jmlease1

I really really wanted Correa back. I think he'll likely age better than most at SS. But the SFG is one of those mega-deals that's got a lot of risk and is very hard on teams that don't have the resources to just buy themselves out of a bad contract. Will this one be a bad deal? Maybe. As noted on The Athletic (with a hat-tip to FanGraphs), only 3 players in the past 5 years have been value-added with the bat at age 37 or older and 350+ plate appearances...and 2 of them were Nelson Cruz while with the Twins. (Weirdly the 3rd was Pujols in his return to St. Louis and somehow after 5 consecutive bad years suddenly got all his old power back.) It doesn't bode well for the end of the Bogaerts/Turner/Correa contracts, but you never know. One of them could close their career like Cal Ripken Jr. All you have to be is an inner-ring Hall of Famer, a top 5 all-time SS. Maybe we can all comfort ourselves by looking at the many worst-case scenarios for these deals, with Correa in particular. I don't wish ill on the man, but maybe his back flares up and he becomes a statue in the field and at the plate (when he actually plays). but really, the comfort will come if the twins are able to find a good use for the payroll space they currently have, and add some other talent, even if it's not Correa. Rodon + Wil Myers? Swanson + Wil Myers? (I like Myers, sue me)

1) how? because Correa & Boras took the offer that had the most money and most years? How is getting outbid getting played? As soon as Turner signed for 11 years and $300M and Bogaerts signed for 11 years and $280M, we knew the numbers were getting very very big and might very well be beyond the Twins means. Twins made a big offer, SF made a bigger one. If any of these big market teams wanted to go in on Correa, the numbers were going up. 2) I guess this depends on how you view ownership in MLB. If you think the fans get to dictate how much the payroll is, and that the ownership should be required to take annual losses to "compete"...then I guess you got played. I don't care about saving the Pohlads any money; they've got plenty of it and they will be fine. Billionaires are always fine. But I don't expect that owners are going to lose money on their businesses just because fans want them to. Could they spend more? Sure. And because of the offer they made, we have a better idea of just how much. But because of baseball's skewed economics (which, BTW, the star players and their agents LOVE) it's always going to be hard to match it if a big market club with way more resources wants to bigfoot the deal. the idea that we could have forced a deal with Swanson is pretty ludicrous, unless we wanted to give him the same kind of deal we offered Correa (i.e., massively overpaid for him). His play once Bogaerts and Turner came off the market has always been to wait to be the last guy standing and see how big he could go with those left at the altar. Do you want Swanson for $250M over 11? I get it: it sucks to be left out when we've been told we had a shot. It sucks to always get out-bid by bigger markets. Welcome to baseball?

Yes, but Myers isn't helpless against righties and can play in a broader context. He's a more reliable option.

well, it's disappointing but not all that surprising. SF clearly had the money after the bids they made on Judge and once they decided they wanted Correa it was going to be nigh-impossible to keep them from getting him. They simply have the ability to tack on $50M more without blinking in a way that's much more difficult for the Twins to do. The Giants can have a payroll over $200M annually and still be profitable, right now. The Twins can't. The Giants can pay in to the luxury tax and still net out ok...the Twins can't. Baseball economics are not great for anyone outside the biggest markets and the revenue sharing that makes the NFL work so well is basically still a joke in MLB. 13 years. Whoof. Correa might be one of the few players that can make that work, but the odds are against him. I do think he'll age fairly well as a player; his skills at SS (great positioning, strong arm, etc) age better than a speed-based player, and with that arm he can slide over to 3B just fine if the range drops too far. But they're making a bet that Correa's career will age like Cal Ripken Jr's: all-star until you hit 35, solid regular for another 3-4 years, and maybe 1-2 bad years at the very end, with good health throughout. That's a big ask, to match an inner-circle HoFer, a top 5 SS of all-time. There's huge risk here. I still wanted Correa. would have definitely done the 10 years and clearly the Twins were there on the AAV. But the Turner & Bogaerts contracts showed that some teams were looking to stretch contracts to manage their luxury tax payments and keep AAVs down and were willing to underwrite some huge risk. I think Correa wanted the 13 years, I think Boras wanted the $350M number, and I think that's probably more risk than the Twins could swallow.

Did you actually read the article? Nimmo is older, had only 2 healthy season in the last 6, is less talented/productive, and just got waaaaaay more money on a longer deal. On the open market, Buxton would have gone even higher.

The money is a little higher than I expected, but Vazquez is a really nice player and getting another legit MLB catcher on the roster was absolutely a huge need, so I'm pretty happy with this move. I haven't given up on Jeffers (unlikely many on this board who seem to prefer Sandy Leon and wanted Jeffers tied to a raft and set adrift at sea) but this is a bit of a signal of a loss in confidence in him/message that he has to step up his game. Maybe it's related to his poor results against righties, maybe it's a lack of faith in his health, but there's no question this is going to result in a demotion for him to the #2 guy, even if he'll still likely get 60-70 starts. We'll see how he responds. I'm not surprised at this move: if this front office has any pattern it's that they work hard to set a floor for the team that they think will make them competitive, that they look to lift the bottom parts of the roster every year (whether you agree with how they do it is another story) and this definitely raises that level. Assuming reasonable health, we should be able to send out a starting caliber catcher every game. I like that.

I have no idea if Swanson is the right fit or what kind of contract it would take to get him here, but the fact that he just married Mallory Pugh elevates him substantially in my eyes. :D

"FrRnd" = First Round minors is in parens because the link just takes you to their minor-league stats when you do a search like this in Baseball Reference

With a 7 year deal on Rodon a big market team is almost certainly assuming that they'll miss one of those seasons completely and call it the cost of doing business (and hope maybe they can insure him?). Any pitcher for 7 years is a big risk. A history like Rodon's and it's a massive risk. but this is the advantage of being able to have a $250M payroll: you can buy yourself out of trouble. The Bogaerts deal stunned me too: 11 years is pretty nuts for a guy who has already turned 30 and where PED testing is actually a thing. This isn't Bryce Harper, where the last year of his deal is his age-38 season, Bogaerts is going until he's 41. He's going to have to really be worth it in those first 5 years, because the last 3-4 could be very ugly.

I'm in on Wil Myers, but I don't think it's going to take $12M to get him. He's a quality RH bat who can still play a corner OF spot, but he's getting older, had a rough year, and substantially underperformed his contract the last few years. No one is offering him a 3 year deal, either. Even with money going up, I think he can be had for $8-9M, likely on a 1-2 year deal.

It's a mistake to track back too far to try and establish a pattern in drafting; with a new regime comes a different philosophy and it makes little sense to hold Falvey & Levine responsible for drafting Kohl Stewart or Tyler Jay. They're responsible for trying to develop the draft picks they inherited, but they didn't draft them. What should we presume with this front office when selecting at the top of the draft? Hard to know, i think. They've had 2 top 10 picks in their regime: a HS SS and a college SS. Most of their first round picks have been in the lower parts of the first round, and while that's been mostly college hitters, both of their picks in 2021 were HS players, one a pitcher. I think this front office looks for as much value as they think they can get in a draft more than anything else. They might prefer college players due to risk, but I don't think they're afraid to draft HS kids either. I don't think they'll be afraid to draft a pitcher at #5 if they think it's the best value prospect available.

So hard to know who the right guy is going to be, but there's no question the Twins will have some good options at #5. That high up in the draft, I'd prefer to avoid drafting a HS pitcher unless there's just so much more talent there than any other available option. So many things can go wrong there and I'd rather dodge a little risk with such a high pick when other options are likely to be on the table. But generally, I think with a top 5 pick you take the best player available and figure it out later. I don't know who that's going to be, but I'm excited that the Twins get to find out!

eh. he basically hasn't pitched since 2019 and he's about to turn 39. A minor-league deal isn't really going to hurt the club, so long as there aren't any guarantees of an MLB slot at any point, but this is a lottery ticket move. I think the Twins need to be making moves with better odds.

exciting and excellent news. MN fans are not conditioned to moving up in a lottery, only sliding the other way. Should be a couple of good options at #5 and you never know who might slide. It's an opportunity to add more high-end talent to the system and that's always a good thing. I doubt anyone would complain about getting another player like Brooks Lee!

I think he probably would have gotten a little more run in CF behind Buxton this season except for two factors: 1) we had so many OF getting hurt that we didn't exactly have a surplus in the corners any longer either, 2) if we needed to play celestino because of the truck load of injuries, we were better off playing him in CF than moving kepler over and asking celestino to play a corner spot, and 3) Kepler's busted toe probably meant that even after he came back they were trying to protect him a little bit from having to cover CF. which is also why he ended up batting in the top half of the order more than his production warranted late in the year: who else was gonna go in? I'm not itching to trade kepler, but I would nose around a little and see what the return is, especially if they need to create some payroll space (seems unnecessary, but YNK). I certainly wouldn't move him just to move him and I wouldn't be afraid to slide him into more of a 4th OF role if they sign a big RH bat for RF.

A fair assessment and I think it's where a lot of people are. He's good enough to be a decent starter, but he's made a lot of weak contact in the last couple of years that's very very frustrating. He's a 2+ bWAR player and that's not anything to sneeze at...but it feels like something is missing with Kepler, and he's certainly not hitting like a top half of the order player. If you're not getting plus offense from your corner OF then you need to be finding it elsewhere, and that tends to be harder. I don't think Kepler has had poor luck, though: his average exit velocity is only 51st percentile, his barrel % was below average, his hard-hit rate is only average...sure seems like he deserved to land where he did. Now, he did battle through a broken toe last season that almost certainly sapped his power production, and making the shift go away will likely help him some (but remember, he was a low average hitter back in 2016 & 2017 and certainly wasn't being shifted as much back then). I'm hardly opposed to keeping Kepler, but I'm also not expecting him to suddenly break out again like 2019?

I remember Kepler hitting more weak groundballs to the right side than I do him hitting sharp ones, but YMMV. The case for keeping Kepler is based on two things: 1) our many other LH hitting OFs haven't proven it/stayed healthy, and 2) Kepler's numbers on offense will improve when the shift goes away. Neither is wrong, per se, but the arguments for moving on from Kepler are reasonable as well. 1) we need a little more balance in the lineup and some thump from the RH side, which is easier to find in the corner OF, 2) Kepler's ability to play CF and provide superior defense in RF gives him trade value on this contract, and 3) it's a gamble to hope that eliminating the shift is going to send enough of those bouncers to the right side through for hits to make Kepler and above average hitter in RF again. Kepler isn't a bad player, but his offense hasn't been above average since 2020 and his OPS has declined four seasons in a row. It makes it hard to feel confident in him as a significant contributor. Twins shouldn't give him away, and he can still add value to the team, but they should also be willing to consider moving on from him if the right RH bat becomes available and a reasonable deal is on the table.

I think we should calm down before we start presuming that Joe Ryan can't pitch against "good" teams. cherry-picking out 4-5 starts in his rookie season doesn't really tell you much, and he certainly pitched just fine against Cleveland, which was a quality team last year. 4 of his worst starts against those "top" teams were road outings, but I don't think that's enough evidence that Joe Ryan can't pitch on the road. If he can limit the free passes and keep the ball in the park he's going to be a quality pitcher and key part of the rotation again. I'm still a big fan and this was an elite trade.

Why this keeps coming up? The offseason is long and people get bored? Of the 4 deals you mention, the Twins came out well for Kepler and Polanco's contracts; even with Kepler not having a great year in 2022 he was still worth 2.1 bWAR and definitely more than his less than $7M salary (and has done for the length of his contract). It's also why people still talk about him having trade value. Polanco's deal has been an absolute steal for the team. The Dobnak deal hasn't worked out, but also has cost them very little. If he can get healthy and be a quality reliever, then they could still end up about even on that one. The Sano one didn't work out for the team, but the decision-making around it was sound, so I don't have any real objections to how they're moving on extensions. If the Twins add high-end talent through free agency this off-season they can absolutely contend, whether it's bringing back Correa, or adding Rodon plus a big bat, or whatever. Health is what snuffed out this team's chances last season, not talent. Polanco is a key part to that lineup, a consistent veteran presence and they would have to get a ridiculous, staggering return (which they won't) to make dealing Polanco worth it.

I'm a big no on trading Polanco. The argument here seems to be "he's not very good defensively, has a lot of trade value because his bat and contract, and we have Julien waiting in the wings". But Julien is a worse defender and untested as a major league hitter, so what are we really doing here? A healthy Polanco isn't bad defensively at 2B and is certainly good enough to get by. (and let's be clear, with his terrible knees I wouldn't expect Arraez to hold up well at 2B for a full season either) But the real issue is, we have a superior hitter with a team-friendly contract who is already tested at the MLB level and has performed at an all-star level. If he was going into his final season, maybe it's worth considering, but we've got Polanco for 3 more years if we want him at well below market rate. He makes this lineup significantly better and gives us financial flexibility to add more pieces without having to hope an untested player will come through. This team is too talented to trade away a player like Polanco. We're not in rebuild mode and dealing Polanco would be waving the white flag. Might as well deal every veteran at that point.

I agree that "ace" is too subjective. Some people define it as "Cy Young contender", others as "legit #1 starter", and others might define it as "guy you want starting game 1 of a playoff series". I look at Mahle and see a pitcher that reminds me a little of Brad Radke in terms of production. (they're different pitchers, of course; Mahle gets a lot more Ks, Radke walked way fewer, etc) But he fits that mold to me in terms of the results you might get. That's not a bad thing. Let's hope Mahle is healthy. If he is, I think he's going to have a very good season. I certainly wouldn't complain about him starting game 1 of a series, to be sure.

From a marketing standpoint for Boras & Correa, if they sign with the Twins, they can fold last year's money into the total package if hitting a bigger overall number is especially meaningful to them. Sure it's nothing but marketing fakery, but why would they care? I hope someone from the Twins makes sure to mention that idea, because why the hell not? 9/$285M + 1/$35M still gets them to a bigger number than Seager...

superstars in baseball get paid $30M+ now. To make it in the top 50 in MLB started at $20M in 2022; even back in 2015 over 100 players topped $10M per season. yes, $100M is a lot of money, but in the context of MLB...it's not any longer. Buxton played at an all-star level last season: his defense was still superior in CF, even with the bum knee and his OPS was .833 when the league average was .706. He had an OPS+ of 135. To put that OPS+ in context, the Philadelphia Phillies (who made the World Series) had exactly 1 regular who had a higher OPS+: Bryce harper, who clocked in at 145. (Harper is a fun comp: he's unquestionably a superstar, had a serious injury that limited to roughly the same number of games as Buxton, made 2.5 times as much, and added less overall value) It's disingenuous to say his batting average "hovered around .200 for most of the year"; that makes it sound like he was batting around .200 for most of the season and the reality is his batting average never got all the way down to .200 and really it was only a week where he was sitting close to the Mendoza Line. He spent much more of the year in the .220-.230 range, in a season where the MLB average was .243. I think a successful season for Buxton is about staying on the field more than anything else. If he can play 125 games or more with better overall health, it's a big win. He's plenty productive when he plays, but the fact that we needed to replace his impact for so many games is a problem. The dropoff is severe. Buck missed 70 games last season; if he can cut that in half this team will be substantially better. But he was 100% worth the money he got last year.

It's a possibility to be sure, but the skill set that makes Correa great at SS isn't based just on speed, which should age better. His superior defense is also based on his great arm and sure hands. he sets up deeper which a) gives him more time to react, and b) allows him to get to more balls in short left. He's also such a student of the game that he always positions himself well. There's a real possibility that his defense at SS ages much more like Cal Ripken, who was still playing great SS at age 34. Correa's one of those players that could easily keep playing shortstop into his mid-30's, and with his arm would have no trouble sliding down to 3B if his range slips to the point where a replacement is needed. Set the over/under on his remaining years at SS at 4 and I would bet the over, which makes a longer term deal with him more palatable.

I'd be a big no an opt-out after year 1. really don't want to do this dance again after just one year? year two? ok, if it's what gets the deal done, but this structure almost guarantees he opts out if he's healthy and is extremely player-friendly for a guy who still has injury red flags. But I would love to have Rodon at the top of the rotation. I don't have a very good feel on what he gets for a contract in terms of dollars. It kinda feels like $125M is more in the range where the team assumes he's going to be hurt for one year out of the 5, and hopes it doesn't come until year 4...