Minnesota Twins

Starting this weekend, baseball will hold its annual Winter Meetings in Las Vegas. The event will get started on Sunday night and wrap up next Thursday with the Rule 5 drafts.

It's been a busy offseason already for the Twins as they have fired a manager, hired a manager and filled his coaching staff. They moved their Double-A affiliate from Chattanooga to Pensacola. Joe Mauer retired. Three players were added to the 40-man roster. The team claimed CJ Cron and then signed him and Ehire Adrianza too. They tended contracts to the rest of their arbitration-eligibles, with the exception of Robbie Grossman. There have been some minor league signings and a whole bunch of rumors.

It is well understood (and intuitively obvious) that on-base percentage correlates highly with run-scoring. In fact, looking at this year's MLB results, you'd conclude it simply correlates with winning. Thirteen of the top 14 teams in OBP finished above .500, and 10 made the playoffs.

The Twins now find themselves with a dire scarcity of this treasured resource. Where can they acquire it?

Today was the deadline to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players. Ehire Adrianza has agreed to a deal worth $1.3 million for 2019, avoiding arbitration. Dan Hayes of The Athletic reported that the Twins would not be tendering Robbie Grossman a contract.

I’ll do my best to update this article with all the players who are non-tendered as news breaks. Any player who is not tendered a contract becomes a free agent.

Coming off a 78-win season, the Minnesota Twins have plenty of room for improvement. Given what all went wrong however, that total in the win column is about as ideal as it could have gotten. This team was a postseason participant just two years ago, and things had only begun to trend up for them. Blueprinting this offseason, and executing during the calendar, the front office has some real direction decisions to make.

Nathan Eovaldi is one of the hottest free agents on the market right now. Jon Morosi of MLB.com reported that the Astros have joined the mix of 10 teams confirmed to have interest in the 28-year-old right-hander. With that much competition, Eovaldi figures to land himself a handsome contract. It’s difficult to see the Twins coming out on top of the bidding war should they join the pursuit, but what they really should be doing is trying to find the next Nathan Eovaldi.

The Minnesota Twins need to make a decision on 11 of their players on Friday. The deadline for determining whether to offer a player arbitration, or not, is one of those milestone dates on the baseball calendar. They don't have to sign a deal, just determine whether to offer the players a contract or not.

This year, players with at least 2.124 years (2 years and 124 days) of service time are arbitration-eligible. Those players between 2.124 service years and 3.000 service years are the Super-2 guys and will have four arbitration seasons (should they stay in the big leagues that long).

Today we will have a brief review of which players are arbitration-eligible. A reminder that you can find much more on these players (except CJ Cron, of course) in the Twins Daily Offseason Handbook. It's been a relatively quiet offseason, so if you haven't yet, you can download the Handbook (for free, if you choose).

With the offseason underway, there is naturally a widespread focus on signings and trades to bring in new talent. But I think we all fundamentally understand that, in order for the Twins to turn things around and reach their potential in short order, it'll need to be driven by drastic internal improvements.

Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe interviewed new Twins manager Rocco Baldelli and reported that the Twins were among the teams who’ve expressed interest in Sonny Gray (it’s a long article). His bi-polar name is quite fitting. On the “Sonny” side: He’s still only 29, had a 3.17 ERA on the road and won’t take a king’s ransom to acquire. On the “Gray” side: He’s averaged less than 140 innings pitched the past three seasons, had a 6.98 ERA at Yankee Stadium and is only under team control for one more season.

On Monday, the Minnesota Twins announced that they'd claimed first baseman C.J. Cron off waivers, which is great news because it provided me an opportunity to use the terrible title pun you see above. (Yes, I'm aware Cron's last name isn't actually pronounced like 'con' but LEMME HAVE MY FUN.)

Is Cron's addition good news for other, more legitimate reasons? Let's take a look-see.

The Minnesota Twins announced on Monday afternoon that the team claimed first baseman CJ Cron off waivers from the Tampa Bay Rays.

The slugger hit .253 in 2018 with 28 doubles, 30 home runs and 74 RBI.

The Twins head into this offseason with bullpen upgrades among their most glaring needs. This is largely because their boldest investment to address that unit a year ago has failed to pay dividends.

Not only was Addison Reed's first year with Minnesota a disappointment, but his uncertain status going forward creates planning headaches in 2019. The only thing guaranteed with Reed for next year is his hefty salary. Can the Twins find a way to derive value from it?

The hot stove is officially burning. With the trade of James Paxton to the Yankees on Monday, the offseason began in earnest. Over the coming weeks, Twins fans will be able to move from reckless speculation to analyzing the moves of their bold front office in addressing their pressing off-season needs. What’s evident in the work of the front office, is that they are not risk averse.

With needs in the middle infield, bullpen, corner infield, and the rotation, Falvey and Levine seem intent on addressing them via as many angles as possible, including trades and player development. If there’s a personnel area that lends itself to free agency, it’s another strong relief pitching free agent class.