ashbury

I use Out Of The Park to validate ideas sometimes, and just for fun I played an off-season where I intended to offer as many Correa-like contracts as I could. Turns out that it doesn't make much sense for older players, and the younger free agents tend to hold out for a long contract and not be interested in "creative" contracts with high annual averages but don't give the lifetime contract guarantees they want. It's just a game of course - somebody's simulation containing their own preconceived notions, and/or groupthink. Maybe in a year or two something in the underlying programming will change to reflect this new datapoint. For now this Correa contract seems to be quite the unicorn.

Front-loading would increase the expected payout while lowering whatever small chance he chooses to stay after one year. I mean, just to bracket the outcomes, if it weren't for league rules about salaries, they could front-load all $105.3M to the first year, and let him opt out after that, same as this contract; ludicrous of course, but it reduces the "risk" to zero while increasing the expected payout to exactly $105.3M, a huge overpay. Since he'd be paid $0 in years 2 and 3, but has a player option, he walks. $35.1M for one year is already pretty rich for this FO's blood, so I don't see how any front-loading between these extremes would be more palatable (to the FO) than what they actually signed. Paying him, say, $45.1M this year with player options for $30.1M each of the next two years, just increases his incentive to leave, while not decreasing the amount the team is o the hook for if he has a bad injury during 2022. (I'm leaving out net present value for simplicity of keeping the totals the same.) A back-load would be more palatable to the team, but not to the player. Say $25.1M this year and $40.1 in the other two years - Correa would look at those two years and be more tempted to hang around, but it still means re-entering free agency two years hence and not being too sure of totalling the $300M he likely has in mind, after gifting the team that first year at a bargain price. I think agent and team found the sweet spot with this arrangement. PS, Bauer is older and IMO just not a comp for anything here.

I have less confidence in there being huge trade value. Whoever trades for him will need to consider the same aspects of the contract - to reap full value of giving up assets to get him, they'll need to be ready to give him a contract extension that he finds favorable, and maybe they would be better served to just wait until the off-season and offer him that contract when he opts out from Minnesota. If they just want him for however long he's willing to play without opting out, the same considerations I laid out probably apply, except that the maximum reward for the remainder of the season is probably down around 3 WAR if he performs at an MVP level, and the maximum risk of the remaining $70.2M remains unchanged. If he were totally a free agent in the offseason, you might get something in return similar to what we got for two months of Nelson Cruz, but I think the contract risk (of a massive injury during those two months) lowers the value in trade. Good thought, though.

As if my post wasn't long enough, I probably should have clarified that I wasn't trying to identify every risk. If we make it successfully through 2022 but there is no clarity about the SS prospects being ready to take over, well, the FO will have to figure something else out for next year. But that has more to do with the prospects themselves, than this new contract.

I for one welcome our new robot overlords.

Thanks for providing that. I don't usually sit through entire 30-minute videos, especially when platitudes can be expected. But gosh, I find it hard to understand any Twins fan NOT wanting to soak up every minute of this. Who knows what the future brings, but that was a big day in Twins history. Oh, and now I know how to pronounce Ted's last name.

Steven Cruz. Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time. In fact I don't recall the name at all. Thanks for bringing a longshot arm to our attention. Worth knowing, even if he remains Sir Walksalot and never reaches AA.

(obligatory) He put up good numbers last year at age 26, but mainly in double-A ball, and as a reliever. Having 3 minor league options preserves some value, but conversely means no one ever thought to put him on a 40-man roster until age 27. All this together paints a picture for me. Any slight perturbation to the roster, such as signing a legit major leaguer, means he's off it, either to another team who claims him next or else to sit in St Paul with Chi Chi and the others waiting for good luck and good timing. Speaking of timing, this claim occurred in sync with putting Dobnak on the 60-day IL. So in effect it's a free shot at claiming then waiving a player of some minor value for use at AAA, using an empty roster spot that might otherwise go unused until something more productive presents itself in a day or three. If he's claimed when another player is added to the roster so be it - nothing ventured nothing gained.

Disclaimer: Despite the photo, no Byron Buxtons were used in the preparation of this blog entry. Do I have to say it? Okay, I will, just to get it out of the way: I love the Correa signing. Teams should be trying to get good players, and we just got one of the best baseball players on the planet, in the middle of what should be his prime years - a center-cut slice, as they say. But ever since I heard about it, TWO LONG DAYS AGO, there's been something on my mind. Risk versus reward. And I don't think I've seen any of the writeups here, or elsewhere, look at it from this angle. Did we really outmaneuver the Yankees? I'm not sure that's what happened, or that New York's front office is gnashing their teeth with regret in the slightest. Everyone's treating this like it's a one-year contract, and I agree that that's the most likely way it plays out. But it's not a one-year contract - the Twins committed to three years. There's the saying that there's no such thing as a bad one-year contract. The converse is that (because team budgets don't carry over from year to year) everything longer than one year requires the signing team to put its neck into a noose, to one degree or another. So, what's the risk with this contract, and what's the reward? The risk is pretty obvious and pretty easy to define - Correa could get hit by a meteor tomorrow* and the Twins still would be on the hook for the full $105.3M, which by their usual accounting would apply equally to the budgets of those three years and in some way impact their ability to operate. Probably they'll pay him $35.1M for one year of service and then thank him for his service as he departs. But they've put $105.3M on the table, and are risking it. You know how you say you'd "bet your house" on some sure proposition? You don't really ever do that, because you would actually have to put the deed to your house out there to be taken if you are proved wrong, and you'd start thinking about all the ways it could indeed go wrong. It's like that here. The Twins haven't bet the (Pohlads') house, but there's a significant chunk of change on the table that wasn't there three days ago. That aspect still seems underappreciated. Now what's the reward? Much harder to estimate. There is expected reward and then there's maximum reward. Let's focus on the maximum here, since I started with maximum risk. I'll use WAR as a catch-all for how to measure a player's contribution. If you want to skip the details, jump down to "I'll Do The Homework Later." Carlos Correa may not yet have had his "career year" - remember what I said about us getting a center-cut slice? He might go full-MVP bananas-mode in 2022. Shohei Ohtani was MVP last year and his pitching/batting WAR on b-r.com added up to 9.0. So let's go with that. If Correa has that kind of year, he walks after the season, of course - goodbye and good luck, good sir. Let's say he goes out and puts up "only" a season like last year, with a WAR of 7. Same outcome. He walks away, with smiles all around. But maybe 2021 actually was his career year, and he follows up like that with an all-star level WAR of 5. Same outcome - maybe he loves his teammates here, but bidness is bidness, amirite - he leaves. Maybe he's only above average and his WAR is 3. Probably he walks, right? Still can market himself to a big market team for a long contract, certainly for more than the $70.2M he's still owed. What if he's average, and/or injured part of the time, and his WAR is 2. Maybe he stays, maybe he walks. What if it goes really badly and his WAR is 1? Same uncertainty - maybe he stays, trying to rebuild value. WAR can be 0 too, or even negative. Probably he stays, trying to rebuild value. Okay, sorry to belabor, but my point is that if he stays, it's almost certainly tied to low performance relative to expectations. Reeeeeally low. Now, consider Year 2, 2023. Seems like it's 90% odds that he's gone, and whatever WAR he earned for the Twins this one year is the end of the story. But in that remaining 10% case, what will be your expectation of WAR for 2023, given that he put up 0 or 1 WAR in 2022? Depends on why, but probably a WAR of 9 is now off the table - chances of a bounceback like that are just too remote. Could he return to 2021 levels and deliver 7 WAR? Sure, maybe. If he does, then he walks after the year, and his contribution to the Twins is that number plus his (low) 2021 number. Like around... 8 or 9, for the two years together? It can't be much higher, because he would have left already. Of course he might not deliver 7, but only 5 - he still walks after Year Two. 3 WAR - probably he walks. Lower than that, maybe he stays. So if it was 10% that he's staying for Year 2, probably it's also at most 50/50 that he's back for Year 3, or 5%. And that will be only if he's put up WAR in the neighborhood of 0-2 the first year and followed up with 0-2 WAR the second year. Now what are the odds that he suddenly goes bananas at last, after 2 straight sub-par years? Really small, right? Anything can happen, but an MVP type season really is unlikely. He could win Comeback Player of the Year with a 5 WAR. I think that's about the ceiling at that point. 0-2, plus 0-2, plus 5, equals... gee, 9 at most, again. There are all kinds of ways to do this kind of analysis, because nothing is certain. But I've convinced myself that the absolute maximum the Twins can sanely hope for, from this particular contract, is a total WAR of 9, whether in one season or spread across multiple. "I'll Do The Homework Later." Good, I don't blame you. To recap: the Twins stand to reap 9 WAR as a maximum, by signing Correa - go back and do the homework if you think it should be higher, I really don't think you'll come up with a sound argument. The Twins' maximum risk is $105.3M. We don't expect the latter to happen, but that's the risk. Now, let's compare. What if a deep-pockets team had gone ahead and instead given Correa a 10-year $325M contract like some were saying, and let's assume no opt-outs? Let's do a quick version of the max risk/reward analysis for that - bear with me for one paragraph. As before, the maximum risk on the contract is simple: $325M is on the line, win lose or Tommy John Surgery. What's the maximum reward? If we're allowing a chance at an MVP-like 9 WAR before, we need to do it again. He might do that in any of the 10 years of the contract, but let's don't go crazy and think he does it every time. Let's say 1 year of 9 WAR, and a 7 (a second monster year), a couple years of 5 WAR (still a huge asset), three more years of 3 WAR (above average), and then 1 WAR each of the other three years if he hits a steep decline or sprinkles in an injury-plagued season or two earlier in the sequence. So really, I'm not talking absolute maximum after all, merely an optimistic outlook for a window of contention involving a great player. Those 10 numbers, they all add up to 38 WAR. A starry-eyed optimist could look at a potential future hall-of famer and come up with an argument for more, like 50 - meaning inner-circle HoF, which I can't honestly rule out for him at age 27 - he's less than halfway through his career and is more than halfway to HoF status IMO. But let's go with 38. Estimated performance would likely be lower but remember, this is max risk and max reward. So, put yourself in the Yankees' shoes. Do you risk $105.3M for at most 8 WAR, like the Twins are doing? Or do you say, **** that, I mean forget that, we're rich, and by tripling our risk, we can more than triple our potential reward. Isn't that what smart money does? So I think they, New York, say no to the smaller contract. They have deep pockets, and won't risk significant money for modest maximum reward, when they could invest 3X as much in risk and really hit the jackpot. Max risk and max reward are not the only analyses a team would make. Not by a long shot. Anticipated actual cost and estimated reward also are crucial. Let's say 4 WAR for 2021 to reward the (very likely) $35.1M he gets from the Twins. Compare that to maybe 30 WAR over a 10 year contract that costs $325M. Now the dollars per WAR are much more favorable to the short contract - it is center-cut after all, an advantage not shared by the full 10-year cut of meat. But likely outcomes aren't enough. A front-office that didn't present a solid risk/reward analysis, which I have merely half-assed in this lengthy post, would be laughed out of the room by their higher-ups - if, that is, the higher-ups had an actual sense of humor and were in a forgiving mood and didn't fire them for lack of due diligence. Bottom line, this is a mid-market contract, in my estimation. The expected reward fits the expected price, but the risks are disproportionate. A big team goes big. No regrets for the Yankees. This is the kind of deal the Twins have to embrace, but by no means did they "put one over on them" when they traded Donaldson to the Yanks to free up the cash to make this happen. The Twins had to, in effect, buy Correa a $70.2M insurance policy, to get him to commit to just one year at $35.1M. It probably adds $10M to the cost that the team's CPA has to factor in. Thanks for your patience. I welcome nit-picks, or bigger criticisms. * Let's assume a small meteor, and like in Princess Bride he's only mostly dead, yet still slightly alive and expecting direct deposits at his bank to continue

Seth's "2:24 in the morning" video keeps popping up at the bottom of my screen, and after subliminally viewing his haggard looking face over and over, I've decided that this video represents Twins Daily's "Blair Witch Project". For earnest in-the-moment intensity, it will probably never be topped, at least until some kind of "Cloverfield" disaster, like a monster devouring Byron Buxton for lunch and Jorge Polanco for dessert.

Pacific time-zoner here, and I went to bed early enough not to get the benefit of that built-in advantge, and the next morning of course the time zone was a disadvantage. Moreover, I had fallen into the habit of not checking TD (or any sports site) among the early checks when I'd fire up the computer at breakfast time or thereafter. So where was I at the moment I learned? Reading Facebook Saturday morning, which usually doesn't bring me fresh sports news but in this case did. Wait, you're asking where was I at the moment the signing happened, and/or began hitting Twitter and so forth? Getting ready for bed, I guess. Where exactly was I at the fateful moment, you ask? Hint, a crossword puzzle was involved. You don't really want to press for that kind of detail, do you?

Glad to see he wasn't displaying LLF.* * (Lance Lynn Face)

I've had the same thoughts. But one counter-weighing argument is that it is good for the site that readers see people have stepped up. It may encourage others to do likewise. I'm happy to play my little role in that overall aim. There probably becomes diminishing returns to this, though. After a week or two, perhaps the "halo" should go away. I support the site not because I want pats on the back.

I do not think he will take from your post what you think he will take from your post.

He'll do, until one of our prospects pushes him out.

It's Spring. Every player has arrived in the best shape of his life, and every pitcher has a little extra hop on his fastball.

That's a baseball idiom I don't know that I've heard before. "Eat." What does it mean? Get a major league salary?

He has sufficient major league service to refuse a demotion to the minors, even if he passes through waivers I believe, so the choice would be to cut him and eat the salary in that case.

Probably moves the needle some. Depends on how the other team views the specific players of course, and what other offers are out there, but all that's true of any proposed trade. I'm thinking that specific 6-for-3 package is still light in terms of prospect arms, and the A's might choose a different team offering top-100 prospects.

(Reposting from a thread where it didn't really belong...) Warning, I'm going full-geek mode on this. I've said before that I like to play the Out Of The Park computer baseball game. After a slow start, this Twins offseason has become an OOTP offseason. Namely: before making any moves, examine your roster carefully and among other things identify the salary you consider an impediment; then pay what it costs to get that salary off the books, even with lopsided trades in terms of talent. Then, redeploy the freed up money to acquire something really good. I'm sure every FO has a plan to guide their offseason. I held a lot of doubt that our FO was going to be able to execute theirs. For a long while it wasn't evident that their plan was aggressive at all. Then for the better part of a week, it looked very much like a half-completed plan had run into a serious snag. (Indeed, my guess is that it did, and they pivoted from Story to Correa with an offer that carries a steeper risk-to-reward ratio than is appreciated.) But the plan now looks clear. Several steps remain to be completed. Next, if they can pull a OOTP style of trade involving several prospects whose Rule-5 eligibility has arrived, in return for one stud pitcher with years of team control, I'll REALLY be impressed.

What was your secret to success when you moved up to the majors?

Fair enough. Sometimes the word "maybe" gets interpreted as a ceiling.

A .750 OPS at DH would be disappointing, and likely put us at a disadvantage in the batting lineup versus the day's opponent more times than not.

Getting two major league pitchers and giving up only one pitching prospect would be the steal of the century. Not going to happen. Position players who aren't up-the-middle are over valued in MLBTV.