alexlegge

Hahaha. Great quote. For a second I thought he was referring to the Mall of America. Silly me. He secretly probably hates Juicy Lucys too. The man might not be super genuine all the time, but he knows how to play a real solid shortstop and win a fanbase over. I wish him well.

Also recall the front office's whirlwind of trades leading up to the Correa signing. Was it a clever orchestration of baseball resources that blocked an opponent from getting a player we wanted? Sure, I can give them credit there, they same way I'll give them credit for the Trade Deadline optics. At the end of the day, the optics don't matter. What happens on the field matters. And to be frank, the Twins would probably have done themselves a favor to have kept Donaldson and Kiner-Falefa, and forgotten about Sanchez/Urshela and Correa. Would the clubhouse have been as much fun to root for in April and May? Probably not. But for what those three collectively earned, it just seems like a big waste. At least the former FO found crummy performance insanely cheaply (in turn being good for someone, maybe a Pohlad or two).

...you may appreciate this remix of Prince's "Go Crazy" that I created as an homage to a select few Minnesota sports highlights from my lifetime. Two out of three of them are Twins-based (you can probably guess which games they're from). It's called "The Puckett Formerly Known as Kirby" I'm also including a flac version if you'd like to download it, but clicking on the above link or the below album cover should take you to a streamable version on my Bandcamp page. (Now that we've been mathematically eliminated from the playoff race, I figured this post would be more appropriate, and perhaps even ever-so-slightly uplifting.) 367178346_thepuckettformerlyknownaskirby(loudversion).flac

Great point here. Indeed, if the Twins didn't trade for Mahle, I think almost anyone in this forum would probably agree that they would've at least wanted to try to add someone else as a starting pitcher. They needed a starter and would've gotten a starter almost inevitably. They chose poorly. --- One more related thought, but does it seem like Falvey is irrationally opposed to two-month rentals at the trade deadline?? Not that this is necessarily the right year to put all of one's eggs in the metaphorical basket, but theoretically the right piece for a championship might *only* be available as a rental deal when the deadline comes. One example that comes to mind would be the 2009 Phillies trading for Cliff Lee (they even had the added bonus of warming Lee up to Philly so much that he accepted less cash to sign with them for a multi-year deal in 2011). I supposed the argument against this would be like the 2008 Brewers' trade for CC Sabathia. But even that deal probably opened their championship window far wider...IMHO we'll need to take accept risk like that and pull off a similar deal somewhere en route to propping open our championship window enough. Any Twins road to a trophy this decade will go through Yankee Stadium and/or Minute Maid Park. But even beyond this decade, we'll always be up against one or two superteams in the AL. Treading water and hoping for the best in a playoff "crapshoot," which seems to be the happy medium for this front office as well as both the front offices led by Terry Ryan and Bill Smith, is flawed logic; not to take things overly literally, but that strategy basically just guarantees we'll be firing bullets made of crap on the rare occasion when our championship window is opening...and you can be sure as s**t we'll be up against a team firing steel. Perhaps a more philosophical way of thinking about it is the following: I'd personally opt for the same number and types of flags that the Royals have had since the year 2000 compared to the Twins - basically trading all the division championships in exchange for one championship and one additional pennant. Maybe we lose out on some good regular season memories, but now we're seeing a well-oiled playoff melancholic memory machine.

All good points. And yet the outcomes for the players with injury risks have consistently been suboptimal over the past few years. That's why I think it's worth questioning however medical information and injury risk calculation is being funneled through the Twins baseball operations department. It's not just Mahle. What about the Paddock deal? Absolute nightmare scenario. And Aaron Gleeman's recent Athletic article does a nice job of assessing the Chris Archer signing, which hasn't been terrible but also has been far from spectacular. Can anyone name one player with an above-average injury risk who, during his Twins tenure in the 2020s, has contributed more than OR equal to what we would've expected based on raw talent?? *Maybe* Buxton could count, but that would be a stretch, and only even in the discussion because of prior knowledge of just how susceptible he is. I still think the management strategy this year was a mistake. He may end up with more games played, but he's consistently been missing in key games due to injury and unnecessarily rested in other key games without significant injury. The result has been the same: less healthy Buxton than we could've had. As others have mentioned, Falvey was brought in with a reputation of being particularly forward-thinking on pitching. The organizational results haven't been a total disaster, and some trades have worked better than others (the Maeda, Fulmer, and Lopez deals all seem to have arguably made a decent impact), but I don't think anyone would say confidently that the Twins pitching pipeline is in great shape, or even that their pitching at the major league level has improved drastically. I'm not ready to point the finger at Falvey directly though, because the suboptimal outcomes related to injury risk assessment/calculation seems to be a noticeable common thread. If that's on Falvey, then the organization has much bigger structural problems. I think right now we need to be concerned about their rehab/training and medical teams. Something in there just isn't clicking. Another thought regarding the recent issues this season - Rocco has never been the most pristine manager when it comes to managing a pitching staff on the whole. He seems especially inept with getting the best bang for your buck out of a relief corps. Tbh, it raises the question of whether the Twins would still be in first place had Wes Johnson stayed???

It's a bad sign when the prospects you traded for a pitcher at the trade deadline are already outperforming that pitcher a month later. That being said, I'm more concerned about the Twins' medical staff than I am about "Falvine" per se. Point 1: Everyone is taking too much time to recover from injuries. That has been the case the entire year. Point 2: The whole Byron Buxton 2 games out of 3 ratio ended up with Buck hurt during the most crucial part of the schedule, leaving the team vulnerable to complete derailment, which is what we're seeing unfold in front of our eyes. It's unclear how to deploy Buxton properly, but I don't think this was the best strategy. If he's not injured, he's our best player and should be able to play more than 67% of the time. If he was dealing with nagging injuries, then he probably shouldn't have been playing 67% of the time. This solution was an overly simplistic approach to an absurdly complex puzzle. Point 3: If the Twins were in pursuit of Mahle for a long time, as has been reported, I suspect that there's a reason the Reds caved in now rather than, say, last offseason. We seem to have been fleeced by them; Mahle's arm is clearly not right, and it sure makes me wonder if this is something that could have been caught earlier. Thoughts?

1991 Twins on April 23rd: 4-10 2006 Twins on May 1st: 9-16 2017 Twins on August 5th: 52-56 2017 Dodgers from August 26-September 11: 1-16 Baseball is a weird sport. 8-13 feels like garbage, but let’s not rush to judgment.

Of course, but it's easy to see how there might be different incentives for players and trainers coming from a country with a different set of values and laws regarding PEDs. I know MLB is already coordinating some "education" for young Dominican players regarding the adverse effects and career risks associated with use, but clearly there are still a lot of issues. First, they probably should focus on ways to improve cultural sensitivity. I'd also be interested in finding out if there were any particular trainers or 'hubs' of trainers in the DR that tend to distribute PEDs. There might even be trainers down there who administer PEDs to players unknowingly to advance their own careers. There are several angles that could be improved, because clearly something's wrong with the system at this point.

True, but at the same time Eduardo Escobar was raking at 3B while filling in for Sano. Sure they are worse without him, but it's a smaller difference than you'd think. Adrianza is a better fielder, and Escobar is arguably a better hitter (unless you're *really* buying into Polanco's hottest 6-week stretch, with or without PEDs). They'll make it work.

I feel like this news is getting a lot of overreactions because it really stinks from a 'fan of Jorge Polanco' perspective and raises some questions about the position going forward. Realistically his ceiling this year was a 4ish-WAR player. So we're really only 'losing' max 2 wins over 80 games, and the team has enough depth to make up at least one win - so we really only lose one win, maybe even less....The bigger story to me is the continued suspensions among Dominican players especially given that many PEDs are legal there. If you were a young player and you thought you could be a lot more successful by doing something that's completely legal where you grew up, wouldn't you? MLB needs to address this better

Just that some of his regular season numbers are better than Koufax after adjustments for ballpark & league-wide offense during the era. It's a popular comparison. I personally wouldn't make that argument, but it's waaaay closer than most people think, especially based only on regular season performance. So yeah, *arguably* better in the sense that you could make a reasonable argument if you had to

Let's say, just for fun, that Johan wasn't injured at the end of 2010, and instead ended up playing 11 more years, staying relatively healthy but pitching substantially worse overall. Let's say he doubled his career innings, averaging the following stats over that stretch: 9-8 record, ERA of 4.00 and an ERA+ of 110 (approximate midpoint of Patrick Corbin's and Chris Archer's ERA+ from this year, since they both had ERAs just barely over 4). Then, overall, Santana's career numbers would look like this: 238-166 (.589), 3.60 ERA, 123 ERA+ Even if he never won a World Series, those numbers look Hall-of-Fame worthy to me. By comparison, Mike Mussina's career numbers are: 270-153 (.638), 3.68 ERA, 123 ERA+ Also: Don Drysdale's career ERA+ was 121, John Smoltz's was 125. You get the idea. ... And now compared to Jack Morris: 254-186 (.577), 3.90 ERA, 105 ERA+ 3 points to be made of all of this: 1) Johan's candidacy is in a different league than Morris. Morris is really only relying on slightly above-average pitching, win totals, and 2 great postseasons (leaving aside the crappy postseasons he had). As a Twins fan, I'd find emotional satisfaction in Morris getting elected, but he's well below the admittedly-subjective 'standards' for the hall. Let's also not forget that most of Morris' wins came before the steroid era. Santana, by comparison, could have had 11 more years of mediocrity and his career numbers would still far exceed those of Morris. 2) If Johan doesn't get elected (which he won't) and perhaps even falls off the ballot (a distinct possibility), then he will basically have been penalized for not having 11 years of middle-of-the-rotation caliber pitching. Is that really what we want the Hall of Fame to be about?? In my personal opinion, a player that has a 4-5 year stretch of awesomeness (like Johan) is just as solid of a candidate as someone who was steadily above average for a long time (like Mussina), and both of those players are very worthy selections. 3) The saddest part, I believe, is that Johan's candidacy is being reduced due to market sizes. He was arguably better than peak Sandy Koufax from 2003-2007 with the Twins, but there was slightly less national attention paid to that because it happened in Minnesota. Then he went to the biggest media market in the US and had 1 great season. Hence, the lasting image from the NYC market perspective is more focused on the guy whose Mets career sadly faded due to injuries than the guy who was a monster for 5 years in Minnesota. Unfortunately, that's the perspective of most HoF voters too

First time I've ever seen someone strike out on a pitch that almost hit him in the face. Talk about adding insult to injury.