ashbury

"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.

Who leaks that the player prefers Team One but Teams Two and Three are in play? Not Team One. Not the other two teams. The player's agent? Why do they want to tell Team One to keep lowballing them?

What would the Cardinals do? I'm more interested in emulating a franchise with an engaged fan base.

(Actually it's the shoulder for Lopez if I recall correctly.)

So, something good from Milwaukee to Oakland is yet to be disclosed?

I continue to wonder whether the trade has been reported accurately.

Purely speculation on my part, but maybe the talks reached a level of seriousness that medicals were exchanged, and one side said, "whoops, uh oh."

Is it a condemnation or just looking at what it would have taken? If I'm looking at this three-team trade, the A's get two MLB-ready starting pitchers and a position player with a good bat. (Plus a throw-in veteran catcher to hold the roster spot for the time being.) By my very simple comparison, maybe we would have matched that haul with Simeon Woods-Richardson, Austin Martin, and, say, Cole Sands. And maybe the A's like the particular package they wound up with, in which case we'd have to beat it by a little bit. Would our FO have pulled the trigger on that? Would I? Tough call.

This leak is only for plausible deniability for later, when they need to say, We Tried™. The tipoff, and this has already been mentioned, is the phrase "far beyond anything in franchise history." The leak comes from the Twins side, not the Boras/Correa camp. I'll be happy to eat crow on this if Correa does sign.

You're the one talking about free agents avoiding the Twins, not me.

Put a question mark on Mrs's first remark, give yourself a snappy comeback to that too, and you've got the makings of an Abbott and Costello routine.

I assume that to be a Chief-like "rhetorical yes" to Brian's rhetorical questions.

Paddack and Gray were trade acquisitions; the players themselves had no say.