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?
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