Vanimal46

Tripling down on three true outcomes. Lovely.

My analogy is for the corporate 9-5 desk warriors out there. Falvey and Levine thought throwing a pizza party and saying “We’re a family here!” was enough to retain an employee vs. paying them what their market rate is. Sorry, millenials and especially Gen Z sees right through that.

I am not there yet with the Twins. This offseason appears to be a dud, and I don’t think it will be salvaged. But once spring rolls around, I won’t be able to help myself watching opening day. I’m 32 and have no memory of the Twins winning a WS besides looking back at the grainy footage. Odds are low that I’ll ever see a WS win in my lifetime. That’s the choice people need to make. If your definition of a successful season is a WS title, and only a WS title, then it might be time to walk away.

LEN 3 is the new Patrick Reusse for the Star Tribune. No longer a beat writer, just a columnist. Dan Hayes, Aaron Gleeman, Betsy Helfand, Do-Hyoung Park. That’s what we got. Edit: Also, we’ve never, ever had a beat writer ask the tough questions. It’s always been a country club at 1 Twins Way.

Never thought for a single second that the Twins were “seriously in” on Rodon. This offseason so far is a dud. The only way to dig out of this hole, if they actually want to win, is make 2 to 3 trades for MLB talent. Further depleting the farm system.

This FO has shown to be unpredictable over the years. Going from buyers (trading for Jaime Garcia) to selling him after 1 start. If they strike out on Swanson and Rodon, which seems likely, then I wouldn’t put it past them punting the 2023 season.

If Rodon or Swanson’s market still hasn’t materialized by January, call them up and offer the agreement Correa opted out of 2/$70

After sleeping on it, I think now we wait out the free agent market for a few weeks. The market for Rodon is once again not what he’s looking for. Dansby Swanson is a good, not great player who just had a career year. The Twins are legitimately stuck right now. I saw locking in Correa in the same realm as the Machado signing for SD. Back when they had nothing going on, but he was the start of their foundation. I can now envision Falvey and Levine pivoting to punting on 2023… Selling off Mahle, Gray, and Maeda.

MLB Network’s version of Stephen A Smith isn’t the guy I’d take too seriously. He’s a shock jock.

Make the game on the field the secondary entertainment… Take a page out of the indyball Saints or Savannah Bananas’ playbook and get as gimmicky as possible. If improving the on field product is off the table, then they have to provide value elsewhere. I can go to any hole in the wall bar and order a craft beer for far less than what you pay at Target Field. There are tons of indoor and outdoor parks that kids can go to for far less than the price of a Twins ticket. They’re going to have to take a hit somewhere to make Target Field a desired destination.

Back in my college days and the Timberwolves were a terrible team, they offered a ticket upgrade from the upper to lower level if you showed up early enough. I got to see Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook destroy the Wolves up close and personal! The Twins are truly approaching the apathy level of the Timberwolves from 2006-2020. Not even free tickets to the game would entice my friend group of casual Twins fans.

Falvey and Levine have dug themselves into a hole and I don’t know how they’re going to get out of it. If the goal is to compete and win a weak AL Central division, we’ll have to deplete the farm system further making 2 or more trades for MLB talent. If the Twins are closer to rebuilding, they haven’t shown a reason why they should be the ones to take on rebuild #2.

You’re okay with Farmer being the starter until after the trade deadline? Lewis had surgery on June 22. Expecting anything before August is extremely optimistic. Likely unrealistic too. Brooks Lee has, what, 3 months as a professional baseball player?

“Financial Flexibility” - We can easily have a bottom 10 payroll. “A massive contract far beyond anything in franchise history“ - The contract is still woefully short of winning the bid, but it is significant compared to the Twins’ status quo. “Willing to get creative” - The contract is still woefully short of winning the bid, but we’re offering you a chance to get the hell out of Minnesota earlier! “Seriously in play” - Please include us in this rumor. Our offer is woefully short of winning the bid, but we need this man. People are starting to ask questions.

The 3 mission critical priorities I had for the offseason was acquire a SS, acquire a middle of the order bat, and acquire a C. Correa could have checked off 2 of those boxes. We did complete 2 of the priorities… Vazquez is signed and Farmer is capable of standing at SS. Now we need to find an upgrade(s) to boost the offense. The offense wasn’t good enough last year with Correa included. Now the downgrade from him to Farmer will be painfully noticeable on a daily basis.

Preach it. The books have never been cleaner to lock in one long term contract. All of this talk over the years about financial flexibility… It’s only used for 1 + option year contracts for mid tier free agents. There’s still time to salvage the offseason, but as things stand on December 14, this is another 90 loss team.

The only way we’re signing Swanson is if his market craters and we offer a short term contract with an opt out after 2023. The better question to ask is who will fill the massive hole at the top of the lineup? We just lost a heart of the order hitter in 140 wrc+ Correa. 92 wrc+ Kyle Farmer has no business hitting above 7th in the lineup.

Spot on. There are 10-ish teams in the league that can write off the last 3-4 years of these agreements. And that’s what we’re seeing. They get their pick of the free agent stars every year, and the other 20 teams get the leftover scraps.

This isn’t exactly the news I wanted to wake up to. Disappointing, to say the least. These contracts that Boras is negotiating are ruining Major League Baseball.

Awesome! Thanks everyone! Rumor: Rumor has it, the keg stand competition starts at 4:01 with @Brock Beauchamp and @wsnydesleading the way

I’m ambivalent about the deal. I do wonder what we’re going to say about him in years 2 and 3 of the contract. I doubt he’ll be a league average bat now and in the future.

You could be right. Not sure about Soderstrom’s status in real life. He’s also rated 30/80 as a catcher in the game so he’s probably not a defensive juggernaut in real life either.

The A’s have a nice catcher pipeline in the minors with Tyler Soderstrom and Daniel Susac. They always develop well in OOTP ?

Correct. Let’s not pretend that equal revenue sharing will create a utopia of balance in baseball. The same challenges will persist. The top free agents will still choose the desirable locations. Teams like Cincinnati and Pittsburgh will still be on the outside looking in… And get into bidding wars for the mid tier free agents. Thus overpaying for them. For 2+ decades in the share all revenue equally NBA, the Timberwolves have been required to overpay mediocre talent because that’s all they could attract to Minneapolis. In the NFL, the Jacksonville Jaguars have to wildly overpay free agents to get anyone interested in playing for them. Long story short, there‘s no perfect system.