Buyer Beware: Ranking the Twins’ Worst Contracts

[Fatbat]

Its a bit early to conclude if the contracts are bad. So far, if you want to say they have production lagging behind pay, that’s entirely fair.  If we didn't have Buxton or C4 around the last 2 years, who would we have filled the roster with? Hard to say and its equally hard to say these contracts are good or bad. Jury is out in my book because you don’t buy injuries you buy the upside potential…. Or you go to the FA market and pay for past performance. Both are necessary evils. 

[wabene]

4 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

We hear insistently that the problem is the Pohlads are cheap.  Yet, those who post this NEVER offer any form of proof that the Pohlads spend a smaller percentage of team revenue than other teams.  Nor do they show any sources that project the Twin's to make more money than the other teams or even the same amount of money. 

I looked up one year, 2022.  I was lazy and just did the teams with +/- 10% of the twins revenue.   However, I have done this for several other years in the past and as far as I can tell these rants are the product of an unwillingness to actually get informed before drawing a conclusion and/or complaining.

TEAM                                   REV          Payroll   % of REV

 

Is this correct? If so I take back my recent comment that the increased spending under Falvey was mearly adequate. Last year was pretty good! Does it have anything to do with the best results in decades? I still think overall on the ledger the Pohlads are middle of the road at best. There have been many years when they under spent, especially under Ryan. 

To the OP, the Dobnak deal was a head scratcher from the outset, but a minor, practically inconsequential one.

They were the highest bidder on Vasquez so they paid a premium and he had a down year. Still not a big deal, my hope is he bounces back, Jeffers continues his good play and Carmago gets a look and proves he can make Vasquez expendable in the future. Vasquez is needed presently.

It is too early to judge the deals for CC and Buck. Correa provided some real value in the playoffs. We don't win that series without him. 

[Major League Ready]

1 hour ago, wabene said:

Is this correct? If so I take back my recent comment that the increased spending under Falvey was mearly adequate. Last year was pretty good! Does it have anything to do with the best results in decades? I still think overall on the ledger the Pohlads are middle of the road at best. There have been many years when they under spent, especially under Ryan. 

To the OP, the Dobnak deal was a head scratcher from the outset, but a minor, practically inconsequential one.

They were the highest bidder on Vasquez so they paid a premium and he had a down year. Still not a big deal, my hope is he bounces back, Jeffers continues his good play and Carmago gets a look and proves he can make Vasquez expendable in the future. Vasquez is needed presently.

It is too early to judge the deals for CC and Buck. Correa provided some real value in the playoffs. We don't win that series without him. 

I would not call last year a great success.  They were pretty good, not great but where did their production come from?  Sonny Gray and Pablo Lopez made a combined total of %17.5M.  Their highest paid players produced next to nothing.  The six highest WAR position players made a total of $15M with over half of that going to Kepler and the best RPs made the league minimum.  I don't how we would come to the conclusion their success was a product of spending.  

[Doctor Gast]

7 hours ago, Blyleven2011 said:

Now think about the worst twins contract signed , for me ot was DONALDSON  , why ? , because we didn't need him after a great 2019 offensive year , what we needed at the time was pitching ...

Worst acquisition  for the Twins  , plain and simple  ...

Totally agree. Twins struck out on the FA SPs they wanted. So to save face they went all out to sign Donaldson. They should have gone to the trade market. Their excuse back then was there was none to be had. Yet other teams usually found good deals. But this contract hamstrung us from getting players we needed more. To correct this mistake they had to completely dismantle the great depth at the premium position of catcher. Which greatly handicapped us. This is by far the worst.

 

Gallo was pretty bad too but probably the focus is on current contracts.

 

IMO the Dobnak contract was a good one. He was given a contract due to his newfound slider. This gold mine was his downfall due to mismanagement. Dobnak was a good GB pitcher, they should have left him alone & used the new pitch sparingly using it on opportune times as a SO pitch. But they wanted to transform him into a SO pitcher therefore they focused on the new slider. His hand was not accustomed to it & he quickly had difficulty with control & soon injured the finger that drove that pitch & never recovered fully.

 

Vazquez's drop in offense was to be expected because he needed to focus on getting to know new pitchers to aid in their pitch selection. Plus adapting to a new team, especially the hitting philosophy that's so different from HOU. Yet Vazquez got some clutch hits and contributed a lot to our defense & our pitching success. With Vazquez's PS experience, he could very likely risen to the occasion & had a good one that everyone would forget his regular season offensive shortcomings. But he never was given that chance. I expect a better '24. He's worth his contract.

 

Buxton & Correa was hampered by injuries. '22 to credit the Twins they focused on limiting Buxton to maximize his ABs throughout the season. But to their discredit, after he got hurt they still tried to force ABs (IMO attempt to help Buxton, $ wise) but instead of giving him the proper time to heal, greatly aggravated his injury that followed him into '23 that cut his playing time & kept him from the PS. I believe both these guys will have a much better '24.

 

 

 

 

 

[Brandon]

6 hours ago, mikelink45 said:

I had to look at this from another direction since there are too many ways to evaluate this so - cost benefit - using baseball reference:

Correa $36 - 1.4 WAR - $25m per war points

Dobnak - $2.5 - 0 War - no return

Vazquez - $10m - -0.3 WAR - a negative return

Buxton - $15m - 0.8 WAR - $18.75 per war point.

30 million per WAR is not too bad.  There are much worse contracts out there.  Free Agent contracts are typically solid at 10 million per WAR and a value when a team gets more WAR than that.  

At lease Vazquez is good defensively.  same with Correa.  Most of Correa's slide in value is in batting average.  the rest of his numbers were similar to past numbers.  

Buxton was injured so lets see what happens next season now that he is likely to be healthy.  

Dobnak was a head scratcher to me.  I think they planned on him being a bullpen / 6th man type of pitcher and he could be that 6th/ 7th starter next year.  I wouldn't be surprised if he got 5 starts for Minnesota next year or several weeks in the pen or both.  

On another note.  These contracts are not Heyward bad or Phill Hughes extension or Ricky Nolasco contract bad.

[Schmoeman5]

46 minutes ago, Brandon said:

30 million per WAR is not too bad.  There are much worse contracts out there.  Free Agent contracts are typically solid at 10 million per WAR and a value when a team gets more WAR than that.  

At lease Vazquez is good defensively.  same with Correa.  Most of Correa's slide in value is in batting average.  the rest of his numbers were similar to past numbers.  

Buxton was injured so lets see what happens next season now that he is likely to be healthy.  

Dobnak was a head scratcher to me.  I think they planned on him being a bullpen / 6th man type of pitcher and he could be that 6th/ 7th starter next year.  I wouldn't be surprised if he got 5 starts for Minnesota next year or several weeks in the pen or both.  

On another note.  These contracts are not Heyward bad or Phill Hughes extension or Ricky Nolasco contract bad.

Where does the 10 million per WAR number come from? If that's a genuine figure guys like Acuna, Freeman, Betts, Olson. Cole, and Ohtani are a steal.  And most of those with the exception of Ohtani are already signed to long term deals. But just going by the numbers Ohtani and his agent should be looking for 60 million or so a year. If WAR value is that high he was worth 100 million in 2023. That's cumulative between pitching and hitting. Since he won't be pitching in 24 what is his projected WAR? 6? I don't get it.

[Jocko87]

9 hours ago, terrydactyls said:

What kind of plane?  Cesna, Airbus, 777?

Ahem, it’s a Cessna.  Thank you. 

As for the terrible contracts, if this is what we have to complain about I’m pretty comfortable with things.  

[tony&rodney]

Aaron Sabato.

[Major League Ready]

12 hours ago, Schmoeman5 said:

Where does the 10 million per WAR number come from? If that's a genuine figure guys like Acuna, Freeman, Betts, Olson. Cole, and Ohtani are a steal.  And most of those with the exception of Ohtani are already signed to long term deals. But just going by the numbers Ohtani and his agent should be looking for 60 million or so a year. If WAR value is that high he was worth 100 million in 2023. That's cumulative between pitching and hitting. Since he won't be pitching in 24 what is his projected WAR? 6? I don't get it.

$10M per WAR is the average production for free agents.  Therefore, it is the average cost of 1 WAR in free agency. Cost and expected value are two different things and interpreting this as the expected or accepted value is misguided.    For starters, a team with half the revenue of another team must produce twice the per WAR number as the higher revenue team for that investment to have equal productivity.  In other words, the targeted production from free agent spending depends on the level of revenue they produce.

A more practical to way to look at this is that a player expected to produce 2 WAR is not getting a $20M AAV.  They are going to get roughly $12M.  That’s the target but all of the bad contracts significantly inflate the average WAR/$$ spent.  Did the Angels expect Traut would only produce 3WAR/season?  A really gppd team produces about 50 WAR.  If they produce just 30% via free agency that costs $150M.  How many teams can be successful with this model?

The ratio also seems to be higher for free agent pitchers and elite position players.  This makes sense based on scarcity.  Plus star players impact interest in the team and butts in seats.
 

[Trov]

The nature of how the game works is most FA signings are of less value than an arbitration or pre-arbitration player.  Most players sign at or after their peak, and teams are hoping that players peak will last into mid to late 30's.  However, only a very few players even play above league average late into 30's and they are HOF bound generally.  The problem is once you sign one of these guys, even more so for mid-market teams, you are stuck with him for better or worse.  Normally paying them for same level of play you could get a rookie to do, but paying them what a superstar output should be. 

This is why when so many fans call for spending huge on top FA pitchers, generally even higher risk than position players, I always respond with never more than 4 years, and would prefer 3.  Fans call the Twins cheap for not going out to try and sign some of these FA pitchers, but it is not being cheap to not want to connect yourself to a terrible starting pitchers for 4 season after good 1 to 3 seasons.  

The talk of Bucks contract is that one it was cheaper because of his health risk.  It is also a risk because one thing that made him amazing is his speed, something that will go away as he ages and continues to have lower body injuries.  If he loses his speed he will lose much of his value because his speed put him so over the top.  Not saying he is nothing without it, but he much less without it. 

When signing a player to long term deal into mid to late 30's you need to project how much will they hold up.  Is their best skills going to go fade?  For pitchers do they rely just on velo, and if so will they adjust when that fades?  For hitters is speed their main tool, how will they adjust when that fades?  

[DJL44]

15 hours ago, Doctor Gast said:

IMO the Dobnak contract was a good one. He was given a contract due to his newfound slider. This gold mine was his downfall due to mismanagement. Dobnak was a good GB pitcher, they should have left him alone & used the new pitch sparingly using it on opportune times as a SO pitch. But they wanted to transform him into a SO pitcher therefore they focused on the new slider. His hand was not accustomed to it & he quickly had difficulty with control & soon injured the finger that drove that pitch & never recovered fully.

So they mismanaged Dobnak by trying to turn him into a good pitcher? They should have left him alone to be a bad pitcher instead? The end result was the same - pitching lots of innings in AAA.

[DJL44]

1 hour ago, Major League Ready said:

The ratio also seems to be higher for free agent pitchers and elite position players.  This makes sense based on scarcity.  

There is also a postseason advantage if you can get your wins from an elite starting pitcher. That is something that can be leveraged in the playoffs when you drop the worst pitcher from your rotation.

[UK Twin]

Dobnak's is easily the worst out of those 4 because he's no longer with the Twins. Buxton's only looks bad because of his injury woes. If he can get reasonably healthy he's easily worth $15mill a year. 

Correa's contract is not bad in the slightest. Yes he had a down year but he still provided Gold Glove caliber defense at SS (probably the best I've personally ever seen from a Twins SS). Plus the guaranteed years of his contract only takes him into his age 34-35 season I think. Compare that to other big name free agents who will be on 40mill a year contracts into their late 30's or even 40's.  The last 4 years are vesting options and has to have a certain number of PA. For a player of his track record, we've got a steal TBH. Look at what he was going to get from the Giants before it all blew up.

[IndianaTwin]

On 12/3/2023 at 10:24 AM, terrydactyls said:

What kind of plane?  Cesna, Airbus, 777?

Based on Dobnak’s three data points, it seems his performance has been pretty flat.