Money Might be the Real Reason the Front Office did Nothing at the Deadline

In my never-ending quest to grapple with unfavorable realities by saying what things are similar to other things, I took a look at the 2022 White Sox to try and figure out why this Twins team did nothing at the trade deadline and then gave us an excuse on par with a sixth grader who forgot their math homework. The White Sox were last year's Twins - they had more talent than the rest of the division, but couldn't get out of their own way, had some injuries, and generally just hovered around .500. Every winning streak became a losing streak. Every breakout performance turned into an injury. The opposition crushed every 3-2 pitch with a game on the line.

And when the deadline came around, the White Sox did nothing. It was inexplicable. They made one trade, sending their backup catcher, Reese McGuire, for struggling lefty reliever Jake Diekman. GM Rick Hahn had the following to say:

"We're disappointed that we weren't able to do more to improve this club, I think you saw a year ago at this time, you've seen it for the last several years, arguably the last couple of decades, that it's our nature to try to improve this club at any opportunity we have. Unfortunately, we weren't able to line up on some of our other potential targets."

That is probably a bit more direct than Derek Falvey's explanation for the Twins' inaction, and White Sox fans crucified Hahn's. They had five quality starters (sound familiar?), but they had a true ace in Dylan Cease, who finished runner-up for the Cy Young. They had lineup stars in Tim Anderson, Eloy Jimenez, Luis Robert Jr. , Andrew Vaughn, Jose Abreu, Yasmani Grandal, Yoan Moncada, and a great (though expensive) bullpen. It made even less sense for that team to be .500 then for the current Twins to be .500. They needed any playable outfielder and a bullpen piece at the deadline. 

Sound familiar?

When the season concluded, it came to light that the White Sox were operating with a cap on their spending, and that was at least part of the reason for their inaction. Even with the additions of Andrew Benintendi and Mike Clevinger, they opened the 2023 season with a payroll of about $13 million less than what they ended 2022 with. Could this be a reason the Twins stood pat, as well?

In Chicago's case, they had a thin farm system and probably assumed that the Twins and Guardians would return to earth in the second half, so they could avoid adding any payroll (They were right about the Twins, at least).

The Twins are in a similar spot. Their farm system is weak but has a few impact guys floating around in Brooks Lee, Marco Raya, and Emmanuel Rodriguez. They could have cashed those guys in and gone for it, knowing they were likely to host a playoff series, but could the team have afforded/gotten ownership approval for adding on Paul Goldschmidt's salary? Juan Soto's? Even the $5 million owed to Teoscar Hernandez over the rest of the year?

We have no indications that they either could or could not, so what follows is theory, not fact. What we do have are half-baked explanations that they didn't want to remove anyone off the 26-man roster of a team with a .500 record and had a couple of sellers turn into buyers last minute. One way to divert attention from being at your spending limit is to say you don't want to give up your prospects, but they certainly had no problem offering up Cade Povich and Christian Encarnacion-Strand last year and didn't even offer that excuse this time around.

Moderately tuned-in Twins fans have tried for years to quell the masses claiming "cheap Pohlads" and "poverty franchise" at every missed free agent. While all that was true in 1999, we tried to explain that the payrolls have risen to be mid-pack. We signed Carlos Correa! We extended Pablo Lopez! There's plenty of blame to go toward the front office, but their mistakes don't have anything to do with money! It was annoying work, but someone had to do it. The team is now running into some real financial limitations, some of which are out of their control, but nonetheless could have steered the front office away from adding anyone with anything above a minimum salary the rest of the way.

First, the Diamond Sports situation could greatly impact payroll flexibility. While they agreed to pay the Twins for their 2023 contract, the team is a free agent at the end of the year. And it seems increasingly unlikely that whatever media partnership they enter into for 2024 will not be nearly as lucrative as the one they had with Bally (court documents revealed that the deal was worth $54.8 million per year)- there's a reason it was hemorrhaging money beyond just mismanagement. With streaming and general shifts in the media landscape, TV deals just don't hit like they used to ten or even five years ago. If $20 million or so gets knocked off the team's revenues for 2024, that will impact the team's payroll, one way or the other. Not to mention the team is already running a franchise record $153 million payroll after signing Correa to the biggest deal in team history.

Second, ticket sales have not been great. They are up over 2022 at roughly 24,000 per game, but that pales compared to 2019 (28,000/game) and 2013 (30,000/game). Twins president Dave St. Peter famously stated last August that he didn't understand why fans weren't coming to games, citing the likable, contending (at the time) team. Not noted by St. Peter was any awareness of the public perception of the team, which had yet to collapse at that point.

My theory is that Falvey and Levine were directed not to add to the payroll for this year. That may have to do with the team's lackluster performance, or it might have to do with a lack of future revenue. Either way, it would seem ownership told the front office to make something up about believing in their guys and not wanting to boot anyone off the roster.

I've supported most of what this front office has done, or at least could see the thinking behind their weirder decisions. But if the team is fabricating excuses for not having authorization to add a couple million to its payroll, that's dysfunctional. Adding Connor Joe and Michael Fulmer wouldn't have made this team that much more of an attraction. But don't tell me you couldn't address obvious weaknesses that wouldn't cost much in prospect capital because the market didn't shape up exactly how you anticipated or didn't want to hurt Joey Gallo's feelings. If you weren't authorized to add payroll, say that. We get that; we're Twins fans.