Article: Twins Trade Justin Morneau To Pirates

[Thegrin]

IF Morneau has a good Sept and postseason. IF he is willing to sign a reasonable contract for 2 years with a Twins option for the 3rd year. IF Colabello and/or Parmalee don't show us anything in Sept. THEN I would like to resign Morneau. Otherwise, I wish him well on the rest of his career.

[drunksam]

I was going to wear my Morneau t-shirt today. I'm wearing black instead. Though, I suppose the teams funeral has already been held.

[cmb0252]

Quick question: didn't PIT give up a pretty decent player as a PTBNL earlier this week? A pitcher named Black or something?

 

Vic Black. John Sickels ranked him #15 on the pirates prospect list. AAA RPer who has hit 98. Had a good year and has a chance to be a big time closer.

[Rosterman]

As John Bonnes mentions, maybe the PTBNL will be more significant.

 

He could be that guy the Pirates don't need on the 40-man. He could be a potential minor-league free agent candidate with no room on the 40-man roster. He could be someone in excess in the lower minor leagues.

 

At least Presley will get some time in the outfield, along with Mastro, to see if either can fit into Minnesota's plans for the future.

[Yossarian]

Arcia, Buxton and Hicks, LF to RF; Sano, Florimon, Dozier and Colabello around the infield, Mauer behind the plate, Willingham, Pinto, Rosario, Plouffe and Parmalee on the bench. Let's get on with it, although I'd love to see Justin back next year.

[ThePuck]

When talking about the Morneau trade, I was told Ryan looked ashamed of himself in the footage they showed. Wouldn't look at the camera or the interviewer. Tone was solemn.

[howeda7]

Well it does also work well if they want to resign him, because of those 5/10 rights and the fact they won't need to come within a percentage of his previous salary: if I've been reading correctly.

 

I could really get behind this Pirates team.

 

The chances of the Twins signing Morneau for next year went down today, not up. People need to stop citing this as a benefit of the trade.

 

The % of salary issue is only if they offer him arbitration, which they were never going to. If he'd stayed, he'd have had to take a deal prior to the arbitration deadline. There was no requirement for that deal to be a % of his salary.

 

The 10/5 issue is valid, but there's nothing stopping Morneau from simply requesting a no-trade clause as part of coming back. It would be hard to blame him and we'd probably agree to it.

 

Bottom-line is that players rarely go back to the team that traded him. Yes it happened with Aggie, but it's rare. If the chances of him being around next year were 20% yesterday, they're 10% now. If we'd gotten any sort of returned, it would be fine. But we got a warm clone of Clete Thomas, so the PR hit, however large it may be, was simply not worth it.

[Highabove]

Everyone talking about the PR hit is hilarious.

 

The Twins aren't gaining any PR by letting Morneau ride out the season on a loser of a team. The best PR move the Twins can make is put a contender on the field as fast as possible. If JR believes that making this deal makes that happen faster, he'd be a fool to worry about fan reaction.

 

Why has the Wild's GM been so successful so far? He doesn't care what you people think. He traded Burns on the day of the draft, when the draft was being hosted in St. Paul. He traded Cal Clutterbuck (another fan favorite) for a prospect in need of a change of scenery, a far from sure thing. He brought in Matt Cooke, who despite his rep, is a very effective player. All these moves were without consideration of what the fans think, and the Wild are a contender because of it.

 

JR needs to think about building a contender and nothing else... not what a bunch of nostalgic already pissed off (due to the recent losing seasons) fans think.

 

Do you really want to hold up the Wild as an example?

Didn't the Wild sign the top two free agents last year for big money???

[D. Hocking]

I can see why they made the trade, but it is a bit disheartening when you think about it. When you think back to 2006 and think back to all the potential that never got fully realized. I know baseball is cyclical, but you think they could have stayed relevant a little further into Morneau and Mauer's primes (I know there were injuries etc...)

[CharacterGroove]

I guess my disconnect was what long term meant. This offseason doesn't seem a long ways away. I also didn't see how we'd need to go through winter negotiations with him if we didn't want him anyway...so avoiding something unnecessary didn't occur to me.

 

Well if he's a member of the team with an expired contract (oh, and former MVP), any decision this winter necessarily would involve him. It would hang over everything.

 

The circumstances resulting from this trade right now are better for both parties - Morneau and the Twins.

[cmb0252]

From Dave St. Peter when asked how fans should take this trade:

 

Justin going to be a free agent. Got two decent players in trade. Could possibility re-sign Justin.

 

With what Peter and Huntington said it sounds like it won't be cash coming back. Can't judge this trade till we hear the second player.

[big dog]

The trade makes sense if you are a fantasy GM or in a Stratomatic game. It may make sense in this world. But it's a shame to talk about long-time employees as assets to shuffle. That's the way it is, but it makes me sad. These contracts are people. I wish we treated them better. I hope Morneau resigns with the Pirates and has 5 more happy, wildly productive years.

[cmb0252]

The trade makes sense if you are a fantasy GM or in a Stratomatic game. It may make sense in this world. But it's a shame to talk about long-time employees as assets to shuffle. That's the way it is, but it makes me sad. These contracts are people. I wish we treated them better. I hope Morneau resigns with the Pirates and has 5 more happy, wildly productive years.

 

People who make tens of millions of dollars to play children's games. Poor them.

[ThePuck]

Well if he's a member of the team with an expired contract (oh, and former MVP), any decision this winter necessarily would involve him. It would hang over everything.

 

The circumstances resulting from this trade right now are better for both parties - Morneau and the Twins.

 

Yes, Ryan has made it clear that this trade was mostly for Morny...that's the PR spin. This reminds me of how he talked about the Castillo trade. He said we could absorb the loss, then said we were a better team with the trade. Those statements, together, make no sense. When you say you can absorb a loss that means you have enough talent to make up for the dropoff in talent. Right there, that's saying you didn't make the team BETTER, but that the team is good enough for the dropoff not to hurt so much. He also said on one day that he made the trade because Castillo was a FA at the end of the year...two days later he said he would have made the same trade anyway even if we had Castillo for another year...

 

And we all know what happened the end of that season...

[DAM DC Twins Fans]

Well if he's a member of the team with an expired contract (oh, and former MVP), any decision this winter necessarily would involve him. It would hang over everything.

 

The circumstances resulting from this trade right now are better for both parties - Morneau and the Twins.

 

Yes, Justin was going to be non-tendered anyway--no point in keeping him here another month when Parmalee needs playing time to see if he is the answer.

 

We need to open a roster spot for Sano this winter--that was going to be Morneau.

 

Whether the PTBNL turns out to be anything or not--we needed to do this. Now get rid of Willingham for whatever we can get.

[MichiganTwins]

Seth just retweeted that PTBL is significant so we should hold off our criticism.

[Highabove]

There are 17 home games left in September. Over 400 thousand Fans will be coming to Target Field next month. Taking Morneau off the field for nothing is an insult to those Fans.

They deserve to see some resemblance of an entertaining product.

They do not have the option of turning to the Travel Chanel after the third inning.

[RedBull34]

Very Nice Trade, Hoping the PTBNL is a SP!

[big dog]

People who make tens of millions of dollars to play children's games. Poor them.

 

The vast majority of them don't make that much, or much of anything. Nice use of a cliche, though.

[cmb0252]

The vast majority of them don't make that much, or much of anything. Nice use of a cliche, though.

 

Much of anything? I don't know what you do for a living but even minimum is ~400k a year. Also, Justin has made quite a bit of millions.

[nicksaviking]

I'll retract my negative opinion if the PTBNL is a quality player as currently being advertised.

 

Still, I'm not a fan of taking on Pressley. Way too many AAAA'ers on the 40 man as it is.

[josecordoba]

Few Thoughts

 

1. The complaint that always comes up is the Pohlads are cheap. I remember hearing this before the season. The Pohlads cheapness has nothing to do with the Team not being very good. This is a 68-70 Win Team as presently constructed. If the Twins jacked the Payroll up $25 Million you're looking at a 73-75 Win Team (Big Freaking Deal) this is a poor investment for the Pohlads. This is assuming the standard cost of a 1 War being 5 Million Dollars. Since this seems to be slightly below average this is fair for the exercise.

If you jacked the Payroll up $50 Million you might be looking at a 78-80 win team. This is better from a Fan standpoint yet your ability to commit yourself financially in 2016 since jacking up the Payroll now will lead to long term commitments. Basically it's pointless for the 2013 Twins to pay for production on the Front End of Free Agent Contracts.

 

2. Morneau has been worth 0.5 over replacement in the last three years. The Twins have paid 40 Million Dollars for this production. This idea that they would want to give an extended shot to Parmalee or Colabello makes perfectly good sense. I applaud Morneau coming back from injury and his dedication to the Twin Cities yet he is by no means a long-term solution at 1B.

 

3. I'll speak about this as a fan. I went to the game on Thursday (I live about 3 1/2 hours north of the Cities). Pedro Florimon was batting 2nd. The best position player on the team Thursday was Brian Dozier( This isn't really debatable). The best starting pitcher is Deduno? Pelfrey? Correia? Basically the on-field product isn't attracting people to games in September with Morneau there or not. The good will is going to be restored when Sano posts a .500 Slugging percentage, when Arcia develops into a well-above average Major league hitter, and Byron Buxton brings his Eric Davis, Kenny Lofton, Andrew McCutchen type ju-ju to Target Field.

[cmb0252]

Dave St. Peter:

.Not about cash, we want the player.

[Seth Stohs]

Just some of my opinions:

 

1.) For the last two months, most have been writing/saying that the Twins need to just get whatever they can get for Morneau. Well, they traded him and got what they could get, and of course it is never going to feel like enough.

 

2.) The idea that it is "just a salary dump" is ridiculous to me. That's one of those things that's just so easy to say. The $1 to $1.5 million that he's owed is not going to get them some hugely better prospect than what they got (whatever that PTBNL is).

 

3.)The PTBNL has likely already been determined. Either that player will go through waivers now and if he were to clear, it could happen right away. If he gets claimed, they'll wait until the end of the season. Or, it's a list, and although I'm not expecting some Top 10 Pirates prospect, maybe there is a decent pitcher on the way. Hard to judge the trade wholly at this point.

 

4.) I really believe that the Twins believe in loyalty to a point. And, I do believe that they went to him and were communicative with him about if he wanted to be dealt to a contender. I'd heard that he was agreeable to that, and the Twins helped accomodate that. Maybe the Twins saved a little money, but not enough to worry about. I think that giving Morneau an opportunity was something that was important.

 

5.)Who knows what will happen next year? He could come back at a fair rate after he sees that he isn't going to be able to get huge money elsewhere. I think we'd welcome him back at the right price and longevity.

 

6.) He had a tremendous stretch with the Twins from 2006 through that concussion in mid-2010. That's the most important thing to remember long term.

[Mike Sixel]

It is all about the PTBNL......and I like that Justin has a chance at winning.

[Dman]

According to MLB the PTBNL is Duke Welker Does anybody know who that is?

[Highabove]

Per Pioneer Press

 

Justin Morneau's letter to the Fans.

 

First of all, I would like to say thank you to all of the Twins fans. I would also like to thank the Minnesota Twins organization for giving me a chance to realize my dream of being a Major League baseball player. I was drafted by the Minnesota Twins in 1999. Since that day I have been very proud and fortunate to call myself a Minnesota Twin.

I was a wide-eyed 22 year kid when I made my big league debut in 2003. I received a warm welcome that day and have felt welcomed ever since. I feel like I was a kid when I first got here, but was able to grow up in this organization and become someone my friends and family could be proud of. My wife, kids and family are Minnesotans and this has become my second home. Minnesotans are some of the kindest, most genuine people I have ever met.

I am sorry that during my time here we weren't able to achieve our ultimate goal of winning the World Series, but I will forever carry many wonderful memories of my time here. I will always cherish every day I was lucky enough to play in front of you fans in a Minnesota uniform.

Thank you for all of your support throughout the years.

Your friend, Justin Morneau

Justin Morneau says 'thank you' to Twins fans - TwinCities.com

[nicksaviking]

 

 

2.) The idea that it is "just a salary dump" is ridiculous to me. That's one of those things that's just so easy to say. The $1 to $1.5 million that he's owed is not going to get them some hugely better prospect than what they got (whatever that PTBNL is).

 

While the player may not be "hugely" better, you acknowledge he would be better. So why not pay the salary you have already agreed to pay? This is supposed to be about getting the best talent possible. And I believe it is closer to $2 million owed, so Morneau plus $2 million likely could have gotten a nice upgrade. In terms of draft picks, that's a low 1st rounder bonus money.

[Halsey Hall]

Having talked with TR many times thru the years, I really think he'll resign Justin this off season. He just can't say it. I remember when Aggie walked in from the bullpen and his wife went up the stairs in tears. I immediately said, don't worry honey, you'll be back. I'm even more certain of this with Morneau, if he desires.

[Spicoli]

Wow this is the Twins for you. We have NO core for when all of our young guys come up. You need a core to build on and we know they wont go to FA or trades for top players.