2021 Twins Turkey of the Year

Happy Thanksgiving everyone

Time seems to have gotten away from me and it was only in the last few days that I realized it was that time again, time to pick another Twins Turkey of the Year. This years winner will be number 13. So far we have only had one repeat winner and that was President and CEO Dave St. Peter who took the honors in 2013 and again in 2019.

With the 2021 Minnesota Twins expected to do well and go deep in the playoffs by their fans and the so called baseball experts and then to see the team finish 73-89 and in last place in the American League Central Division you would have to think that there were more turkeys then you could shake a stick at. You would be right.

The Twins won the AL Central for the second year in a row in the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season but were quickly eliminated by the Houston Astros in two games in the ALWC series. That made it 18 consecutive losses in postseason play for Minnesota going back to game one of the 2004 ALDS when Johan Santana beat the New York Yankees and Mike Mussina 2-0.

The 2020 offseason saw the Twins front office let starting left fielder Eddie Rosario walk away and that was not totally unexpected as 2016 first round pick Alex Kirilloff was waiting in the wings. What was unexpected however; was that the Twins would send Kirilloff to the minors to start the 2021 season after he put up a mediocre spring training.

What happened next is hard to comprehend except to say that there must be something in the water at Target Field. I say that because Derek Falvey and Thad Levine (who I call the Dynamic Duo) decided to continue the old Twins management style of days gone by and decided to continue being bottom feeders. They picked up relief pitchers like Ian Gibaut, Brandon Waddell, Juan Minaya, Derek Law, Danny Coulombe, Luke Farrell, Glenn Sparkman, Hansel Robles, Cleiber Maldonado, Oscar Peredes, Jose Oliveras, Hector Andrade, Edgardo Chaviel, Chandler Shepherd, Ian Hamilton, Orlando Rubio, Andrew Albers, Alex Colome, Robinson Leyer, Juan Rojas, Cristian Jimenez and Roger Duran. Many of these guys did not put on a Twins uniform in a regular season game and those that did probably were not worthy of doing so. Saying that the two “big name” relievers they signed, Hansel Robles and Alex Colome did not meet expectations would be a huge understatement. Robles was traded at mid-season and Colome would have been had anyone expressed even a hit of interest. Colome was so bad, particularly at the start of the season as the team closer that you could almost say he single-handedly put the team into a death spiral they never recovered from. Colome brought on discussion from the fans as they tried to determine if Colome was replacing former Twins pitcher Ron Davis as the most hated Twins closer of all-time. Next the Dynamic Duo moved on to sign and add J.A. Happ and Matt Shoemaker to the starting rotation .

The Twins started the season on the road in Milwaukee and Detroit and came home on April 7 with a 4-2 record and were actually in first place in the Central Division. Three days later they were out of first place never to sniff it again. On April 14th they dropped a twin-bill that dropped them below the .500 mark and that too would be in their rear view mirror. So there you go, the Twins 2021 season in a nutshell.

So that brings us to why the Twins were so bad and who contributed to the Twins downfall. We could say that it was a “total system failure” but that term was taken back in 2016 so let’s dig in and see who was to blame.

We can start with injuries, yes, the Twins had a ton of injuries with at least a dozen players missing 40 or more games this past season. But injuries happen to every team and that is not the total answer but it certainly contributed to their poor play.

On the pitching side, Kenta Maeda went down with TJ surgery and was not overly effective when he did pitch. Michael Pineda started about 20 games. Closer Taylor Rogers went down for the count after 40 games due to a finger injury similar to what Rodney Dobnak experienced. So let’s see who our finalists are for the 2021 Twins Turkey of the Year.

We will start with number five on the list, right fielder Max Kepler. Kepler appeared in 121 games and had a slash line of .211/.306/.413, down for the second year in a row from his career best in 2019. Although he was not charged with any errors in the field, he did not seem to have the same range in the field as he has had in the past. His career, at least with the Twins is at a cross-roads.

At fourth on our list of finalists is closer Alex Colome. Colome’s option for 2022 was not picked up by the way. Colome got off to a terrible start and he got better as the season improved and the fact that he was always willing to pitch saved him from being higher on this list of Turkey candidates.

In the number three slot we have the combination of J.A. Happ and Matt Shoemaker, two starting pitchers brought in by the Dynamic Duo to slip into the Twins starting rotation.

Matt Shoemaker started 11 games and allowed 43 runs in 50.2 innings and had a 7.28 ERA with a 2-7 record. The bullpen beckoned but that didn’t pan out either so he went off to St. Paul never to be heard from again except when he kept bringing up how well he was doing in St. Paul. Thankfully the Twins brain-trust didn’t listen.

I was actually in favor of the Happ signing when it happened but I soon realized how wrong I was. J.A. Happ was in the Twins rotation for 19 starts until the St. Louis Cardinals who apparently were more desperate for pitching than the Twins came calling. In his 19 starts in Minnesota, Happ was 5-6 throwing 98.1 innings and allowing 21 home runs, 125 hits and 76 runs and a 6.77 ERA.

In our runner-up spot this year we have manager Rocco Baldelli. After two first place finishes Rocco gave us a fifth place finish in a dreadfully weak Central Division. Rocco didn’t seem to be on his game this year with most of his moves back-firing. His constant changes to the line-up and batting order didn’t work and his pitching management was atrocious. The players made the same mistakes time after time and their fundamentals were pretty much non-existent. I think the team gave up after their terrible 9-15 start in April and the inexperienced Rocco didn’t know how to deal with it after having good starts in his first two years.

This brings us to this years run-away winners. Speaking of run-away, did you know that turkeys can run up to 25 MPH? Our winners this year are once again repeat winners and just like back in 2017 when they took home Turkey of the Year honors, Derek Falvey and Thad Levine are still joined at the hip. That is a good thing because the Chief of Baseball Operations and the General Manager need to be on the same page.

These two gents were brought in after the 2016 season to turn this franchise around and I still don’t see that happening. In their five seasons at the helm they have given us two first place finishes, two second place finishes, a fifth place finish and zero playoff wins in six games. Over the last five seasons the Twins record is 373-335 and they have played at a .527% winning clip. That sounds OK at first glance but you have to remember that in 2019 they were 101 and 61. If you take out that outlier season in which most of the team had career seasons you see the Twins record drop to 272-274 giving us two winning seasons, two losing seasons and and a win percentage of just .498%.

This administration was going to improve the Twins pitching but so far I have not seen that happen, all I hear is that it is coming, how is that any different than we have have heard for years? The free agents pickups made by Falvey and Levine are nothing to brag about. What about Josh Donaldson you say? Did that $92 million signing even get us one playoff win?

The trade front has not been kind to the Dynamic Duo either. They have made over 30 trades and what have they really got to show for them? Everybody brings up the Ryan Pressly trade where they got Jorge Alcala and Gilberto Celestino. But did the Twins really come out ahead on that deal? The Jake Odorizzi trade was OK but he was 22-18 over three years and then we got zippo for him. The Kenta Maeda looked like a steal for the Twins at first but over two seasons the Twins have 32 starts from him and now he will miss all of 2022 with TJ surgery. Some of the trades they made in 2021 look promising and might pan out but that is an unknown.

How about the draft front? Since Falvey and Levine started drafting in 2017 they have had five players (Bailey Ober, Charlie Barnes, Brent Rooker, Trevor Larnach and Ryan Jeffers) make it to the big leagues. Ober a 12th round pick in 2017 has the best WAR at 1.2 and Ryan Jeffers a second round pick in 2018 has a WAR of 1.0.

The Dynamic Duo is building one heck of a kingdom in the front office where the staff is growing in leaps in bounds. The bottom line however; is putting a team on the field that wins the championship, not to build the best FO in the business. Neither Falvey nor Levine have stepped up and taken credit for the Minnesota Twins dismal play in 2021, that bothers me, you have to own what you control. As we go into 2022 and as they start their sixth season in charge, the first thing you have to do is to admit you have a problem, accept responsibility for it, and then come up with a plan to fix it. Old school stuff Mr. Falvey and Mr. Levine, get’er done. Enjoy your 2021 Turkey of the Year award as you gents have earned it.