothing's perfect but I usually agree with them. Lately I've listened to Chin Music with LENIII, Smalley and Souhan. Souhan mostly stays out of the way (good thing). LENIII is entertaining, sometimes insightful but definitely not as researched as the geeks mentioned above. He is a columnist now so he has an excuse. Smalley is an older ex-player and sometimes might be a little out of date, but many times I think he has some really good insight. The stories they tell can be good as well.

I have tried some others, but these are the two I go to now. Maybe I'm missing something, let me know. Reusse? Forgetaboutit!! 

[wabene]

Wait a sec here I should probably add the Reusse can be a very good human interest writer mixing in old stories, like very good. His opinions? Again forgetaboutit!

[Brock Beauchamp]

26 minutes ago, wabene said:

Reusse is a columnist who's job is to opine on all sports. Therefore he cannot have the intimate knowledge of a geek like Gleeman who obsesses over baseball. I have tried to listen to Reusse on podcasts before (didn't bother this time) and his takes are always ill informed and off-base in my opinion. His personality can be entertaining in small doses, but what he says usually erases that quickly.

Don't want to be a bobo here but if you want a good baseball podcast it is Gleeman and the Geek hands down. Nothing's perfect but I usually agree with them. Lately I've listened to Chin Music with LENIII, Smalley and Souhan. Souhan mostly stays out of the way (good thing). LENIII is entertaining, sometimes insightful but definitely not as researched as the geeks mentioned above. He is a columnist now so he has an excuse. Smalley is an older ex-player and sometimes might be a little out of date, but many times I think he has some really good insight. The stories they tell can be good as well.

I have tried some others, but these are the two I go to now. Maybe I'm missing something, let me know. Reusse? Forgetaboutit!! 

Nash Walker's podcast Locked On Twins is a really good daily take on the Twins. You should check it out.

[4twinsJA]

Part of reason TB model works for them is they are the only ones doing it, at least to the extent they are. TB model  has not helped with attendance at TB. 

[Sousy]

6 minutes ago, 4twinsJA said:

Part of reason TB model works for them is they are the only ones doing it, at least to the extent they are. TB model  has not helped with attendance at TB. 

The Tampa Bay model is also one where they are not focused on attendance and all the 'normal' things nearly at all.  Low revenue, low salary, wash, rinse, repeat.

Also, if the CBA establishes a salary floor it probably removes the feasibility of that type of organizational model for good or ill.