Brock Beauchamp

All of this. If the Twins are confident they can improve Priester, I make this move in a heartbeat. As it stands right now staring at a stat line, hard pass. Which is why specific trade proposals are always fraught with uncertainty. Priester was very highly regarded just 12 months ago. He was a punching bag in 2023. How the Twins view him is everything in this situation and none of us staring at a FanGraphs page has a real idea how to value this trade.

The article is about excuse-making by the Giants and Rosenthal's broadcasting of those excuses. The article does a good job of counter-balancing Posey's opinion with actual events that happened surrounding Aaron Judge, Carlos Correa, Shohei Ohtani, and many others.

This thread is (rather unsurprisingly) going off the rails. Please stop debating crime statistics, this piece was about Rosenthal and the Giants blowing smoke and how their rationale doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Keep it on topic.

Oh, I'd believe that. It has a lot of people. I like NYC. I'm just saying that it's absurd to attribute problems to SF as if they're some kind of show-stopper for free agents when those same free agents go elsewhere with similar problems. Let's not forget Judge also declined a massive offer from San Diego. But hey, that doesn't fit Rosenthal's narrative.

Whatever you believe about cities or San Francisco in particular, Rosenthal's rather idiotic statements fall apart once you realize that Aaron Judge chose New York City and Shohei Ohtani chose Los Angeles to reside for a decade. I lived in LA for a decade. I have family in NYC and visit pretty regularly. Whatever bombs you can lob at SF apply equally well to LA and NYC.

Jon Morosi of MLB Network tweeted today that infielder Jorge Polanco is receiving increased trade interest from other teams. This free agent class is considered one of the weakest in years from a position player standpoint and Polanco, were he a free agent, would be one of the most attractive pieces on the market. Polanco has two option years remaining on his contract for the 2024 and 2025 seasons for $10.5 and $12 million, respectively. The Twins are looking for ways to shed payroll and have a glut of infielders. While they're apparently in no rush to move on from Polanco, trading him this winter makes sense for several reasons. View full rumor

omfg I'm dying

First, if you say anything 16 times a day, perhaps consider stopping doing that. Second, "catastrophic collapse of broadcast revenue" is accurate and I have no problem with it. Both things can be and are true.

I'm actually pretty moderate on the entire payroll situation. I disagree with the Twins here because I think the TV revenue will re-stabilize at a lower number than 2023 pretty quickly, which means they will need to move payroll downward at some point in the near future. I happen to think 2024 and 2025 are the wrong seasons to do it. You have prime Lopez, Buxton, Correa, et al. Spend a little more today knowing that those players aren't going to be in their primes forever. But anyway, we've both explained our opinions, let's not derail the topic any more than we already have.

But that absolutely is what's happening. You can understand and agree with their decision, that's fine. I happen to disagree. A business wholly owned by the Pohlads (and therefore not under pressure from minority stakeholders) can decide whether to be profitable and to what extent, particularly over the short-term of a season or two. Businesses do it all the time. I don't recall the team giving money back to the fans when they were wildly profitable running barebones payrolls from 2013-2014. Why is it okay for them to reap the rewards during boon times but play the role of the pauper when things temporarily go sideways?

It shouldn't surprise anyone but both Nightengale Jr and Dan Hayes have mentioned that the Twins expect to add a starting pitcher to their rotation this offseason. Given the self-imposed payroll constraints the Twins face this offseason and their relative pitching depth in the upper minors, a one-year deal remains the most likely result should they opt for the free agent market. Wade Miley, 37 years old, remains a well above-average lefty when he's healthy. It's hard to expect more than 120 innings out of him in any given season but that might actually make him appealing to the Twins, who have Louie Varland waiting to step into the rotation at any time. Other options include reclamation projects like Frankie Montas or, if he's available on a one-year deal, Lucas Giolito. The Twins are equally likely to opt for a longer-term trade candidate and at that point, there are a dozen viable names who may be on the market. View full rumor

They also have Jeferson Quero in the upper minors, who could legitimately turn into an All-Star himself. The Brewers are all full up on catchers.

The problem with this analysis is that the Brewers snuck into the Contreras deal, turned him into a good defensive catcher, and he became a 5.4 fWAR catcher in 2023, over a win more than Sean Murphy.

That'd be great, thanks!

Love this, have you considered writing more of these as blog entries? https://twinsdaily.com/blogs/

There's a rumors forum now, please direct all rumor-based conversation to that forum.

Jon Heyman is reporting that the Twins and Tigers are interested in signing Kenta Maeda. He calls Detroit’s interest “serious” while also saying there might be other clubs interested in adding the veteran starting pitcher. Will Maeda end up on another AL Central team? View full rumor

Yeah, I wasn't entirely clear what I meant. And your feedback is absolutely useful and constructive. In the case of Pascual, his sabr bio is in-depth and great. But what other Pascual content is out there of quality? In the case of Pascual, we don't need to replicate the sabr work. In his case, maybe his page is most useful as a link aggregator: link to his Wikipedia, Sabr, and other articles of note. But in the case of Gagne or Mack, I see the biography being of more importance because of the gaps left by other sites. And in this situation, the purpose of this wiki gets a little squishy. Some players are best served by collecting a repository of others' works. Some players are best served by creating new work. And in the case of "squishy" stuff, that means human decision-making and coordination becomes more of a necessity.

I don't know if his money is dead money, though. He could easily rebound and be considerably more valuable next offseason than he is right now. His numbers could be better and his contract length shorter. I'm in no rush to dump him just for the sake of dumping him. If the Twins need to clear payroll, a better way to do so is moving Polanco and/or Kepler. They're more valuable and would return legitimate talent, not just payroll relief.

The more I think about it, I believe the differentiating factor is the general weird and obsessive nature of this community in regards to the Twins. As I was researching this more, I spent some time on Wikipedia and guys like Shane Mack stood out to me. He's a fascinating story that I know somebody out there wants to research but his Wiki page is just a list of stats and a mention who he played with in Japan. He doesn't have a sabr.org page. That's not the Shane Mack story Twins fans are interested in and no one else is cataloging that information. On top of that, I think a high-quality link repository is really useful. Like if you want to find the best information on someone like Camino Pascual, where are you going to find it? A place to gather sabr.org, wikipedia, retrospective pieces, historical information, etc. in one place has real utility. The Twins HoF is a great mention. I'm leaning toward figuring out how to incorporate groups of players together in another page. Like a page commemorating the 1969 Twins, one of the most under-appreciated teams in franchise history. But your questions drive at the point I'm trying to determine myself: where is the real utility in this project and how are we approaching it differently than other sources on the internet? And I'm kinda leaning away from replicating the great work done on higher-profile players elsewhere in favor of linking to those sources to further promote the work being done.

Yep. If you're at the point where Vazquez clears you $4-5m of payroll, what's even the point of doing it.

Robert Murray of FanSided has reported the Twins are aggressively shopping catcher Christian Vazquez in hopes of clearing up salary space for positions of greater need. The Twins will be reducing payroll in 2024, which puts the front office in a bind as they try to build in their 2023 AL Central champion squad and the franchise's first postseason wins since 2004. Vazquez signed a three year, $30 million contract before the 2023 season. Last season, the 33-year-old had a terrible season at the plate, posting an OPS a full 100 points lower than his career mark. The Twins might have difficulty moving $20 million of contract for a player who hit closer to Drew Butera's career mark than league average. View full rumor