Whammy

The Tristan Gray callup and a brief discussion in yesterday's game thread got me thinking about prospect callups again, the motivation behind them, and how the CBA expiring might be adding a wrinkle or two that we don't normally worry about. Normally this time of year we aren't talking too much about service time suppression. By the end of July, those dates have long since passed. In a baseball season there are 3 prospect callup dates that matter (or actually "windows of dates" because the actual dates always vary a little bit): Mid April - Another year of service time. Teams get 6 years of service time from players before they become free agents, but if teams call up a player and start the service time clock after mid-April, then those new players don't accumulate enough service time that year to have it count as a full year, so you end up getting 6+ years. In some cases, almost 7 full years. Mid June - The Super 2 date. It feels like we talk about this one less than we used to. If a player is called up after mid April, but before the Super 2 cutoff, then they get pushed into the arbitration process a year earlier than their service time clock might indicate. Normally teams get a player for 3 years at a pre-arbitration salaries (less than $1M) and then 3 years of arbitration begins and their salaries escalate. If a player is "Super 2" (Like Luke Keaschall is on track to be) then what would normally be their last year of pre-arbitration salaries converts to an arbitration year. In that case, that player has 4 years of arbitration rather than the usual 3. This date doesn't affect years of team control, but rather how much a player will earn over those years. Mid August - Maintaining rookie eligibility. I won't get into all of the thresholds of plate appearances or inning pitched, but usually if a player is called up after mid-August, there's a good chance they will maintain their true rookie status for the following year. This matters for offseason prospect lists. Mick Abel barely crossed one of the rookie thresholds last year. Most people use rookie eligibility to decide whether they can appear on a prospect list. If Abel was still rookie eligible last offseason he probably would've appeared on some top 100 lists and been in the 4-5 range on the Twins top 20 list. Does this REALLY matter? No. But how this has historically mattered more is for Rookie of the Year voting the following year. And these days with the Prospect Promotion Incentive (PPI) tied to RotY voting, there's maybe a little more motivation for a team to maintain rookie status for their players than there always has been. Those are the normal dates and motivations, but does the impending CBA expiration, potential lockout, and lost 2027 games provide a couple more things to think about? One of those considerations has been talked about a decent amount. If a player is called up, then they must be on the 40 man roster and if there is a lockout, players that are on the 40 man roster cannot participate in team activities. But if a prospect is NOT on the 40 man roster then they are still eligible to participate in minor league activities. Emmanuel Rodriguez is on the 40-man roster already and if there's a lockout, he'll be part of that lockout. But Kaelen Culpepper and Walker Jenkins are not yet on the 40 man roster. If they are not called up this season, they will remain off the 40-man roster over the offseason and thus will be eligible for minor league activity. I don't personally believe that's a good reason to keep them at AAA the next couple months, but it's certainly something the Twins are discussing. The second thing to think about is more speculative. One of the likely negotiating items for the new CBA is team control of a rookie player. Currently, as was laid out above, that's 6 years of service time. But in practice, it ends up being closer to 7 years. Almost certainly the players will be looking to shrink that. The sooner they hit free agency the better. Let's say the players are successful. What happens to players already in the "pre-arbitration" process? They've started their service time clocks. Do they get to switch to the new rules? Or because they've started the clock, are they forced to live by the rules that were in place when they got called up? Not sure. And who might get grandfathered in? It seems like there are 4 possibilities: No grandfathering in. Pretty straightforward. Old rules don't apply any more. Everyone lives under the new rules Players on 40 man rosters get grandfathered in, regardless of whether their service time clocks have started. Players who have started their service time clocks at all (even 1 day) are grandfathered in. Players who are not longer rookie eligible get grandfathered in. I have no idea if this is a consideration, but it seems like it might be. Teams obviously have more knowledge about what's being talked about, but given how early we are in the negotiations, they might need to do some speculating here as well. Normally, all things being equal, you're rather a prospect maintain rookie eligibility than not, but might there be different motivations from teams this August and September related to keeping their young players under control as long as possible. Sorry... that went way longer than I intended when I clicked "Create New Topic." If I messed anything up, please let me know.

I agree with this. With a little better defense, that could have easily been a 1 or 2 run outing for Joe. The Perez triple, with a healthy Buxton that could've been an out, but at the very least should've only been a double. The weird Brooks Lee play on the attempted bunt could've easily been a double play if he played it differently. Royce could have been given an error on that 4th run. Just gotta make that play.

No. The super-2 thing passed in June.

Year of control has nothing to do with it. That wouldn’t matter again until next year

I somewhat agree. They don’t seem to be acting with as much urgency as I would like. It’s equal parts annoying and strange. It caused me to look up Rookie eligibility rules (not that that should matter). We’d have to keep our un-debuted players at AAA until around mid August to maintain their rookie status for 2027.

Listen, I’m not happy with how this game is going but Jesus you folks are some of the most mopey, woe is me, m-fers I’ve ever seen.

Probably true, but if I have like 25 career major league games and I’m trying to make an impression I might just exert an above average amount of effort.

How much money does someone need before they say no to low 6 figures of dollars for a day of work?

I'm firmly on the "Give Jeffers the QO" bandwagon, but I do think the value of the, say, 35th overall pick is a bit overstated. We've actually had some pretty good luck drafting in that range (shown below) the last few years, but I feel like a prospect at the bottom of the top 100 has a lot more value than a Compensatory A pick. Having a Comp A pick turn into a Top 100 prospect feels like about an 80th percentile outcome. I still say keep him and give him the QO, but I don't think the value of what me might get in trade versus what we might get as a comp pick are as close as people are assuming. 2021 to 2025 Picks 30-40: Riley Quick Kyle DeBarge Charlee Soto Noah Miller Picks 41-70: Quentin Young Billy Amick Dasan Hill Luke Keaschall Connor Prielipp Tanner Schobel Steven Hajjar

The win last night was obviously fantastic, but the way it went down (9th inning comeback) has some tangible benefits that linger into today (or perhaps tomorrow). If we had gotten a ho-hum 3-2 win, we most likely would've used our best relievers to secure the win. Depending on how many pitches they threw, they might not be available today and certainly if they were used again today, they wouldn't be available tomorrow. And beyond that, the Royals DID use all of their best relievers. Not only did our hitters get a chance to take AB against them, they are now less available the rest of the series. This feels like something that has happened the opposite direction a decent amount to the Twins the last few years. Blow the first game of a series and have it linger throughout the series.

Worth noting that the Royals were 7-3 in their last 10 coming into tonight.

I think the mistake Twins fans might be making is believing that the White Sox will act in the same way that we think the Twins would act in a similar situation.

I'm not going to claim to have any idea what players/agents are going to do this go around, but the last time there was an expiring CBA there were a TON of free agents that signed before the CBA expired.

My gut. Just reading the tea leaves of Ownership shifts. They've been a sleeping giant over the last handful of years. As of 5 months ago, that sleeping giant still felt a couple years away, but I expect them to look at this division and the AL in 2026 and say... why not now? They have the financial resources to make bolder and riskier decisions than the Twins. And I expect to see a few this week.

One thing that I've learned about you over the last couple days is that you're a BIG Luis Arraez guy.

I disagree with you that the White Sox are unlikely to spend much to improve at the deadline. I expect them to be the most active AL team.

I'm generally against trading Jeffers, but the way it would probably work is more of a de facto 3 team trade. We trade Jeffers for prospects. We also trade prospects for Relief help. It's unlikely that it would be the same prospects, but it could be that the two groups of prospects changing hands have roughly the same value. True 3 team trades are just very rare.

I'm pretty on record as being against trading Jeffers and attempting to secure him in 2027 via the QO, but much like no prospects ever being "untouchable" (there's always a price), no player on the Twins is untouchable. So, yeah, if the Yankees (or any teams) want to make what I view as an overpay for 2 months of Jeffers, then I'm open to the idea, the same way I looked at the Duran and Jax trades last year (I know... different situation) and thought "Yeah... for those prospects I guess I'm ok with it." But I'm not out there LOOKING for a Jeffers deal. I'm letting teams come to me with an offer than I'm going to have a tough time saying no to.

Fangraphs currently has us at 21% to win our division. If the playoffs started today, the White Sox would have a first round bye. I think the 30% odds you talk about, under normal circumstances, might not push the FO into being buyers, but for not only the franchise-level reasons you mention, but the unique circumstances of the 2026 American League, it's worth investing a little more than normal on a 30% playoff odds team. I mean Fangraphs has us at 10% odds to get a first round bye.

I'm curious what your idea of "go big" is.

I think we're just going to have to come to an agreement that: a) you think people dreaming on a 30% playoff chance and their "anything can happen" attitudes are crazy b) we think you telling us all the reasons why we wont win the world series and using that as justification for not trying for a playoff push is crazy

Because some of us view the cost of those minor roster changes as trivial compared to the opportunity, no matter how low those odds might be. By the way... the twins are 3 games out of 1st round bye position and have ~10% chance of getting a first round bye according to Fangrpahs

Haven’t you heard? We might have to play the Dodgers (or equivalent) if we get to the World Series, so we’ve decided it’s not worth trying to get there. Time to start building for 2028.

The same Twitter user pointed out that with the Rockies going into their overage this year (for the first time), there is just now just one team that has never done it… The Twins

I’m open to any deal that improves the team. I’m not going to claim to know how much he would improve the team this year and beyond, but adding “name” players who are currently struggling with the idea that you can bring back the good old days, always seems like an uphill battle. It seems like Seattle knows that his contract is flirting with being underwater, given what he’s still owed, so either it wouldn’t take a ton of prospect capital to add him, or you’d be getting the Mariners to eat a good chunk of money.