Muppet

The Twins aren't the Yankees or Dodgers and, thus, will not be able to afford as much pitching, offense, and defense as they want. They have to make a plan and move the chips where they can to back the plan up. I'm sure poor hitting defensive studs are much cheaper than awesome hitting but poor defending players. I don't know if the plan will work, but as much as I wished they had more average hitters, I'm glad they are trying something new and sticking with it. The rotation looks to be one of the best I've ever seen. Perhaps they have no Nolan Ryan-style aces, but they have 5 or 6 number 2s. Even Ober, who looks to be the cast-off would have been the team ace in the Nolasco years. They could use better middle relievers and better hitters, but they very well might have the best rotation and all-around defense in the MLB.

And let's not forget those lovely Dodgers fans that put Giants fans in the hospital for supporting the wrong team.

$12 over 4 years? That's much less than they are paying Joey Gallo, who has even worse numbers.

He has been very good in the minors and mostly very good in the majors. In 2022 he almost only pitched against teams that were not very good, but excelled. So he has rocked AAA and rocked AAAA. A six man rotation is not unprecedented. And... like everyone says... someone will surely be injured nearly out of the gate. So, let's not sweat it. Put him on as the sixth.

Last year was one of his worst. He’s likely to be at least slightly better this year. The end of the shift will get the credit even if it has nothing to do with it.

I look forward to Emilio Pagan being MLB's most improved player in 2023.

The ghost runner sucks. I hate it. It makes for completely worthlessly disappointing finishes to otherwise close exciting games. Might as well end in a coin toss. Why is the position player pitching occasionally a problem that needs fixing? Who cares? To make baseball more watchable or relevant in the modern era, instead of focusing on ridiculous fixes to problems that don't really exist they could instead focus on making it possible for people who aren't wealthy to watch baseball games on TV (or even in person at the stadium). We are slowly degenerating to a future where baseball is just a series of random number generated outcomes constantly updated and augmented by the averages and standard deviations of fictitious player-avatars whose profiles are also randomly generated. What's even more pathetic is that I'll still watch and keep track of my bot-baseball team every day and get pissed when they lose.

If the lineup was full of decent hitters, having someone who strikes out a lot but hits 35 HR would be OK. As the lineup looks today, Gallo will hit 35 HR and have 35 RBIs. He will be involved in more 1,2,3 innings than anything else.

So he becomes a better pitcher by pitching in the AL's AAAA league? I'd say that just hides his "weakness" rather than fixes it. By that token, all of the Twins are probably not as good as they appear on paper (which might be true).

Totally true. We expect all prospects to turn into Aaron Judge. We should be happy if they all play as well and consistently as Polanco. Probably only half will… and those that do will be dismissed as failures …. Like the truly most underrated player on the Twins — Nick Gordon.

With an outfield this solid, they'll only lose every game 1-2 instead of 1-3. Please bring in someone who can hit.

They upgraded at catcher. CC is a very good, but overrated SS. That said, I'm glad they got him. Until Miranda puts in a full successful season at 3B he is just potential. His downslide at the end of last season is problematic. I don't count my rookies until they've hatched. That said, they've offensively downgraded at every position. They can still win if they have a miraculous ability to keep players off the IL, if the pitching is as good as advertised, and if the young guys improve. They've been to the playoffs before with a similar looking bunch of miscreants. I think they are a worse team than last year, but I don't care. They can still win. There is no better time to be optimistic and excited than before they've thrown their first pitch. For me winning is fun, but it isn't everything. I'll happily watch them if even if they have a 62 win season (though I'd prefer a 100 win season).

Ober may have missed time to injuries last year, but when he did play he was one of the most dominant on the team. Only Sonny Gray had a lower ERA but Ober had a better whip than any of the starters and fewer HR/9 than any of the starters. The flip side was that he almost only played against AL Central teams who obviously weren't the best in the league. When the Twins did lose with Ober pitching they lost 1-8; 0-5; 3-4; 2-5; and 2-3. Clayton Kershaw would have lost most of those games. ALSO, the bullpen lost 3 of those 5 games Ober pitched in. This tells me 3 things. 1. Ober belongs in the rotation until he gives the Twins a reason to be demoted, and 2. The Twins need offence more than they need starting pitching, and 3. The bullpen needs to be better than last year.

As someone who is mostly only able to "watch" baseball on a MLB game-day computer simulation where blue dots are hits and red dots are strikes, one of the things I'll never get to see is the quality of the pitcher. Perez' downslide looks the same as Dobnak's 'rising star' innings. They are both just red and blue dots. Seeing actual pitchers pitch is maybe the thing that makes teams decide that their faltering starter haws 2.89 ERA potential.

Assuming Celestino and Matt Wallner start the year in St. Paul, and that Kirilloff gets a few starts in RF, the Twins will have more outfield arms than bullpen arms. Seems smart. If your tired mediocre bullpen that pitches more than 4 innings per game starts to falter, your stacked outfield can surely get those extra outs.