Johnny Ringo

This can be a short convo. Low risk, likely low reward. If anyone wants to know how Tampa miraculously competes every year; start with the Chris Archer case study.

Look at the bright side. If someone in the FO has a couple too many, they now have a ride option home for the few months. Too soon?

I am a student of human nature. Does that count?

We can't seem to beat the Yankees on the field but we just beat them like a rented mule here. Almost surely Correa will opt out next year but who cares? This game is year to year as we all know. This is an audacious and great move by Falvine. I said in an early post, we should wait to judge the FO once the dust had settled. I think the dust is still swirling a bit

I wish Rortvedt all good luck but he reminds me of a girl we never paid much attention to until she started dating a friend of ours. Now he is filled with mystical qualities and intrigue. Godoy seems likes Sanchez buyer's remorse. Sanchez is a "catcher" like I am "golfer". If he is flippable, I would flip. The sensical thing, of course, is to put Kirilloff at first (a big upgrade over Sano defensively) and put Sano at DH (a big upgrade over Sanchez). Pairing Sanchez with a young pitching staff is like pairing Charlie Sheen with your car keys.

The Josh Donaldson bashing is maddening. He was/is EXACTLY the player the FO thought they were getting. Twins fans always berate players over money. Half of the posts on TD historically have been about the alleged criminality of Joe Mauer. (Don't let facts destroy a good narrative; Joe was underpaid for his career given his WAR). I am sure all of them, given the opportunity, would turn down the money or give it to charity. Was Donaldson a little prickly? Yes. Well, I got news for all of you sitting around the campfire. A lot of great players are great players because something burns within them and they can't or don't choose to subjugate that.

Even if you sign Story, the Yankees trade is torturously bad. You have gotten worse at both positions and all you have done is save money. I guess the best thing you can resolve is to wait under the dust settles and view the remodeling effort in its totality.

It feels like two guys are in the cockpit and they keep wrestling the controls away from one another. If I could say only one thing to Falvey it would be "with 12 team playoffs and residing in the worst division in baseball, there is no reason not to try to compete in 2022."

This is a disappointing trade. Not awful in isolation, but discouraging for what it portends. The only reason to do this versus signing Simmons or Iglesias is to save money. They all are a bit different but they are, mas o menos, the same player. The signing of Gray does nothing to change my POV. I am not an ownership basher. I think the Pohlads are perfectly fine owners. They will not dip into their pocket to fund the team like the Mets' Cohen, but neither do they live off the league feedbag like the Orioles or Guardians. But with the expanded playoffs and residing in the worst division in baseball, to spend just a bit more than comfort seems to be what an owner as a fan would do. All the quality free agent SP are gone. That leaves only trades. I would rather have Garver and a few less dollars when I went shopping. As an aside- why do people bash Donaldson on this site? He is exactly the player the Twins expected when they signed him.

"Shortstop" prospects are often not really shortstops. Youth baseball favors putting toolsy players there who are simply the best athlete on the team. That skillset often doesn't translate into the majors. I think that is clearly the case with Gordon and I like Nick. His attitude seems to be of All-Star caliber if his game is not. With Lewis and the others, we simply do not know their real viability at the position. COVID and injuries have certainly obscured any conclusions. The Twins' problem at shortstop is just a part though of the club's poor drafting and development challenges more broadly. For instance, our track record of producing home-grown pitchers is just flatly bad. The current crop is promising, but on that too, we shall see.

On a $150mm contract playing in MN costs a FA $7.5 mm versus Florida, Seattle or Texas. That is 150 times a 10% marginal tax rate divided by half the games. That assumes marginal tax rates are steady throughout the contract which may be a gutsy call. The DFL wants them higher. It is a freckle more expensive tax-wise in NY versus MN. The FA can also earn substantial endorsement monies on a state income free basis which can be worth a great deal more. It ain't, as they say, nothing. Having lived in both, NY does not have sameish weather to Minnesota. Like many Midwestern held beliefs about New York, that is simply not true.

If one wanted to view this question dispassionately and not through the lens of fandom, they would conclude that Minnesota is a bottom 10, perhaps even a bottom 5 destination for free agents. Bad weather, bad taxes, a track record of dealing players when they approach market rates and 30 years of playoff irrelevancy are all negatives individually and collectively they cast an ominous repellent. Minnesota can only compete where they flatly outspend the field (Donaldson, Cruz). That's why judging the front office is so difficult. In team construction, they can't think in terms of who they want but who they can get. Did they inherit this problem? Yes. Did they perpetuate it. Yes. So the analysis of that conundrum and its attribution really is central in evaluating Falvey and Levine.

I love the Twins, but the FO doesn't love us back much. Does all of this noodling feel a little like desperation? The Pohlads, for all the grief they get (some deserved, some not) were good to their people during COVID. It feels like they are in the mode to get some of their money back. I know many will chuckle or spit-up at that statement. There is nothing to indicate they will open their wallet for Story. A slew of really good shortstops signed, by modern standards, at reasonable prices prior to the lock-out. You didn't hear a peep that the Twins were in the hunt for any of them. The Astros don't seem particularly budget conscious. I'm sure Odo is available at a price, but it will be one undoubtedly rich in prospect terms.

Golly. You would have him for 1 year (2023) after his TJ recovery before he becomes a free agent. With the Berrios episode, the Twins have demonstrated their lack of appetite for market-based SP contracts. So what are you going to give up for that one questionable year? Now for the bad news; the Tampa Bay FO has proven to be far better than ours. That is not really even an opinion. That is pretty close to a closed-case fact. They have done way more with way less. So almost by definition, if you could strike a deal with them; you have paid too much. As long as I am taking the punch bowl away, there is a better chance that Aaron Rodgers signs with the Twins than Zack Greinke. He's a gazillionaire. Do you really think his coda will be giving free tips to eager youngsters while smiling his way through a 65 win season in freezing weather? The Hallmark Channel called. The script has been rejected. Way too syrupy. It tested poorly even with the ladies in the nursing home.

I was lucky to be around Torii a couple of times. A nicer man, you will not find.

Torii has little or no shot to stay on the ballot but he has only a marginally lower career WAR (50.7 vs 55.3) than David Ortiz. Chew on that folks.

As the great Chris Rock said, " You can do it but it doesn't make it a good {redacted} idea." Polanco and Arraez would be a nightmarish defensive middle infield. Re-sign Simmons (or his equivalent) and rotate the young guys through short to see what you have. I don't think the Twins will advertise their 2022 season as " Come see try-outs for 2023!!!" but that's clearly what it is going to be.

Golly no. You have him for two more years and catchers age like fruit in the sun. Incrementally, you would be tying him down for age 33 and beyond. With resources seemingly so precious for this club, that seems ill-advised, especially given our abundance (Sano, Rooker, Arraez) of no-defense bats.

Seth, I realize the Twins don't employ him. The post was totally tongue-in-cheek. The Twins now seem like that old bar sign that never changes, "Free beer tomorrow".

If Do starts to win, the Twins will try to trade him for some high school kids with promising writing skills.

I often think that the Twins don't deserve their fans. By passing on every viable FA pitcher (most of them signing for reasonable money in the current context) and a bountiful SS free agent class, the Twins can say what they like, but 2022 is a lost year. The Berrios trade was a harbinger in retrospect. He wanted Cole money, blah, blah. The reasonable question that John Bonnes posed a few weeks ago, "would you rather have the prospects and $20 million a year to spend?" seemed apt at the time. Now, you just have the the prospects. There is no one left to sign if you were so inclined. The store is closed; move on. There is no sense in putting Polanco back at short. I thought they might want to grab Galvis but he voted with his feet. Resign Simmons or someone of that ilk cheaply and rotate Lewis through to see what you have (I suspect not much as far as shortstop viability) and pray for a copious amount of rain. I am not much of a hockey fan but the Wild had a bold and audacious plan in re-tooling the team and its already working. The Twins seem adrift, content to sell over-priced hot dogs and warm beer. On a brighter note, its only a few weeks until Bailey Ober and catchers report for spring training.

When did it become a given that Ryan and Ober are starting rotation fixtures? They pitched a few dozen innings of encouraging ball in meaningless games last year. That's all that we know. Recall that Dobnak was a flash in the pan such that it launched him into an ill-fated playoff start in Yankee Stadium. He has basically been a cautionary tale every since. If it were not for his inexplicable contract he would be on to his next career. The Twins are once again, in the Bundy signing, as the late, great Jim Steinman said (through Meat Loaf): " looking for a ruby in a mountain of rocks/but there ain't no Coup de Ville hiding at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box"

Dylan Bundy. Wasn't that the supergroup Bob envisioned before Ted became troubled?

You forgot the third task; design a stylish surrender flag. Maybe two; home and away.

Didn't the Berrios trade and subsequent signing erase any ambiguity on this point? Buxton will be traded. " We really tried to sign Jose, uh sorry Byron, but we just couldn't pay those outrageous (market) numbers. We have to think about the club. " I sincerely wish Buck all the best. He's been hurt a lot of course, but he has the heart of a champion.