bean5302

That's right. Fire sales are when a team dumps all its controllable assets to initiate a rebuild because they don't believe they have the MLB talent and farm system talent to be competitive in the next 2+ years. Fire sale would be Kepler, Polanco, Arraez, Donaldson, Maeda, Garver in addition to absolutely Berrios AND Buxton with the Twins making no legitimate attempt to sign either to an extension. The Twins have a silver lining to a terrible season right now in that they can get farm team talent to the MLB club and evaluate them without any risk to the season outcome. It remains to be seen if they're competent enough to do it.

What a team might pay him in free agency right now is fun to debate, but moot. He has 2 years and $30MM guaranteed left as a non-catastrophic case scenario because he's going to get a QO at the end of 2022. He'll technically be 29 at the start of free agency for the 2023 season. There is little incentive for the Twins to offer, or for Buxton to accept, a short extension. Buxton can get 1-2 year high AAV contracts each year (like Nelson Cruz) when he comes to free agency if he doesn't decline too far, but teams taking a 1-2 year risk is totally different than a 7 year risk.

Center fielders don't really need to hit well. Buxton himself only managed a wRC+ of 93 in his career year 2017. Looking over Celestino, his sprint speed is well off the pace for a premium CF. He's just about identical to Jake Cave in sprint and speed to first. I did notice Gordon is exclusively playing CF these days. Guess the Twins are trying to figure that possibility out. Nothing super concrete to offer at CF, though. That's for sure.

I would really not like the Twins trading Kepler. He can cover center field if necessary and has an above average bat. Solid 3.0-4.0 WAR player over a full season, cheap and under a long term contract. The Twins have control of him for 3 more years and if he continues to put up 3-4 win seasons, the Twins will be giving him at least a QO. Kepler is the kind of stable season contributor who fills out your roster and allows you to move other pieces around.

Cavaco was a project when the Twins drafted him, but he has been getting better. Keep in mind, he's only 20 with virtually no pro experience coming into this year. .294/.375/.388 OPS .763 since June 1. .264/.361/.358 OPS .719 since his return from the IL on July 2. Biggest red flag I see with Cavaco is the K rate around 30%, but there's a lot to work on.

The Twins could totally afford a healthy Buxton. They could do 6 / $180MM, and if Buxton was healthy, he'd get it. Shortly after extending Morneau, Nathan and Cuddyer, you may recall they did 8 / $184MM over a decade ago.

The point about not spending when they need to is the most relevant to my complaints about the Twins as an organization. The appearance the team is entirely uninterested in World Series aspirations and dedicated to a goal of "above .500" and "competitive in the division" sits poorly with me, but seems to make fine business sense if your goal is a nice, smooth cash flow and P&L. In the last decade, the Tigers, Royals and Indians have all maxed their payrolls higher than the Twins when they had a shot. The White Sox, at $129MM, were within $2MM of the Twins' all time high opener. The Tigers, Royals(x2) and Indians have all been to the World Series in the last decade. That's across 3 different front office heads. Something tells me it's not the front office holding the Twins back.

I wonder about the perceived value vs. actual value of packaging top players, but packaging Simmons and Pineda or something like that might make sense and improve the quality of the prospect to high level (but still sub-elite). Which does a team value more, a few mid level prospects or an elite prospect? I expect teams value their elite prospects more so they'd be unwilling to sacrifice elite prospects for players they could get non-packaged with a couple mid level prospects. It's not like good relievers (though Rogers is excellent) are hard to find and Berrios or Buxton were already going to command an elite prospect by themselves. I don't see a team morgaging their entire future on a 1.5 years of Berrios and Buxton or giving up an extra elite prospect for throwing in Rogers.

Voted no. A long term contract which is middle ground for Buxton's potential earnings makes no sense for the Twins and a long term contract which is at the lower end of Buxton's potential earnings (where the Twins are now) makes little sense for Buxton. Reports are saying the Twins' offer was in the $100MM neighborhood with unknown incentives that looked more like a football contract than a typical baseball contract. Gleeman and the Geek was unusually direct to the point and worth listening to on this issue today. Berrios' ask is unknown. If he wants 5 / 125MM, you give him 5 / 125MM. If he wants more than 25MM annual over 5 years or more than 22MM annually over 6+ years, you can't sign him to that because it's an overpay compared to an expected free agency market for him.

Because they owe him, at a bare minimum, $12MM next year. ($9.25MM guaranteed + $2.75MM buyout for 2023's team option). I'm sure the hope is Sano gets on one of his patented hot streaks through the end of the year and the Twins can use that to trade him or justify keeping him on the roster next year.

If the Twins feel Contreras is somebody they want to play over cave Cave, they'll release or trade Cave instead of screwing him over and earning the angst of the rest of the clubhouse and veterans across the league. Contreras' metrics across his limited MiLB experience at CF are similar to Cave's, but Contreras hasn't played CF as a primary position and hasn't played center at all this year. I'd say Contreras' bat profiles as maybe league average ceiling right now. It's worth noting Cave has been significantly superior at the plate over the past couple years in his time at AAA (OPS .984, .972) to Contreras (.891). Cave has a higher batting average, double the walk rate and a much lower strikeout rate. Cave's had a rough couple seasons comprising a grand total of about 200 plate appearances where before that Cave showed roughly league average play in center field with a slightly above average bat.

Gotta be fun for Contreras to get a big feature article like this. I also appreciate these writeups, though I'm pretty skeptical of Contreras getting called up. He's not currently on the 40 man so that'll make things more difficult and there are some big red flags in the batting profile, but if he's able to put a couple things together, who knows?

Meh, I'm fine with that's happening. The Twins aren't good this year, but the free agency class for 2022 is amazing. I continue to be irrationally optimistic the Twins will become a different team and use all the extra money to make a couple big signings instead of making 15 medicore to bad signings and throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks while log jamming the talented guys in the minors.

Click on the article link first, then the podcast at the bottom of the article. The link is definitely to a podcast from like 2018 when Joe Mauer and Escobar were on the team haha.

Plus the $2.75MM for the Twins buying out his option.

Buxton is not a free agent and will not be a free agent at the end of this year. I think the speculation, even though it's fun, about what Buxton might command in the free agent market right now is interesting, but moot. In regard to that, if Buxton was a free agent this offseason, I can't imagine any team in baseball offering him more than 1-2 years. The only way Buxton gets that big AAV along with several years is to play a full season and produce more value in that season than he's ever done in his career. Buxton's situation makes it really hard for the Twins to extend an offer which would likely keep him. Since Buxton is virtually guaranteed of $25-30MM over the next two years between his 2022 salary and the QO he's going to receive, it makes a big impact on how low of an AAV he'll accept on an extension. Even if Buxton remains very good, but injury prone while playing 1/2 seasons from here on out, he'll still make $70MM over the next 7 years. However, Buxton putting together 2 full seasons in 2022-2023 would put him into a position to cash in hugely. I'd think he could pull in $170MM over the next 7 years on a 5 / $150MM year deal. A mid way point where I think Buxton would sign is 7 years $125MM, but if he remains injury prone or slows down, it's an albatross contract for the Twins similar to Jason Heyward's contract with the Cubs. Thus, the Twins cannot reasonably offer Buxton significantly more than the low end of Buxton's value over the next several years and Buxton can't accept what the Twins can reasonably offer.

When the Yankees signed Hicks, he was coming off a 7.2 bWAR and 5.2 bWAR per 162 seasons. Buxton was at 5.6 bWAR and 8.7 bWAR in 2019-2020. Hicks also posted wRC+ numbers of better than 120 in 3 of his past 4 seasons. This season is a major outlier, but he was playing with a strained UCL. Defense isn't worth as much as you might think. The difference between Buxton and Hicks in CF is 1.0 to 1.5 WAR over a full season because a large part of their defensive value comes from positional value. Between the two, based on the history, I find nothing to convince me Buxton's bat is better, and even arguing Buxton and Hicks are equal at the plate is awfully dubious. Hicks' wRC+ 120 performance at the plate has a 1500 plate appearance track record now. Buxton had never achieved that level of performance in his career until this luck fueled 110 plate appearance explosion. My opinion is you're seriously overvaluing Buxton and seriously undervaluing Hicks (when they're on the field, that is)

Did this comparison in a different thread. Buxton has better defense. Hicks likely has a better bat. Bottom line, they were pretty similar.

Yeah, incentives are a question here, though they aren't typically big escalators. For Buxton, a 4 year contract or 4 year extension would make him a free agent at age 31 or 32 vs. a free agent at 29 currently. That's probably not desireable for Buxton. He has to expect he'll receive a QO next year worth probably $20MM or so and maybe $10MM for 2022. So Buxton can probably bank on 2yrs, $30MM along with being a free agent at age 29 with no qualifying offer baggage. If he puts together a couple straight full seasons where his bat is solidly above average, 5yrs $150MM is probably obtainable. That would give him $170MM over 7 years vs. the Twins' offer of less than half that. Let's pretend the above scenario plays out, but Buxton remains fairly frequently hurt, but he performs well while on the field. He only needs contracts which add up to 5 years and $50MM to beat the Twins' final offer because he'll get the $30MM over the next 2 at a higher AAV than the Twins are offering. He'll always find a suitor for a 1-2 year contract if he's playing well, regardless of injury history and I can't see the cumulative 1-2 year contracts adding up to less than 5 years $40MM. Assuming all that... Buxton would make anywhere from $70MM-$170MM over the next 7 years provided he doesn't have a career ending injury or experience major decline. The Twins are offering him $80MM plus (probably marginal) incentives. That's way towards the bottom of the range.

Rosenthal also reported Buxton's camp rejected an offer of $80MM guaranteed after the $73MM offer was rejected. Extension discussions were started in March or earlier this year. https://www.startribune.com/byron-buxton-says-twins-are-talking-about-a-contract-extension/600031270/ With how this has played out in public in the last couple weeks, it certainly doesn't feel like this is a process which is just beginning.

It's tough to speculate what the Padres would offer for Berrios. They may well be more interested in Maeda because of cost. I'd see the Padres being intrigued by Kepler and Rogers, too. I just have zero faith in the front office to recognize the position the team is in right now. I get the feeling the front office thinks we can compete largely as-is, like back in 2011. The White Sox are likely monsters and Detroit is ready to build. The Indians are better than us this year, too. The Twins are not going to be playing in the weakest division in baseball like they were in 2017-2020. The same talent level will not get the job done in 2022 like it did in 2019 when career years showed up out of the woodwork like the 87 and 91 WS teams. Side note, Darvish is not on the IL, and he dominated in the two starts immediately after the sticky stuff change. He then came down with forearm tightness and spent some time on the 10 day IL before coming back and pitching 5.2 innings of 2 run ball on the 20th.

I don't think any team in MLB history has tanked for draft position. The MLB draft is way too much of a crap shoot to justify "tanking." It's not like other sports where top 2 or 3 round picks are expected to play immediately. Even a number 1 overall pick is a crapshoot to make it to MLB, let alone be productive at the MLB level. Teams have tanked in MLB to manipulate service time and bring entire crops of dirt cheap MLB ready talent to the big show in a short period of time while they reserve all their payroll capacity to fill in the gaps after the wave of prospects reveal weak spots.

Numbers say what I want them to say when I use them to further my point. That's generally how honest arguments are made, and there's nothing wrong with that. Honestly, if numbers always said the same thing, there wouldn't be much to debate about baseball players. Anyway, the numbers you're using are intended to show, in a perfect world where Byron Buxton plays a full season, that he is the best player in baseball, are they not? I did assume you expected Buxton to play full seasons and be available when/if the Twins make the playoffs so maybe that's where I went off into the weeds? The numbers you're using include what I consider to be a ludicrous 110 plate appearances from this year where it would make Byron Buxton look like the best hitter in MLB history, let alone currently. Since WAR is not truly a cumulative stat, Buxton's 2021 is artificially increasing his WAR value. I find nothing in his entire history to suggest Buxton can hit near the pace he's hitting right now and the underlying stats like BABIP, walk vs. strike out rates are screaming regression to me. I think I've seen you comment that Buxton turned a corner this year, but it seems clear to me a huge component to his added performance at the plate is just sheer luck. It is reasonable for me to think Buxton might have a wRC+ 120ish bat. That's fine. He's still a great player with a wRC+ 120ish bat. A solid 6 WAR player in a full season. He's just nowhere near the best player in MLB when he's on the field and since I only expect him to play 80 games a year, he's worth 3.0 WAR during the regular season. Of course, his 50% regular season availability means there's a 50% playoff availability, too. I think there are a lot better ways for the Twins to get 3.0 WAR a season and Buxton is too risky and expensive for the Twins right now.

Numbers say what people want them to say. You want them to say Byron Buxton is the best player in baseball based on 3 partial seasons.

You have a dramatically higher viewpoint of Byron Buxton's upside and value added than I do. If they were to both play full seasons (moon, sun, stars align), I wouldn't expect to see any significant difference in on field value between Byron Buxton and Aaron Hicks.