ashbury

I don't want attendance to drop to zero, so I am grateful there are fans who will accept business as usual, in Twins country.

Even if he bounces back to previous production, he's a Three True Outcomes guy (SO/BB/HR) and that is boring baseball. Joe Pohlad needs to put his big boy pants on and insist that Marketing have some say. ... wait. What if Marketing thinks HR is the best and only way to publicize the team. Joe P has some housecleaning to do in that case.

That's definitely a reference worth including.

Your example is certainly true. As a second-order effect, the years (when it's that many) probably would matter. Two offers of $350M, but one at 10 years, would be more attractive than 13. Not because of "average annual value," but because it commits the player to less work. At that level of pay, the issue likely is more about the charitable foundation the player wants to fund. Getting out of bed at age 40 to go do strenuous physical activity with 25-year olds trying to beat you, grumbling "I'm too old for this ****, but I'm doing it for the needy kids," is all well and good, but he'd rather have that final grumble at age 37 if he's permitted.

I look at it more as execution*. They seemed to have believed they had invoked logic and planning and strategy. They couldn't execute. The off-season's not over and maybe that blunt assessment will turn out to be premature. * I'll save everyone the trouble, "wait, the front office's execution? Yes, I'm in favor of it." Har.

One more year and $3M more in AAV and pretty soon you're talking big money.

They spread the cost across 6 years instead of 5.

Slightly. And I hope my wording, at least in conclusion, indicated I don't take reports like that entirely at face value. It's preposterous they would really stop in their tracks to reassess, rather than pivot to an already-planned Plan B or C. But the signal coming out from that writer doesn't add any reassurance, does it.

What? Reassessing? Now, in the heat of battle, as it were? They didn't war-game this in September-October, following obvious pairs of scenarios such as "Correa signs with us" and "Correa doesn't sign with us" to their logical conclusions? I'd be... ahem... unimpressed to learn that. Reassessing would have been for if Cincinnati had asked too much for Farmer...

Thanks for putting together this concise summary of the way things look from the inside. I'll limit my response to one thing you said: "They aren't cheap - they are disciplined." Disciplined can overlap with rigid, and can be the opposite of dynamic. In the last few weeks, the market for the very top end of position players, shortstops in particular, exceeded all (public) expectations. Were the Twins disciplined, or unwilling to adapt? The concept of an s-shaped curve is well known (to you I'm sure) and IMO applies to free agent salaries: I couldn't find a great visual so ignore the numbers on the two axes, and imagine salary paid on the horizontal, and value received (I'll think in terms of WAR) on the vertical. Pay major league minimum (lower left hand corner) and you receive essentially zero in value; pay a little more and you still get zero, keep paying more and you start to receive value better than a minor-league free agent, keep paying more and you get somewhat linearly increasing value, but eventually your additional payment starts leveling off and every extra dollar nets you less and less. When you go after top end talent, in this case Correa, you know in advance that you're at that upper-right corner of the chart. You've committed to "overpaying" in terms of price-performance. Everybody, literally everybody, wants the difference-maker players on the right of this chart, and the big market teams will pay what it takes. All of a sudden, the curve changes right from under you. Where you thought you were one place on the curve, now you are way insufficient; way to the left on that graph than you thought. What do you do now? I am bothered that the Twins FO apparently thought they were committed going in, but then didn't adapt. You call it disciplined, I call it rigid.

If there's a rebuild, I'm first entertaining trade offers on Falvey and Levine themselves.

Rename the team as the Yankees, because the rumors are that's where he wants to go. Deal with the trademark infringement at a later time.

I didn't read your post - I stopped after "If" - but I'm pretty sure I didn't like it. ?

"You should smile more." Always a great ice-breaker for a conversation!

The phrase "better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven" comes to mind, where Crawford's preference is concerned. Not that I like the idea of the Twins being anybody's Baseball Hell. But here we apparently are; kudos, Pohlads and FalVine.

Sellers' markets can be like that. Look at real estate just after the worst of the pandemic.

This is on the right track. They still need to be major league, and not get accused of bush league antics. But plenty of other teams have fun traditions that might seem unsophisticated to visitors, so I'm not afraid to push boundaries. Here's one. Get certain fans in each section installed as "official" cheer leaders of the game, maybe in return for a free soft drink, and let a Fenway like atmosphere start to evolve where cheering is organic. Get rid of the stupid Everybody Clap Clap Clap audio clip. I know managing 100 loud fans will require ongoing work; this is an ongoing theme, the Twins looking for little investment. But Fenway fans can be profane, and the ushers manage to take care of it.

As I tried to imply when I said "summarize", it's a complex and nearly intractable problem, and I certainly don't claim to have the answers. This is an issue that goes above Falvey and Levine. I would say Dave St Peter should be thinking in these strategic terms, except I can't for the life of me figure out what he does at work on a typical day, except to sign the paychecks of the guys in charge of making sure enough hot dogs and beer are ordered. Another poster above suggested Mike Veeck, which is along the lines I'm thinking (I posted something about a month ago concerning "fun"), and if you go back to Mike's daddy Bill, well Bill was renowned for going into the cheap seats and talking with fans. I have real doubts St Peter has ever done this. IMO Joe Pohlad should, as market research; executives ought to get their hands dirty and really, *deeply* understand their markets. Markets. I come from a field (software development) where marketing isn't a dirty word. Product marketing is its own subniche in the marketing world, and they work closely with the product side to construct plans for what will fill marketing demands, and then translate for Sales so they can convey the message to customers. You NEVER expect Sales to come up with solutions like we're talking about - they have enough to do when matching product to the customer's needs, "where the rubber meets the road." As with my understanding of Analytics as a field, I see no evidence that the Twins treat marketing as where significant investment toward high-end talent is called for, anything greater in scope than taking pictures of the players and getting those to news outlets. Product Marketing, if properly hired, should be empowered to tell FalVine, "no, you can't trade Arraez," if that's the solution they have to the overall marketing plan, and should be prepared to take it up to the top level for a decision if they can't see eye to eye. One of the principles I learned in product marketing was to devise half a dozen or so "personas" to exemplify the variety of customers we are trying to satisfy. Apparently that became second nature for me, because that $100 family of 4 is exactly a persona, one that I would then want to explore in such depth that I can write a realistic story about their day going to the ballpark, probably down to the detail of whether their Toyota is a Corolla or a Camry and how old a model. Bill Veeck could have written a dozen related stories of the 1940s version of this family, in his sleep. There are certainly other personas - the fat cat wanting to impress a client in a luxury box, etc. although the high-end ones I fear are already well-enough covered. It doesn't matter what ideas I may propose, but I want to feel that Joe Pohlad will throw out previous approaches and start with a clean sheet of paper. Certainly fielding a winning team needs to be part of the strategy, but in a 30-team league with other franchises trying to make their own fan bases strong, it can't be the only part, not year-in and year-out, because then it's a zero-sum game, whereas I want every fan base to be strong. Now I'm definitely repeating myself.

Melissa's asking the right questions, which IMO are more important than the tactical ones of putting a winning team on the field. I'll summarize by saying Joe Pohlad seems well suited to finding answers and of course is well placed to see them implemented. For me the benchmark would be, how can a family of four come to the ballpark for $100 and come away feeling good even if the home team loses 6-3 that day. The higher tiers of revenue will fall into place if they can answer that one successfully.

Always look for the hidden incentives. Yes! On the other hand I continue to believe Boras is an ethical guy, and he tries to compartmentalize his own interests versus his clients. As evidence: he advised Correa to accept the one-year contract for $35.1M (with a $70.2M insurance policy on top of it) and try again. Adding this Giants contract to what Carlos earned via this advice, does anyone believe Boras convinced him to turn down $385.1M last off-season? So then, the advice was sound and Correa reaped the benefit versus whatever sub-$300M offer was probably on the table this time last year. Boras happens to reap the agent benefits, as he should. Boras IMO is unexcelled at his job, and clients flock to him because of that.

I choose not to believe the book is closed on Rortvedt's bat. That's another advantage of your 3rd catcher having minor league options, because then he's probably young and still has room for reaching a higher level of hitting. In any case, "saving" a 40-man spot by going with two catchers could be a false economy, because the first time one of your two gets injured, you'll be adding someone else. And it won't be at a time of your choosing, so you might have trouble slipping another player through waivers, plus then later on you'll need waivers to drop your 3rd catcher if he's a veteran. If you go with that, that one 40-man spot had better be used on someone really valuable.

Every contract carries that risk. Bigger market teams can underwrite bigger risk.

The 13 years is nearly irrelevant. Total contract value is almost always the name of the game, and the Twins come up well short if they offered under $300M with player opt-outs as the sweetener. The Giants will release Correa well before 13 years and just treat the remaining payments as deferred salary for the good years they actually got. "They tried," and almost surely knew it wouldn't be close to enough.

Third string catchers who have minor league options remaining are a pretty good use of a 40-man roster spot IMO. Better than a non-roster retread who has to pass through waivers to be moved back down after an injury fill-in. I disliked trading away Rortvedt for that reason.