gunnarthor

I went with 75-79 wins. This is basically the same team as last year and that team was a bad team. The Twins are really hoping on health. If everything breaks right, you can see the Twins winning the central but a lot has to break right. I don't like this pitching staff although I do like some of our young and upcoming hitters. My guess is that we end up trading off some vets at the deadline. I do hope I'm wrong.

Generally, I'm ok with the DH position being passed around. The Twins have enough offensive players that they'll need to find at-bats for all of them.

He's 27. He is what he is but Twins fans should be happy with that. He's a cheap, seems durable, and under team control for another five years, I believe. That's good. Last year he managed to lead the team in innings, managed a 2 WAR season, and posted a 109 ERA+. We should hope he can do that again.

My guess, without looking at fangraphs, is that they have Lewis as a higher future value player but Steer as a safer prospect with a solid floor. Depending on what you want, how you measure risk, it can make sense to have Steer above Lewis. As for the Mahle trade, the guy has only thrown 16 mediocre innings for us so, so far, we got fleeced. Hopefully, he is healthy this year.

I figure there are a few thoughts/ideas from this. 1) Did the Twins mess with something in a negative way? I'm inclined to think they so b/c a few players have sorta whispered that the Twins want certain things done. But I suspect that most teams do this and the Twins failure to develop Kiriloff, Sabato, Wallner, Larnich, etc into capable middle of the order bats highlights the problem a bit more than it otherwise would have. My guess is that this doesn't have any huge long-term negative effect on Martin but hopefully, the FO starts looking at why some guys are succeeding and others aren't a bit better. 2) Can Martin be a good ML player? I think so. He's sorta my sleeper prospect. I like him more than others. He had a tough year but still walked nearly as much as he struck out. He has a good eye at the plate and I think that type of player is more and more important now, as pitchers have dominated the game for a bit. I also like that he, as DMan points out, put the blame on himself and realized what kind of hitter he is.

I was ok with Brandel as a back up.

I think in that mock he fell to the Vikes at 23. I have no idea if that's realistic. We have so few picks, I can't imagine we can trade up.

I saw a mock where the Vikes were going after Richardson, from Florida I believe. Not sure he's your QB of the future but if you like him, sitting him for a year behind Cousins isn't a horrible move.

Well, I hope you're right. Really, I do. I'd love to watch playoff baseball. But I think people are ignoring just how bad our staff has been the last few years. Partly, Target Field is a pitcher's park so it helps hide it and partly it's because pitching league wide has really become dominant over hitting the last few years. But this is a really bad staff, it's also old. And a lot of the guys they are counting on have injury and durability issues.

My guess is we will have some moments of surprisingly good performance so Nick can write a few "see, what did we tell you" and "Falvey and Levine prove the doubters wrong" but, over the course of the year, the pitching staff is a huge problem and we finish below .500 and Nick can write a few "how injuries derailed the Twins" stories. This was a bad team last year and, while I liked the Arraez trade, this team hasn't done nearly enough to improve. We have some depth on offense but our ceilings are generally limited. Our pitching staff could be a dumpster fire. A lot has to go right for us to finish above .500 and not all that much has to go wrong for us to crash and burn. And the "go right" category requires players playing well above their norm and/or realistic expectations AND be very healthy.

There's enough observable results to condemn this FO. Suggesting that people who do criticize them think like children probably says more about the writer then critics of the FO. This FO failed to augment the nucleus they inherited, they failed to extend the window of contention, and they've failed to produce a pitching pipeline. We're very likely looking at another listing season.

That's a very moving article, Seth. Thank you for sharing it. The Radcliff/Ryan years, to me, will always be a wonderful time in Twins history. Watching those guys work with all the limitations they had, turning the Twins into winners, was absolutely wonderful. And I remember a lot of your articles from sethspeaks back in the day. It was more than nice of Radcliff to give you honest answers. I suspect that he recognized someone else who just loved baseball. Prayers for his family as well.

Ouch. I'm not quite that bad but I hung onto square, roku, and fiverr.

We haven't done much, investment wise, this last year but it was a decent year. We grabbed some American Express stock and some more proctor and gamble, nothing sexy but hopefully in twenty years we won't regret it. Moving money into our IRAs and will probably make a couple modest buys, maybe Pepsico or more index funds. How's everyone else doing?

Taylor is going to play a lot. He was a 3 WAR player last year and would have been 4th on the Twins last year. He's a good player, he won't be in St Paul. The Twins got him so he can play gold glove caliber defense in CF. Buxton will DH a lot.

Aren't we in cap hell? Isn't Cousins untradeable?

This is where you and I differ. I think folks forget a lot of the bad. We had Odorizzi for three seasons and he amassed 5 WAR. That's not a great return on 33.5. Maeda had 11 starts that everyone raves about but ignores that he has given us 2 WAR in 32 starts. That's fine but that's a back end starter. Sonny Gray, one year, 2.5 WAR. Mahle, injured. Alcala will be 27 next year and in four seasons hasn't amassed 1 WAR. Duran is a nice arm, very happy. And Ryan is a back-end starter. Good trade, But you also left off quite a bit - Lance Lynn, Addison Reed (17m!), Sam Dyson, Martin Perez, Dylan Bundy, Joe Smith, Chris Archer, Jamie Garcia (for Ynoa), Pineda (three years were slightly less valuable than three years of Odo), Happ (8m), Bailey (7m), Shoemaker. Honestly, I'm not sure if you add up the value of the pitchers we signed/traded for under this FO if it would be A) a positive number or 2) higher than the value of players we've just released or traded away to get those crappy pitchers. People aren't recognizing how bad pitching has been under this FO. fWAR ranks over the last ten years: 2013 - 24th 2014 - 14th 2015 - 11th 2016 - 23rd 2017 - 24th 2018 - 22nd 2019 - 4th 2020 - COVID 2021 - 25th 2022 - 20th - and this staff had Gray, Ryan, Duran, Alcala and Mahle on it. bWAR are probably pretty similar but slightly worse, That list doesn't suggest that this FO can put together a pitching staff. If I put in WAR values, it actually looks worse. For example, the 2016 and 2022 teams amassed the same WAR - 10.7 but, by ranking, you'd think 2022 staff was better.

Yeah, I'd love to see Buxton out there a lot but the Twins only put him in CF 52 times last year. They let him DH a bunch (34 times). So, even if Buxton were to play a complete healthy season, you'd think he's have basically 100 games in CF at most. Taylor is going to play a lot. He can amass a lot of WAR pretty quickly. I also think he'll play a lot in the corners as late defensive replacements and spot starts here and there.

They inherited a number of guys that they thought were worth extending - Sano, Polanco, Kepler. Two more signed solid 100m+ contracts - Buxton and Berrios. Gibson and Rosario got multiyear deals on playoff teams. They were given a pen that had Pressly, May, and Rogers which seems like a nice starting point. (Did May get hurt)? They had a system with guys like Garver, Arraez, Kiriloff, Baddoo, etc. The FO couldn't do anything with that. Now, we're arguably in a worse point. They've constantly shown they can't acquire pitching. I don't think we should expect much improvement. I hope I'm wrong but I suspect we will have another season of the pitching staff failing to hold up.

Buxton, Correa, Gray, Polanco, Taylor.

I didn't have a problem with them letting Rosario go, although I liked him a lot and I know others really missed him. Same with Sano. The Berrios trade was good but the reason why we could do it - because we stunk - is a red flag on the FO's ability to keep a window of contention open. Berrios had a bad season (although fWAR liked him more than bWAR) but I do think he's a good pitcher and will bounce back. But I also think Martin is the type of hitter the Twins need more of - good contact, good walk guy. The first major job this FO had was simple - augment the group they inherited so they could win in the post-season and extend that groups window of opportunity. They failed at both. Now, their job is to reopen a window of opportunity while Buxton and Correa are still in their primes. I don't think they've constructed a pitching staff that will let them do it. I hope I'm wrong. I like this lineup more than most on TD do - honestly, a few fairly possible things break right and this is a top 5 offense. But I hate this pitching staff.

I think generally this FO has done a bad job of making trades, constructing a pitching staff or keeping the competitive window open. This idea - "Develop a team of young, cost-controlled talent, target veterans to when needed, trade for players with multiple years of team control, and fill in the rest of the holes with one-year deals, except in very specific circumstances" - isn't mind blowing. It's the blueprint Terry Ryan invented. The problem is that Falvine haven't been able to do anything close to what the Twins did in the 2000s, despite having financial resources, draft rules, and a stronger international presence that should make it easier.

I don't think the Twins have done enough to fix the pitching staff to be a better than .500 team. But, just like last year, I like the offense. I liked the Arraez trade. I think we have some nice trade chips at the deadline that will help us in the future. But this team is too far away right now. And we have zero depth.

Seems fair. I like Lee but someone has to be the low man on him and Klaw might be the high man on Rodriguez.

Honestly, that seems low. They looked really good against SF. I think KC might get the doors blown off them.