Should 'Thadrek Falvine' be listening to Twins fans and making more moves?
If you watched the Twins Town Hall feature on FSN Wednesday night — a one-hour forum featuring questions from fans and FSN folks for Derek Falvey, Thad LeVine and Paul Molitor of the Twins — you probably didn’t learn a ton of specifics about the 2017 team. (If you missed it, I imagine it will be replayed a bunch of times).
This is probably by design but also by necessity, since Falvey and Levine are really still getting up to speed on the whole organization and the pieces with which they have to work.
That said, they are also operating a team that lost 103 games last year during an offseason that’s not terribly long. Pitchers and catchers will report to spring training in about 2 months. Even if Falvey and Levine are correct in their assertion that the Twins have more talent (young talent at that) than most teams coming off a 59-win season, this is an organization that has holes in the short-term and long-term.
They’ve patched one by signing catcher Jason Castro, but I get the sense that some fans are getting a little antsy for more action.
I asked on Twitter whether that’s true — and if Thadrek Falvine, a mash-up of the two Twins bosses who seem very much joined in the spirit of synergy and collaboration in the decision-making process, should be taking into account what fans want when they make decisions. (Note: that image of Falvey and Levine combined into one person looks a lot more like Levine to me than it does Falvey).
To the part about being antsy, fan responses were about 50-50. Refreshingly, to the question about whether the Twins bosses should be listening to fans, the overwhelming majority said no. Perhaps the response that best captured the overall spirit was this one:
@RandBall they shouldn’t listen to us, but it is annoying when teams who need to get better don’t do anything
— Shane (@ShaneofMN) December 15, 2016
If the roster still looks pretty similar on Feb. 1 — or if the Twins make a trade involving Brian Dozier that proves to be unpopular — I have a feeling the answers might be different. For now, though, it seems as though a pretty good number of Twins fans are in “trust the process” mode.