Is the course of action summarized by Twins President of Baseball Operations Derek Falvey on Monday the best plan, a defensible plan or the only possible plan?
I fear that the answer veers more toward the second and third options than the first.
You can certainly make the case, as Falvey does, that the Twins can improve over their 78-84 season in 2023 with some better luck and improved health. In that scenario, roster additions might be considered more enhancements and tweaks than anything else, while the firing of head trainer Michael Salazar could be the most significant staff personnel move.
"Superficially, sometimes people want personnel changes just because if you make a change, therefore you're trying," Falvey told reporters Monday. "We had to assess whether or not change was needed. But this whole group, we feel like, is the right group to help lead us in the direction we need to go."
Falvey might really believe that. Or he at least might believe that there is no other viable course of action for an organization that is never going outspend its competition and which has a dwindling base of minor league prospects from which to make trades (MLB's web site has their farm system at No. 23 in baseball as of now).
However we define the plan, know this: It had better be the correct one for the sake of the Twins' trajectory, which I talked about on Tuesday's Daily Delivery podcast.
Attendance for Twins home games this season was the lowest it has been for a full unrestricted year since 2001, and the lack of a sharper upturn when the Twins were in the playoff race for much of the summer left President Dave St. Peter "surprised and kind of bordering on disappointed."
Combined with lingering uncertainty about whether their games will be available to a large swath of cord-cutting TV viewers, the Twins face the potential for further erosion in the local sports marketplace.