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Ahead of the impending sale of the Minnesota Twins, many have speculated about what the team can do today to make the organization more attractive to potential buyers. One of the most common ideas that come up is that a new owner would want clean books—no messy contracts, no back payments to aging players, or money retained in trades. Basically, there shouldn’t be money that the new guy has to deal with for the next decade whether they like it or not.
However, when that general idea is extended to mean that a new owner doesn’t want any money tied up, we might be missing the point a bit. One tangible example is some fans’ opinion that a new owner wouldn’t want to sign up for paying Carlos Correa $100 million for the first three years of their regime. In that case, the team should try to flip Correa to present this hypothetical owner with clean books.
This idea makes sense at the most rudimentary level: some big hotshot billionaire is in this business to make money! Don’t sign him up for spending money that he didn’t agree to!
However, that’s probably not exactly how this works. You’re more likely to see the save every penny, please don’t spend my money approach from more tenured, old-school owners—or at least from owners who have owned the team for more than five years. Baltimore and Miami saw $30-$40 million spikes in their first years under new ownership. We’re much more likely to see a new owner focus more on success than an older one. Shoot, John Rubenstein is practically begging the Orioles to spend his money.
Recent reports suggest Justin and Mat Ishbia have emerged as potential buyers of the team, and from their history with the Phoenix Suns, it’s not hard to imagine them taking more of a winning focus than a moneymaking focus. Of course, I could be completely wrong in this imagining, or some other rich person might buy the team, but you can use those brothers as stand-ins for this imaginary owner if you want.
Would a new owner who wants to win now prefer to greenlight moves for the team in his own image? Sure. But there’s a lot that goes into that. Let’s stick with Correa, as an example. Sure, you could flip him for some modest prospect package and have his remaining $92 million off the books for 2026 and beyond. That makes the books cleaner.
Do you know what it doesn’t make cleaner? Anything else.
Congrats, you’ve rid yourself of that pesky All-Star shortstop. Next step? Replace that pesky All-Star shortstop on your own. You’re probably going to need to win a new bidding war. Your 2026 options are Bo Bichette and the ghost of Trevor Story. Oh, you’re okay with just finding a shortstop, and he doesn’t need to be an All-Star? You’ll have the pick of the litter between David Fletcher, Luis Rengifo, and Brooks Lee—a kid who’s already slow at 24. I forget: is quickness important at shortstop?
Just because a book is “clean” doesn’t mean it’s good. There are no albatross contracts on this team. The worst contract, right now, belongs to Christian Vázquez—a one-year, $10-million contract for a high-end backup catcher whom some team would likely pay for 60% of if the team wants to move him. There are no long-term deals here. There’s no Giancarlo Stanton-like contracts or Rafael Devers and Xander Boegarts-esque deals that reach into the 2030s.
The Twins’ closest things to albatross contracts are Correa, Pablo López, and Byron Buxton, the longest of which reaches into 2028. In fact, those three are the only players with guaranteed contracts past 2026, which would, in all practicality, be the new ownership group’s first year.
We’ve already gone over Correa’s deal, but paying an All-Star shortstop in his early thirties that amount of money isn’t the end of the world. He needs to stay healthy, but if that’s your worst long-term contract, you have bigger fish to fry as a new ownership group.
López is only under contract through 2027 and has shown the ability to be an elite pitcher. He’s stayed healthy, and he’s on a relatively team-friendly contract, compared to what pitchers of his caliber are making in free agency right now. A new owner is not getting a López-tier starter for $21.75 million right now. It is more work to get rid of him and replace him.
Buxton, at this point, will likely never be fully healthy for a season. That’s part of the deal. But he’s an All-Star-caliber player when healthy, and the $15 million that he’s making each year through 2028 is not that much money compared to the rest of the league. Ahead of 2025, that’s not even a top-100 contract per year. By 2028, it will be even more insignificant.
And again, those are the only three players on guaranteed contracts after 2026. Actually, I fibbed. They’re the only three contracts on the books after this year. I’m not a billionaire, but that seems pretty palatable. There’s still tons of room to maneuver and style the team as the new guy sees fit. It’s not like the three names tied up are Anthony Rendon, Miguel Cabrera, and Stephen Strasburg. These are good books. There’s a nonzero chance that moving those contracts would make the team less valuable.
The elephant in the room is that it might not matter what the new owners want to do. It’s possible that the Pohlad family might have more of an eye on the money today, wanting to get down to a magical payroll level that preserves their own funds ahead of the sale. That’s a totally different thing, though. They’re not doing that for the sale's profitability or the team's medium-term outlook for a new ownership group, one that would probably prefer not to build from scratch. They’d be doing that for liquidity today, in this fictitious universe that I made up in my head.
Nonetheless, fans shouldn’t be so quick to assume that the best thing for the sale of the franchise is a housecleaning on the active roster. Such efforts might do the opposite. Some good books are clean, but not all clean books are good. The books are only good if they’re setting the team up for success, and the books that have Correa, López and Buxton on them do that better than any realistic set of books without them.
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