Six Twins Players Receive Major Bonuses Via New MLB Pool System

Very happy to see the MLB rewarding high performance players with limited/no bargaining power!

Merry Christmas guys.

Go Twins

I’m very impressed with ownership and the union working together to pay the young players that perform the best!! WOW! I’m just gonna venture a guess that the formula is pretty simple. Specified award$ + (Bwar + Fwar) / 2 = total bonus paid down til the $$$ runs out. 🥸

Congrats to those guys!

Certainly nice gains for those guys.

But let's get real:  101 guys split up $50M, or 71% of Ohtani's contract with the Dodgers.

Yep, system is quite equitable and fair.... 

I had no idea that this system existed. Thank you for your excellent article and congratulations to the six players

5 hours ago, h2oface said:

Great to see the bonuses. The MLB CBA is so veteran skewed, and the young players have no real power to change the CBA. To pay Vasquez around 10 million and Jeffers less than a million for doing a better job, for example, is comical. And Correa.............. but that kind of inequity happens to every team, and so it goes.

Perhaps there should be a salary base for each player, and the remaining payroll money could be dealt out each year according to how each player actually performed and contributed. Watching veteran players suck up the coin for sucking and other young players get shafted comparatively for far out performing them just because they have less years under their belt is a reality that cries injustice. If owners were fair, they would dole out bonuses to the deserving just because they deserve it, regardless of the contracts. 

The players have agreed to this system.  The system has gone through changes over the years, but the players agreed. The big issue with the players in recent years was that teams learned you can win with young cheaper guys more than you generally can with vets making much more.  The system shifted and so the players wanted something for the young controlled guys.  However, the vets want theirs, just as the vets before them. I am sure if the players wanted to work out a system based on actual output they would, but then many of the high priced vets would lose money.  

And Merry Christmas to all.  Well, not all but this group certainly has a pleasant surprise under their trees this year.  As for the Twins, they wouldn't have been in the playoffs without this group.  Considering there were 101 young guys earning these bonuses and there are 30 teams, the average team should have about 3.33 players earning the bonus.  Seeing the Twins with six confirms they have a very good young group which should bode well for them going forward.

When I read this in this morning's Strib, told Bonnie.  Her comment was that the group making the minimum were paid ONLY $720,000.  Add me to those who wish the top players made a bit less and all these exciting young guys got a lot more.  But who says life is fair? 

You answered many of my questions, such as where this money came from and how much each team paid into it.  Thanks, Seth, and Merry Christmas.  

2 hours ago, Seth Stohs said:

I don't know. I like to think that with 26 years of experience at my job I should be making more than someone in their 2nd year of doing the same job. 

I get that in theory the best system for the players would be everyone get one year contracts and be a free agent every year... but I don't want guys jumping around that much. I want the young players to stick around 5-6 years, or more. So there needs to be  a system. and players should be rewarded for longevity. They've earned that right in a free market to earn what someone is willing to pay them. 

This is just a nice incentive for those pre-arb guys who don't have the ability to negotiate  what winning an MVP award might be worth. 

What if the guy with 2 years of experience is doing 2-3x as much work?  Should the person with 26 years of experience still get paid more for doing less, just because they've been there longer?

2 hours ago, Seth Stohs said:

I get that in theory the best system for the players would be everyone get one year contracts and be a free agent every year... but I don't want guys jumping around that much.

Yeah, that's not working so well for college football right now.

The only way this ever gets truly fixed is to let the MLBPA distribute revenue to the players.  The owners would provide the MLBPA with the agreed-upon split of the revenue, and the MLBPA distributes those billions however they see fit.

To ensure that players don't just collude to form a superteam, all players will be under team control until they turn 27.  After that, there would be a limit to how many over-27's a team can have (this would need to be negotiated, and would probably include a minimum and maximum).

Interesting to see the Twins will make over 400k on this deal. Would be nice to see the Pohlad's give the young players who got them to the PO's an added extra bonus instead of pocketing it.

8 minutes ago, sweetmusicviola16 said:

Interesting to see the Twins will make over 400k on this deal. Would be nice to see the Pohlad's give the young players who got them to the PO's an added extra bonus instead of pocketing it.

Where does the 400K come from? Isn’t it reflective of the Twins having more good young players receiving money than the share the Twins had to pay into the pool? Maybe I misunderstood the 2.1 and 1.7.

36 minutes ago, sweetmusicviola16 said:

Interesting to see the Twins will make over 400k on this deal. Would be nice to see the Pohlad's give the young players who got them to the PO's an added extra bonus instead of pocketing it.

The money goes directly to the players, the Pohlads get nary a cent.  The MLB-wide pool is paid for by all teams, at different levels based on revenues.  So the Twins' responsibility to the pool was $1.7M.  Twins players received $2.1M from the pool.  The only place that $400k comes into the picture is that the Twins don't have to pay their players the bonus, so they're paying $400k less than they would have if they had to pay directly.  That said, there is no mechanism for teams to just hand out bonuses to players because they want to, so the POhlads are making no money here.  In fact, they're spending $1.7M more than they would have under previous CBAs.

16 hours ago, SteveLV said:

Yep, system is quite equitable and fair.... 

The system is specifically designed to not be equitable - i.e., to reward higher performing players for their performance.  All MLB players don't need a participation trophy.  

4 hours ago, NotAboutWinning said:

But do you get 30x the amount the 2nd year person is making?

The compensation in baseball for these young (inexperienced) players is a good thing to an extent. 

CEO pay is 254+ times the pay of median workers. Free market system has never been free. We all get to work somewhere. All is well that ends well: good for Ober and good for Ohtani. The compensation reward tells a story too ... Ober and Julien were the Twins most valuable young players.

Any statisticians want to determine my WAR at work?

Question, does this arrangement mean Ohtani received the bonus for MVP?

Another question, since arbitration contracts are somewhat based off of previous years earnings, will this be incorporated into first year arbitration contracts?

Example of Jeffers estimated arbitration of $2.3 but since he actually earned $1.05. Will he be starting at a higher baseline? 

No, because Ohtani is not a pre-Arb eligible player.

No, Arb figures are based on their actual salaries, to my knowledge.  This is literally a bonus pool of $50M spread out to younger players (who are getting a lousy deal under the CBA, and this mitigates that a tiny bit).

Thank you.

Corbin Carroll is under contract for 8 years though. He would be pre arb but technically never will be and he still receives a bonus from his pool.

I guess I'm still confused.