gunnarthor

I am still stunned that the Lions fired Jim Caldwell, who had 36 wins and only one losing season (7-9) in four years, and then gave so much rope to such obviously overmatched head coaches in Patricia and Campbell (17 combined wins in 5+ seasons). Great for the rest of the NFC North but, man.

It's time to move on. I don't think he has huge trade value but someone might take him so long as we don't expect a great haul back. I'd happily move him for a lottery ticket and let Wallner play RF next year. If we keep him, I'd agree with lukeduke that he should be a 4th OF from here on out.

I love Ohtani but if Judge doesn't win it, it'll be a travesty. He's having a historic season.

Detroit going to Detroit.

There's not a lot of reason to expect success next season without the Pohlads opening the checkbook and us signing several real starters. And this FO has utterly failed to do what they were hired to do - mimic the 2000s Twins success. So, not sure why we need another season to wait on what is clear - they aren't capable. We need to move on.

Anyone watch the Gophers? Other than Penn St, all the other games are winnable from here on out. Really exciting season.

Pretty disappointing to hear this news and signals that we can expect another sub-.500 season next year. The whole system has to be torn down at this point but it doesn't look like ownership has realized that. Not sure what the excuse will be for this season - probably injuries - but they'll need another excuse next year. And Cleveland is just going to get better.

I honestly don't see how people think the pitching is going to be good. Playing in a pitcher's park might be hiding just how bad this unit has been the last couple years. We have a bottom third pitching staff and we aren't a young pitching staff. Next year, Gray will be 33, Ryan, Ober, Smeltzer will be 27, Maeta 35, Mahle 28. The minor leagues don't look likely to give us anything better than back of the rotation types. We don't have any horses coming up. We need multiple starters and multiple strong bullpen arms. And that doesn't even cover the horrific philosophy that we are using of limiting starters to twice through a batting order. That calls into question whether or not minor league arms are being encouraged or taught to use a third or fourth pitch or does our philosophy think that is a waste of time? I have no idea but I'm worried about it. Right now, unless Pohlad is willing to spend our way out of this hole, or Levine starts making some insanely lopsided trades, we're a sub-.500 team for several years.

Optics. The team collapsed after a total system failure last year. Someone takes the fall for that.

If they finish below .500, Rocco is gone.

Anyone watch the reboot of Quantum Leap instead of the second half of the Vikings disaster? I really enjoyed it. Made my kids watch it with me. Good times.

The secondary seems like a weakness

Gads, what an ugly game.

Looking at my posts, I'm a bit concerned that they are too negative. I would be very, very happy to be wrong on Ryan. He seems like a good guy, works hard, has stayed healthy. He's easy to root for and I hope to eat crow when he's an all-star next year.

No. Sorry, but no. There's too much kool-aid going around TD on our pitching. It's a bad, bad staff. As a staff, both starters and relievers are in the bottom third in baseball. Ryan is a back of the rotation pitcher. While he's a rookie, he's already 26 years old. He' not going to improve much more. He's made 30 ML starts so we have a decent idea of what he is over a full season - 30 starts, 160-170 innings ERA+ around 100, 2 WAR. That's not bad but it's a back-end arm but not what a playoff team wants to throw out in a make or break game. He's not top 50 in any stat right now. Ober hopes to be this good. And the rest of the pipeline looks to be more of this. I like healthy Mahle and Gray. Both are in the 2/3 range although Gray will be 33 next year so that's a problem. But it would be silly to expect Gray to better than he was this year and Mahle is a big question mark. Maeda is 35. His last season, he managed a 91 ERA+ and .3 WAR. He's coming back from TJ. He'll be a bullpen arm. This season has pretty clearly shown we don't have the horses to pitch us to a 90-win season - heck, probably not even to a winning season. We need an overhaul of the system. Barring that, we need several real starters, and simply hoping that another year of experience and getting healthy is a really bad plan. The lineup will be fine.

It's more his range that's the issue

Gray has a hamstring injury. Not devastating.

Trey Lance is out for the season. The replay I've seen of the tackle didn't look so bad but perhaps a different angle (that I haven't seen) shows how the ankle got broken. Looked like a pretty routine play. Bummer for him.

I'm sure they won't do that but shoulder injuries are usually much, much worse then elbow injuries. 100 innings seems like a reasonable over/under to me.

So Wallner isn't the most graceful of fielders ...

I'm still a big fan of Martin and think he'll right the ship. Balzovic will pitch in the majors, I'm not sure how well though. I was hoping he'd be another solid Joe Ryan-type. I'm sure he'll get a chance next year.

The 2023 Twins will face the same issues the 2022 Twins did - bad pitching. Sonny Gray is a real ML pitcher and easily our best one. Joe Ryan is a solid back of the rotation starter but wouldn't be a starter on a playoff caliber rotation. Mahle has shoulder issues so we can hope he's healthy but should probably plan on only getting 100 innings from him. Maeda is 35 and coming back from injury. His last season with us, he produced a 91 ERA+ and .3 WAR. We should probably expect more of that production then any SSS. So the Twins need pitching. Tons of it. The pipeline is a failure. The pitching philosophy is boring and a failure. So, lots of work to do in the offseason.

Depends on your definition of ace but Santana was a legit ace, Liriano occasionally pitched like one, Radke was much better than people remember. But, yeah, aces are really rare. But there's a long way between "sign only aces" and "create a competent pitching staff." Pitching is hard but the FO was brought in to replicate the 2000s Twins' success, a decade in which only 10% of starts were made by free agents. So far, they've completely failed to do that so we have a the pitching failures of the last two years.

Rough doubleheader.

I'm higher than most on both Martin and Julien. Love them both. I know Martin's bat is struggling but he can still take a walk, he looks like he absolutely knows the strike zone. Those are my favorite type of hitting prospects. The hits will come, as will the power. Julien was a nice steal. He'll be a solid MLer.