farmerguychris

We just need a placeholder until Lewis is healthy enough to play. See if Gio can still play there, or Gordon or any 10-20 range FA SS. Use our resources for high end pitching as despite having numbers in the wings - they nearly all have health concerns.

Absolutely not interested in bringing him back. Time for someplace new for him. Rough numbers in San Diego, rough numbers here - would rather have Austidillo back and throwing pitches for us. There is nothing he can do for me to want him on our team - numbers show one of the worst relievers that past 2 years. Why would we even consider this?

Considering we had mostly a AAA team for a significant part of the season, I actually think as a group - we overperformed. IF all our starters had remained healthy (like Cleveland did for the most part), expert projection programs pegged us for what - 85 wins? To have the rotation, and the outfield we did for significant parts of the seasons, I really feel we won more games than we should have. Had we had the same opening day roster as we did for game 162 - I would expect a replacement level season. We exceeded that.

Easy fix. Win in the post season. If you win at least a series there, you'll buy at least another 3 years of fan support.

If that is all the former Twins that are in the playoffs this year - that really doesn't look good for our scouting department. There has to be more and I'm assuming these are the only ones included in the article.

Carlos is a great player - BUT, with our mid-level payroll - I'd rather pay out 17M to 2 different players that can have twice the impact as one at 35M.

He is a no brainer. Keep him for one more year while under team control, and then worry about the future of the hot corner the following year when hopefully our young guys are ready to burst down the door and need playing time.

At the beginning of the season, most models predicted we'd finish 3rd in our division - we finished the year with an on the field product that looked nothing like it was supposed to compared to the start of the year team. Does that mean our back-ups overachieved as we hit that prediction? I can't blame Rocco, he can only play the players he is given. Much of the team he had down the stretch were not who you want going into a pennant race, and that fault lies with the F.O. and is due to injuries.

I think pro sports in general are much more entertaining when there is parity. The NFL is a great example as every year teams spend close to a predetermined hard cap and any team can win any given year. It is not possible to buy championships in the NFL unless you convince players to play for less than their true value. I sincerely wish the MLB would have a hard cap. (and by necessity, also a hard floor) Until they do, every year there are certain teams we know will compete (Yankees) and certain teams that will only compete once a decade when they see if their prospects and rebuild worked out. For the long term future of the sport, teams like the Pirates and Rockies need to have fans that have a reason to believe that every opening day could be the first in a year they possibly could win it all. Very few NFL teams start a year telling their fans they don't have a shot to make the playoffs - yet we have discussions about what MLB teams are even trying. Long term, will teams that give their fans no reason to support them continue having fans? Will this eventually lead to only a handful of teams going forward and only in big markets? I fear it could.

I like Max as a player for us - he's not perfect and I think he'll have better luck next year at the plate as teams adjust to not putting their entire set of fielders on the right side. But - he is redundant by being a left handed outfielder. Trade him if we can get a decent middle of the rotation arm, or for a great reliever if we can for him. We have other younger, cheaper talent that can do what he can for us and we need pitching......again.

Hmmmm - What kind of stadium do we need?

I think Jeffers has the most to prove that he belongs, and unfortunately the Twins appear to have put all their catching eggs in his basket.

I know our existing training staff is only 2 years in - but how about we re-evaluate them. No manager or F.O. could have won this year with the amount of players on the IL that never made it back, or took way longer than expected to return after injuries.

I think we need to look into why so many injuries. Seems that for multiple years now, we are among the teams that have starters miss the most games in the A.L. Why? Do we have a inadequate training staff compared to other teams? Are we trying to save money by not having a very good training staff? Are we not using the best available/modern methods compared to other teams? This year it seems we not only were poor at preventing injuries, but also poor at getting the players back quickly once they were injured. (why does a 6 week injury turn into a 3+ month recovery?) If this were a video game - we appear to have hired a trainer with an F in preventative, and an F in recovery. We have the Mayo Clinic not too far away - maybe get a partnership with them to try and have our 2023 squad spend less time on the IL?

Is it in Japan that the balls are a little tacky out of the box? I like that idea here - levels the playing field. Pitchers shouldn't get penalized for following the rules, but they do in the MLB.

Your last sentence is the most critical. Time to hold nothing back.

Hi future should be here next year. He can't control injuries. To succeed, the F.O. needs to give him horses, especially in the Pen if they don't want starters to go thru a line up 3 times. No manager could have success this year with the pitching he was expected to compete with this summer.

Just gotta keep him healthy. WAY TOO MANY great prospects in Twins history have looked great until something happens..... So far looking like a great pick!

That is a pretty impressive injury list when you lay it out by position like that - I can't imagine how any team could compete with that type of time lost due to injury. So the big question is WHY? Are we selecting injury prone players? Is our training staff not very good at their jobs? This isn't anything new for us, should we look closer at this department?

Yes - the batting gloves thing is ridiculous. They were just fine when you didn't swing at that last pitch, must you really to readjust them?

I think we are pretty stuck with Jeffers and possibly Leon next year as we have nothing our system. The below list of 2023 FA Catchers doesn't excite me either: Yadier Molina C 40.1 R R STL $10,000,000 - Willson Contreras C 30.2 R R CHC $9,625,000 - Gary Sanchez C 29.8 R R MIN $9,000,000 - Roberto Perez C 33.7 R R PIT $5,000,000 - Martin Maldonado C 36.0 R R HOU $5,000,000 - Omar Narvaez C 30.5 L R MIL $5,000,000 - Christian Vazquez C 32.0 R R HOU $7,000,000 - Tucker Barnhart C 31.7 L R DET $7,750,000 - Austin Hedges C 30.0 R R CLE $4,000,000 - Jason Castro C 35.2 L R HOU $4,750,000 - Mike Zunino C 31.4 R R TB $7,000,000 $9,645,521 Curt Casali C 33.8 R R SEA $2,600,000 - Kevin Plawecki C 31.5 R R BOS $2,250,000 - Kurt Suzuki C 38.9 R R LAA $1,750,000 - Sandy Leon C 33.4 S R MIN $1,000,000 - Robinson Chirinos C 38.2 R R BAL $900,000 - Stephen Vogt C 37.8 L R OAK $850,000 - Austin Romine C 33.8 R R CIN $700,000

Perfectly said! Before the trade deadline it was simply unfair to expect Rocco to both limit how long starters go, while at the same time turning games over to an incompetent BP. Not sure why they refuse to invest in the Pen in the off season and year after year it is a weakness that we need to then trade prospects to get back to adequacy. I am curious how our pen ranked in salary compared to other AL teams trying before the trade deadline - I'm better pretty low.

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean its not the best thing for our team when it comes to limiting the amount of times opposing batters face the same pitcher. Now this does require having at least an average bullpen, which we didn't have for the first half of the year. I blame Bert going on about pitching 300 innings a year over the airwaves for 20 years. However - things improve and facts don't lie. Will this come full circle and someday pitchers will go complete games more often than not in the future? I highly doubt it as pitch speeds increase and pitchers arms are pushed further and further for higher speeds. If anything, I think pitchers will go less and less innings in the future. Its not Rocco, its that hitters simply do better they more they see a pitcher on the same day today, and they always have.

Maybe it wasn't Falve who helped make Cleveland a pitching destination - could it have been the coaches who worked with the pitchers on a daily basis who made them look so good? Not saying picking the right players isn't important - it obviously is - but its the coaches who actually develop them into something, not the F.O. Do we have the right trainers (to keep healthy) and the right minor league pitching instructors to turn these picks into front line starters for us compared to Cleveland in the past?

I think that in today's MLB, especially teams that value science and analytics - developing a starter to consistently go 6 innings is the goal. Many people who listened to Bert go on about throwing 170 pitches in a game won't like the new style of what is expected of a starter - but just because one does not like it does not make it factual.