Thoughts from a cynical Twins fan (hope I am wrong)

[Azviking101]

There's still time, I get it, but I can't help but continue to wonder the direction with pitching still awful. Am I wrong to say that they are currently one of the 5 worst staffs in baseball (starters and relievers)? At any moment Montas and Manaea could be traded to one of the many other teams looking for pitching. Also, waiting until the final pitchers possible is not the smartest move for value (and we know Falvey is obsessed with a good deal).

They have a legit chance to be really good this year, but don't seem willing to part with the prospects and they weren't willing again to sign free agent pitching. My thoughts are that the Correa signing and in smaller part the Gray trade are the twins effort to be "competitive" and when the deadline arrives and they're not good enough, these are easy trades to boost the farm system once more. 

I worry that Correa signed because he knew this was the guaranteed way to be on a playoff team this year. If the Twins are that, great. If not then he gets traded to one at the deadline.

Correa was a huge move, there's no doubt about that. The most exciting free agent acquisition in history. BUT if he is on this team for only 80 games then it was simply a fancy way to not only build the farm, but keep Twins fans happy and not revolting against Owners and front office for one more year.

I hope that as I hit send a move comes in and that I am proven wrong, but I just don't have any confidence in this owner and front office.

The main goal should be ending this historic 18 game losing streak and I just don't see with this current roster.

Feel free to call me crazy in your responses lol.

 

[Otto von Ballpark]

3 minutes ago, Azviking101 said:

Am I wrong to say that they are currently one of the 5 worst staffs in baseball (starters and relievers)?

Fangraphs has our current staff tied for 18th in MLB in projected WAR.

Rogers is projected tied for the 3rd best reliever WAR in MLB, behind only Hendriks and Hader.

[gunnarthor]

You're not wrong. This is a horrific pitching staff. It was so bad last year that it will probably be better just on chance alone but is easily a bottom five staff. That said, I'm going to wait until the moves are done. I do like Bundy, probably more than most. And Gray is a real pitcher. But Ryan will regress, I'm not sure we can hope for more from Bailey than what we got last year, and the arms we're stockpiling in the pen (so far) look pretty meh to me.

On the positive side, the offense and defense should be better from last year. So pitching with a lead might happen a bit more and our up the middle defense might be a true asset. I think we'll score a lot and give up a lot. It'll be a more entertaining brand of baseball, if nothing else.

[chpettit19]

If we're looking at it as a "traditional" 5 man rotation and 8 man pen there's most definitely work to do. I think the FO is likely working down 2 paths simultaneously. I think they're looking for trades, but won't blow up the system for a 1 year window with the current roster. So they're also looking at ways to build an "out getter" staff. Jax and Thorpe types for 2-3 innings. Ober and Ryan for 4-5 innings. Gray for 6-7. Rogers for 1. Bundy for 3-4? Can Alcala do 2-3 innings? Whole stable of near MLB ready guys on inning limits who could do 3-5 inning stretches every 5ish days. I think we see a mix of the 2 plans as they continue to look for top end MLB pitchers, but even bringing in Montas doesn't get them to a great, or even all that good, traditional 5 man rotation, 8 man pen situation. But Winder, Balazovich, Duran, et al don't have to come up and be great starters if they only need to go 2-3 innings or once through an order. 

Moral of my story is there's certainly a lot to be desired with the Twins pitching when looking at it from a traditional view, but there's a little extra hope if they're only expecting guys to get through the order once instead of multiple times. How well they can execute either plan (bring in top MLB pitching or build an out-getter staff) remains to be seen, but at least there's a couple options and if you squint you can see a road to success.

[RpR]

Well right now Twins pitching, in the game against Atlanta, have 8 strike outs to the  Braves 3 but Twins still trail 2 to 0, with a total of 3 hits , so as of now pitching is not the only problem.

[LA VIkes Fan]

I'm not quite as pessimistic as gunnarthor, but I'm certainly hoping that we are not looking at the final roster. We are a minimum of one starter short and that number increases f any of Bundy, Ober or Ryan blow up or someone gets hurt. I understand there talking to Johnny Cueto who is fine insurance, but not enough by himself. We need an established starter to stick in the number 2 hole. I think were done in the bullpen.

I do remain hopeful. I think the FO earned some leeway with their moves this off-season. Let's hope they've got another one up their sleeve for pitching. Let's hope it's not signed Johnny Cueto go forward. Then we're really hoping that someone like Winder, Balazovic or Canterino is ready to go this year.

[USAFChief]

I can't see this team even approaching .500 as constructed. The offense looks to me to be average at best, defense should be pretty good... but pitching will be bad to awful. 

 

Hope I'm wrong.

[Azviking101]

17 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

If we're looking at it as a "traditional" 5 man rotation and 8 man pen there's most definitely work to do. I think the FO is likely working down 2 paths simultaneously. I think they're looking for trades, but won't blow up the system for a 1 year window with the current roster. So they're also looking at ways to build an "out getter" staff. Jax and Thorpe types for 2-3 innings. Ober and Ryan for 4-5 innings. Gray for 6-7. Rogers for 1. Bundy for 3-4? Can Alcala do 2-3 innings? Whole stable of near MLB ready guys on inning limits who could do 3-5 inning stretches every 5ish days. I think we see a mix of the 2 plans as they continue to look for top end MLB pitchers, but even bringing in Montas doesn't get them to a great, or even all that good, traditional 5 man rotation, 8 man pen situation. But Winder, Balazovich, Duran, et al don't have to come up and be great starters if they only need to go 2-3 innings or once through an order. 

 

Great response and great points here. One thing I want to mention is the "mlb ready guys" like Winder, Balazovic, Duran.

Do you really see the Twins bringing all their minor league pitching prospects up this year? This team has always struggled to bring prospects to the majors, especially pitching prospects. I really doubt that they're all of a sudden going to bring everyone up and start their MLB clock. If they don't then they're relying like you said on Jax, Thorpe, Bundy, Alcala. I just don't see a situation where that is successful.

[rv78]

Wouldn't it have been great to see Winder, Balazovic, Duran come up last year in September so there would be some inkling of what they have in those 3? Like moving Alcala to the closer role at the start of September instead of only giving him the last game of the season? If the plan is to add 1 or 2 more good arms then I understand the reason for keeping them in AAA, but if it isn't, then they have floundered in their ability to assess what they have. Clock or no clock you use your chips when you need to, not just when you want to. Signing Correa will be a 1 year deal if they don't acquire pitching that will take them deep into the playoffs this year. He will not stay with a team that makes a half-hearted effort to win.

[RpR]

Twins lost 4-0 to the Braves, but Larnach got a hit!

The veteran pichers did real well, but the rookies looked like rookies.

[chpettit19]

42 minutes ago, Azviking101 said:

Great response and great points here. One thing I want to mention is the "mlb ready guys" like Winder, Balazovic, Duran.

Do you really see the Twins bringing all their minor league pitching prospects up this year? This team has always struggled to bring prospects to the majors, especially pitching prospects. I really doubt that they're all of a sudden going to bring everyone up and start their MLB clock. If they don't then they're relying like you said on Jax, Thorpe, Bundy, Alcala. I just don't see a situation where that is successful.

They're not going to have a ton of choice. Balazovic, Duran, Sands, Strotman, Vallimont, and Winder are already on the 40-man. DFAing and losing any of them without letting them debut would feel to me like awful management of the 40-man. So the only other option is to be claiming/signing players mid-season and dropping others from the 40-man (or adding to 60-day IL) or having other prospects jump those guys and DFAing others (or adding to 60-day IL). So they're in a spot where they're either going to lose their near or current MLB ready guys without actually giving them a shot or they're going to have to roll with them for better or worse for some chunk of the season.

Now that doesn't mean we see them all, but it's going to be darn near impossible not to see a few of the guys who haven't debuted but are on the 40-man. I'd expect guys like Strotman and Vallimont get the first couple calls when they get to that point unless one of the bigger names is on fire. I'd think those 2 would be more expendable so would likely get some short stint shots in the majors before the other guys. Will be interesting to see what the 5 recalls rule does to how teams manage pitching. May make it harder to only use a couple of these guys since they can't be constantly moved up and down between Minneapolis and St Paul.

[Adam Krueger]

20 minutes ago, RpR said:

Twins lost 4-0 to the Braves, but Larnach got a hit!

The veteran pichers did real well, but the rookies looked like rookies.

Please stop talking about individual spring training games as if they hold any meaning whatsoever. A lot of times, pitchers are out there to work on something very specific, with no regard to results, same for hitters. There is literally no correlation between Spring training success/failure and regular-season success or failure.

[chpettit19]

48 minutes ago, rv78 said:

Wouldn't it have been great to see Winder, Balazovic, Duran come up last year in September so there would be some inkling of what they have in those 3? Like moving Alcala to the closer role at the start of September instead of only giving him the last game of the season? If the plan is to add 1 or 2 more good arms then I understand the reason for keeping them in AAA, but if it isn't, then they have floundered in their ability to assess what they have. Clock or no clock you use your chips when you need to, not just when you want to. Signing Correa will be a 1 year deal if they don't acquire pitching that will take them deep into the playoffs this year. He will not stay with a team that makes a half-hearted effort to win.

Impressing Correa should have 0% impact on their moves. They could win the World Series and it wouldn't mean he'd pick up his option. He's opting out unless he gets hurt and won't have a shot at a huge payday. This is a 1 year deal and they should treat it as such unless they actually think they may give him a 6-10 year deal for 30M+ a year after this year. In which case they should've just done that now. That's why he's going to leave, not because of the Twins pitching.

And FYI: Winder didn't pitch after 7/21 last year. Duran didn't pitch after 6/15. And Balazovic wasn't great down the stretch while pitching in AA, not AAA. Feels like some anger being directed in places that don't really call for such anger.

[Otto von Ballpark]

48 minutes ago, rv78 said:

Wouldn't it have been great to see Winder, Balazovic, Duran come up last year in September so there would be some inkling of what they have in those 3?

Duran was hurt and didn't pitch anywhere after June; Winder same, July.

Balazovic was healthy but considering he had never pitched at AA before June 2021 and he was limited to ~97 innings, it would have been fairly aggressive to place him in MLB in September.

[LastOnePicked]

You're not crazy - there's a lotta sting in being a MN Twins fan. But I'm a bit more optimistic at this point. I think I've talked myself into the idea that the plan is to run with some vet starters (Gray, Bundy, Cueto(?)), some second-year starters (Ober, Ryan) and a number of bullpen games with promising arms. There's a chance that plan works well enough to keep them at .500 near the trade deadline, when asking prices on trades might not be as steep as they are now. We'll see. Or, maybe a mega-deal with the A's gets announced within a week, so who knows.

I admit that the Correa signing still has me wearing rose-colored glasses. I expect to be back to my cranky and pessimistic self pretty soon.

[Dave The Dastardly]

Thoughts from a cynical Twins fan (hope I am wrong)

 

Like your title, however there is no other type of Twins fan.

[bean5302]

Spring Training has no bearing on regular season results, especially when it comes to early Spring Training and especially, especially pitching. The players the pitchers and batters are playing against are often inexperienced guys who won't even be on the 26 man roster and pitchers often don't even throw all their pitches. They're working on mechanics, location, feel and experimentation.

The Twins have tons of question marks and that makes them difficult to project, but I learned a long time ago "if, if, if" almost never goes a team's way. It's more like you get 1/3 or 2/3 of those things which work out and in order to be competitive, the Twins need some luck in that regard. Some other teams in the division also have a lot of question marks (Tigers, Royals), but the Tigers in particular, were a much better team than the Twins last year and they've gotten better. The Twins... have not really gotten better on paper. They're just not far worse than they were after signing Correa.

[TheLeviathan]

This thread has taught me that David Banuelos is going to shatter the big league record book with his inevitable season of hitting .500.

Pfft....catcher problems.

Jovani Moran striking out literally everyone he faces will be a close second.