{"id":276674,"date":"2023-10-17T09:35:50","date_gmt":"2023-10-17T14:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=276674"},"modified":"2023-10-17T10:11:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T15:11:00","slug":"putting-a-wrap-on-the-twins-2023-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=276674","title":{"rendered":"Putting A Wrap On The Twins’ 2023 Season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Minneapolis – The Twins\u2019 2023 season lasted longer than it did in either of the previous two years, thanks to the success that led to a division championship, a snapping of the record playoff losing streak that stood since \u201804 and the organization\u2019s first playoff series win since \u201802.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But on Friday, as we do after the end of any campaign, we had a chance to sit down for an informal, on-the-record chat with president of baseball operations Derek Falvey and manager Rocco Baldelli for a full end-of-season postmortem, discussing some of the factors that led to the season that just ended and a handful of topics pertinent to the offseason to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly, the biggest news that came from that session was the upcoming surgeries<\/a> for Byron Buxton and Alex Kirilloff, but we touched on a wide array of other topics, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what you should know from that discussion:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Royce to stick with infield<\/strong>
The Twins are preparing for next season with the idea that Royce Lewis will be the starting third baseman, Baldelli said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He could take some grounders at shortstop, too, so that he could be ready as a backup option for Carlos Correa, but even with a crowded infield group that could further grow with the eventual promotion of No. 2 prospect<\/a> Brooks Lee, the Twins do not have any intentions to try Lewis in the outfield again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can’t talk to five years from now; that would be irresponsible for me to do so,\u201d Baldelli said. \u201cBut I consider Royce an infielder at this point. I consider Royce, going into the offseason and next Spring Training, getting ready to play third base. That’s where we’ll start the conversation with him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What will center field look like?<\/strong>
The Twins are preparing Buxton to play center field again in 2024, but as they found out this year, it\u2019s a good idea to have a safety net. That\u2019s what Michael A. Taylor was when they acquired him — and Taylor ended up starting 126 games in center field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Taylor bound for free agency, Falvey brought up Willi Castro and Austin Martin as players the Twins expect to play some role in center field. Perhaps they could think about bringing Taylor back, or finding another consistent option to preserve the positional versatility of both Castro and Martin — but it seems the Twins aren\u2019t going to put all their eggs in the Buxton basket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese guys are going to all play a role for us,\u201d Falvey said. \u201cWhat that looks like, exactly, on our roster, is TBD. Hopefully Byron is also playing a role in that mix, and we’ll see what else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Varland to the bullpen? They\u2019re not ruling it out<\/strong>
Louie Varland was initially reluctant to move to a bullpen role down the stretch, and made his reservations known both internally and externally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That happened with the expectation that Varland would return to starting in 2024 — but the Twins don\u2019t want to make a call on that just yet, both Baldelli and Falvey said. They\u2019re glad he now has experience doing both at the highest level, but it did affect their perspective to see Varland up to 100 mph with his fastball with a cutter that gave hitters fits out of the bullpen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think he has the ability to be an elite reliever,\u201d Baldelli said. \u201cI don’t want to make any bold statements. I\u2019ll talk to him soon. What he showed out of the bullpen was special. It’s hard to look away from that and not at least think about that going forward. I’ll just say that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Minneapolis – The Twins\u2019 2023 season lasted longer than it did in either of the previous two years, thanks to the success that led to a division championship, a snapping of the record playoff losing streak that stood since \u201804 and the organization\u2019s first playoff series win since \u201802. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":272399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=276674"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276693,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276674\/revisions\/276693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/272399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=276674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=276674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=276674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}