Auto7

This team still needs a ton of work on the pitching front to be considered legitimately competitive. That said, any time you can add a guy who had a 7.2 WAR season the year before, that's not a bad thing. Great job to get this done and hope they keep going.

The above post is now slightly obsolete after recent events. Most of my points still stand

Hey everybody. I rarely post here, but I've been stewing lately. Anyone who may remember me from the old mlb.com Twins forums may remember my propensity to post long text walls. ... Here comes one. As of now, the Twins offseason gets an F. If they emerge out of it with Montas, Manaea, and Story, to go along with Gray, this offseason will have become a C. The twins will have entered with gigantic holes in the rotation, at short, and in the bullpen and exited with holes at Third, Catcher (Jeffers is at best a question mark) and the bullpen which mystifyingly has been untouched. As of now, in my estimation the Twins are WORSE now than they were the day after the season ended. "We intend to compete" indeed. Frankly, I think we're starting to reach a major crossroads with Falvey and Lavine. So far since coming here, they've shown themselves to have an approach to roster construction that I think best could be described as pointlessly conservative. Their plan nearly every offseason that they've been here has been to wait out the free agent market and make "bargain" signings late. Signing players who project to be good, to be certain, but are not real game changers to short term deals in the hope that they continue to have good seasons. The main problem with that is two fold. 1. You're going to get more 2018's than 2019's doing that, and 2. you have to rebuild a substantial portion of your roster every year. For a front office that preaches sustainability, that doesn't seem to be it. Add to that, is they appear to dillydally around on every single thing. You hear that they were "in on, calling about, could maybe be interested " guys. I want them to be ASSERTIVE. Have a plan in the offseason, identify 2-3 guys that they really want, for their price point, and get the thing done. I get it takes two to tango, and that it may take more in the way of prospects, or money, or both, to acquire a guy that you want. But they HAVE to flip to doing that. And I am not saying the Twins should be a luxury tax team every year (Though i do think the least the pohlads could do is hit it for a couple years.. I know that's wishful thinking). I believe the Twins could easily compete for a world championship (the only one that matters, with the AL pennant being a close second) with a payroll not much in excess of 150 million. But they HAVE to make moves that are aggressive. To do that, they need to do things that will make them (and a certain sect of the Twins Fanbase) uncomfortable. But I think it's for the greater good. 1. They must commit to re-evaluating how they value prospects and the role of prospects in the organization. Prospects serve 2 purposes in 3 ways. They can either improve your team via coming up and contributing, or by being traded for proven players who will contribute. The other purpose is to provide depth over the course of the year. (Think your callup/filler type guys. Spot starters and what not). But the Brass at 1 Twins way NEEDS to start considering that not trading top prospects for proven big league talent is more of a risk than trading them. Every single prospect is a gamble. We have been hearing about prospects for years. And while plenty have become contributors on this team, there are some stark realities that we need to just deal with. The Twins have not developed a true number one starting pitcher since Liriano. And he got hurt. They have not developed a true long term everyday quality 3B since Koskie. Sano was not great there and moved to 1B. They haven't developed a solid everyday long term SS since Guzman. And with the latest reports on Lewis and Martin both potentially not being SS long term and Gordon definitely not panning out there, that appears to be still the case. And out of the last Big prospect rush the Twins had, (The group starting with Sano/Buxton) every single player in that core has had some sort of issues. Sano never has consistently gotten it together, though when he's on he is a monster. Buxton took FOREVER to figure out the big leagues, and then has never once been consistently healthy. Kepler is inconsistent, Garver was inconsistent before he left. Same with Rosario. And while Berrios was a solid 2-3 guy, he never was a true ace. I wasn't much of a fan of him to be honest. So being totally honest with ourselves. Is building exclusively through the farm with the exception of one or two prospect trades the way? Or is there a more even mixture of both that is healthy. You develop guys, but move others, acquiring talent. I get that the twins have apparently a bumper crop of starters coming up... One, i'll believe it when I see it given our history. And Two, if they ARE that good, surely we can part with 1-3 of them. 2. They must try to get their offseason shopping done by Christmas. You want the heavy lifting done early in the offseason, so you can go bargain hunting late, later. This offseason was a weird one with the looming lockout, but the Twins did NOTHING prior to that (Dylan Bundy is the kind of signing that easily could have waited until this week) that would have improved the team in any tangible way. Had they come in high on a guy like Kikuchi, or a Ray or someone prior, then traded for Gray, then added a shortstop via trade prior to the lockout coming in, then the lockout ends, and you sign a few relievers ,and let it ride with Garver and Donaldson still here. The way they managed things, they basically pussyfooted around while the rest of the league signed the best players. To me it felt like they were either caught totally by surprise at the run on players prior to the lockout, or they just thought the lockout wouldn't last long and thought they could do their typical january bargain shopping. When the lockout ran long, they realized "oh crap" .. . and came out of the lockout with essentially "well we'll try but it's going to be really hard, you guys."... So long story short. Get it done quick and kick your feet up. 3. Do not be afraid to give extra years. Listen, as much as people go "well the Pohlads are cheap, and they are filthy rich and they can afford this".. they choose to run their business for a profit. That's what most businesses are for. If I had their money and owned the team, I wouldn't make that decision but that doesn't make their decision bad. HOWEVER, what can't happen is missing out on guys because you are stuck on this idea of 1-2 year deals. If a guy wants 3 and you're at 2, if you REALLY like the guy, just go deal with the 3rd year. and if it doesn't work, you adapt from there. You can't do that for everybody, and while the Twins can afford to spend on free agents, they can't miss on too many on long term deals. But being too risk averse is not good either. Sometimes you'll just have to say "Okay we'll give this guy 5 years, and in 3-4 if he's not doing well, we'll cross that bridge in 3-4." It's not like we didn't go there with Mauer at times. You just can't have 4-5 big contracts like that. but you can swing for the fence on 1-2. This is really not a major thing. But The Twins have ZERO idea how they come off. Every single team signs minor league deals with invites to spring training. EVERY single team signs AAA-AA roster fillers who have some MLB time with really bad stats. It happens all the time. And at best those moves are met by completely being missed. However Twins fans are PARTICULARLY hostile towards these. Why? Because that's all you're doing. It is not in any way inspiring to watch a guy like Chi Chi Gonzalez sign a MiLB deal on the same day that established names like Greinke, duffy, etc are signing. Especially when the Twins have made exactly one move that improves the roster, and one big splashy move that is only acceptable on the condition that they make more big splashy moves. And the twins do this year after year. They make these signings while the good free agents either sit there or get scooped up by others. And then you hear from reporters "Twins called".. or even more baffling on some "Twins never made a call"... Like the Twins apparently did not check in on Archie Bradley, but could not wait to sign Gonzalez. They need to understand they have a reputation of being "Cheap" (Which in my opinion is not really earned). And that does not help. So what's the point of this text wall? Well, basically I'm as of now convinced that Falvey and Lavine will NOT be the duo that brings a title to Minnesota, but I also think that that may not happen without Pohlad selling. Not because Pohlad is cheap, it's because he really doesn't care that much. There is an organizational attitude, that existed through the 00's, it exists now. And that attitude is that their definition of "compete" and mine are totally divergent. The Division title is a championship. That is the view. Here's the reality. The division title is not a championship. You got a ticket into the raffle. You didn't win the raffle yet... I'd also lean towards saying Baldelli is not the answer. The team takes on the personality of its manager. Rocco has none. I'm also not a fan of his in game management. I get the stats say to get to the pen earlier, but listen. when you have our pen, and you've tried this 4 times in a week. And all 4 times the pen immediately gives up the lead... You have to make an adjustment. So either he isn't empowered by the front office (in the name of "collaboration") to make decisions about the usage of players in game, OR he is too inflexible and rigid to change a strategy that isn't working. Either way it doesn't bode well for my estimation of him. Anyways, tl'dr, "we're doing it wrong"