It's the Roster

[Mike Sixel]

2 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Does it?

I'm not sure. Maybe. 

It's fair that some small market teams don't care....but this team has its highest payroll ever, and isn't doing what Pitts and Oak and others are doing....but I could be wrong. Maybe they don't want to win (but then I don't see any way they sign CC or Buxton to those deals). 

[USAFChief]

9 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

It's fair that some small market teams don't care....but this team has its highest payroll ever, and isn't doing what Pitts and Oak and others are doing....but I could be wrong. Maybe they don't want to win (but then I don't see any way they sign CC or Buxton to those deals). 

I have zero issue with current Twins player expenditures. None. That hasn't been the case until recently, but they're spending approximately what they should in 2023.

I wish they could spend more on international free agent youths, but I believe they're capped by rule. 

I will accept that ownership wants to win. I just do not believe ownership is more interested in winning than profits. And I'm not sure we should expect them to be, even if perhaps other owners don't operate the same. Clearly Twins ownership isn't just milking profit sharing to make money.

[dxpavelka]

Meanwhile instead of watching Sano hit .235 and 35 home runs we're watching Gallo hit .189 and maybe not set the team strikeout record because he'll miss too many games.  I'd rather watch Sano eat Twinkies. Much more fun.

[USAFChief]

3 minutes ago, dxpavelka said:

Meanwhile instead of watching Sano hit .235 and 35 home runs we're watching Gallo hit .189 and maybe not set the team strikeout record because he'll miss too many games.  I'd rather watch Sano eat Twinkies. Much more fun.

Sano last did either of those things in 2019.

[DJL44]

30 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Does it?

I'm not sure. Maybe. 

48% of the ticket revenue is shared to the central pool. The Twins are a below average revenue team so they receive more than they put in. Each additional dollar that comes in gets offset by the Twins getting less money from the central pool.

Let's make the math easy - Twins get $100M, they share $48M and keep $52M. They're slightly below average revenue so let's say they get $52M back from the pool. That gives them $104M in revenue.

Now let's say they have a winning season and make $110M, they share $53M, keep $57M but still only get $52M back from the central pool because their extra $5M in pooled revenue is offset by someone else's drop of $5M (someone wins and someone else loses every year). That gives them $109M in revenue. Each additional dollar only nets them 50 cents.

Here's the real drag - now the Twins are a net contributor to the pool so they don't get the perks that come with being a revenue sharing recipient - draft pick compensation for Sonny Gray is not as good, they lose a higher draft pick if they sign a free agent who rejected a QO and they can't be in the draft lottery in 2024 because they moved up in the draft in 2023. They could also move from Competitive balance round A to round B.

[Woof Bronzer]

46 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

Attendance has been down considerably, so your position makes absolutely no sense.  This whole line of thought that the people who own or run the team don't care about winning is incredibly naive.  A good product makes more money and perhaps more importantly increases the value of the team.  

Lol they're drawing 23k a game and I believe they're up over last year.

Corporations exist to make profit - that's just a fact.  (To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a corporation's sole obligation to society is maximizing shareholder value.)  The Twins are one asset in a diverse Pohland portfolio.  They're a line on a P&L report.  All corporations must balance investment with expected returns.  The Twins have always walked this fine line and have historically seemed to target being competitive in the division as the balance - give yourself a chance to get into the playoffs, but don't break the bank chasing a Series.  This way fans will stay interested over the course of 81 home games, which is a much more stable proposition than the uncertainty of the playoffs.  Too much losing and they'll lose fans (and therefore revenue); so yes, the team is interested in winning as a strategy to maximize profits.  But I have seen zero proof from the Pohlad sons and grandsons that they are interested in winning for winning's sake.   Have they ever gone beyond their "payroll is set at 50% of revenue" in the interest of legitimately chasing a World Series?  If not, do they truly care about winning?  

Corporations can't reasonably accomplish more than a couple broad goals, and usually it's all in service of the bottom line.  For example, a corp might say, in order to differentiate ourselves from the competition (and thus maximize profit), we're going to have the best customer service.  They build strategic plans around that, and if they are reading the market correctly, their success or failure is dependent on their ability to execute those plans.  

But a company that doesn't prioritize customer service isn't going to accidentally have great customer service.  Saying the Pohlads care about winning is like saying Comcast cares about customer service - I'm sure they feel it would be a nice to have, they're never going to say "we hate customer service", but they clearly don't believe the cost-benefit of investing more in customer service is there.  And like customer service, winning doesn't happen accidentally.  As evidence I will point to 1 playoff series win in 30 years. 

But hey, don't take it from me, take it from Dave St. Peter, who said the problem with last September's meltdown wasn't the losing, but the lack of fans showing up at the park to empty their wallets.  

[Woof Bronzer]

1 hour ago, Mike Sixel said:

The value is irrelevant (mostly) unless they plan to sell.

I do agree, though, that this idea that the owner, FO, and manager and players (I've seen all of them mentioned, repeatedly) don't care about winning is ridiculous. Utterly.

Not what I said, but I'll take the bait:  can you point to a single demonstrable example over the past 30 years where this franchise put winning ahead of profits?  

[Beast]

It’s 100% on the FO.  No question.  Baldelli is an absolute abomination of an MLB manager (as if he really had any say, anyway, it all comes from the analytics department these days), but I still put less on him than the FO.

Their job is to the get the roster right.  That’s it.  They either do or they don’t.  There’s no pass for, “this player was supposed to do” X or Y.  That’s completely irrelevant.  In any line of work that’s ever existed (except weather man), you’re judged on your results.

Also, they’re relying on the same guys they’ve watched stink for the past 3 years.  We’re not talking an unexpected injury to a superstar, here.  How in God’s name can anyone sit here and say, “not their fault, Max Kepler and Byron Buxton were supposed to put it all together….everybody knew that was going to happen.”  That’s just an incomprehensible level of absurdity. 

They have failed.  There’s no middle ground or consolation prize.

 

[Richie the Rally Goat]

1 hour ago, USAFChief said:

I think it's naive to believe Twins ownership believes winning is more important than profits. 

100% accurate, you’ll never see the Pohlads go all-in like San Diego did. This team will always be cost conscious.

however if you don’t grow the top line, it’s very hard to grow the bottom line.

winning drives top line sales.

half measures to win the division but not go all in to win a World Series is the most likely outcome (as we’ve seen)

 

[Hubie29]

So many posts about Kiriloff, Kiriloff, Kiriloff.  That's the problem. He is not a major league hitter. If he is what you are counting on in the middle of the lineup, these results don't surprise me.  Add Larnach, Miranda, Gallo on and on.

[chpettit19]

2 hours ago, Brian Kingfield said:

I’m not sure if I’d agree that the FO assembled a bad roster. If they did, I’m not sure many of us could have predicted its badness. We knew offense wouldn’t be a strong suit, but the lineup at the end of Spring Training was looking not horrible. I put asterisks next to offensive assets. I have no idea how to assemble a lineup so forgive the order…

1. Buxton*
2. Correa*
3. Polanco*
4. Kiriloff*
5. Miranda*
6. Solano
7. Gallo
8. Kepler
9. Vasquez

A lot of us praised the depth at having flexible guys like Taylor, Castro, and Gordon on the roster too. There was also hope in AAA with Julien and Lewis. This doesn’t look that bad on paper at the start of the season. We could have predicted some of those asterisks not panning out and the FO was prepared for that possibility. To have all 5 of them either hurt, in an extreme slump, or relegated to AAA is the worst case scenario. The FO was prepared to have some of them fail, but not all of them. 

All this to say I’m fine if big changes are made with FO, but I don’t think we can act like FO put together a bad roster and we all knew it the whole time.

 

 

 

 

There were many of us saying that we had real concerns about this lineup. My problem with it, from the beginning, is that even if the 5 you have * next to were all hitting to their expectations we're still for sure 1, and probably 2, true impact bats away from a true contender's offense. 

Hot Buxton is an impact hitter, but he's too streaky, and injury prone, to be a true, overall impact bat. Correa is really good for a short stop, and that's valuable, but he's not good enough to be the #1 or #2 bat on a contender. We all hope Kirilloff gets there, but there's no way we should've been banking on it coming into the year with his wrist concerns. Polanco is a lot like Correa in that he's really good, but not a true #1 or #2 bat, and came into the year with injury concerns. Miranda is a lot like Kirilloff in that we have hope for him, but shouldn't have been banking on him being an impact bat in his sophomore season, especially after he slumped to end last year.

Those 5 guys are worthy of lineup spots on a contending team if they're hitting to expectations, but they are not good enough for the top 5 of a contender. I'd argue you need 2 guys better than any of them, but there's no doubt you need at least 1. And if your top 5 aren't good enough, the rest of the roster definitely isn't going to save them. Many of us had this team winning 85ish games. That's not a terrible roster, but it's certainly not a great one either. 5 guys worthy of being in a playoff lineup is not a good roster, in my opinion.

[dxpavelka]

2 hours ago, USAFChief said:

Sano last did either of those things in 2019.

Also the last time the Twins offense didn't under perform..

[ewen21]

22 hours ago, Beast said:

 

Also, they’re relying on the same guys they’ve watched stink for the past 3 years.  We’re not talking an unexpected injury to a superstar, here.  How in God’s name can anyone sit here and say, “not their fault, Max Kepler and Byron Buxton were supposed to put it all together….everybody knew that was going to happen.”  That’s just an incomprehensible level of absurdity. 

 

A home run of a post right here.  The assumption by too many was that Kepler and Buxton are really good players.  The Twins FO believed it enough to extend them and invest in them long term and yet they flipped Luis Arraez.  Arraez produced actual tangible results in a very short period of time unlike Kepler and Buxton and yet organization was  extremely patient with both believing that their "athleticism" and "tools" would eventually translate into baseball skills and help them become money ballplayers.  Buxton has a .300 lifetime OBP, has trouble playing even half a season most years and currently doesn't play the field.  Since he had his best season in 2017, if we exclude this year (because it is incomplete) and 2020 (because it was a shortened season) he has averaged precisely 67 games over the four subsequent seasons after his "breakout season". 

 

In spite of Buxton's inability to stay on the field and unpredictable streakiness this FO invested in him long term.  They also invested in Correa long term and both he and Buxton lobbied for one another.  The front office bought that.  Several years before they gave Kepler a nice extension, which seemed like a decent risk at the time, but Kepler has not even been an average major leaguer for the last three seasons.  Worse, he doesn't even appear to enjoy baseball.  Buxton hates taking batting practice and evidently wasn't all that interested in watching baseball as a kid.  Time to stop looking athletes who might become good players and start looking for baseball players who are in shape mentally in physically to play BASEBALL.

 

 

 

Edited July 1, 2023 by ewen21
I added something at the end