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Dan Hayes of The Athletic went as far to imply it's likely the Twins will end up with "one of the Carlos", whether that ends up being Rodon or Correa. I'd put better odds on it being Carrasco.

They probably have a better chance of getting Rodan from the Godzilla movies, than they do of getting Rodon. As you can see...Rodan likes to pitch inside!

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the second comment on this thread found a way to bash this signing. TD comment section has become a real downer. To the haters I would kindly request that you save it for things that have actually occurred. It is hard to understand the need to register a potential “I told you so”.

We traded with them last year and it worked out okay

Six years later, the Twins finally got Jose De Leon!!

Thanks for the article. You did a lot of research. You pointed out Jeffries versus the lefties and Vasquez versus righties makes sense. I am guessing that is how they convinced Vasquez that he will be the main guy. That and $30 million.

Another difference - he’s probably $10MM/year cheaper which is worth a really good relief pitcher each year. Hard to say all things considered - including the intangibles and opportunity cost of money (which is a real thing to a mid market franchise like the Twins) - which player overall would contribute more. Love CC, but Swanson is also a very, very good baseball player. I’d still take CC as the franchise face alongside Buxton. However, if Swanson ends up being our guy on a shorter, cheaper deal with fewer opt outs or no trade clauses, we shouldn’t be upset.

What free agent pitcher, with interest from anyone else, would want to come to Minnesota with Rocco in the helm? "You're doing great. You're hitting your spots. Pitching to the scouting report to a T. You're straight rolling...but you're 5 1/3 innings in and numbers show on cloudy evenings when you're in the midwest and there's a chance of rain, you have a tendency to throw 84% of your pitches up in the zone and give up 24% more dingers. Shower up."

I think he was the best get from the FA class, the Twins get his age 32-34 seasons at a reasonable price. I think this will be similar to the Jason Castro signing a few years back, a strong Veteran catcher with passable offense and strong defense and leadership. Great move by the FO.

This is good news! Catching is so important and this really fills a significant hole.

Who leaks that the player prefers Team One but Teams Two and Three are in play? Not Team One. Not the other two teams. The player's agent? Why do they want to tell Team One to keep lowballing them?

Thought provoking, indeed! You bring up some interesting points. To answer your closing questions, I think a compromise will work until the issue can be resolved. Just tell Max that you might be wrong about him and that you might owe him an apology! I'm sure he'll understand!

Am I the only one who feels Farmer may be fine for half a year while Lewis gets healthy? I like having CC on our team, but not enough to keep us from spending money in the future when I think Lewis may be a good SS for us very shortly.

He was the best option available unless you want to give up the haul Oakland got for Murphy. There is a reason Oakland has the best winning percentage of any team outside the top 5 in revenue since the turn of the century. They got 4 MLB ready players for 2 years of Murphy. I will take Vazquez for 3/30 and look forward to finally having a great defensive catcher 4-5 days a week.

Wished we had him last year. Vasquez wants to be the main guy, which is great, Less Jeffers catches the better.

It's not even Christmas yet. Can the "we only did this" takes wait until at least Spring Training? Vasquez is an excellent add at an area of need

Eleven Defensive Runs Saved last year, tied Vasquez with Realmuto in 4th place among catchers plus an extremely quick pop time release, plus a good veteran clubhouse presence, who has been on two WS Championship teams...that's my kind of catcher. Great signing FO. Thank you.

Earlier today the Minnesota Twins crossed a major offseason to-do off their list by signing catcher Christian Vázquez to a 3 year/$30M deal. Since 2020, Vázquez has caught the 5th most games in MLB and was worth 1.6 fWAR in 2022. Important considering Ryan Jeffers' health concerns. Prior to the signing, the Twins were projected to generate the 5th worst fWAR out of the catcher position. Now, they project to be around league average (15th) with the duo of Vázquez (2.0 projected fWAR) and Jeffers (1.4 projected fWAR). Here are five reasons the Vázquez signing could be exactly what the Twins need: 1. A great defender Since 2020, Vázquez has accumulated the 6th most DRS at the catcher position (+17) in 2,277.1 innings behind the plate. His fielding runs above average is also the 6th highest during that span (30.9). Additionally, he's been a plus pitch framer his entire career. He was worth +1 framing runs in 2022, but has the 8th most framing runs in MLB since Baseball Savant began tracking this metric (+29 framing runs). The Twins have been known to be great with their catchers to improve this metric. Ryan Jeffers was worth +2 runs in 2022. Gary Sanchez went from -6 in 2021 with the Yankees to +1 last year, so it's possible that Vázquez could benefit even more from coach Hank Conger. Image via Baseball Savant. 2. Elite Pitch Caller It's baseball so everything is trackable. The statistic rCERA is catcher ERA runs saved. So essentially, it's measuring how effective (or ineffective) a catcher is at limiting runs for a pitching staff. A plus in this statistic is a good thing. It's as close as we can come to assigning a number to a catcher's ability to call a game. If you watched a Twins game late in 2022, you saw some questionable pitch calls by Gary Sanchez. Jeffers is above average in this statistic (+1 rCERA since 2020) and Vázquez ranks 4th best in MLB since 2020 with a +5 rCERA. During that timeframe Gary Sanchez ranks dead last out of 130 catchers with a -10 rCERA. The Twins overall ranked 19th in rCERA (-1) in 2022. The combination of a healthy Jeffers and Vázquez should no doubt help the Twins pitching staff. An improvement from last year. Here's to hoping that we see less righty on righty changeups being thrown in 2023 :) 3. Throws Out Runners It's not a secret that the Twins have a stolen base problem. Late into the 2022 season it seemed like runners could take extra bases at will. The Twins allowed 94 SB in 2022, the 9th most in MLB only throwing out 20% of runners. Ryan Jeffers is not a great throwing catcher. Last year he only threw out 18% of runners. Since he came into the league he has the 3rd worst rSB (runs saved by throwing out runners) at -6 rSB, ranking 163 out of 165 catchers. Since 2018 Christian Vázquez has thrown out the second most runners in MLB (81) at a 30.45% clip. His exchange time of .67 seconds was 4th quickest in MLB last year. His 1.94 sec pop time ranked 22nd in MLB among 85 catchers. With stolen bases a problem for the Twins, and base sizes increasing in 2023, all the more reason for the Twins to add a catcher who can control the run game, and they're getting this here. Here's a nice video of Vázquez's hose piece vs the Twins (sorry Jake Cave). 4. Hits RHP Better than Jeffers Vázquez is by no means a thumper. He owns a 92 wRC+ since 2020. But, has posted a 95 WRC+ vs RHP during that span. Twins catchers were especially poor vs RHP in 2022. They ranked 24th in baseball with a 66 wRC+ and a 30.7 K% which was 3rd worst in MLB (YUCK!). Ryan Jeffers posted only a 57 wRC+ vs RHP last year (ranked 41st out of 55 catchers who had 100 PA). While the best offensive combo for the Twins would have been to pair a LHH catcher with Jeffers as a platoon, just having a catcher who can at least hold their own vs RHP will be a massive upgrade. Ryan Jeffers will assuredly get all of the AB's vs a LHP - a career 125 wRC+ vs LHP (Vázquez has only posted 84 wRC+ vs LHP since 2020). The combo of Jeffers vs LHP and Vázquez vs RHP will be plenty serviceable offensively and a lift upon a total black hole at the spot last year. 5. Veteran Presence Vázquez is 32 years old and has played in 8 seasons. Two of those eight have resulted in World Series parades (2018 with Boston and 2022 with Houston). He's played in 31 playoff games logging 99 PA's which is more than Max Kepler, Byron Buxton, and Jorge Polanco have in the playoffs combined. No doubt a player of Vázquez's caliber will be instrumental in leading a young Twins core in 2023 and beyond. The Twins average age of position players was 26.9, 4th youngest in MLB. He's the cliche "clubhouse guy" and the Twins absolutely need that. In his short time in Houston, he made an impression in that locker room and with the pitching staff. One can only hope he is on the Twins team that breaks the playoff curse during his tenure here. Please enjoy this video of Vázquez hitting a walk-off HR vs the Rays in the playoffs last season. 6. He's Buddies with Carlos Correa (BONUS!) OK, I know I said 5 reasons but I couldn't pass this up. Carlos Correa and Christian Vázquez went to the Puerto Rico Baseball Academy together. Maybe they will find each other playing for their country in the World Baseball Classic in 2023 alongside Twins 3B Jose Miranda and RP Jorge Lopez. And maybe the combo of Jose + Christian + Jorge can recruit their fellow countrymen back to Minnesota? It's a dream. But, it certainly can't hurt!

No doubt each team has their own evaluations. It would have to be impossible for a website to harness all of it. I do admit I've been impressed how often the website is in the ball park when you review completed trades which I do all the time now because I'm 57 and don't have much else to do with my life I guess. ? I agree it would be misguided to call BTV gospel. I also don't spend a lot of time worried about weather a prospect is ranked 5th or 6th or 12th or who put together the rankings that say the prospect is 5th, 6th or 12th. I understand that Keith Law is pretty plugged in but he has to plug into someone that is more plugged in because he can't personally assess the thousands of people who need to be assessed so I'll take my Keith Law with a grain of salt as well and I'll take those people in the front offices with some salt because they are wrong often. I don't blame them for being wrong because the margins are thin between that 5th ranked guy and the 12th ranked guy who were ranked by some guy who asked them. I always assume that the trades are equal when made.... At least in the eye of the beholders. Winners and losers are determined later by how the acquiring club develops the acquired player. If you want to win trades... make the players you acquire better. It's real simple. Let's see what the future has to say. With all of that said. William Contreras with his 1.106 years of service, .860 OPS at age 24 is a fantastic get for a Brewers team looking to add offense. It took Contreras plus two sweeteners for Milwaukee to part with this Esteury Ruiz and the A's said... Yep that's fair. Now I'm still trying to grasp it. Anyway... Great post... You are Solid.

I'm in pretty deep with the Brewers community and the feel I got from this trade was that the A's and Braves couldn't agree on a trade... then the Brewers slipped in and said "give us this, we'll give you that" and somehow accomplished highway robbery in the process. I think the focus of the A's and Braves were on each other while the Brewers managed to offer enticing value to each while neither noticed the Brewers weren't giving up much in return.

Vázquez fits what the FO talks about from the catcher position the best imo of all the free agent catchers. 3 for 30 is reasonable and if there was a lot of compitation involved probably necessary to get it done. He provided 2.1 WAR last season. If that continues its a bargain at 10 mil per. There were trades that may have been an even better fit, but the recourses needed for those are much harder to replace. Also, I'd like to point out that as the years have gone on, they have been spending more aggressively. Let's hope that continues.

Awesome! Thanks everyone! Rumor: Rumor has it, the keg stand competition starts at 4:01 with @Brock Beauchamp and @wsnydesleading the way

Infield should be where it opens up the most but all 4 infielders must have feet in the dirt with the new rules so... that guy hanging out in short right is gone which will open up RF quite a bit. And if infield is indeed where the change is most felt. Could the Twins be looking at quick re-tool at those 4 positions.

I sincerely hope you are wrong and the Twins don't need 10 starters this year, not counting guys they bring up for a double header. Let's pray for good health so that maybe seven or eight at the most pitch those 50+ innings. If that's the case, the Twins are all set with Gray, Mahle, Maeda, Ryan, Ober, Winder, Varland and SWR, with Paddack coming back hopefully by late summer. Yes, the pipeline isn't churning out lots of options, although Ober, Winder and Varland were all drafted by the Twins. Perhaps the best thing the front office duo has accomplished is stocking this pitching staff via several smart trades, trades that have brought in solid starters with more than a year of control. Now they just have to decide which of the four veterans should be extended and get it done by mid-summer. Heck, I'd like to see all four kept around and whether or not they sign Correa, they should have the dollars to do it. And let's remember Tom Kelly's most basic belief, "you are only as good as your next day's starter."

Josh Donaldson for Gio Urshela was a steal for the Twins. Unloaded that contract and got better production.

Why? Just go with Farmer. He's better.

It's a fine move and an easy B from me.

I like Swanson. He is a very, very good player who would make the Twins a better team if signed. He is clearly not as strong a player as Correa based on past track record, but time will only tell as to how they both play in the future. My feeling is that if Correa signs elsewhere, Swanson is hardly a "consolation prize" and Twins fans should be well pleased if he comes to play here. The Twins might have more financial resources and flexibility if Swanson is signed vs. Correa, too. And he could outperform Correa, too.

The money is a little higher than I expected, but Vazquez is a really nice player and getting another legit MLB catcher on the roster was absolutely a huge need, so I'm pretty happy with this move. I haven't given up on Jeffers (unlikely many on this board who seem to prefer Sandy Leon and wanted Jeffers tied to a raft and set adrift at sea) but this is a bit of a signal of a loss in confidence in him/message that he has to step up his game. Maybe it's related to his poor results against righties, maybe it's a lack of faith in his health, but there's no question this is going to result in a demotion for him to the #2 guy, even if he'll still likely get 60-70 starts. We'll see how he responds. I'm not surprised at this move: if this front office has any pattern it's that they work hard to set a floor for the team that they think will make them competitive, that they look to lift the bottom parts of the roster every year (whether you agree with how they do it is another story) and this definitely raises that level. Assuming reasonable health, we should be able to send out a starting caliber catcher every game. I like that.

That was a previous management. We traded with them last year and it wasn’t that bad

I don’t like trading with the Yankees, they know what they are doing. The Twins not so much. Hicks for Murphy.

Dodged a bullet, though not for lack of trying. Lewis or Lee will be putting up fairly comparable numbers in a few years.

13 years? Lmao baseball is ridiculous. They’ll need to install a hand rail going down the first base line for the last year of his contract

I think the Twins are definitely out on Rodon if Correa signs. Considering "rumors" of 6-7yrs and $180-200M for Rodon, the Twins might be out even without Correa in the fold. The Twins DON'T need to sign some back end SP at this point, thankfully. My "hunch meter" says the FO likes their existing rotation and expect better health with a normal ST, and feel depth is finally here. And if they want to add, a trade is the best option as it won't be someone with a $20-30M per deal, hence why they've passed up other options. So far, as probably expected, bullpen arms are just sitting there. And there might be value in the "patience" mode the FO likes. But I'm interested in Eovaldi if he's sitting there in a couple of weeks. He's not great by any means, and his career numbers reflect that. But when healthy he's flashed. If he comes cheap, I'd be interested in adding him for what he CAN do when healthy and right. But other than cheap and looking for some kind of 1yr or 1+1 deal, I don't think I see a fit. I think the FO looks at the trade route to add, if they add at all.

Narvaez, despite a couple bad years, has a better career quad slash line and more power. His LH bat would be nice to have for balance sake. I would have been happy to have him. But the more I've read, heard, and thought about this I'm very pleased. Vazquez is still an average to slightly better than average bat for a catcher. So while he's still a #8-9 hitter, he's by no means bad at all. But what's way more important is his experience, leadership, defense, and clubhouse presence. Forgetting Correa for a moment, the Twins have $ to spend and need to spend it. And this was a serious need that needed to be addressed and was done so in a solid fashion. But they can't stop now. This team still needs a quality RH bat to be added, even with a possible Correa signing. Even more so if they don't. I understand calls for a SP and RP, and I get that. But when you look at the roster, a RH bat in the OF has been a glaring problem for years now. They need balance and depth and options. The various times of offensive futility in 2022 show that. They should, IMO, jump on someone like Wil Myers immediately for something, hopefully, around $10-12M for 2-3yrs. He fits the need very well. And you can't stop adding while waiting for Correa. Happy as can be with Vazquez. But don't stop adding now FO. You still have $ and need.

I don't think only looking at FA deals is a good measure of risk taking....but I get your point.

Book it.

Nah...Carlos Silva!

It would be huge if two of Varland / SWR / Winder prove they are here to stay over the course of 2023. That would give them 4 prearb starters plus Paddack at a modest sum. They could afford to sign anyone they want. Obviously, they still need to convince them to come here but they will have the money to spend.

Vazquez is a huge upgrade over Sanchez, IMO. He immediately starts out as the second best catcher in the division behind Salvy - The Great One. I could see him earning half to two-thirds of that contract in year 1 and then see the time share with Jeffers swing in Ryan's favor more in years 2 and 3.

What is really sad here is that this signing is a positive in almost every way. The contract is relatively low for a top-half catcher who is considered a good clubhouse guy and fairly durable. It doesn't cost them a ton of prospects either. As if signing Correa and doing nothing else will win them the AL Central this year...

Both Vasquez and Correa are from P.R. I hope they are good friends.

It feels like a shakeup to the core/bringing in of the new core is on it's way. Sano already gone. Kepler feels like they have him packaged up and ready to ship out. Buxton not going anywhere. Polanco and Arraez both reportedly available in trades. Feels like they're attempting to put Buxton and Correa at the top of the lineup and turn the rest over to the youth. Maeda, Gray, Mahle holding their spots for the year while the youth start taking over the rotation when injuries occur then being gone after the year (I could see a Mahle extension, though). It just feels like they're ready to make some drastic moves if they can get the right return. Hopefully being more mindful of injury concerns and limiting the number of "injury prone" guys on the roster. It's exciting and scary all at once. I can support the idea of letting Buxton and Correa lead the new core of Lewis, Lee, Miranda, Larnach, Kirilloff, etc. but that is a lot of faith in those young guys figuring things out, and staying healthy. If that's the plan I really hope they sign Vazquez to help usher in the young arms. I don't mind Jeffers, but I want a veteran behind the plate helping to lead the young arms through a game. I'd also splurge in the pen to make sure I give the team every chance to lock down wins.