Man oh man oh man oh man… what is happening to this team?
I say that after reading a recent MLB.com story about Twins executive Derek Falvey and his “expectation” that the Twins’ two best pitchers — Pablo Lopez and Joe Ryan — will be part of this team next season.
Here’s the money quote and it is not encouraging:
“When I look at this roster and I look at the team,” Falvey said, “I’ve said it now probably a number of times about the core and the group: Those guys [López and Ryan] are part of it, right? So that’s my vision, that’s my hope. That’s my expectation as we sit here. It still requires some ongoing conversations with ownership and what that looks like. And ultimately, my hope is that we could build around that group. That would be my hope.”
That would be his hope? Sounds like they are leaving for sure. After all, this is a team that reportedly is $500 million in debt, and with Lopez set to earn $21.5 million next season and Ryan due a raise, why would ownership hang onto them?
The Twins would certainly receive a boatload of prospects for those two, but again a prospect is a prospect is a prospect until they make it in the major leagues.
Extra innings…
–Target Field attendance for 2025 chimed in at 1.77 million fans, or 11th out of 15 teams in the American League.
–The Yankees finished tops in the AL with more than three million fans and the West Sacramento A’s (or whatever you want to call them) came in dead last at around 768,000 fans.
–In the National League, the Colorado Rockies, the worst team in baseball at 43-119, attracted more than 2.4 million fans. Go figure. Coors Field must be a heck of a good time because the product on the field is not.
–Cleveland’s luck finally ran out: The Guardians, who went on an incredible 20-7 run in September to unseat the Detroit Tigers for the AL Central title, didn’t look nearly as good in their brief, best-of-three-game series against Motown. In the end, the Tigers, who were tops in the division for 151 days, finally proved to be the better team.
–How lucky were the Guards? They finished the season at 88-74, but by Pythagorean terms they had a losing record, according to Baseball-Reference.com. The Guards never overcame their negative run differential, meaning they allowed more runs than they scored. That eventually catches up with you.