KirbyDome89

I think it's missing the part I already mentioned following Correa's comments about that uncomfortable feeling. Do you believe the Twins were aware of his potentially balky ankle prior to the season starting? Do you believe they examined his ankle after the slide and were ok with what they saw? We just watched acquisitions flop due to health issues that each had prior to joining the team, but yes, how unrealistic to think the Twins weren't aware of whatever SF or NY found.....

Paddack's 2021 ended with elbow issues and he'd already undergone TJ once. Mahle spent time on the IL with shoulder inflammation just before the deadline. I think we have an idea....

So the same team that watched the Paddack and Mahle acquisitions blow up in their faces was so far ahead of the curve when it came to Correa that they were fully aware of whatever issues his future potentially held, and simultaneously certain that those issues wouldn't surface during a 3 year deal? Ok. After the slide incident and his post game "vibrating," comment, Correa played a bunch of meaningless games and the Twins apparently felt comfortable enough to offer him 10/285. Those are decisions that a team makes with full understanding of his ankle aliment prior to the season? If it's really the "worst possible light," to say the Twins didn't have a solid grasp then guilty as charged I guess. We're using a routine slide from this season as the launching pad for what could go wrong, but there isn't concern in the short term? I don't think the cliff is as easy to pinpoint as you seem to believe, i.e. "we're safe for 3 years, but watch out in year 6."

I haven't seen the term incompetent being thrown around. Yeah, it was a 1 year deal assuming health & production, and I buy that MN was willing to risk some kind of freak injury, but I have a more difficult time believing an uberconservative team like the Twins was equally aware of the ankle, and they were $70M sure it wouldn't be an issue. I don't have a strong background in medical science, but that type of predictability (year 2-3 with MN vs. some permutation of years 3-9 elsewhere) seems off to me. They were fine with gambling on Paddack and Mahle, so maybe they just don't view short term risk as that big of a deal, but the money is where I'm hung up.

Weren't those later years considered a wash anyways?

Some of this might be nitpicking but.... I'm 100% fine with drafting the best available player and not going all in on arms. This FO inherited a really nice group of positional talent. If they weren't going to stockpile arms the last 5 years, ok but then deal some of the positional prospects, not Chase Petty, for established arms. Easier said than done, and maybe it's an impossibility, but then that's misreading the market IMO. You can't miss on guys like Sabato and Cavaco back to back either. Also, I think it bears mentioning how the Twins have acquired some of the talent being talked about. You brought up the Berrios and Cruz trades; those don't happen if the team isn't experiencing TSF 2.0, a disaster to which the pitching side greatly contributed. This FO preached sustainability; there's nothing sustainable about that avenue of talent acquisition. In a vacuum Petty for Gray isn't necessarily a bad swap despite what I said above. In the right situation I think it could end up being a good trade. My critique (similar to one of yours) is that Gray should've been brought in alongside a true frontline guy via FA that would've added some stability beyond a year or two. Giving up Petty (to me) signified a willingness to compete, but Gray at the front wasn't going to be enough. We knew that before last season began. The FO essentially bet the season on an inexperienced/volatile (from an injury standpoint) group of arms, and it went poorly. That burned a Gray year, and now this year looks pretty lackluster too. I guess if he's healthy, Gray can be moved now, or at the deadline, but I have no idea if they'll get a Petty-esque return. I'd rather see this club try to win games than hoard prospects and sell hope, so hopefully what I'm about to say isn't seen as contradicting that, but if you're doing "just enough," i.e. trading a 1st round arm for 2 years of Gray but still entering a year with an obviously flawed staff, while simultaneously claiming to prioritize draft/development and having zero intention of spending any real money in FA, I have to question the move. I don't think anybody is down on the Ryan swap. I'm one of those who doesn't count him as a "pipeline," product. For me it's simple, he was a complete pitcher when they got him, and he spent almost zero time at AAA. He wasn't drafted, nor developed by this organization. We don't count a guy like Odo as a pipeline product, similarly, I don't count Ryan. I agree that when we're talking about adding talent overall the distinction doesn't matter, but I think it's important to draw the line when handing out credit for pitching this FO has actually produced. I agree, I was in favor of adding talent at the deadline. You just have to get it right, and they didn't. The results matter, as much as some might want to waive them away. I'm pretty low on Ober. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I just think the guy is a massive injury risk and totally unreliable from a rotation standpoint. Varland is a complete unknown, there's not much more to say about him. Ditto for SWR. Sure, they're part of the pipeline. Again, I'm down on Winder. He's been shelved 3x in the last 2 years with shoulder issues. He hasn't looked all that great as a SP either. Maybe he stays healthy and can be a backend guy but that might be the best case scenario. Balazovic? Yeah, no clue after his abysmal performance last year. Henriquez is a RP now. Idk if I have a strong opinion on Duran as a starter, it probably depends on how some of the aforementioned names perform this year. That's pretty much it as far as pipeline for the near future is concerned. You've got SWR and Varland who might be mid rotation guys if everything breaks right. That might even be a little kind for Varland. Winder and Balazovic look like question marks. Maybe you can count Winder as a RP? What are the odds they get 2 solid starting arms out of that group? What about even getting 1? As far as the pitching outlook for this year, yeah, at surface level you can read the names and maybe see the rotation doing enough to win a really bad division. Would it shock anybody if Cleveland was mediocre? I'm not going to count Henriquez or Balazovic as backup options, at least within the first few months. I reserve the right to be totally wrong there. That leaves us with 8 starting candidates, a seemingly robust number, but 4 of them (Winder, Maeda, Ober, and Mahle) have MASSIVE durability concerns. Gray is a different conversation IMO, and Paddack is a non-factor this year. We don't have a choice, the Twins are going to bank on a health resurgence, but for at least a couple of those guys, the injuries issues run deeper than just last year. Do I think the Twins have a pipeline? Sure, people can call it whatever they'd like. Obviously the term is mocked because it was used to overexaggerate the amount and depth of talent that was supposed to be coming through. What did I expect by this point? Something more than hoping to get a mid rotation starter out of a couple guys with no MLB track record (yes Duran is a beast.) If people want to argue Ober, fine, but I've explained my stance there. The goalposts keep shifting. Last year it was Ober and Winder. Now it's SWR and Varland. We're entering year 7 and still crossing our fingers on the 4-5 spot in the rotation.

Until a few days ago the Mets role in the Correa sweepstakes was unknown, but as it turns out, they had initially outbid MN as well. What info do you have that would indicate Correa was ready to sign a deal for 10/285?

AAV doesn't matter, CC is going to make more money during the length of his Mets deal than he would've in MN. What is it about the extra years + extra money that's so difficult to grasp? Yes, CC's opportunities to earn off the field are much greater in NY. Also yes, the Mets paid him more than the Twins.

What mystery team was going to jump in and beat NY's offer? Was Boras in a hurry, or did he get the best possible offer and advise Correa to say yes? Passing because you refuse to spend isn't due diligence.

You might be right, but to me that just points to an unwillingness to spend that I previously mentioned, not due diligence.

If the money spooked them, is not cold feet? Whether it's insurance, an owner stepping in, ect it doesn't matter.

"If Minnesota wanted Correa, Boras conveyed, the team needed to improve its earlier offer – even though Correa appeared compromised with the Giants. The Twins would not have advanced the conversation without investigating the potential issues caused by Correa’s physical." What else would the bolded imply?

There might not have been money left at the table. Boras could've read "I need some time," as the beginning stage of a breakup and decided to get out in front of it.

"So there you have it. I'm not sure anyone can hold the Twins front office at fault in this situation, given that they merely appear to have been doing their due diligence." He would've undergone a physical last year in MN. The article mentions that the Twins had "a solid understanding of Correa’s medical history, having just employed him," and that the leg injury he suffered in the minors has never caused him to miss time in 8 ML seasons. The Mets were also a team that passed on Paddack last year due to medical concerns, but now the Twins being outbid by the Mets is "due diligence?" That's a fairly massive spin job. I'm gonna call BS on the idea that the Twins were eager and/or willing to jump back in and spend the money it would've taken to sign Correa. Why would Boras wait on a team that was still $30M short, and had zero intention of even getting to $300M? How many other teams were actually in on Correa, and of them, how many had enough room in their budget to throw a better offer at him than NY? Isn't MN's unwillingness to spend, and NY's enthusiasm to do so a much more plausible explanation than some mysterious malady which hasn't affected Correa in nearly a decade, and was completely off the Twins radar during both their own physical and the entirety of the year he played for the organization?

I'm honestly curious, where does Correa start to look bad here? Short of sabotaging his own physical (not sure how that's possible) it was SF who decided to press pause. I can certainly see a scenario where things got contentious, especially after the non-presser and news getting out, but if I'm CC, and a team that promised me $350 a week ago decided to come back talk about a lesser offer I'd probably be pissed too.

Weren't the Mets the same team that passed on Paddock because of his medical report? Either they view the Correa issue totally different than SF (not impossible,) they're desperate for that "final piece," to get them over the hump, or maybe SF actually got cold feet. Either way it's pretty wild. What was your favorite CC Giants moment?

Yeah I'm not suggesting anything nefarious, but 7 days seems like a long time if you'd even remotely consider nixing the deal. I guess we'll have to wait and see what/how serious the hold up is. Swanson is also in agreement though no? The Cubs would have to find a physical reason to fail him and move on similar to what Vanimal mentioned, so they're technically off the board barring that happening right?

How does it take SF this long to get a medical report? If I'm Correa, or even Boras, and I've watched Swanson sign thus removing a potential suitor, and meanwhile SF took a week and decided to press pause...ehhh yeah. Does the PA get involved if SF decides to pull the plug here? Idk how there isn't some kind of deal still worked out between the two sides at this point.

I doubt anybody is high on the signing to begin with, but I like it a lot less if Gallo is a depth move. You can maybe sell fans on him being a higher upside play than Kepler. Maybe a package of Kepler + fills a different hole on this roster. That's at least a semi creative way of using the $$ resources at your disposal. Keeping both players feel like a "throw it against the wall and see what sticks approach."

It's not halftime, the game is over. The FO can try to salvage this offseason and bring in talent via trade, but that will require parting with talent at the major league level, or from an already thin farm. There's no winning when you had ample $$ and passed on spending any of it on impact, or even solidly above average players. A team that claims to rely so heavily on developing talent continues to put themselves in a position where they have to trade prospects just to plug holes and tread water at the ML level. Make that make sense....

They also inherited a nice core of players. As far as putting a competitive product on the field, most of the heavy lifting was already done. Aside from 2019 when seemingly everybody was having a career year, this FO hasn't done a great job supplementing that group, or bringing along the next wave as the current core phases out.

Nobody is saying FA is anything other than a supplement. Nobody. You need to understand that, and argue in good faith. It won't fix the development issues, but it can certainly lessen their impact. Is the current strategy of signing bottom tier arms anything other than bad? How many years should this club potentially burn waiting for the stars to align as far as developing a staff goes?

They didn't suggest it was a good strategy, they suggested it was a necessary one based on the total lack of development and this FO's inability to consistently plug the holes they create year after year. They aren't avoiding actions with a high probability of failure; Happ, Shoemaker, Bundy, and Archer were locked into rotation spots the last 2 years.

Cool, a LH bat for an OF that badly needs RH power, and another "all or nothing," hitter to insert into a lineup that looked anemic for long stretches last year....

You've got it backwards. I'm not willing to overpay, I'm willing to meet the price that the market dictates while you're championing below market offers. To continue your home buying analogy; the length of my mortgage as the buyer is irrelevant to you. All that matters is agreed upon sale price. So, I'll ask again, would you sell me your home at 20% less than what equivalent homes are currently going for? If the market dictates that your home is worth $350K, and I offer $280K, you wouldn't be underwhelmed? You would seriously entertain my offer?