No deal!

 

Over the years, I have grown accustomed to the Twins not being able to seal deals. Trades, free agents, anything. If there are reports, there is an initial buzz of anticipation, followed by a long trickle of disappointment as it becomes clear that the rumored move is definitely not happening any longer. So why should it be any different when the team itself is on the block?

News broke over the weekend that the Ishbias, the only known interested parties in the Twins, have instead increased an investment in the Chicago White Sox, and are no longer pursuing the Twins. There is a wailing and gnashing of teeth in Twins Territory, and some are speculating that the Pohlads may pull the team off the market. 

I see that as a bit of an overreach, based on previous reporting, that there was a significant level of interest, more than anticipated, when the team was first announced to be on the market. I have to believe also that the typically coy Pohlads wouldn't have made such an announcement if they didn't know they already had suitors. I can't imagine that the Ishbias were or are the only ones in play, nor that they backed off because the Pohlads were having a change of heart.

There was a rumor early in the process that Glen Taylor might be interested in the team if he ended up losing the Timberwolves in arbitration. And he did! But that is just one of the scenarios related to the potential ownership of the team, and we don't know how many suitors remain, or if more step up with the announcement that the Ishbias are out. 

Even if the Pohlads are planning on keeping the team, they still went along with the plan for payroll to climb, if incrementally this winter. Regardless of whatever happens in the next couple of months, if the Twins are still in the Pohlads hands or not, it's not as dark a time in Twins Territory as this time last year.

The story isn't done being told quite yet, and the ending still has a good chance of being happy

Got their number

 

We all know the players that we love to hate. It's because they always seem to have an extra bit of success when they face the Twins. I'm looking at you, Salvador Perez. We don't recognize it, but other teams have Twins that are their bugaboo as well. I thought, as we get ready to kick off spring training, we should look at the Twins projected opening day roster and see whose number our players have. These will be based on teams they have at least 10 games against, though I will make some notes if there are worthwhile exceptions. 

UTIL, Willi Castro - Milwaukee Brewers. Willi's OPS against our next door neighbors is 85% higher than his career OPS (this is called his tOPS, and will be our measure for all players). His average against the Brewers is a whopping .390. If I didn't qualify teams, though, Castro would show that 7 of his top 8 victims are NL teams. Get him in those inter-league games! The exception is the Angels, who Willi has a habit of hitting home runs against.

C, Ryan Jeffers - Texas Rangers. Do you remember when Jeffers got into a dust up with the Rangers in 2023? It turns out he might be more in their head than originally thought. A 213 tOPS based off of a 1.176 OPS in 14 games will do that.

1b, Ty France - Kansas City Royals. New first baseman Ty France may have been signed specifically because of the way he has feasted on the Royals. His tOPS is 202, which is because he's hitting .406 with 5 home runs. Other victims of the new Twin are the Astros and Rangers. Could have used that a couple years ago.

2b, Brooks Lee - Houston Astros. Lee doesn't have more than a handful of games against anyone, but against the Astros, he hit .462 with a double and a homerun.

SS, Carlos Correa - Colorado Rockies. It's wild that Correa has played enough games against the Rockies for this to be a consideration, but rightfully, he has always battered them, with a .412 average. His favorite AL victim? The Twins. 

3b, Royce Lewis - The Athletics. Lewis has hit 4 home runs against the A's, second only to the 5 he hit against the Guardians. He did it in half as many games, though, to the tune of a 170 tOPS

LF, Trevor Larnach - Kansas City Royals. Larnach is not only good against the Royals, but he's also played against them more than other team, save the White Sox. His tOPS is 151 against Kansas City, boosted by a keen eye at the plate and a .419 OBP.

CF, Byron Buxton - Chicago White Sox. Buxton has a pretty level numbers for his opponents, so the top tOPS is a 141 against the Sox. Reliable, though, against a division rival, and driven by the fact that he has hit 16% of his career home runs against the Southsiders.

RF, Matt Wallner - Chicago White Sox. Wallner, like Lee doesn't have many opponents he has faced a lot, but his 146 tOPS against Chicago is buoyed by an uncharacteristic .339 average. Also, unlike every other guy so far, his numbers are actually better against teams with winning records.

IF, Edouard Julien - Seattle Mariners. Julien's numbers against the Mariners feature a 195 tOPS, but the real story is that if you don't qualify his opponents, 6 of his top 7 are out west. Maybe likes being up late?

IF, Jose Miranda - Toronto Blue Jays. Miranda's 1.034 OPS against the Blue Jays is driven by a high proportion of extra base hits to hits (6/14). Also noteworthy is that Miranda is one of few players that level up against the Tigers.

OF, Harrison Bader - Texas Rangers. Bader played 11 games against the Rangers, which cumulated to a .343 average with 5 doubles. His most difficult times were against several other AL teams... including the Twins.

C, Christian Vazquez - Philadelphia Phillies. Honestly, there was no reason that Vazquez was listed last, just that he is a bench player, but his performances against the Phillies have been otherworldly.  OBP of .508 means that in his 19 games, he got on base more than half the time. 19 games is quite a few! His tOPS against Philadelphia is 266! He also plays better against the AL Central across the board, except the Royals, against whom he is abysmal.

The Twins look well primed to face their divisional foes, interleague play and for west coast swings this season. They've got their number.

Coaching when it counts

There has been a through line on the Derek Falvey tenure, and it has been an investment in their pitching staff. Not necessarily in the players, of course, but to an environment engineered to get the most out of the arms they have. They have made a point to roster excellent receivers. They jumped on Jason Castro right away during Falvey's first offseason in charge. More recently, to outsiders Christian Vasquez looked like an obvious trade candidate, but the Twins held on to him, in no small part because the front office still values him as a benefit to the pitching staff, as a compliment to Ryan Jeffers.

The other lift has been via excellent coaching hires. It started with pitching coach Wes Johnson, and has been reflected through Pete Maki, as the major league rotation and bullpen have rounded back into form. Johnson's contribution was felt acutely in his departure. The Twins staff fell apart when he left abruptly in 2022 to take the same role at LSU (he is now the manager at Georgia), but have reconstituted under Maki.

The Falvey era was supposed to emphasize the pitching pipeline, and through scouting, analytics and importantly, minor league coaching, that emphasis has born fruit. Bailey Ober, Griffin Jax, Cole Sands and many with less time in the organization have blossomed thanks to the environment in the Twins organization. The Twins have developed an incubator for pitchers, and the coaches have played a big role in that, both in development and maintenance. 

Back when Johnson was hired, the Twins seemed like they just had a knack for coaching hires. Former hitting coach James Rowson steered the offense to an historic output before taking a new job in Miami. Since Rowson left, the Twins offense is best described as inconsistent. David Popkins couldn't elevate the offense in the same way Rowson got the most out of his players, or Maki is still getting results from the pitchers. 

Popkins was let go at the end of the year, and replaced him with Matt Borgschulte, who comes in with more experience than Popkins. The Twins hope that translates to the same kind of magic that Johnson, Rowson and Maki have manufactured. Since taking the reins, Falvey has shown a sharp eye for impactful coaching hires—so perhaps Borgschulte should be considered the team’s most significant addition of the offseason.

Rationally irrational

After a long dark offseason, we are hitting the early part of spring training. Pitchers and catchers are reporting, and projection systems are doing what they do best. Projecting. Most predictions that have been released to date have a surprise in store for Twins fans: The Twins are the favorite to win the American League Central.

The entire offseason narrative was built around a vague statement Derek Falvey made about the payroll remaining level entering 2025. This was taken to mean the Twins would have to trim a little bit of payroll to add much of anything, and a lot of the focus was placed on Chris Paddack and Christian Vazquez as potential departees. The calculus recently changed, trades were not made, and suddenly, the Twins have added three players to the major league roster in Harrison Bader, Danny Coulombe and Ty France. 

But here's the thing about a lot of those projections: they came out before the Twins' latest splashes in free agency. The Twins were viewed as likely to be better than their competition in 2025, even by maintaining the roster they had in 2024. 

The Twins have elite talent on their roster. The rotation has three very good starters in Pablo Lopez, Joe Ryan and Bailey Ober and good, developing depth behind those three. They have a strong bullpen, led by Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax and Cole Sands. They have good, professional hitters, including Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton and Royce Lewis, as well as legitimate talent at multiple other spots in the field. Based on the players they have, the Twins are a very strong team.

Even after all that news, even after all the kinds words from me, most Twins fans, myself included, know that there is something missing from the computer projections. These projections don't perfectly capture the Twins likely hundreds of man-games lost to injury this season. Sure, they do all right acknowledging Byron Buxton's inevitable third of a season on the shelf. But do they also note that young players may launch extremely poorly, or the big time injury to someone like, say, Joe Ryan (as in 2024) that could completely deep six the season? 

We fans acknowledge the team's historic misfortune. Numbers can say one thing, and even if they are coldly rational, we can't help but view them as overly optimistic. Something will probably go wrong, because something always goes wrong. Why would this year be any different?

The Athletic released their first team rankings of the season, and picked the Twins as the 4th best team in AL Central. Don't these prognosticators give the Twins any respect? 

The same as before

 The Twins have followed a pretty steady pattern of offseason moves for the last few years, and I'm not just talking about their tendency to wait until the tail end of the offseason to act, essentially every year since Derek Falvey moved into the executive suite. For the last few years, the Twins have, in the late stages of the offseason, sought to add just a little bit more to the bullpen, outfield and infield depth.

This season, despite rumors of concerns over payroll that was made louder by concerned fans that it probably needed to be, the Twins have started their shuffle into Spring Training. It's the same course of action that the team took in the past, broadly, but it comes as a bit of a surprise, given all the other things surrounding the team this year. 

In the late winter of 2025, there is a bit of a surprise that none of the moves have come via trade, as payroll seemed to be such a concern. Instead, in the last week the team has, via free agency, signed old friend, pitcher Danny Coulombe, and new face, outfielder Harrison Bader. The word is out there that the team is also looking at another option for depth on the infield, such as Paul DeJong or Luis Urias as well. The trifecta of late offseason Twins maneuvers. 

It suggests a few things. On the obvious financial side, it either means that the payroll limitations were perhaps not as hard and fast as we believed. Perhaps it also means that the Twins are very confident that a trade is very close to happening. I can't imagine that this late in the offseason there is a market for the Twins to reduce payroll while at the same not sharply affecting their future. 

Don't make the team a lesser product right before you sell it. That's been a pretty regular chorus here at the Rhino and Compass all winter. 

The other suggestions are more on the field things. The first is that the Twins were intentional about finding a fielder that could roam the outfield moreso than looking for the right handed bat. Yes, Bader is a righty,  and he is a bit better against lefties, but not THAT much better. In fact, he was markedly worse in 2024. Bader is an elite fielder, however, and is better viewed as Byron Buxton's backup than a platoon option.

Also, it looks like the Twins are going to rely on Jose Miranda, predominantly, to handle first base. Tasked with the role two years ago, he was laughably poor in the field, but if the Twins feel good enough about him being their option, I have no choice but to assume that he'll be better on defense. If the Twins are looking at adding a middle infielder like DeJong or Urias to the mix, that could push Edouard Julien over to first as well, especially if Royce Lewis ultimately takes over at 2nd. 

The Twins in 2025 waited again, nibbled again, and ultimately are going to end up with the three types of players they are always looking for. Maybe it's this type of consistency that helps them be the pick to with the AL Central this season. 

Let's not burn down large cities for good concerts

Last night's marathon concert to benefit fire victims in the LA area featured something for everyone, except for country fans. (No shade given, country stars have been showing up in disaster zones in the Southeast all year). I like big events like this, where genres and eras can come together. Even if you aren't a fan of say, Billie Eilish or Green Day, It's still really cool that this happened.

Next time, let's keep the collaborations to the Grammy's and not wait for regional catastrophes.