S.

I think a 1 year deal is still certainly a possibility but that hinges on our other offseason moves and how big of a question mark Sano is.

Good to know you already know their offseason plans, as well as their plans for the entirety of next season. Is this reaction entirely based on a bad team selling when they're well under .500 at the deadline, or do you have any sort of evidence to back up your claims?

Obviously it'll never happen, but it'd be really interesting to know what sort of numbers we offered him and what sort of numbers his agent wanted. I'd be curious to know if he was trying to get paid like his second half numbers are the norm. At the end of the day though, not signing him to an extension was the right choice both then and now.

I know it is wishful thinking, but with all this turnover, now would be a nice time to start considering new managers as well. I can dream at least.

An infielder that is worse than Dozier, Dodgers #19 prospect, and an unranked guy. Very odd trade. I assume the Dodgers were the ones who wanted us to take Forsythe since they're close to the luxury tax.

I'll be damned. My fault, definitely thought I was in the game thread. Feel free to move these posts, Chief.

Yeah, but he was up warming up well before they needed the K in that spot. I mean, i understand there is no one else in our pen to trust really but it seems weird to have him warming up in the 5th to me regardless. Low on my list of issues with this team though, I'd say.

Hey, what a surprise, Ryan Pressly is warming up in the pen.

Why not save him for the 9th in the hope that we might have the lead? And if we don't then he can still pitch the 9th.

Are you ****ing kidding me? Why are we using Rodney in the 5th inning down 4-1?

Or how about using Magill?

They need a team meeting for the team to meet the new manager.

Blanking on the name, but one Cubs player left with cramps, which likely was a result of dehydration from the heat.

Most of them weren't good though. Developing players like Tyler Duffy isn't some impressive feat.

It's also hard to include a pitcher with 41 IP and I'm hesitant to call Gibson a late bloomer until we see if he can maintain this sort of performance over a couple seasons and not just 75 IP. Let's not forget he had an ERA over 5 and a WHIP over 1.5 the previous two seasons. And while I definitely think he's turned a corner, he wouldn't be the first pitcher to have a good season and then regress back to his average. And that's not to say Gibson hasn't had other stretches where he looked good too, but he's going to need to maintain his success a bit longer before I'd start considering him a real success story (and i'm certainly rooting for him and Romero and Berrios to all continue improving and having success).

He is certainly trying his damnedest to make that true.

The issue here is that even if the offense turns it around, our defense and pitching are still a dumpster fire and you can't make a playoff push without real good pitching. I think the sad truth of the matter is we're either looking at continuing our stretch of being a bad team or we're likely going to need to do a full rebuild. If Buxton and Sano aren't going to be the pillars of our team that we build around, then we're going to need to trade them. And probably anyone not named Berrios who is worth anything at the trade deadline or in the offseason. You can't build a championship team around guys who can't stay healthy and can't consistently produce. And as much as it pains me, Sano and Buxton haven't done either. Its been quite clear that we lack the ability to develop any significant amount of quality pitching, we're not going to be signing Clayton Kershaw in the offseason, and signing middling FAs isn't working. So, I don't really see any way we're going to be getting those good pitchers necessary for a playoff push without selling big time. Also, Molitor needs to be gone and should've been gone long ago.

C'mon now. Regardless of what you believe happened, the fact is none of us have anything more than a he said, she said situation and we don't have the slightest clue whats going through Sano's mind in relation to all of this. Its disingenuous to pretend that either Sano or the MLB isn't taking it seriously when you have no basis for that claim.

If he pitches poorly, the end result is the exact same regardless of if there is an opt out or not. The opt out really only comes into play if he pitches well for 2 years. Maybe I'm misunderstanding Chief, but i think a big part of the issue is that we weren't even willing to offer it.

Honest question, who else do the Twins still have access to that has the same ceiling as Darvish? I don't think anyone is treating him like a bona fide ace (or I certainly don't see him that way), but he was the closest to an ace that we're ever likely to sign in free agency. There is no way we're signing someone like Kershaw in FA and we'd have to gut our entire farm system to trade for someone who is already an established, bona fide ace. And we clearly haven't been doing a very good job of developing our own bona fide aces. The presumption with the saved money is based off of history. The Twins are not taking the money saved from the last decade of not signing big FAs so they can throw 300 million at Kershaw next year. They're not stockpiling that money for future signings. They are putting that money back in their pocket and then its gone. There isn't some saved up reserve from all our unimpressive offseason or anything like that. I mean, sure, they can take some of the money they "saved" by not signing Darvish and go sign Cobb or whoever this offseason but I don't consider that a serious win or something that is going to give us a great chance in a wild card game or a playoff series against a real contender. Edit: I should add, of course not signing a big free agent gives you more flexibility with money down the line, but what big name pitchers are we really going to be in the running for next offseason? David Price? No thanks. Every year we delay going for it, we lose time on our current young, reasonably priced, offensive core. The longer we delay, the more expensive that young core gets. And then some of them are going to go elsewhere and some of them are going to age and decline and at some point if you want to really contend you have to stop worrying about, "well, what about the impact that might have on our payroll in 5 years?" because your window of contention may be long gone by then.

And the rest of us would at least like the possibility of 2 years of a really good pitcher, but not signing him completely eliminates that possibility. And just like always, we aren't using that "saved" money on anything else worthwhile.

What do you really need to plan for? If he pitches great in the first season and starts off the second season well, you start thinking, "well, decent chance he's going to opt out after this season, so lets start planning our options for if he does." If he doesn't pitch great, he's likely still better than any pitcher we have besides Berrios or Santana. Or you can go with option 3 where the Pohlads pocket that ~20% of payroll because its not like we're going to use that extra money to sign Kershaw next offseason, and the FA pitchers outside of him for next season are not impressive.

This is what upsets me so much over the FO's vocal disdain for the opt out. No one opts out of their contract if they just put up some garbage seasons. They opt out of their contract if they pitched spectacularly and they think they can get even more money. Everyone wishes they could get a great pitcher on a short contract with none of the fall off on the tail end, but instead our FO is out there saying how they aren't interested in even offering the opt out. It's one thing if you're trading a bunch of prospects for a guy with an opt out, but in this case we had absolutely nothing to lose in offering it, unless you consider possibly having to shop for a pitcher again in 2 years as a loss.

Exactly what other high-caliber starting pitchers do you see available, because I don't see any. I don't know how Santana missing a big chunk of the season to keep him more well rested for a playoffs we probably won't reach is a good thing. None of this stuff is good. Nothing we have done in regards to our starting rotation this off season has been good. I'm not sure why you're basically writing a PR puff piece for the Twins when our starting rotation looks like one of the worst in the league even if we do add one of the available arms like Cobb.

Darvish may not be an ace, but he'd probably be as close as the Twins are ever going to sign in free agency. There is a 0% chance we're going to land Kershaw next year in free agency and then the next best potential options in 2018 are David Price and Gio Gonzalez and I certainly don't consider either of them aces either. Kershaw is also likely to make 1.5x as much as Darvish, so it isn't exactly an apples to apples comparison of "huge dollars". For the price of a true ace like that in FA, you're talking about paying as much as it'd cost to sign Darvish and some additional quality players. Beyond that, your FA options are limited. Real aces don't make it to free agency all the time and when they do, everyone wants them. And when it comes to a pure money bidding war on someone like Kershaw, we aren't going to win. Thats the unfortunate truth of the situation. If we want good pitching we're either going to have to sign high end, non-ace guys like Darvish or we're going to have to trade the farm, because we're certainly not doing a very good job of developing any ourselves.