Set up for the future

 This is going to be a momentous offseason for the Twins. Not only will there be questions about the roster after consecutive playoff runs, but the front office is in contract years. Will they be willing to continue in Minnesota, even as the restrictions on payroll increase?

My thought is that they will, for as long as Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa are under contract. That is, they will stay on for another four years, unless they are blown away by some  huge offers to take over elsewhere. I think that, yes, the Twins have made some frustrating payroll reductions, but I also believe that their window for being competitive is both wide open, and exactly what Falvey and Levine have been building towards.

I was listening to KFAN last week while in the car, and Dan Barreiro suggested that the Twins might be in trouble because of the issues with Correia, Buxton and Lewis's health, and the inability to get all three of them on the field at the same time. Sure, there are concerns long term, but this year, I think Buxton and Correa are being kept on the shelf to ensure they are at 100% for the post season.

Going forward, I think there is a concern with all players. There is simply a different body type playing Major League Baseball now, and bigger stronger players are going to have a greater tendency for injury. Barreiro reference the Braves as a team with good health and players that play every day, conveniently leaving out the season ending injury to Ronald Acuna and Spencer Strider, and lengthy absences for Austin Riley and Ozzie Albies. It affects all teams, not just the Twins.

But with the Twins in particular, I don't think the team is concerned. Correa was sitting with plantar fasciitis, something that you can play with, but Correa was dissatisfied with his performance playing with it in his other foot last year. As someone who has suffered from the same ailment, I can guess that he is not in the lineup because his fielding is most greatly affected, and he has so much value as a fielder. 

I'm not yet concerned about Correa long term, especially given the start to the season he had. With Buxton, most of his injuries came via his incredible effort, which is certainly no reason to excoriate him. Nevertheless, the potential for injury is baked into his contract. Even if you are grousing about it, the Twins are unbothered. 

Royce Lewis has the worst, and most unforced injuries of the three. He's also the bulkiest, putting strain on his ligaments, a common concern for athletes of his generation. Fortunately, Lewis is the only bat first player of the three. His bat will likely play, even with ravaged knees as he grows older. 

Even if you remain unconvinced, there is still enough there, in my opinion, to continue to go for it with this roster. With the payroll limitations in place, but a fairly young roster, there aren't likely to be many changes in to either payroll or roster for at least the next several years. The rest o the core of the team is still under team control for several years, including Pablo Lopez, Bailey Ober, Joe Ryan, David Festa and Simeon Woods-Richardson, many of whom will get valuable playoff experience this season, should they make it. Despite the risk of a beleaguered core, they should have the makings of a playoff experienced rotation for the next several years.

That seems to be the most important thing to a lot of fans. Watching the Twins flail offensively for weeks, I am not sure I fully agree with that. But the Twins future looks good there too. Not only are the three subjects of this post under contract, but Matt Wallner, Ryan Jeffers, Brooks Lee and Jose Miranda are going to be staples, with Walker Jenkins and one of the best offensive prospects in the game, Emmanuel Rodriguez coming soon as well. 

The Twins, barring a complete tear down (which I don't rule out, sadly, because of the ownership and not the front office) are well positioned to be competitive for the next few years. If they can hang on and make the playoffs this year, that will be a big step towards longer term contention.

The Twins are scuffling, but which scuffle is greatest

Since around mid-August, the Twins have been in a tail spin. Starting with August 18th's loss to the Rangers, it's been nearly a month of drudgery. A lot of this has been pinned on the team's financial woes, managerial missteps, and general team exhaustion. I have two other theories that kind of go hand in hand. 1 - The Twins, as are all Minnesota men's sports, are cursed. 2 - Since about mid-August, the Twins have been without the three top WAR producers on the team, Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton, and Joe Ryan. That's unlucky, but it is fortunate that some combination of those three will be back before seasons end and the post season. 

But if you want depressive takes on what is going on, or someone who is willing to pack it in for the rest of this season and look at the future as a Pohlad (modestly) funded abyss, then you can go to Twins Daily. I'm here because of something I heard on the news last night, roughly, "It's not just the pitching and defense that are bad, the offense isn't very good either." 

Oh? I have been under the impression that the set back in offense has been significantly worse than the run prevention side. I dug into it a little bit. First, I looked at the runs against. In the season ahead of the slump, so through the 17th, opponents were scoring at a clip of 4.3 runs per game. Since that time, that number has jumped to 5.1 runs a game, or about .8 runs more per game.

On offense, the Twins have scored at an abysmal 3.3 runs a game, compared to their pre 8/18 average of 4.9 runs a game. The offense has cratered at twice the clip of their run prevention. In fact, according to Fangraphs, the Twins have the 4th highest pitching WAR in the Major League baseball, which suggests they are pretty good. Since they lost Ryan, they are #12, which means, and hold on tight... they have dropped to slightly above average. Lost in the misery is the fact that Pablo Lopez has been great, Bailey Ober has been incredible, and Simeon Wood-Richardson has silently been a strong back of the rotation starter all year. The pitching seems worse because the Twins are so bad at scoring runs themselves.

Since 8/18, the Twins offense has been 4th from the bottom in all of baseball. They were 7th overall before that The only player regularly producing is Carlos Santana. Maybe it's exhaustion. Maybe it's a slump. Maybe it's Maybelline. I don't know, but the offense is the problem, underlined, bullet pointed and starred. The Twins need Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton back to give the offense a hard reboot. Hell, I would take Alex Kirilloff at this point. 

The pitching since the slump started has taken a mild step back. The offense went from being a strength to no longer being competitive. It's as simple as that. 

Bracing for the Worst

  The last couple of weeks have been tough for the Twins. Their bullpen has started to come apart at the seams, their bats aren't coming through when they are needed, and in the last 10, the Twins are 4-6. What maybe hurts the most about all of this is that everyone in the American League seems to have hit a similar bump in the road. They are now 4.5 games away from having the best record in the American League.

Wait, hold on. Is that right? We are all worried about the team, and the Guardians, Orioles, Yankees and especially the Royals are all treading water or backsliding as well? The Twins have overtaken the Royals, and still, remarkably, are within 4.5 games of the league's best. But this isn't just a "vibes" issue, the leaving the Twins for dead, thing. I'm here to provide optimism, that there is more to come.

The top Twins trio of Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa and Royce Lewis have all been healthy at the same time on 17 occasions this season. Buxton is gong to be back and ramping up for the postseason soon - he i already playing in St. Paul. Correa played through plantar fasciitis last year, and didnt like what it did for his regular season numbers. After a pause to recuperate, he could also be back to pick up one of the best seasons of his career. Even at 80%, playoff Correa is a force to be reckoned with. And then there is Lewis. 

While ink is often spilled about the Twins pitching, both the starters and the bullpen and it has struggled lately, but since the 18th, when the recent struggles began, the Twins scored more than 5 runs only 4 times, and 3 or fewer runs 7 times. It's hard to win games if you aren't giving your pitchers routine run support. Theoretically, the veterans returning to the lineup should be a boost. 

The pitching is going to be very youthful. The best case scenario, which is reasonable, is that Joe Ryan can return and get some work in during the postseason. At this point, I think the Twins could look forward to a Pablo Lopez, Bailey Ober, Simeon Wood-Richardson postseason trio, with David Festa pitching in a longer series, with Joe Ryan working high leverage relief as he comes back from injury. Again, the concern isn't that the Twins rotation is bad. They are simply young and inexperienced in the postseason. 

Despite it all, the Twins are among the upper echelon of the American League this year. They aren't even functioning at full capacity right now, but may well be there by the post season. Still, given all of our collective history and the messaging around the team this year, Twins Territory is bracing for the worst in October.