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How many competent players would the Royals need to sign to go from 106 losses in 2023 to being genuinely competitive in 2024? It's probably an unrealistic number, but they've decided to try some things.
Giants Make Splash, Sign Jung Hoo Lee
The huge news of Tuesday was the Giants' six-year, $113-million deal with Jung Hoo Lee, by far the most enticing player ever to come straight out of the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO), as evidenced by the record dimensions of that contract. This is a massive risk on their part, but the reward could be equally great.
Lee is a lefty-swinging outfielder with some real power questions. He's a career .340 hitter (yes, those still exist, somewhere in the world) in the KBO, but that league is famous for its inflationary offense and it's not as deep with good talent as MLB. Many people question whether he'll be able to generate any real jolt against Stateside big-leaguers, and if he doesn't, the pressure to stick in center field will ratchet up. That's worrisome, because whether he can do that is a matter of some debate among scouts.
All of that is true, but so is this: Lee has 1,014 plate appearances in the KBO since the start of 2022. Even with his 2023 interrupted and dimmed by injury, in those trips to the plate over the last two years, he's thumped 100 extra-base hits, drawn 115 walks, and struck out a grand total of 55 times. Merely touching the ball won't be enough in MLB, but Lee has the contact skills to threaten Luis Arraez for batting titles if the tools translate.
This doesn't quite count as a blow to the hopes of Twins fans, because only a select few held out any hope of landing Lee this winter. Given the local nine's payroll situation, though, this kind of deal was never within the realm of possibility. It's considerably more than most prognosticators expected Lee to get.
Seth Lugo Finally Hits it Big
By contrast, Seth Lugo is a name I identified as a good fit with the Twins' pitching predilections and their position in the market, weeks ago. Of course, there's a bit of the Twins' pitching DNA in Kansas City now, after they hired away former Twins minor-league pitching coordinator Zach Bove a year ago. That's where Lugo has landed, on a two-year deal with a player option for 2026.
If Lugo exercises that option in two years, the final terms of the deal will be $45 million over three years. That would be more than this Twins front office has ever spent on an external starting pitcher in free agency, so it's not a surprise that they didn't go there. The Royals paid a premium to lure the lanky righthander to a small market and a losing situation. Still, it's one of the first moves of the winter that could make a Twins fan feel genuinely left out. Lugo could have made them better, at a reasonable price.
Joe Mauer, Byron Buxton, and the Whole Game
I've been thinking often, lately, about Byron Buxton's foggy future in center field. No matter how promising the reports are right now, we can't say for sure whether Buxton will ever play center field again--let alone do so on a regular basis. That's not a pessimistic answer to all that optimism; it's just a realist reading of the healthy history of a man who just spent an entire season confined to designated-hitter duties.
It makes me genuinely ache to see players who play baseball as well and as beautifully as Buxton plays center be rendered unable to participate in some major part of the game. It's not a new ache, to me or to any Twins fan, of course. As I think about Buxton and feel Schrödinger's grief over the possible loss of the defensive part of his game, I'm led back to Joe Mauer. Watching him be forced out from behind the plate by concussions and have to take up residence at first base for the final half-decade of his career hurt. It was limiting. It was beneath Mauer, who played the game with such grace and unexpected agility.
Remember the play on which Miguel Sanó most clearly affirmed the stupidity of the experiment to put him in right field, early in 2016? On that play, amid the carnage of the collision in shallow right, Mauer raced out, seized the ball, and threw a gorgeous strike to third base for an unlikely out. It's one of my favorite plays ever, because for just a moment, Mauer had been released from his sentence to a safe, boring life at the cold corner. He got to play the full game, with all its speed and difficulty.
When I think back on his career, in addition to any number of hits or that hustle double in Game 163 in 2009 or his deke and diving tag at the plate or the poignancy of his momentary return to catching in his final game, I think of that play Mauer made. I hope we don't have just a couple of poignant vignettes like those for the second half of his career. He deserves better, just as Mauer did. Anyway, I wrote about that Mauer play (from a very personal lens) at the time, and the archives at Baseball Prospectus are free, so go read it if you'd like. And if you see a Hall of Fame voter today, tell them to vote for Mauer.
Would you have wanted to see the Twins wade in and take the risk the Giants took on Lee? Who's your preferred target, now that Lugo is off the board? Do the Royals worry you at all? Let's talk some ball.
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