What Light Does Diamondbacks Deal Shed on the Minnesota Twins?

1 hour ago, Major League Ready said:

I have asked that a fair and accurate representation be made.   Apparently, that's a problem.  I even went to the trouble of listing all of the financial constructs that were flawed a few posts back.  So, instead of this type of emotional response, feel free to provide a counter argument specific to the flaws I listed that disproves any one of the concepts I listed are not flawed. 

It's ironic you would portray the guy providing very specific evidence that information is flawed as only wanting to discuss it in a manner in which I approve.  How is it a problem to expect an accurate representation.  I have repeatedly encouraged anyone who disagrees these representations are flawed to state their case.  No takers for an intelligent debate.  Just this kind of snotty response devoid of any actual value.

Dang I’m confused. So you do want to have payroll discussions. I’m going to take my own advice and not partake. I can’t keep up. 

53 minutes ago, Linus said:

Dang I’m confused. So you do want to have payroll discussions. I’m going to take my own advice and not partake. I can’t keep up. 

You called me out and insulted me in the process so I defended myself.  All I asked for was an accurate representation of the facts and you damn well know this is the case because I listed them in specific detail.  I invited you or anyone else to disprove these points which is the polar opposite of insisting on my way.   You can't disprove any of the things I brought up so now that you can't keep the discussion within a context of your liking, you don't want to discuss it.  You have just clearly illustrated my original point that many posters here are simply ignoring anything they don't want to acknowledge.    Apparently, my preference to accurately represent these issues is problematic.

I am happy to have a payroll discussion if it's based on accurate representations and valid financial constructs.  You are further proving the lack of desire here to have a discussion on that basis at which point I don't see the point of perpetuating the same conceptually flawed explanations of the situation.  Prove me wrong a show us all the error in the points I outlined but don't refuse to play and then accuse me of being unwilling to have a reasonable disagreement about the facts.  Several of you willing to take shots at me but not a single person willing to debate the actual points I made.

Hey Ted, please stop saying that the 2023 season was the best in three decades (presumably since the WS victory in 1991).  By every measure, 2002 was a better season, so it's actually no more than two decades.  Probably seems like a quibble, but for baseball fans it is really not.

On 2/26/2024 at 7:06 AM, chpettit19 said:

Why should we believe they were made in 22 and 23? Someone brings up the 23 BAM money in all these articles. Forbes said the Twins likely made about 16 mil in 22. That's them investing? If making 16 mil is them sacrificing financially for the betterment of their product I'm even more upset that they slashed payroll now.

I'm not asking them to be the Padres or Mets and spend to the luxury tax. Convenient that you left out the Dodgers, Yankees, and Rangers in that, though. Especially the Rangers who invested big time and I believe they won a world series recently, no? And the article is literally about the DBacks so if you have a problem with me following the lead of the article perhaps take it up with Ted. I'm glad you're happy with the team's spending. Not telling you not to be. But I don't get how finally winning and then slashing payroll and not coming through on streaming is a praise-able situation. To each their own. 

From the Forbes web page on the 2022 season

On 2/26/2024 at 8:01 AM, Major League Ready said:

This response exemplifies why it’s time to move on.  That “spreadsheet” which was nothing more than a simple calculation offered absolutely no opinion on spending level.   It simply illustrated how to do the math and that posters were using a very flawed financial construct to determine how much payroll would need to be reduced to make up for losses in revenue.  The fact that you object to this being pointed out and portray it as a defense of the Pohlad’s is why it’s pointless to have these conversations.  Some of us with financial backgrounds have attempted to point these things out but posters refuse to even acknowledge some errors that are pretty basic.  What is the be learned by continuing a conversation based on badly flawed concepts?  I don’t see any point.  

Let’s go over the examples.  

The first one that was brought up over and over was the $30M in BAM money.  Many posters here were unaware.   That’s an honest mistake until it’s pointed out numerous times and people, including all of the writers here ignore it because they don’t want to accept it.  JD-Twins in this very thread said he was “tired of hearing about BAM money”.  This is about as factual as it gets.  

Another example is when posters insisted if revenue went down by let’s just say $40M, payroll should only go down $20M because the organization generally uses 50% of revenue as their target.  The math simply does not work that way.  Let’s say someone makes $6K/month and pays $3K month in rent (50%).  2,400 (40%) goes to food / vehicle pymt / gas / other monthly expenses.  This would be a parallel to operating expenses.  The other 10% goes to 401/savings.  If your income goes down by $1,000, will moving to a different rental that is $500/month cheaper cover the difference?  Does the fact that the $3K was 50% of revenue matter?  Of course not.  This is rather simple financial concept.  Yet, it was constantly misused here.

Another example is when the difference in spending was calculated as the current payroll vs ending payroll from last year. The ending payroll includes all of the payments to those who fill-in for injured players.  The Twins used something like 48 players last year.  It’s not a huge amount but $7M or $8M changes that percentage substantially.

Another example is once the BAM money was pointed out so many times it could not be ignored, people started insisting that they should not have used one-time to sign long-term deals.  This was a silly argument given we know with certainty that all of those contracts fit within the budget guidelines outlined by the FO.  I don’t really know what could be more obvious but some people still attempted to portray this as incompetence.

Another example is people insisting that the Twins should rank 14 or 15th in spending because they have the 14 or 15th ranked market.  The only rank that counts in terms of supporting payroll is revenue.  You would think this is about as obvious as it gets but apparently not.  One could argue they could or should generate more revenue but using market rank to justify spend is not a reasonable financial construct.

Another that’s not as cut and dried is we just want them to take it in the shorts for one year.  The problem with that premise is that meaningful free agents require multi-year contracts.  A really good FA would ensure a 2025 payroll at or near record levels with uncertain revenues.  We would also have an unmanageable percentage of payroll in two players if a major FA was signed.  It would also make it very difficult to extend our young core which is a far more effective practice than signing free agents.  

The last concept is an interesting and much more nuanced conversation.  The others can and have been proven mathematically.  You choose to ignore the opportunity to better understand these concepts others cheer you for it.  It’s one thing to not know the financial constructs.  It’s another thing entirely to intentionally ignore them when an explanation is offered.  That’s when it’s time to move on.   
 

OK water toter. 1st off you keep talking about the BAM money. That was a 1 time thing and it was represented by the 2023 payroll increase. I assume the Twins realized that. So a decrease would be expected for 2024. But not back to what the payroll was in 2019. Payroll should have been adjusted back to 2022 with a slight increase. The cost of doing business generally goes up annually. It's called inflation. I'll give them a little leeway for the fact that the TV deal wasn't done. But they managed to screw the pooch on that one too. And your analogy of a working person's budget as opposed to the the way the Twins do business is ludicrous and not real. A working person needs to adjust to survive. The Twins won't disappear off the map if they lost money for a year or 2. And I'm not one who advocates spending huge dollars on FA. But don't cry poor mouth and act like you're doing us all a favor. Buxton  signed 2 years ago. Correa last year as well as Lopez extension.. Are you saying they didn't realize they had spent all that money going forward? I hope you like that occasional bone they toss out there. Am I hiding?

I don't think many of us complained about the spending in 2023, but they could have improved the team and the trade deadline and didn't. In a season where it was anybody's guess who would win it all, I wish they had made a push. This team will win 90 games this year and that may be enough to get 2+ million fans in the stands and they should be exciting, at the very least.

7 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

That's what I get for trusting someone else's post. Fair enough. But that Forbes page also says the Twins were up 114 million from 2013-2022. Including the massive loss they took in 2020 and the 2022 loss. In 2013 they lost 96 games. 92 in 2014. Nice 2015 where they were 2 games above .500! Then down to 103 losses in 2016. 85 wins in 2017 was nice. 78 wins in 2018 wasn't. Incredible 2019 with 101 wins (and apparently made 43 mil in profits! crazy that building a good team leads to more money, who knew?). Craziness of 2020 season with a nice "regular season" before getting swept by the Astros. Follow that up with 89 and 84 losses in 21 and 22. So in that 10 year period the Twins went 729-789 with 6 losing seasons while making $114 million in profit. Averaged nearly 26 mil a year in profit for the 7 years before covid season while 4 of those 7 seasons were losing seasons. They were so kind to sacrifice so much in that 2022 season. I'll never ask them to make a short-term spending risk again when they finally win a postseason game for the first time in 2 decades. How silly of me. Should've known the expectations shouldn't change with winning or losing seasons. Always need to make the Pohlads 25+ mil even when they put out garbage teams and can't expect them to make less when they're good. Fair enough.

So they pay $44M 40 years ago and its now worth $1.5B along with the Family business total net worth north of $9B and they still can’t/won’t spend enough to insure an above average season result. Analytics is pretty easy. Just Buy enough WAR at a decent price and go win games. Put fans in the seats and make a profit. Spend more to make more.  That approach works well in the sports industry.  The FO does a good job at evaluating risk for the most part.  Ownership can’t be letting them maximize the offseason opportunities tho. 

7 hours ago, Schmoeman5 said:

OK water toter. 1st off you keep talking about the BAM money. That was a 1 time thing and it was represented by the 2023 payroll increase. I assume the Twins realized that. So a decrease would be expected for 2024. But not back to what the payroll was in 2019. Payroll should have been adjusted back to 2022 with a slight increase. The cost of doing business generally goes up annually. It's called inflation. I'll give them a little leeway for the fact that the TV deal wasn't done. But they managed to screw the pooch on that one too. And your analogy of a working person's budget as opposed to the the way the Twins do business is ludicrous and not real. A working person needs to adjust to survive. The Twins won't disappear off the map if they lost money for a year or 2. And I'm not one who advocates spending huge dollars on FA. But don't cry poor mouth and act like you're doing us all a favor. Buxton  signed 2 years ago. Correa last year as well as Lopez extension.. Are you saying they didn't realize they had spent all that money going forward? I hope you like that occasional bone they toss out there. Am I hiding?

If you bother to look at my statement, I said it was repeatedly ignored entirely.   Article after article and poster after poster did not acknowledge it.  What you think is the appropriate level has absolutely nothing to do with what I said.

I was validating the concept of what is required to make up for revenue loss not trying to prove if it was more devastating to an individual.  The math does not change if it's a corporation.    I will use payroll directly.  If revenue is $300M and payroll is $150M payroll is 50% of revenue.  If revenue goes down by $50M, a $25M reduction in payroll does not cover the lost revenue.  The fact that payroll was 50% of revenue has nothing to do with the calculation of what's required to compensate for the loss.  This is about as simplistic as finance metric get.  I at no point suggested the Twins could not survive.  I said that people that insisted the payroll only need to be cut by half of the revenue lost simply did not understand the math.

You are arguing based on a belief.  You are welcome to that belief.   I might have a different belief but that is not the content of my post.  My post suggests there has been perpetual misrepresentations and flawed financial constructs.  You want to focus on those beliefs instead of the financial constructs that were the subject of the post. 

9 minutes ago, Fatbat said:

So they pay $44M 40 years ago and its now worth $1.5B along with the Family business total net worth north of $9B and they still can’t/won’t spend enough to insure an above average season result. Analytics is pretty easy. Just Buy enough WAR at a decent price and go win games. Put fans in the seats and make a profit. Spend more to make more.  That approach works well in the sports industry.  The FO does a good job at evaluating risk for the most part.  Ownership can’t be letting them maximize the offseason opportunities tho. 

Insure like it did for the Padres or Mets or like it insured we would get a player that produced far more than 1.1 WAR like it did with Carlos Correa or Christian Vasquez or Anthony Rendon or Carlos Rodon, etc.

We got 2.8 WAR total from our 3 highest paid players ($58M) last year so it's far from "insured".  Our six highest WAR position players made a total of roughly $14M and produced 14.9 WAR

27 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

Insure like it did for the Padres or Mets or like it insured we would get a player that produced far more than 1.1 WAR like it did with Carlos Correa or Christian Vasquez or Anthony Rendon or Carlos Rodon, etc.

We got 2.8 WAR total from our 3 highest paid players ($58M) last year so it's far from "insured".  Our six highest WAR position players made a total of roughly $14M and produced 14.9 WAR

No amount of money can avoid injuries. Depleting a roster by august and not paying for depth causes loses. Playing AAA guys that aren’t ready for MLB because you have no other choice is gross miss management. 

1 hour ago, Fatbat said:

No amount of money can avoid injuries. Depleting a roster by august and not paying for depth causes loses. Playing AAA guys that aren’t ready for MLB because you have no other choice is gross miss management. 

Wouldn't you say this is a deep team?

39 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

Wouldn't you say this is a deep team?

It got deeper with the last trade for sure.  The ‘24 team could be one of the best twins teams ever.  I believe we are heading in the right direction for sure but not because ownership is as supportive as they could be. 

11 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

That's what I get for trusting someone else's post. Fair enough. But that Forbes page also says the Twins were up 114 million from 2013-2022. Including the massive loss they took in 2020 and the 2022 loss. In 2013 they lost 96 games. 92 in 2014. Nice 2015 where they were 2 games above .500! Then down to 103 losses in 2016. 85 wins in 2017 was nice. 78 wins in 2018 wasn't. Incredible 2019 with 101 wins (and apparently made 43 mil in profits! crazy that building a good team leads to more money, who knew?). Craziness of 2020 season with a nice "regular season" before getting swept by the Astros. Follow that up with 89 and 84 losses in 21 and 22. So in that 10 year period the Twins went 729-789 with 6 losing seasons while making $114 million in profit. Averaged nearly 26 mil a year in profit for the 7 years before covid season while 4 of those 7 seasons were losing seasons. They were so kind to sacrifice so much in that 2022 season. I'll never ask them to make a short-term spending risk again when they finally win a postseason game for the first time in 2 decades. How silly of me. Should've known the expectations shouldn't change with winning or losing seasons. Always need to make the Pohlads 25+ mil even when they put out garbage teams and can't expect them to make less when they're good. Fair enough.

So, how many scouts do the Twins have? How much does it cost them for the Fort Meyers complex. How much does each member in the front office make. The reality is nobody knows. They really don’t know. They can figure out revenue by as sales tax collection is public. I don’t think income tax records are. So, how do they know? Liberty Media may be a public company but that dosen’t tramslate to every other club is run the same way 

20 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

That's what I get for trusting someone else's post. Fair enough. But that Forbes page also says the Twins were up 114 million from 2013-2022. Including the massive loss they took in 2020 and the 2022 loss. In 2013 they lost 96 games. 92 in 2014. Nice 2015 where they were 2 games above .500! Then down to 103 losses in 2016. 85 wins in 2017 was nice. 78 wins in 2018 wasn't. Incredible 2019 with 101 wins (and apparently made 43 mil in profits! crazy that building a good team leads to more money, who knew?). Craziness of 2020 season with a nice "regular season" before getting swept by the Astros. Follow that up with 89 and 84 losses in 21 and 22. So in that 10 year period the Twins went 729-789 with 6 losing seasons while making $114 million in profit. Averaged nearly 26 mil a year in profit for the 7 years before covid season while 4 of those 7 seasons were losing seasons. They were so kind to sacrifice so much in that 2022 season. I'll never ask them to make a short-term spending risk again when they finally win a postseason game for the first time in 2 decades. How silly of me. Should've known the expectations shouldn't change with winning or losing seasons. Always need to make the Pohlads 25+ mil even when they put out garbage teams and can't expect them to make less when they're good. Fair enough.

Lots of people in baseball are making a lot of money regardless of performance. Several teams made much more while sucking.  Prince Fileder made almost twice that much and produce negative WAR  Ellsbury, Bumgarner, Hosmer and several others were so bad the teams paid them to quit or play elsewhere.  The fair question is how does that $114M over 10 years compare to the other owners in the league.  I mean that's what we are really talking about here.  Scherzer, Verlander and many others will make this much over a 3 year period, not 10 so the profit number needs context.  The fair questions is how greedy are Twins relatively speaking.  Can you be objective enough to put this in perspective by actually responding how this level of profit compares to other teams over that period?  Give us rank even if it’s a guess.  1-30 how does the $114M compares to others.  It’s in the bottom 7 for certain and probably ranks around 25th overall, right.  Give us a number. 

20 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

I have no idea how it ranks. And frankly, I don't care. That's what you care about, and you're more than welcome to. Not telling you not to. Do other teams invest at moments like this in their team's winning cycle or do they all slash payroll? That's something I'd find intriguing.

The point of the other number for me is to simply show the Twins aren't out there losing money as others have suggested. They were really good in 2019 and saw their profits rise considerably. Yet when some of us suggest they should be looking to invest now to improve their team and set themselves up in a great position to do that for many years we're told that's crazy and they just need to ensure what you claim is middling profits each year. They make what you believe to be low levels of comparative profits while being terrible most of the time, but then you turn around and claim they shouldn't invest to become good to see their profits rise. I don't get it, but I'm not the business genius around here.

Very few people follow baseball the way you do.  I have a VERY hard time believing you don't have a good idea of where the Twins profitability ranks.  If you don't understand their relative profitability why would you complain?  How do you have a basis to judge?  I do believe you don't care.  You simply don't want to acknowledge the truth.  The complaint looks pretty silly if you acknowledge they are one of the lowest ranking teams in terms of profitability. 

We see the relative merit of players backed up by very good evidence.  NEVER does someone complain about spending and then provide any proof as to the twins relative spending.  I can't imagine how many posts you have made complaining.  How about just one with hard numbers that show the Twins don't spend commensurate with revenue.  

10 hours ago, Fatbat said:

It got deeper with the last trade for sure.  The ‘24 team could be one of the best twins teams ever.  I believe we are heading in the right direction for sure but not because ownership is as supportive as they could be. 

Yes there is plenty of focus on what ownership didn't do. Falvey and his crew sure were up to the challenge of building a team while losing 30m of their budget. The strong organization, top to bottom made this possible. Ownership got one thing right when they hired Derek Falvey. He has grown into his job nicely. 

1 hour ago, chpettit19 said:

So believe Forbes when they give info you like, don't trust them when the numbers don't match. Got it.

They tell you the source of how they got the revenue, not how they figure expenses. When the new regime took over they stated how lean the operation was from an employment standpoint and began hiring. The profit listed stayed the same. Of course I am not as smart as you on this stuff so please feel free to explain. How more help equals the same profit in relation to revenue. 

29 minutes ago, wabene said:

Yes there is plenty of focus on what ownership didn't do. Falvey and his crew sure were up to the challenge of building a team while losing 30m of their budget. The strong organization, top to bottom made this possible. Ownership got one thing right when they hired Derek Falvey. He has grown into his job nicely. 

I think this is a good observation. I have been generally meh on Falvine but he has grown in his job. This off-season is really a feather in his cap as he has made adjustments to the team with no money. It’s really the bright spot to this payroll cutting mess. 

1 hour ago, chpettit19 said:

You're talking big picture I'm talking this moment in time specifically. I don't know where the Twins rank in profit because I don't care where any team ranks. They all make more than they spend in the big picture and they could all sell their teams today for a massive profit (unless they just bought it) if they weren't making money. You can claim they're 30th in relative profitability and I'll accept it and not care.

My point is they make money on the team even when it's bad. When it's good (2019) they make more money. 2019 was the only year the fanbase was nearly as excited as it was coming into this offseason and that excitement got destroyed by outside factors. That's legitimately a bad situation for them. But this time the excitement is being hurt by them and their decisions. 

The twin cities have shown they'll turn out and support any pro sports team in this area if it's successful. Including the Twins. I'm not on these boards every year yelling "cheap Pohlads." I'm not even yelling that now even though that's the thing you want to argue against. I'm yelling "shortsighted Pohlads" because they're choosing to chase as much short-term money as they can while self-inflicting damage on their own fan's excitement. 

So I don't care about relative profit. They make money nearly every year. They make more when they're good. They had their fanbase as excited as it's been in 30 years. And they decided to play poor. That's what I'm complaining about. Not their ownership in general, but their ownership decisions this offseason. 

What free agent of impact could they have signed that only impacted this year?  Those players get 3 or more years and the real impact players are 5+ years.  They are going to be at roughly $127M next year with departures, salary increases, and arbitration increases.  They would have been over $150M next year as well if they did not spend one dime replacing any of the departures or filling any new holes.  How could this have been contained to this year?

We should also consider if it's a good idea for a below average revenue team to spend $60M or more on 2 players or 85M on 3 players with Lopez or $100M with Buxton.  We should ask if there is a single example of a below average revenue team being successful while spending $100M on 4 players.   If you can't come up with a single example, you might have your answer as to why they are not following the strategy you endorse.  Do you have an example?  Of course, you know that I have the data for every 90 win team going back 25 years and there is not a single example.  The far better strategy would be to use the money to extend a couple of our young players and that's not really not possible while pursuing the practices you insist upon.

6 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

Cody Bellinger is the obvious answer if you wanted someone for just 1 year. Maybe Snell and/or Montgomery end up with similar deals if their markets never come to their asking price. I don't have the energy to debate with you on why it has to be a 1 year thing. I think they can grow revenue by investing in a better product that reaches more fans. You don't. You're more qualified than me so you win. Congratulations.

You know my definition of success is different than yours. You watch "120+ games a year and care about seeing a quality product more often than not in those games" while I care about winning the World Series. I'm not going to have this discussion with you again. You can either accept we have different goals or not, I don't really care, but I'm not going to go through this with you again. We don't agree on what we'd like their goals to be. I'm glad you approve of their strategies on both the business side and baseball side. The strategy you endorse hasn't met either of our ideas for success, but at least they're making money so you can be happy about the business side.

Bellinger was not a one year deal.  It was a 3-year deal.  You also assume he would have come here instead of the Cubs which is very likely a false assumption.  If your logic is he opts out if things go well, that kind of logic is how people responsible for a $300M P&L get fired.  That is absolute incompetence in the real world.

Now after dozens of posts on they should just do it this year, you are changing the entire premise to that it does not have to be a 1 year thing now that it is evident it's not feasible to be a one-year thing.  It's also not a good idea to negate the potential of signing our young core to extensions.   Don't BS me about not having the energy to debate this after a spending hours upon hours over the course of a couple hundred posts ranting about spending.   You don't want to debate it because you know you can't reasonably illustrate how the spending could have been a one-year thing.  

Our differing goals have absolutely nothing to do with the viability of containing the spending to one year.

18 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

Man, it must have been hard for you to call the Pohlads and Dave St Peter incompetent when they first signed Correa. Because you know full well that was a 1 year deal in their minds. Glad nobody got fired after that one.

I never claimed the spending would be a 1 year thing. You asked for an example and I provided one. My idea this entire offseason has been to invest to grow revenue. I know that's a crazy business idea "your firm" never would've suggested so it's fine you don't think that's plausible. But if you make more you can generally spend more. My idea is that they invest to make more and thus the extra dollars over the 3-year that's really a 1-year deal wouldn't cause them to lose money.

Our differing goals have everything to do with how you want the roster built over the long-haul and that was what I was referring to. Because, again, I never said the spending should be a 1 year thing. That was your idea. But I'm sorry if I misinterpreted things there and caused confusion.

I won't be responding to you anymore. On any thread. Congratulations. You win.

Yup, Bellinger could have pitched the Twins out of the hole that was dug when Gray did not win his game 

21 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

I don't "trust" any of their numbers. There's tons of ways for teams to have more revenue than is publicly available. Plenty of ways for them to be spending more or less than is publicly guessed. It's just a source people have been using here so it's the one I went with. Atlanta is the only team with numbers I trust because it's all publicly available. But your stance was basically "it's either as bad as I say or worse" and I'm just not going to buy that. As far as big picture profit goes, the Twins aren't losing money. They have a year here or there (1 apparently in the 9 year non-2020 sample you quoted) where they guess wrong and lose money. But the idea that the Twins are a losing business is not something I'll ever believe. No professional sports team is a losing business. And if the owner can't make it work they can sell it for an incredible profit and let someone else figure it out. If the Twins are such a terrible business for the Pohlads they can sell it for nearly 2 billion and move on with their lives. The fact that they don't I think should tell us all we need to know about whether or not they're struggling to make ends meet over at 1 Twins Way.

Never said the Twins were a losing money business. Did say that they have had seasons where they lost money.. Still the notion of spending more than your means has not been shown to be effective except in your own mind