bean5302

Are you seriously pretending the mid 90s never happened? Back when 15% returns were normal, but baseball team valuations, revenue and profits were tanking? Pro sports franchises have not outpaced traditional investment options.

I didn't create the roster. Derek Falvey did that. This is what the Twins are currently working with. I don't believe the Pohlad's are going to expand the budget, do you? If this was a "what would you do" article, I'd be changing a lot around.

#1 - Center Fielder. Buxton cannot be expected to play more than 60 games there next year and 20 games at DH. The Twins need an OF who can be an every day CF to back up Buxton, but they have nothing at the moment. Austin Martin's defense was very rough and his bat is fringe. Emmanuel Rodriguez has played 1/2 a year in AA. #2 - Second Base. Edouard Julien? 0 WAR last year and he can't play any other IF position. Brooks Lee? Negative WAR last year. Kyle Farmer and Willi Castro likely off the books. Who is trusted to be the every day 2B? #3 - Top end starter. Lopez is a back end #2. The Twins need a guy who can go out and give them a start which gives them a good chance to win the game 75% of the time next year to advance in the playoffs, provided they make them. #4 - DH. Right handed power bat, preferably. Got nothing by the time you round out the roster. #5 - LHP for the bullpen. Significant departures: Willi Castro Max Kepler Carlos Santana Manuel Margot Kyle Farmer As it stands right now, the roster probably looks like (arb estimates from MLBTR): C - Jeffers $4.7MM 1B - Miranda - $0.8MM 2B - Julien - $0.8MM 3B - Lewis - $2.3MM SS - Correa - $37.3MM LF - Larnach - $2.1MM CF - Buxton - $15MM RF - Wallner - $0.8MM DH - Severino - $0.8MM UI - Lee - $0.8MM UI - Eeles - $0.8MM UO - Martin - $0.8MM BC - Vazquez - $10MM SP1 - Lopez - $21.7MM SP2 - Ryan - $3.8MM SP3 - Ober - $4.3MM SP4 - Paddack - $7.5MM SP5 - Woods-Richardson - $0.8MM BP1 - Duran - $3.7MM BP2 - Jax - $2.6MM (I think this one is way, way low) BP3 - Stewart - $0.8MM BP4 - Sands - $0.8MM BP5 - Topa - $1.3MM BP6 - Alcala - $1.5MM (team opt) BP7 - Varland - $0.8MM BP8 - Funderburk - $0.8MM Just a little issue. There's no money in the Twins' payroll capacity. Subtotal $127.4MM +Dobnak $3.0MM +Farmer/Jackson buyouts $0.5MM Total = $130.9MM Also, also, depth is a major concern for the Twins. Probably okay with starting rotation... and that's about it. Everywhere else is REAL thin for MLB ready guys.

Acquiring the Twins will probably cost in the neighborhood of $1.5B. They typically run an operating income (profit) of about $10-20MM, which is a terrible investment, and a big chunk of revenue is about to disappear. The overall profitability of the Twins, even when considering market value, is under the S&P 500 Index fund so owning the Twins hasn't been a great investment for the Pohlad family for the last 30 years or so. In fact, most baseball teams aren't great investments. In order to provide a the return which would outperform the general stock market, you have to grow the market value, which is honestly accomplished through attendance (fan experience) or national exposure (winning World Series' or employing big name players). So there has to be another motivation behind the acquisitions.

When determining whether or not to trade a player. 1. Team goal. Are you rebuilding, staying pat or seeking to improve? 2. Who replaces Correa? 3. What teams who can afford Correa need a big upgrade at SS? 4. What is Correa's trade value or how much will the Twins have to potentially eat to move him? 5. Will Correa waive his NTC to go to the potential new team? 1. Who knows what the Pohlads expect now? Trading Correa signals a rebuild strategy to me. 2. The Twins have no proven depth at SS, and the only guy on the current roster with the physical tools to play SS is Royce Lewis, who the Twins thought was so error prone they needed to move him to 2B or something? 3. The only team I was able to identify in one of the 87 topics on this issue was the Nationals. 4. I'd say the Twins are probably going to have to eat about $10MM/yr for the next 4 years of Correa's guaranteed contract. 5. Would Correa waive his NTC to play for the Nationals? Ehhhh... I don't know. The Nationals haven't been remotely competitive since winning the World Series in 2019, and I don't think anybody expects them to really be competitive next year.

The likely biggest bonus for the organization and fans is a new owner not being tied to Dave St. Peter and the front office's failed marketing strategy. Butts in the seats = revenue. Revenue = payroll capacity. Dave St. Peter has failed in his goals for 5 straight years and he's still running the show. If a new owner puts a better marketer in place, the Twins are going to draw much better.

I think it's also worth noting.... Arte Moreno was selling the Angels last year for a couple weeks as well. Who knows what group comes forward for the Twins?

Derek Jeter did not lead that group. Bruce Sherman led the group, and he lied to Jeter about resources. Jeter said enough of that and jumped ship.

You won't have to pay any more for it. It's still going to be available on cable or OTA, whatever network decides they want to pay for broadcast rights, those broadcasters just won't have exclusive rights to broadcast (they'll have to share the rights with MLB.com).

I think this may be a necessary move at this point, even though I've been bearish on the change because of risk of getting a legitimate "bad" owner. The Pohlad's must be aware of how much anti-Pohlad sentiment there is in the metro. They've destroyed their brand as a family 2x now. Getting fans back on board won't be so easy. There's also the broadcast rights situation. For a family hell bent on not losing money on a business, operating the Twins in a manner where they could both be profitable and successful isn't a likely scenario for the next year or two. All that said, the Pohlad's have really, really messed up over the past 2 years, but they're not "bad" owners in terms of the rest of MLB. The teams I would definitely categorize as significantly worse are: Rays, Guardians, White Sox, Angels, Marlins, Pirates, Rockies. There a group of teams who have owners I don't think are substantially better than the Pohlads as well (who I think are middle-back tier right now). When it comes to the future ownership groups looking to purchase sports teams, they're are almost always committed to winning and improving the team, not just buying the team to let it sit as a .500 ball club forever. Owning a sports team is as much about dreams as business for most owners. The Pohlad family has long been committed to a base goal of .500, and a reach goal of division winning rather than the World Series. It's a seemingly unique viewpoint. Most owners are looking to win a World Series, and some are just interested in profit (Rays) or entertainment (Rockies). Still, some are... I don't know what the hell they're doing (Marlins). We'll have to see how this plays out... but Jim is feeling an awful lot like his dad, Carl, back in the mid 90s right about now. It's not a good look, and it's not a good feeling as a Twins fan.

Each team's local broadcast AAV's https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/01/each-teams-local-broadcasting-arrangement.html Take the total broadcast values, multiply by 48% and divide by the number of teams = Rev Share Portion Take the each team's broadcast value, multiply by 52% = Team Portion Add team portion to Rev Share Portion. That's what each team makes, net, from local broadcast rights. Each team's payroll https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/_/year/2024/sort/cap_total2 Take up the "cooked numbers" with Spotrac (or whatever source on MLB payroll you like) and MLBTR since the data came from them.

The All Star Games are largely popularity contests. Teams who draw poorly or who aren't national darlings are going to be at a major disadvantage. I think the more fair question is whether or not a player was worth an All Star title. Correa was. Also, Correa lost a month and a half to ineffective treatment. He only missed 2 weeks once the new treatment was started. Maybe the trainers and medical staff eat a little responsibility here, too.

Local media revenues are dependent on interest. Put butts in the seats, create interest, increase local media revenue. The net difference between the #3 and #27 teams in MLB in terms of local TV revenue is $40MM. The difference between #3 and #27 in payroll? $166MM Local media revenue disparities aren't totally insignificant, but they're not crippling, either.

"Seats" is not game day revenue from butts in the seats. Add concessions, parking, merchandise sales, etc.

Incidentally, revenue sharing is creating a group of teams (like the Tampa Bay Rays) who have designed their business model off of receiving welfare (rev share) rather than trying to put together a good product. Owners who have teams who do draw fans are getting pretty PO'd about it, actually. You can see it in the most recent Tampa Bay Rays stadium situation. The new stadium is going to go pretty close to where the old stadium is. The reason people don't go to the Trop is not because it's a dump. It's because the vast majority of the local population who would attend a game can't reasonably get there over the bridge to St. Pete. The Rays owner knows the new stadium can't/won't draw any more fans, but he doesn't care. There will be a nice little economic boom right around the new stadium location he can profit from and his long term MLB profits/revenues are secure on the backs of teams committed to putting out a product people will pay for.

48% of local revenues (up from 31% in the previous CBA) go to the rev share pool. 100% of the national TV deals go the rev share pool. The largest source of revenue for any team (other than the Sacramento Athletics next year) is seating attendance. Get butts in the seats; make money. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1459400/mlb-revenue-by-type/ If the Twins sold out Target Field for the year at the average MLB ticket price, the Twins game day revenue from tickets and concessions would be about $250MM. Right now, they're making about $90MM. Nobody to blame for that other than the Pohlad's. The difference in revenue between being good at marketing and where they currently are is worth 4x their local TV revenue contracts.

Not sure what your "major categories" are. The major categories I looked up have the Twins at or below 15th.

Revenue will still come from broadcasting on cable or OTA or whatever other method gets used. There just won't be the value in the "exclusive" rights part of the package. I don't know what the numbers look like, but it certainly seems like a big part of the pie is being missed in these analysis' It's not like people without an Twins.TV sub won't be able to watch the games. The games will still be broadcast on a network for which the cable providers will pay a fee. It'll be lower, but not that much lower (from like $40MM to $4MM) for Minnesota.

KC had a 48% CS rate as a team this year, though they were a huge outlier. 9 TEAMS were above 30.00%. Guess their catchers must be better than perfect.

Twins ranks from their catchers (while playing catcher) fWAR = 15th wRC+ = 16th CS% = 27th Also, just as a side note, other posters are not your research team. fangraphs.com baseballreference.com baseballsavant.com Use them on your own sometime.

RoY is between Festa and Sim. Nobody else should even be an honorable mention. Negative WAR = no consideration. I guess I'd probably give it to Sim since Festa's actual performance trailed his FIP quite a bit, and for good reason and Sim contributed more.

Not for any team in baseball looking for a playoff appearance. Ober finished the season with an ERA of 3.98 ranking 81st in ERA for starters with 70+ innings pitched last year. His Stuff+ is rated at 91 (below MLB average pitch arsenal) He delivered a quality start or a start with 6.0+ innings and 3 ER or less 58% of the time. He delivered a start with 5.0+ innings and under a 4.00 ERA 18/31 times 58% of the time. Ace / #1 pitchers do that 70%+ of the time #2's do that 60%+ of the time Ober's not an ace. He's not a #2. He'll be 30 years old next year and he doesn't have the stuff to climb any higher. You know what? This kind of stuff really illustrates how low the bar is for Twins fans. How about this? Flashes of Ace / #2 pitchers, Nick Blackburn! 23/33 starts in 2009 met that criteria (70%). #54 in ERA of the 150 pitchers with 90+ IP at 4.03 ERA. 33 starts 205 innings 4.03 ERA 31 starts 178 innings 3.98 ERA woot woot!!!! Bailey Ober, Cy Young in the making! Except Blackburn was 2 years younger and not already entering his decline back then. Nick Blackburn!!! Super ace!

Only on TwinsDaily would a back end rotation arm get a potential MVP vote. 28 games started 1.8 fWAR. Even had the Twins made the playoffs, it'd be pretty crazy to bring Sim into this discussion. WAR = Wins Above Replacement. Meaning Sim was worth less than 2 wins over a Caleb Boushley or an Adam Plutko or Randy Dobnak type pitcher. It's not that Sim did a bad job or didn't take a massive leap forward in production, but there's plenty to be concerned about in regard to how he finished the season and the fact he was worn out despite pitching only 133.2 innings. His velocity dropped back to early season numbers in September, and instead of like in the early year, hitters tee'd off on him. Does that mean the scouting reports are out and Sim will need to hold 94mph to be successful? Tough to say. Correa 4.3 Buxton 3.7 Lopez 3.2 Castro 3.1 Ryan 3.1 Santana 3.0 Ober 2.9 Jax 2.6 Wallner 2.1 --------------- SWR 1.8

Probably goes to Correa. Led the Twins with 4.3 fWAR and 3.7 bWAR. Woof. Top player fWAR for other teams. Ari = 6.3 Atl = 6.4 Bal = 8.0 Bos = 6.7 ChC = 4.3 ChW = 4.7 Cin = 6.4 Cle = 6.5 Col = 3.7 Det = 5.9 Hou = 5.3 KCR = 10.4 LAA = 3.5 LAD = 9.1 Mia = 2.5 Mil = 5.4 Min = 4.3 NYM = 7.8 NYY = 11.2 Oak = 5.1 (Brent Rooker) Phi = 5.4 Pit = 4.3 SDP = 5.3 Sea = 5.4 SFG = 5.5 StL = 3.8 TBR = 2.3 Tex = 4.5 Tor = 5.5 Was = 3.2 Only 6 teams in MLB had a less valuable top WAR player than the Twins. None of those teams made the playoffs.

I mean, it's natural to expect since Falvey's last true catcher draft pick above round 8 was in 2018. Rounds 1-10, catcher selections by Falvey 2017 - None 2018 - Ryan Jeffers 2nd round 2018 - Charles Mack 6th round 2018 - Chris Williams 8th round (AAA) 2019 - None 2020 - None 2021 - Noah Cardenas 8th round (AA) 2021 - Patrick Winkel 9th round (AAA) 2022 - None 2023 - None 2024 - Khadim Diaw (A) 3rd round (he's honestly really an OF) Can't imagine why we're short on catching depth...