Front Page: Winter Meetings Bring a Dose of Cold Reality for Twins

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

I have always said there are a handful of position players. Where I have said it does not exist is in 5+ year SPs so don't change my position for your benefit. I have always conceded the Greinke signing . If you think the billion dollar TV contract they just signed does not make this an aberration we just disagree on that example. Bumgarner is a legit example. What can we learn from this example. Does the fact AZ was his 1st choice perhaps solidify the premise that they have to want to be here?

 

Show me examples of success stories. There is an awful lot of take my word for it and when I actually go look, the facts don't support these transactions were productive. For example, the As trade was an absolute disaster. You can't say the twins trying but losing out on prospects does not count and then say making a trade that is counterproductive counts.

 

The Royals won the WS after their big trade asset left. They got very lucky that the included player performed far better than anyone dreamed. Cueto was mediocre at best when he first came over and he was not the difference in a Royals 4-1 lashing of the Mets.

 

I am drawing a blank on Cleveland. When did they trade top prospects for SPs?

 

I think this is a perfect example of too many qualifiers. No matter what I say, it is dismissed. I list Greinke, but a 4 year old TV deal makes it an aberration (Forbes in 2019 still has the Twins and Diamondbacks equal in revenue, by the way). I list all kinds of aggressive moves, but they can only be SP. There were several SP in my list but apparently they weren't good enough or they only won game 5 of the division series (Cueto) or game 2 of the World Series (Cueto, again) or their team lost game 7 of the World Series or whatever, as if any of that matters to my repeated point that the Twins have yet to demonstrate the same aggressiveness in MLB player acquisition as a number of comparable clubs, and some of us fans are both excited and anxious to see it happen.

 

No, these qualifiers were not part of any prior parameters for this discussion, otherwise I would have never taken part. It's not fun or productive to discuss like this, it's tiresome, and it proves nothing other than one can endlessly pile qualifiers on top of any argument and reduce the whole thing to meaninglessness.

 

(For the record, Cleveland traded prospects for both Sabathia and Jimenez, in addition to several aggressive non-SP trades. But please don't respond with how those don't "count" now for some reason.)

[Major League Ready]

 

That's a little bit of a gray area. Spending on free agents isn't the same as discretionary spending for a household. These are investments.
There are certainly people who invest more aggressively than others who earn a higher income.

 

Fair enough. It's not the greatest analogy but that hardly detracts from the point that the Yankees had $400M more in revenue. The premise that this does not matter and the Twins should follow the same practices demonstrates that fanaticism can trump even those most basic business premise / logic / common sense, whatever you want to call it. 

[Mr. Brooks]

Fair enough. It's not the greatest analogy but that hardly detracts from the point that the Yankees had $400M more in revenue. The premise that this does not matter and the Twins should follow the same practices demonstrates that fanaticism can trump even those most basic business premise / logic / common sense, whatever you want to call it.

That's true, but I don't see anyone asking for the Twins to match the Yankees spending.