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As good of a hitting catcher as we could hope to get. Defensive numbers look decent too. If his offensive numbers continue, he’d be one of the twins’ best hitters (unless everyone else picks it up a bit…. Which, hopefully they will).

Looking at Manaea's numbers. Looks like Twins dodged a bullet there. Same as last year when they didn't trade for him at the deadline.

I could care less about the disparity between rich teams and not-so-rich teams. I could probably be persuaded to care but it is not my main annoyance with baseball. The bigger problem to me is almost completely inaccessible to common people like myself. As a human of the modern era, I don't subscribe to any cable TV channel, so therefore, I am not allowed to watch any baseball games unless I hike up to a bar, or go spend a few hundred dollars on a couple of seats and a few beers at Target Field. My kids will never (or very rarely) see the Twins on TV. They don't even get the thrill of tuning into any random game on TV to watch random teams that happen to be on TV play other random teams, thus getting a glimpse at superstars from distant lands. Now baseball is essentially identical to Dungeons and Dragons. My computer shows me that Byron Buxton is up. He has a charisma of 8, a constitution of 1, speed of 10, intelligence of 8. The pitcher throws the ball. Roll the 20 sided die. 1-5 strike. 6-10 ball, 11-15 out, 16-20 in play no out. Oh good. I rolled a 17. Roll the 20 sided die again. 1-4 single. 5-10 double, etc.... They could literally have a computer simulation play all the games for me and I wouldn't even be able to tell the difference. If it weren't for the nerds, baseball would soon go the way of polo.

Not sure how they calculate those comparisons, but today you can win a batting title with a .315 average. Throughout most of baseball, that was a really good, but not great, hitter.

The twins should trade him. They don’t deserve him. Year after year we complain that he isn’t good enough. He’s the best hitter on the team and gets better every year. Won a batting title. Not good enough. Just trade him for 2 years of an average hitter with average defense. Or a pitcher who will have an era of .425 before he blows out his shoulder. Arraez will peak in 6 years when he’s on the dodgers and reliably hits 20+ hrs per year. Arraez might be the only twin that ends up in the HOF.

I'd trade him in a second if it seemed very likely that Buxton and Larnach were consistently playing in Center and Left. Without Buxton it is a lot more important to have those solid defensive corner outfielders. Especially if Celestino is getting time in CF.

Call me a cynic, but ... do we really need starting pitching? I'd rather have Arreaz. First show me that the new trainer isn't going to magically make pitchers break their arms within their first five games as a Twin. For a lot of the season, when the pitchers were great, the offence wouldn't score. Twins have some decent starters already, but they need to give them run support. And innings.

Ok... This is an answer to a question that maybe nobody asked, but it does make sense for the Twins to pour in a bunch of money on Correa (even if he is a tad overrated... just my opinion). Currently the franchise face is Buxton, who may or may not ever play more than a few dozen games per year. The old remaining 'franchise' squad of Polanco, Kepler, and Sano obviously wasn't enough to draw any interest among people who are just casual baseball fans. Correa would give us several years of another Mauer or Morneau caliber player ... which is currently sorely lacking.

We have a new trainer. With almost everyone constantly spending time on the IL in 2022, this is perhaps the most significant move they could have made in the offseason. They would have been a much different team if they had half of the injury time they had last year. Maybe not Dodgers good, but possibly Phillies good. .... OK maybe Phillies good is a bit of a stretch... .but they would have been good enough to win the AL Central... probably.

Looks like Larnach had a cannon and could be a really solid defensive LF. He might also end up a bit of an offensive liability too. It would be great to have two solid defending corner outfielders (especially if Buxton ever ends up actually playing CF), but it would be a shame if both (or all three) outfielders are unable to hit a combined .225.

I half buy into this strategy. Add to that a new competent training staff, they cut injuries down at least in half, and relief pitchers that aren't overworked and it might be something. The problem is, I'm not sure that this team with everyone playing at their maximum potential and everything going as planned is still a WS caliber team... but it will be much more fun to watch.

Looking deeper at his splits, he performs best when there is nearly nothing on the line. When the game isn't close, or when there are one or fewer people on base. He can't bat first or second, because then everyone is looking for him to provide that spark. If he bats third or forth, that's his sweet spot because he can hit in the first inning when almost nothing is on the line. All good for Max. Bad for the Twins.

He looks like he has good numbers against lefties. So add him to the Kyles and Miranda and the Twins will have a unique ability to slaughter 25% of the pitchers out there.

I guess the best case scenario is that we sign him for tons of money, he has 4-5 great years here, then leaves for the Yankees and starts to go south... We get his best years, then the Yankees get stuck with the ginormous salary of an overpaid has-been.

Yeah, falling off the cliff isn't inevitable. I'm just worried that if he keeps it up, he'll just jettison the Twins for a better deal in 2-3 years. If he DOES start to drop off, we're stuck with him. Don't get me wrong. He's a great player and I hope he stays with the Twins... but I do think he's a tad overrated, but still a great player.

How does a 10 year deal with a no trade clause and multiple opt-outs make any sense for the Twins. If Correa does really well, every few years he can go back and demand more money elsewhere. If he lays an egg and starts hitting in the low .200s, we are bound to pay him 30+ million per year. He is already only a borderline great player. He could easily go either way.

This would put them in danger of losing every 5th game 1-0.

One problem is that both Kyles play at least as much against righties as lefties. New Kyle had more than twice as many at bats against righties. If he ends up playing most days,.... bad news. I'd prefer Urshela's glove and bat next door at third. But... this is the modern era and we need to have almost completely new teams every year... so it goes.

Holy cow. If you look at Stephen Strasburg's stats, it looks like the Nats have paid him more than $100m to pitch 30 innings over the past 3 years. That's the kind of luck the Twins would have if they spent everything on an ace. I like (in theory) the strategy of having pitchers pitch fewer innings. It would seem that more less-than-ace pitchers might perform better if not going the couple of extra innings after they wear down. But that strategy clearly isn't working when they are replaced by 1 inning relievers maxing out at 6-7 pitchers throwing every night. I'd like to see what happens when 3 above average pitchers can complete a game.

I hope they look first for a great pitching coach and a trainer. Otherwise they'll spend a ton of money for a guy that gets injured after 6 starts and all the other pitchers will be overworked with sub-par stuff.

I'd like to see them be able to get through a game without using more than 4 pitchers. Maybe sometimes the 'starter' goes 3 innings, maybe sometimes he goes 7 innings. But when they go 3-4 innings, the following pitchers need to be able to get 6+ outs as well. It is somewhat maddening to see them pull a pitcher who is performing well after 5 only to have 5 or 6 more pitchers finish up the game leaving them depleted for the coming few games. I like that they are experimenting and doing new things with pitching, knowing that they won't ever be able (or willing) to afford top tier pitching, but when the plan isn't working they need to adapt. This whole season has been a demonstration of failing to adapt to a plan that isn't working.

Cave will be an All Star next year.

Exactly. I think the front office should hire me right away. I have more tricks like this up my sleeve.

With an OPS of .644, Jake Cave is more than half as good as Judge (1.111), but is much much cheaper than half of Judge's salary. If we got two Jake Caves then their combined OPS would be 1.288. What a deal! Think of the money they'll save!

Ok. I've had plenty of time to go through the five stages of grief. Now that I'm out at the other end, I'm going to just say it. All things considered, this was a pretty good season. The Twins were a good team. Not a great team and not a terrible team. Sure they didn't win the division or a wild card spot, but the only reason anyone expected them to win in the first place was because the Guardians and White Sox were also not very good teams. We had times where the bullpen was great before it collapsed from overuse and regression to the mean. There were times when the starting pitching was better than expected before everyone got injured one by one. We had Ryan flashing elite stuff here and there. We had interesting experimentation with how to manipulate a pitching staff to compete with better pitching teams elsewhere by limiting starters (though this obviously didn't work as there were no innings-eaters to back them up and they ended up blowing through bullpen pieces... and keeping with the plan well past its utility... but... oh well... we got to see exactly how and why the plan imploded). Arraez broke out. Correa was fun to watch. Buxton had what most could consider a career year with just several dozen at bats. We got to see the potential in AK, Trevor Larnach, Miranda, and others. And I think they even beat the Yankees once or twice (though I could be misremembering). No the Twins didn't make the playoffs. And no... they weren't a great team. I'm not sure they would have made the playoffs with Polonco, Buxton, Kepler, et al in the lineup every day either. Baseball is fun. It has to be fun when the team sucks too. Otherwise you'll be disappointed almost every year no matter what team you're rooting for. I blame everyone's expectations. They lost. But the season is over. Let's move on.