Carlos Correa Trade Buzz Is Heating Up

[old nurse]

13 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

Goal posts officially moved! 

The key statement in this whole thing is admitting that the owners changed the assumed payroll, after the FO signed their two big contracts. WTF was the ownership group thinking?

There is a chief financial officer and probably people under him that did not understand that cable TV could be on life support with dwindling numbers. They probably thought a contending team would make for a larger television contract.  The other half of future revenue, i.e. fans, would also come back in droves with a winning team.  They never considered what could go wrong. It should also be obvious who the architect of the current roster situation was. The guy who currently does not have a job. 

[rv78]

12 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

Those 2 aren't bringing back top prospects. Absolutely not bringing back a top young arm. Trading Buxton or Correa would be for salary relief and salary relief alone. Mid-level prospect for Correa. Unless you think the Pohlads are going to eat a bunch of money on his deal. That could get a better prospect. I find it awfully hard to believe that would be the case, though. You'd be clearing space to bring in more Santanas, Margots, and Farmers. Not changing the future by adding a top young arm or young SS to take over.

Correa and Buxton's deals aren't stopping the Twins from keeping the young guys they have and they aren't bringing back top prospects. Trading them isn't changing the Twins future. Trading Carlos Correa and/or Byron Buxton would be in order to add more 1 year veteran nobodies who block the young guys and provide no ceiling. They may play more games than the 2 higher priced guys, but the team isn't going to get any better.

If neither Correa or Buxton aren't worth a top prospect then neither are worth what the Twins are paying them. Which I have touted all along for the past 3 years. There are a lot of posters here who think they are superstars worth every penny. Funny how the Twins and a lot of the fans think they are the best players on the team yet you say they aren't worth a top prospect or two in trade. Guess according to you then, it goes to show how bad this team really is.

[old nurse]

55 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

Which is why I expressly stated "Payroll Capacity" vs simply payroll.  Would you not agree that they way to measure the viability of paying one player a large portion of the payroll would be to look at every team with X amount of wins or playoff teams and then see if they had a player that reached that threshold based on the team's payroll capacity.  Judging payroll capacity is not exact but it would be reasonable to use a percentage of revenue.

BTW ... I have stated more than once here that producing cheap talent enables free agent spending or extensions.  If I was Falvey, I would have met with the Pohlads when they announced the salary cut and presented them with a list of 90 win teams in the past couple decades.  The list would include the percentage paid to the top player and the top 3 players.  That list would illustrate that teams are not successful paying one player 25% of payroll capacity and explained to them that this could be done this year but going forward they would likely have to raise payroll keep the roster together as a result of arbitration increases. 

The net he would have communicated is that payroll will have to go up a bit in the next couple years (26-27) if they want to keep their young core and Correa.   Put a different way if they want to retain enough talent to contend. they will likely have to raise payroll back to 2022-23 levels.  I say likely because it's possible the young pitching takes a big step up and it's possible Rodriquez, Jenkins and Keaschall change the equation making it feasible to trade Pablo Lopez and a couple of the more expensive arbitration eligible players.

Jim Pohlad fired Bill Smith over wanting to spend the way out of the train wreck of the Twins at the time. I would guess that all of the possible positive outcomes of the 2022 season were used to sell the signing. Joe Pohlad did not ask what could possibly go wrong. 

[bean5302]

13 hours ago, Hubie29 said:

You don't think Correa would be salivating to get away from the dumpster fire known as the Minnesota Twins?

I wouldn't expect Correa would want to bail. The Twins had Correa's back the last 2 years, he has good teammates, and a decent structure of a competitive team around him. So the owner is "exploring" a sale. Same manager, same GM, not rebuilding and the AL Central still doesn't feature any expected truly dominant teams.

Payroll isn't expected to drop from last year, and there are no signs of a rebuild happening.

Unless the Twins have told Correa they're not planning to compete, I doubt he has a good reason to leave the place where he just came begging to sign.

[jmlease1]

I don't blame a NY columnist for suggesting the NY teams start sniffing around Carlos Correa and see if they can use their financial muscle to start treating small and mid-market teams as their farm systems again. And Correa would be a great fit for the Damn Yankees from a baseball perspective.

And I agree with the commentors who have noted that the Correa signing made a lot more sense when the payroll with $150M+ then the self-imposed "right-sizing" limits the Pohlad Family have placed on the franchise now. (And you can't blame Falvey for not anticipating the ownership would suddenly cut $30M in payroll on him. Or that ownership would botch their business operations so badly that they couldn't make up the revenue...or would pocket whatever revenue savings they did find)

But trading Correa (which would almost certainly be framed as a salary dump, no matter how good the prospects we get back might be) would be waving the surrender flag. It'd be a purely financial move, because no one here believes that it would free up $35M in payroll to fill different holes in the roster and retool. There's nothing that says fans should trust this ownership group not to pocket the money as they ramp up for sale, and many indicators to believe that they would do exactly that and not give two craps about what it does to the team's W-L record.

I hate everything about this idea. Correa is a great player, the most complete SS I've ever seen in a Twins uniform. And I do think this team can compete next season and be a fun team that's easy to root for. And ideas like this throw that whole thing in the trash.

A full Target Field is way more fun than an empty one. Trade Correa and watch attendance plummet. Yuck tuck yuck.

[chpettit19]

1 minute ago, rv78 said:

If neither Correa or Buxton aren't worth a top prospect then neither are worth what the Twins are paying them. Which I have touted all along for the past 3 years. There are a lot of posters here who think they are superstars worth every penny. Funny how the Twins and a lot of the fans think they are the best players on the team yet you say they aren't worth a top prospect or two in trade. Guess according to you then, it goes to show how bad this team really is.

Top prospects come back for excess value in contracts, not guys making market rates. Correa is still a great player worth his contract, but the other teams aren't going to give up top young arms for the chance to pay him market rates. There's no value in that. They'll pay a mid-level prospect for that chance. If the Twins want to pay down some of his contract so the other team can get him for below market rate the other team will give up a better prospect because then there's value in that. 

You were the one arguing the Twins could trade them for top prospects yet they aren't worth their contracts. I'm not sure how you feel I'm the one who's struggling with how trade values work.

[TopGunn#22]

There are all sorts of examples that when a team traded away star players team not only didn't tank, they improved and contended.  I'll give you a couple of examples.

The first is the Brewers.  They have traded away Josh Hader (who was the best closer in baseball while with the Brewers) and Corbin Burns, who was a top SP.  They even let their "All World" manager Craig Counsel go to the Cubs and yet, the Brewers continue to confound the "experts" by winning division titles and qualifying for the playoffs.

How about the 2001 Seattle Mariners.  In 1999 they traded away both Ken Griffey Jr. and Randy Johnson and in 2000 they still went 91-71 and qualified for the Wild Card. (they lost the division to Oakland by half a game).  They then completed the "Fire Sale" by letting Alex Rodriguez walk in FA to the Rangers at seasons end.  Coming into the 2001 season, without Griffey Jr. The Big Unit and A-Rod they won an American League record 116 games!!  

The thing that terrifies most Twins fans is NOT trading Correa and Buxton which would open up a $52 million dollar checkbook to address specific areas with the team.  What terrifies us is that with the exception of trading Nelson Cruz for Joe Ryan and Luis Arraez for Pablo Lopez the Twins FO has botched more trades than won them.  By a wide margin.  

If the Twins were to trade those two pieces away, they would need to go after Willie Adames with a vengeance in FA.  They would need to go after Tyler O'Neill.  Correa and Buxton out.  Adames and O'Neill in.  Swapping out RH hitters for guys with more power and who play more consistently.  That would be a net benefit.  

Not sure what the total cost to bring in those two guys would be, but it wouldn't be $52 million.  Maybe you sign Anthony Santander instead of O'Neill.  Would you be able to sign someone like Danny Jansen as a catcher once you've moved Vasquez?  Probably.  You'd probably have enough left to sign Aroldis Chapman as the LH bullpen piece as well. 

You might even have enough cash left to sign one more SP if you didn't acquire one through a trade.  Kikuchi is 34 years old and Manaea is 33.  BOTH have been mentioned as a fit with the Twins (as have the Brewers, Rangers, Nats and Orioles).  We can compete with those teams for FA's.  Both, remarkably are LH !!  Other somewhat affordable potential SP's in FA include Walker Buehler, Luis Severino, Shane Bieber (coming off Tommy John but believed to be ready for the start of the season) and maybe even bargain basement Matthew Boyd (also LH). 

Or how about really being aggressive and bidding for Roki Sasaki, a 23 year old fireballer from Japan who will be posted.  He will not command the huge signing bonus due to his international FA status and even though the Dodgers and the New York teams are favored to sign him, it's rumored he might prefer a smaller market.  How about the Twins?!?  It would depend on how much international signing money we currently have but to add a 23 year old pitcher of his talent?  That would open up a trade of SWR to a pitching needy team.  Or Ryan or Ober for that matter.

Trading Correa and Buxton away is NOT throwing up a White Flag.  But it will take an astute, creative and aggressive front office to move the chess pieces of roster construction to make it work.  Is Falvey capable of this?  Tying up such a high percentage of your team payroll in those two guys is not a recipe for success.  Baseball is a game where massive roster shifts can happen and a team can function smoothly.  It's not like trying to get an offensive line to work together or integrating Donte DiVincenzo and Julius Randle into the Timberwolves lineup.     

[chpettit19]

1 hour ago, TopGunn#22 said:

There are all sorts of examples that when a team traded away star players team not only didn't tank, they improved and contended.  I'll give you a couple of examples.

The first is the Brewers.  They have traded away Josh Hader (who was the best closer in baseball while with the Brewers) and Corbin Burns, who was a top SP.  They even let their "All World" manager Craig Counsel go to the Cubs and yet, the Brewers continue to confound the "experts" by winning division titles and qualifying for the playoffs.

How about the 2001 Seattle Mariners.  In 1999 they traded away both Ken Griffey Jr. and Randy Johnson and in 2000 they still went 91-71 and qualified for the Wild Card. (they lost the division to Oakland by half a game).  They then completed the "Fire Sale" by letting Alex Rodriguez walk in FA to the Rangers at seasons end.  Coming into the 2001 season, without Griffey Jr. The Big Unit and A-Rod they won an American League record 116 games!!  

The thing that terrifies most Twins fans is NOT trading Correa and Buxton which would open up a $52 million dollar checkbook to address specific areas with the team.  What terrifies us is that with the exception of trading Nelson Cruz for Joe Ryan and Luis Arraez for Pablo Lopez the Twins FO has botched more trades than won them.  By a wide margin.  

If the Twins were to trade those two pieces away, they would need to go after Willie Adames with a vengeance in FA.  They would need to go after Tyler O'Neill.  Correa and Buxton out.  Adames and O'Neill in.  Swapping out RH hitters for guys with more power and who play more consistently.  That would be a net benefit.  

Not sure what the total cost to bring in those two guys would be, but it wouldn't be $52 million.  Maybe you sign Anthony Santander instead of O'Neill.  Would you be able to sign someone like Danny Jansen as a catcher once you've moved Vasquez?  Probably.  You'd probably have enough left to sign Aroldis Chapman as the LH bullpen piece as well. 

You might even have enough cash left to sign one more SP if you didn't acquire one through a trade.  Kikuchi is 34 years old and Manaea is 33.  BOTH have been mentioned as a fit with the Twins (as have the Brewers, Rangers, Nats and Orioles).  We can compete with those teams for FA's.  Both, remarkably are LH !!  Other somewhat affordable potential SP's in FA include Walker Buehler, Luis Severino, Shane Bieber (coming off Tommy John but believed to be ready for the start of the season) and maybe even bargain basement Matthew Boyd (also LH). 

Or how about really being aggressive and bidding for Roki Sasaki, a 23 year old fireballer from Japan who will be posted.  He will not command the huge signing bonus due to his international FA status and even though the Dodgers and the New York teams are favored to sign him, it's rumored he might prefer a smaller market.  How about the Twins?!?  It would depend on how much international signing money we currently have but to add a 23 year old pitcher of his talent?  That would open up a trade of SWR to a pitching needy team.  Or Ryan or Ober for that matter.

Trading Correa and Buxton away is NOT throwing up a White Flag.  But it will take an astute, creative and aggressive front office to move the chess pieces of roster construction to make it work.  Is Falvey capable of this?  Tying up such a high percentage of your team payroll in those two guys is not a recipe for success.  Baseball is a game where massive roster shifts can happen and a team can function smoothly.  It's not like trying to get an offensive line to work together or integrating Donte DiVincenzo and Julius Randle into the Timberwolves lineup.     

The Twins can sign Roki without trading Correa. The international signing pool is in a different part of the budget than the MLB roster payroll. Why not keep your best player and sign him?

I want nothing to do with Tyler O'Neill. That's my fear. They trade Buxton and bring in a far worse version of Buxton. Tyler O'Neill has played 100 games in an MLB season twice. He's had an OPS+ over 100 3 times. In 7 seasons. He can't play CF, let alone at a top level. He's a poor man's poor man's Byron Buxton. And he's going to get basically the exact same deal as Buxton. That's not a win for the Twins.

If the Twins trade Correa for a mid-level prospect and sign Willy Adames for 25 mil a year instead I'll call it a minor victory. You get a year younger, but add a year or 2 to the deal while getting a worse player. Really it comes down to whether or not you think Correa can play 135 games a year for the next few years or not. I think he can, but I get that others think he can't. If you don't think he can play 135 games a year I see why you think that can be a nice win. But, after this year, you'll be saving between 3 and 8 mil a year probably for the next 3 years and then adding another 1 to 3 years depending on where Adames' deal ends up. That's adding a middle reliever to your roster. If Correa plays 135 games a year I'm going to take him over Adames and the middle reliever, sorry.

I don't want Kikuchi or Manaea or Severino or Bieber coming off TJ. Really, really, really don't want Boyd. Those aren't needle movers. And you couldn't afford them after your Adames and O'Neill signings anyways. Trading Correa and Buxton doesn't have to be waiving the white flag, no. I agree trading your most talented players doesn't have to be waiving the white flag, but the plan you laid out shows how hard it is to improve your team when you do trade your best players.

[DJL44]

26 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

The Twins can sign Roki without trading Correa.

The Twins are not signing Sasaki. He's coming over early to play for a World Series caliber team. He can make up the money he loses by coming over early with endorsement deals in a large market but that ain't happening in the Twin Cities (though I would have loved to hear Sasaki endorse Sheboygan sausages).

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

3 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

I have stated more than once here that

mid-market teams shouldn’t be signing high end free agents in the first place? 🙂

[chpettit19]

4 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

The Twins are not signing Sasaki. He's coming over early to play for a World Series caliber team. He can make up the money he loses by coming over early with endorsement deals in a large market but that ain't happening in the Twin Cities (though I would have loved to hear Sasaki endorse Sheboygan sausages).

I wasn't predicting that, was just rebutting the other poster's argument for trading Correa and using the saved money to sign Sasaki. 

[tony&rodney]

Moving Correa and/or Buxton off of the roster does not solve the current problem for the Twins, a lack of speed and defensive acumen. Scrolling through the free agents that make sense is mostly pointless. Christian Walker might work but I'm thinking that Royce Lewis at first base holds more promise. Falvey needs to make some trades for talent before he looks at dumping any of Vazquez, Paddack, Castro, Correa, Buxton, or others. 

[ashbury]

18 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

The problem is identifying anything less than winning the WS as a failure. 

Nice try but I did not say that.  What I presented was a clear and precisely defined benchmark. 

You want to use mushy terms like success.  Were the 2023 Twins successful?  I would say so, but that's partly influenced by personal experience I've talked about previously. I would not call the 2024 Twins successful, even though they would rank only slightly lower in your spreadsheet of win totals and whatever else - but they did exceed my own pre-season estimate for wins so maybe I should be pleased with them.  Neither team reached 90 wins, but different people would react differently to a 90-win team too.  And the standard for success will vary by franchise; my son in NYC is amused by the angst of his Yankee-fan friends right now.  So your 90-win standard misses some successful teams like our 2023 Twins and overvalues others.

A World Series win, by contrast, is unassailable.  No one hates that.  And the data I provided is likewise clear cut.  No team since the 2003 Florida (sic!) Marlins has won a WS while carrying a below-average payroll.  Your post which I responded to specified a 20-year window, and that team is outside that.  The team's change of name is a reminder that reaching for events that far back may not carry much relevance to today's marketplace for players. 

Still, let's be generous and say that 1 time in the past 22 seasons, such a payroll won the WS.  That's not 1-in-22 odds for one particular team - that's 1-in-22 for 15 different teams each season, half the league, so if your rooting interest happens to be for one team, it's more like 15 times 22, or one in every 330 years.  Not the simple "once every 30 years" you suggested if every team in the majors had an equal chance.  Once every 22 years, a Hunger Games team wins the lottery, and the other 14 Hunger Games teams are supposed to take heart from it.  Once every 330 years, that team might even be yours!

The teams in the bottom half of payroll have vanishingly little chance.  Meanwhile the top 15 payrolls have won 21 out of 22.  Indeed several of those winners were only barely over the dividing line and I am not saying $200M is a guarantee of success since it obviously is not.  So if you root for one of those teams, in a vacuum your odds are more like 1 out of 15 teams with a chance, times 21 over 22, thus... let's call it 1 out of 16.  A good deal more competitive than the simple one-out-of-30, and a huge distance better than the 1 out of 330 bottom half.

Trying to win it all with a sub-par player payroll is close to an impossible task.  15 teams try to do it every year, thinking this is the year, the year that they can thread the needle to play their young and inexpensive prospects.  It hasn't been done since 2003.

Quote

Yes, it's the ultimate goal but nothing is going to make sense if the measure of success can be expected once every 30 years.  .... We can debate if 90 wins or 95 wins is success but nothing is going to make sense if you use a standard rarely achieved.  We can certainly look at those teams as additional insight

Nothing makes sense but you can get additional insight, and then you go on to disparage the insight.  Good one.

4 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

That list would illustrate that teams are not successful paying one player 25% of payroll capacity

No one should care about payroll capacity.  Mark Twain is (probably incorrectly) credited with saying "a person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read," and I feel the same way about payroll capacity.  An owner with deep pockets who doesn't reach down into them has no advantage over an owner who can't.

Ranting about 25% for one player is a subtler form of player disparagement for ownership/management apologists, when it's the small payroll itself that is the cause.  The team that's in the top 15 payroll, and thus has some legitimate shot at winning it all, has very little chance of paying 25% for any player.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.  Don't trade the player, up your game.

Quote

If I was Falvey, I would have met with the Pohlads when they announced the salary cut and presented them with a list of yadda, yadda, and more yadda.

I can't close without commenting on this gem.  Apparently Derek Falvey reads the news in order to learn what his budget constraints are.

Nope, Falvey is on board with it all.  Of course, when his contract is up, he may look at the same analyses you and I are trying to discuss, and depart for greener pastures.  Unless perhaps he is being given a significant profit-sharing arrangement already, or is offered even something like whatever longtime-and-loyal employee Dave St Peter currently has, a seat on the board. New ownership, if it's not just a smokescreen, could shake everything up, of course.

The distinction between Falvey and the current Pohlad ownership group is practically non-existent.

“Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor.”

[RpR]

3 hours ago, old nurse said:

Jim Pohlad fired Bill Smith over wanting to spend the way out of the train wreck of the Twins at the time. I would guess that all of the possible positive outcomes of the 2022 season were used to sell the signing. Joe Pohlad did not ask what could possibly go wrong. 

Pohlad had no Rasputin, who to ask to see the future?

[tony&rodney]

1 hour ago, ashbury said:

The distinction between Falvey and the current Pohlad ownership group is practically non-existent.

This statement is why I have such a difficult time with the virulent articles/comments regarding the Pohlads. The idea that the Pohlads and Falvey operate separately has eluded me. I get that many folks believe something different and respect the right to an opinion. However, I agree with the quoted thought and find is hard to see the other viewpoint.

Falvey has had numerous opportunities to craft rosters and I have maintained that the team reflects his ideas. 

 

[Major League Ready]

2 hours ago, Hosken Bombo Disco said:

mid-market teams shouldn’t be signing high end free agents in the first place? 🙂

If you look back I think you will find that my statement was less of "if they should" vs what they have actually done.  It is a very rare thing when a mid-market team signs a Carlos Correa type free agent.   The White Sox biggest contract is Benintendi's contract at 5/$75M.  The Guardians is Edwin Encarnación @ 3/$60M.  The Royals is Alex Gordon @4/$72M.  Of course, the Tigers signed Prince Fielder to a 9/$214M contract which is a shining example of why modest revenue teams don't sign these deals.  Of course, many teams have signed bigger deals to extend franchise players.

Every Teams Largest Contracts

[KirbyDome89]

On 11/9/2024 at 12:06 PM, jorgenswest said:

If they can trade Correa and end up a better 2025 baseball team then make the move. I suppose that is possible but it won’t happen with a return of minor leaguers and replacing his salary with three mediocre players on team friendly contracts.

I will add that the Twins were 42-43 in Correa’s 85 starts.

The Angels were perpetual losers while rostering one of the best players in baseball history during his prime. The Twins record with Correa on the field last year is pretty meaningless. The guy posted nearly 4 WAR playing only half the year. 

[rv78]

32 minutes ago, KirbyDome89 said:

The Angels were perpetual losers while rostering one of the best players in baseball history during his prime. The Twins record with Correa on the field last year is pretty meaningless. The guy posted nearly 4 WAR playing only half the year. 

On the contrary. It "means" a lot when you aren't even a winning ballclub when your most expensive player is actually playing.

I will add that the Twins were 42-43 in Correa’s 85 starts.

Then they were 40-37 without him.  Yep, he's really important. LOL!

[Mike Sixel]

25 minutes ago, rv78 said:

On the contrary. It "means" a lot when you aren't even a winning ballclub when your most expensive player is actually playing.

I will add that the Twins were 42-43 in Correa’s 85 starts.

Then they were 40-37 without him.  Yep, he's really important. LOL!

correlation and causation are not the same thing.....just sayin'

[RpR]

1 hour ago, KirbyDome89 said:

The Angels were perpetual losers while rostering one of the best players in baseball history during his prime. The Twins record with Correa on the field last year is pretty meaningless. The guy posted nearly 4 WAR playing only half the year. 

Without Correa, the White Sox would been battling the Twins to stay out of last  place, most likely.

The Twins have no one who is not  mediocre or worse at Short Stop.

[old nurse]

3 hours ago, RpR said:

Pohlad had no Rasputin, who to ask to see the future?

They have a CFO who should be looking at the future. He has a GM who should know the pluses and minuses. They were as good as Rasputin in seeing the future. Gawd, this has to be the stupidest comment I have seen in a long time.

[old nurse]

38 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

correlation and causation are not the same thing.....just sayin'

The longer the thread, the more inane comments come out

[RpR]

3 minutes ago, old nurse said:

They have a CFO who should be looking at the future. He has a GM who should know the pluses and minuses. They were as good as Rasputin in seeing the future. Gawd, this has to be the stupidest comment I have seen in a long time.

" He has a GM who should know the pluses and minuses."

No the quote is the stupidest remark saying they should be Seers who can know the future.

Honest Charlie Used Car salesment looked for people with an attitude like yours, but to each his own.

[Major League Ready]

4 hours ago, ashbury said:

Nice try but I did not say that.  What I presented was a clear and precisely defined benchmark. 

You want to use mushy terms like success.  Were the 2023 Twins successful?  I would say so, but that's partly influenced by personal experience I've talked about previously. I would not call the 2024 Twins successful, even though they would rank only slightly lower in your spreadsheet of win totals and whatever else - but they did exceed my own pre-season estimate for wins so maybe I should be pleased with them.  Neither team reached 90 wins, but different people would react differently to a 90-win team too.  And the standard for success will vary by franchise; my son in NYC is amused by the angst of his Yankee-fan friends right now.  So your 90-win standard misses some successful teams like our 2023 Twins and overvalues others.

A World Series win, by contrast, is unassailable.  No one hates that.  And the data I provided is likewise clear cut.  No team since the 2003 Florida (sic!) Marlins has won a WS while carrying a below-average payroll.  Your post which I responded to specified a 20-year window, and that team is outside that.  The team's change of name is a reminder that reaching for events that far back may not carry much relevance to today's marketplace for players. 

Still, let's be generous and say that 1 time in the past 22 seasons, such a payroll won the WS.  That's not 1-in-22 odds for one particular team - that's 1-in-22 for 15 different teams each season, half the league, so if your rooting interest happens to be for one team, it's more like 15 times 22, or one in every 330 years.  Not the simple "once every 30 years" you suggested if every team in the majors had an equal chance.  Once every 22 years, a Hunger Games team wins the lottery, and the other 14 Hunger Games teams are supposed to take heart from it.  Once every 330 years, that team might even be yours!

The teams in the bottom half of payroll have vanishingly little chance.  Meanwhile the top 15 payrolls have won 21 out of 22.  Indeed several of those winners were only barely over the dividing line and I am not saying $200M is a guarantee of success since it obviously is not.  So if you root for one of those teams, in a vacuum your odds are more like 1 out of 15 teams with a chance, times 21 over 22, thus... let's call it 1 out of 16.  A good deal more competitive than the simple one-out-of-30, and a huge distance better than the 1 out of 330 bottom half.

Trying to win it all with a sub-par player payroll is close to an impossible task.  15 teams try to do it every year, thinking this is the year, the year that they can thread the needle to play their young and inexpensive prospects.  It hasn't been done since 2003.

Nothing makes sense but you can get additional insight, and then you go on to disparage the insight.  Good one.

No one should care about payroll capacity.  Mark Twain is (probably incorrectly) credited with saying "a person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read," and I feel the same way about payroll capacity.  An owner with deep pockets who doesn't reach down into them has no advantage over an owner who can't.

Ranting about 25% for one player is a subtler form of player disparagement for ownership/management apologists, when it's the small payroll itself that is the cause.  The team that's in the top 15 payroll, and thus has some legitimate shot at winning it all, has very little chance of paying 25% for any player.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.  Don't trade the player, up your game.

I can't close without commenting on this gem.  Apparently Derek Falvey reads the news in order to learn what his budget constraints are.

Nope, Falvey is on board with it all.  Of course, when his contract is up, he may look at the same analyses you and I are trying to discuss, and depart for greener pastures.  Unless perhaps he is being given a significant profit-sharing arrangement already, or is offered even something like whatever longtime-and-loyal employee Dave St Peter currently has, a seat on the board. New ownership, if it's not just a smokescreen, could shake everything up, of course.

The distinction between Falvey and the current Pohlad ownership group is practically non-existent.

“Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor.”

Using the number of wins/season is not a precise measure?  Since 2006 one team (2015 Royals) in the bottom half of revenue has won the world series.  If you want to only use 1 team to measure something/anything, go ahead.  That would be a horrible methodology, but go right ahead.  There have been (57) 90 win teams and (34) 93 win teams.  I would choose to look at 34 or 57 teams because it is far more meaningful.  However, both sets of data will tell you that the 2015 Royals did not pay a single player 25% of payroll and neither did any of the 57 teams that won 90 games.  As a matter of fact, the royals highest paid player (Alex Gordon) made less than 12% of team payroll. 

I made absolutely no comment about if a team had won the WS with a below average payroll.  That’s your focus and it's an entirely different conversation.  I have been quite consistent in stating that the ability to spend 150 or 200% of what the Twins spend is advantageous and history would clearly support this conclusion.  However, there is very little for teams with such a distinct revenue disadvantage to learn from teams with far greater revenue production.  

Is the disadvantage revenue or spending.  Do you choose to spend less than Carlos Correa on a home or car or does your income dictate it?  I look at teams by revenue.  Payroll swings occur often and vary widely.  When comparing the success of teams, it makes far more sense to compare them by spending capacity.  If one team with similar revenue spends a lot more and wins a lot more the results will be telling.  

[Major League Ready]

57 minutes ago, RpR said:

Without Correa, the White Sox would been battling the Twins to stay out of last  place, most likely.

The Twins have no one who is not  mediocre or worse at Short Stop.

If losing Carlos Correa means they are on the same level as the WS, they have no chance of winning the division with him. 

[BK432]

Depressing, but.....start the conversation with Volpe and if the Yankees continue talks, keep talking....

[purplesoldier4u]

Realistically, what can be expected of Correa, Buxton, and Lewis? Move all three of them.

[old nurse]

14 minutes ago, RpR said:

" He has a GM who should know the pluses and minuses."

No the quote is the stupidest remark saying they should be Seers who can know the future.

Honest Charlie Used Car salesment looked for people with an attitude like yours, but to each his own.

So when the cable market lost 20% of their subscribers in the 5 years before Correa was signed, the Twins should not have been the least bit concerned about a revenue stream with the contract soon to be done?  After all with less viewers they are going to get more money from the local broadcasts to pay players. 

[sweetmusicviola16]

You "consider" trading Correa if you deem it improving your team for 2025 and into the future. If it's to dump salary you have a huge problem. But no way if you trade him don't expect to sign better players with the savings. Not happening. I'm not a big Correa fan, but I do know reality. 

[Mike Sixel]

58 minutes ago, old nurse said:

The longer the thread, the more inane comments come out

The site isn't what it used to be, for sure. Not just this thread.