gunnarthor

Well, 5-1. The defense looks bad but is ok in scoring defense. H. Smith is really showing his age but maybe it's the scheme as well? Kendriks and Hicks don't look great together. But, maybe, the defense can get better with more experience in this 3-4. At times, the offense has looked unstoppable and I think they are probably going to finish pretty good. Too many weapons. Taking KOC a bit to realize how good our run game could be (strange to type that). But this looks like a top 3 team in the NFC. And GB is losing, so. ?

"Derek Falvey and Thad Levine have stressed the importance of keeping the Twins’ winning window open as long as possible." It's good that people are starting to understand that this is what they were hired to do. It would be nice if people understood how utterly they failed at this. They had an incredible nucleus of young, ready to win talent. And, outside of Nelson Cruz, didn't do much to help that group get over the top or keep the window open past 2020 (arguably 2019). We don't need another year to know these guys aren't capable. It's time to move on.

If anyone is dumb enough to believe "but it’s the breakthroughs from the likes of Louie Varland, Bailey Ober, David Festa, and many others that should have fans believing that the system works" they are idiots. If our FO believes this, we're doomed. I have no idea how the FO can fix this mess without making some incredibly lopsided trades or outspending everyone. This team is in a really ugly place - kinda old, no solid nucleus coming up. Potentially a strong offense but no pitching at all. It was pretty easy to see the roster at the start of the season and realize they didn't have the pitching to matter. It'll probably be more of that again.

Low cost/internal options until Lewis is ready to go.

Completely unsurprising. Hope he gets the contract he's looking for. He was one of the few bright spots on this team.

I don't want them to sign a shortstop. They have Royce Lewis. They have a ton of bats. They should be able to produce a reasonably good offense again next year. They need pitching. Every penny has to go to pitching.

Yeah, and I thought for sure he had a concussion after that 6 yard run. Good thing the NFL is on top of that. Stupid that our next play was a rollout where he threw one of our few ****** passes of the game.

3-0 in the division already. I'll take ugly wins over ugly losses all season but, geez, this defense has problems. Hunter, Danztler, LB Smith are pretty good. A few others are solid but mostly folks seem like they are playing out of position and/or a step slow (S Smith)

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how the FO tackles this off-season. What do they think they need to fix or improve? Or do they just think some areas are covered internally. I think that will the most important message of the off-season. In my opinion, I think we have enough offensive players that something should work out and we can be a solid offense. Pitching should be the focus.

It's funny. I watched Hikaru's video on the Yoo game after I responded to you and he was completely dismissive of the game, saying both sides kept making mistakes. Oh well, I loved the game while it happened. It looked fun and was exciting to figure out the attack.

Also, relooking at this thread, I was completely wrong when I said Magnus would absolutely defend his title. Oh well. Other fun related chess channels - https://www.youtube.com/c/AnnaCramling Anna Cramling is a strong woman's player (her mother was a WGM and top woman's player in Switzerland, I believe. Her dad was also a GM and was coach of the Woman's Olympiad). Anna's videos are usually short but she's popular enough to have had on Super-GMs, like MVL. She also explains things pretty well for us lay-persons to understand. https://www.youtube.com/c/CoffeeChess - fun channel about a bunch of chess players, usually talking smack (total PG smack, but still). Very family friendly. Sometimes they'll have big time players show up and you can see the difference between Super GMs and normal, good chess players. https://www.youtube.com/c/GothamChess - gotham chess. Levy Rozman is an IM and chess coach. I think he has the most popular chess YouTube channel but it's at least one of them. Some people don't like him, and he's a bit hit-or-miss but he usually has good coverage of big chess events and chess news. I know there are a lot more but those are some fun ones.

I think it's pretty straight forward. He cheated a lot more in online games than he admitted to and chess.com showed him up on that, which made Hans look really, really bad. But I also think he legitimately beat Magnus at the Springfield Cup and his game the other day against Christopher Yoo was a true masterpiece. I don't think he's cheating now or in any over the board game. I think what happened is that he cheated b/c he wanted 1) to play the better players and didn't want to wait for his ratings to go naturally up; 2) he wanted money. I also believe him when he says that chess is all he does and he's been studying chess for 12 hours a day since COVID. His rise isn't shocking even if it's a bit unusual. And COVID probably stunted a lot of development. He's only 19 and everyone agrees his natural talent probably puts him in the 2650-2700 range. Looking at super GMs describe his game against Magnus and none saw anything suspicious. Magnus played bad. Hikaru had a nice video of a game where Hans beat Fabiano and noted that g4 was a strange move it was also the wrong move. Fabiano just reacted poorly and then got into a position where any super GM would win. Don't have the link off the top of my head right now. I'm probably a bit forgiving of Hans because he was a kid when he cheated - I don't think he's cheated as an adult and the big report by chess.com (covered by the WSJ) also never found evidence of him cheating as an adult or ever in an over-the-board match. Second, I think Magnus is absolutely punching down on someone and Hans is dealing with it about as well as anyone could. I can't imagine the emotional pressure and stress that happens after you beat the best player in the world straight up and he accuses you of cheating. Third, I think Magnus' subsequent retirement after two moves in a game a week later was extremely immature. Lastly, I like what Hans is doing right now. The g4 move was a strange move but an incorrect move. But he might be making strange moves because chess has become a bit over reliant on "the right move" and a bit less about the positional game. Super GMs tend to talk poorly about past greats like Tal b/c his games are judged poorly by computer play. But that's what playing Tal did - he made so many strange moves and strange attacking chances that opposing players never found the best moves against him. So I'm thrilled to see new positional chess come back. Like I said, the game against Yoo was wonderful, even though Hans got in time trouble.

Absolutely. Having "average" ML players isn't a bad thing, sorry if that's how it came out. In 06, for example, the Twins had Santana and Mauer being all-world but Cuddy also managed a solid 2.7 WAR season out of RF. Miranda can be that type of player. Not a bad thing at all.

Miranda, Lewis, and Wallner are the important ones. Miranda is probably the safest bet to be a solid ML player but he'll be - at best - average. Among first baseman with 400 PA, he was 23rd in fWAR. His bat is comparable to guys like Naylor and Seth Brown now and he could improve a bit more but he's likely a 1.5-2.5 WAR player over a full season, depending on how his defense grades out. I don't think he'll be a 30 HR threat but a consistent "professional hitter" with bad defense. I liked Wallner and thought he should have been brought up earlier. Again, his upside is limited by his defense but at this point, the Twins should just roll with him, trade Kepler, and give him RF from opening day. He's too old to be sent back to AAA. His defense could be bad enough where his offense doesn't matter but he could also hit 30 HR at TF. But it makes sense to give him a chance to show us what he is. Lewis is the best player and the highest ceiling. Looked great in limited action. My hope and guess is the Twins let him start the year as our shortstop and live with him there until they can't. Hope that his bat is real. He's still young and talented enough where we can dream a bit.

Yeah, I still think this team can finish the year as a top 20 team but it's so hard to watch this offense at times. The defense played better than the final score indicated. And, while I like Fleck, he made some stupid decisions. It's good that he's so emotional - I think it's an overall benefit - but it does have real downside. Also, that dropped TD in the endzone that became an interception was a backbreaker.

While there were scenarios where things could break right and we could win the Central, I figured the lack of pitching would doom us and we'd finish below .500 again.

Every team had injuries. The Twins designed a pitching system that would ensure they needed 30 pitchers to pitch a full season. Six of those pitchers managed to top 70 innings. To blame this on injuries is nonsense. Bailey Ober on the DL didn't wreck our season, the plan of needing two dozen pitchers to create a pitching staff ruined our season. Re: age. First 30 isn't really the cutoff. Players are (usually) what they are by 25 and start declining by 30. There are tons of exceptions but it's probably a really bad plan to expect 29 year old Polanco to better than 28 year old Polanco. Second, the Twins are in a really ugly weird spot where they need to start relying on a bunch of young guys who aren't really that young anymore but haven't really shown much at the ML level yet - Lewis, Kiriloff, Larnich, Wallner, Jeffers, Miranda. That's not a completely useless core but a lot has to go right to be just solid. They amassed 3 WAR in 1100 PA as a group. To be fair, I think the Twins could have a top 10 offense if things broke right and still finish under .500 (similar to this year). But the pitching is the far, far bigger problem. Lastly, I've been pretty consistent with my concerns about this FO's inability to make solid plans and their reliance on unrealistic expectations and hope v. facing reality. And I've been pretty consistent with pointing out that they failed to do the obvious when they were hired - supplement the core they inherited and extend the window of opportunity they had. The Twins are a bad team. Some of that was hidden because we play in the AL central.

Honestly, I don't know how they can without becoming a new FO. The twice through the batting order thing is tiresome and stupid but the potential danger is that none of the pitching prospects they've had are showing anything. And is that because we are just in a bad development spot (it happens) or is it because the philosophy of twice through the order permeates throughout the organization so minor league pitchers aren't taught third and fourth pitches like they should be? I have no idea but I'm very worried. The Twins had three players this year and three players last year get even 500 plate appearances. That's a stupidly low number but also shows either a problem of philosophy - we have to rest guys more often - or a problem of training. But it means that lesser players get more at-bats then they should. Good teams should give the majority of bats to good hitters. The Twins were more like a pee-wee team, making sure everyone got at-bats. And at the end of the day, there isn't a lot of hope left. Even in 2014, a pretty bad year, Twins fans could see how this young group of superstars in the minors were coming along and they'd be here and we'd be better. Now, we have no real pitching in the minors (and perhaps that's not an accident but a by-product of a really bad philosophy) but even the best hitters aren't going to be difference makers. (Although I loved the Lee pick)

At the end of the day, the Twins have underachieved the last few years and they aren't fun to watch. Maybe it's not his fault but he certainly isn't part of the solution. Move on, try something new.

I do think the Vikings were a bit lucky - esp against Detroit. But, after last year, I'll take it. I think the offense will improve as they get more acclimated to the new offense and KOC becomes better at his job. The defense I'm not as sure about but somehow they aren't giving up a ton of points. Don't know if that's a fluke or something we can continue to do but I'll take it for now.

Twins staff pitching bWAR by year. 2012 0.7 (29th by fWAR) 2013 7.8 (21st by fWAR) 2014 10.1 (14th by fWAR) 2015 16.3 (11th by fWAR) 2016 3.9 (23rd by fWAR) (Ryan fired) 2017 9.0 (24th by fWAR) 2018 9.2 (22nd by fWAR) 2019 16.8 (4th by fWAR) 2020 5.7 (3rd by fWAR) (COVID year, not a normal number)* 2021 -0.1 (25th by fWAR) 2022 9.4 (20th by fWAR) The way baseball has changed slightly and the fact that we play in a pitcher friendly park has really hidden how utterly bad our pitching has become. Essentially, with the exception of 2019, the Twins have struggled to reach the standards of the 2014 pitching staff despite having huge payroll advantages. And the Ryan v. Falvine is a strawman. Ryan ain't coming back. We can get a new FO that is better than the current one. The current one is very bad. * No. They get zero credit for 60 games against no name competition in a year where the SSS made Maeta seem like a viable Cy Young candidate.

No, they just took over a team with a competent nucleus that was ready to go the playoffs. Something we don't have now.

I think what is particularly damning of the current FO is that, after six years, is that the Twins are in worse position then when they took over. I don't think anyone can credibly say that the 2023 Twins team is likely to be a playoff team and the farm system is worse now as well. Utter failure by the FO. But it seems like we'll need a few more seasons to clean house. In the meantime, the Twins blame you for ****** attendance.

Has anyone used T-moble for their home internet needs? They have a decent offer down here in Southern MN but I'm not sure if it's better than the vile Spectrum would be.

Ownership and the FO are completely lost. Blaming low attendance on the fans rather than the product is a real dick move by St. Peter, who should just go away at this point. We have a bad team and a boring team. But let's blame the fans. Sure makes me want to support this team more. And the FO is a waste. Falvey has utterly failed and a good team would have moved on from him already but we're going to stick it out for a few more years. Gads.