jmlease1

Signing Nelson Cruz was also an excellent move. Maybe they just need to find a way to include Nelson Cruz in all Twins transactions. ?

Good grief, that was an elite trade. We got back a starting pitcher who is already a core part of the rotation for half a season of Nelson Cruz.

You sound like you're listening to Dan Barreiro too much. Never take your cues from a guy who targets players based on whether they come on to his show or not, thinks that walks don't matter for hitters, and uses RBIs as his most important hitting statistic.

It doesn't matter how long it took Gordon to become a full-time MLB player, he's still a better hitter than Farmer. And proven or not, Larnach, Kirilloff, and Wallner are still better hitters than Farmer. You're adding new criteria to try and push Farmer into that top 5. Also? If you're using RBIs as your metric for who the best hitters are, I really can't help you.

Rodon wasn't the target I wanted; the injury history scares me more with him than basically any other player, especially after seeing the Twins squad get wrecked by injuries 2 years in a row. But since he cost only money, I think I would have gone for it with Correa off the board...but if he had his mind set on going to NY, then what are ya gonna do? I wonder where the Twins were sitting on this from a numbers perspective? Not that it really matters, but I'm always a little curious to see how high they might have been willing to go. Maybe we're better off not knowing, since it will likely only infuriate the people that hate everything about this front office even more... Down to Swansby. Looking like a poor off season to date: Farmer and Vazquez are not enough.

there's more value in having guys who can hit well at positions where most guys can't, though. It's part of why Mauer was so awesome at catcher. As long as Trout keeps hitting, yeah he'll still be hugely valuable even if he slides to a corner OF spot, but maybe he's no longer a perennial MVP. Part of what made Judge's season so special this year was he played most of it in CF, not RF.

Your hindsight is 20/20. Well done. Literally NO ONE offered Rodon anything close to that last year. Because, of course, he hadn't pitched a fully healthy season basically ever and his own team was apparently so concerned about his health that they declined to make a qualifying offer. Better fire every other front office than the Giants for not giving Rodon a 5 year deal in 2022!

At a certain point when you pay everyone SS money and only one of them is playing SS any longer it starts to get insane, though. Tatis is worth more at SS than he is in RF. If Bogaerts can't play SS in 3 years and ends up at DH, he better not lose anything off his bat.

I would go the 7/$150M if that's what it took to get it done. I think Swanson can be a good defender at SS well into his 30s and still hit enough to be value added and get to around that average of 3 bWAR, and that's worth the money. league average hitter at SS is better than people realize. If Lewis & Lee play well enough to force their way on the roster, there are all kinds of ways to find room, as you've noted. It doesn't ruin the payroll, either at that AAV. If Atlanta is trying to hold the line at $18M per year, and only 5 years...offer 6 at $125M and make him say no.

LA is trying to get under the luxury tax, though. Atlanta sounds like they have limits on their payroll lower than we might expect (remember, they let Donaldson go when he wanted to stay too, and it seemed $$ related). Atlanta may be regretting the $9M they owe Eddie Rosario right now... I think Lee is going to be a stud too, but he's barely played above A-ball. Royce is coming off a huge injury. Look, if we actually sign rodon...great. Patch it together at SS and hope the lineup stays healthy. but I wouldn't be ashamed at all at landing Swanson and figuring out where to play lee & lewis later.

sure, why not have 5 SS? New baseball strategy: stockpile all the best SS so that no other team has anyone good playing there. Lose to the Dodgers. Who is actually going to play SS for them out of Kim, Bogaerts, Tatis, and Machado anyways?

If the MLBTR analysis is right, I hope the twins are pushing hard, especially if Atlanta is only sitting around 6/$100M. They have plenty of space to drop 6/$120 with room to go up if Atlanta goes higher, and the deal should still be a good one towards the end. Swanson is a clear step below Correa & Turner (and Bogaerts). he's unlikely to consistently put up the kind of year he just had. But he is likely to be a 3+ bWAR player on average. I'd be quite happy to bring him in and not worry about SS for years.

Better bats than farmer on the twins roster right now: Buxton, Polanco, Arraez, Miranda, Larnach, Gordon, and Wallner. That's 7 even without considering Kepler (who even in a relatively poor year out-hit Farmer), Kirilloff (who is healthy, and it's fair to be skeptical, is a significantly better hitter), and Garlick (who should only have a part-time role). Let's not be hysterical here. I'm sure Gray & Maeda are drawing interest; I expect Mahle is as well. I wouldn't expect the twins to move any of them. But I would listen to offers, especially if the team is looking at the trade market for pitching because they might be able to get some of the prospect capital they need by moving Maeda, for example, to get someone better. Gray is not going anywhere unless the team stinks out the gate and is out of it by midseason, same with Mahle. but of course teams are asking. I'm also fairly certainly we're getting low-ball offers, especially from big market teams who think we should be grateful to send players to them for a used ball rack and the changes in their couch cushions.

yeah, we ain't getting both. odds aren't great on landing one of them. We're probably talking at least 6/$180M to get Rodon? (Yankess reportedly refused to do 7/$210M and "weren't close") I honestly have no idea what the deal looks like for Swanson any longer. I'd believe anything from 8/$180M to 10/$270M at this point. Would people be happy if we landed one of them at the top end of the salary range? They're both impact players. Or would the same people who are absolutely crushing the Twins front office right now for failing in the Correa hunt immediately turn and scream at them for throwing money away on overrated players and dooming the franchise? Personally, I would go 6/$180M on Rodon and roll the dice. But even that might not be enough.

A non-starter. He's not going anywhere; I'm 100% certain he would veto any trade, even if the Giants approached him with one. I can't see why the Twins would really want him; he's likely to be worse than Farmer and for a lot more money. You'd basically be acquiring a guy for leadership and hoping that his bat isn't trash. The Twins need offense more than anything else right now, and betting on Crawford is a terrible bet, even if you could somehow pry him out of SF, which again sounds nigh-impossible.

There seems to be this strange idea that the twins are this very dogmatic team that insists that every player do things only one way, and there's very little evidence that this front office and on-field staff operate that way. They'll ask player to make significant changes when a player is doing poorly at something, and tinker with their approaches to try and generate improvement...but where exactly is it that they've changed a player's approach that's been very successful? Who exactly have they ruined by having someone try something new or different?

i suspect Ted wrote the piece before the Vazquez signing was announced and an edit was missed after it had been queued up for publication. Happens.

I see 2 markets, then. One for teams in big markets with the ability to spend $200-250M+ annually while still being profitable, and one for everyone else. That's also real.

last year they signed an elite SS. it's a little unfair to say they "passed" on the SS; it's not like they weren't in the game? Part of the problem for the Twins is that the market re-set this off-season...possibly. Deals like Correa, Judge, Turner, Bogaerts used to be maybe 2 guys in an off-season, and 10+ years was even more rare. there's only been 22 contracts over 10 years in MLB history, and we just had 4 of them signed to kick in next year. There's only been 8 contracts in MLB history longer than 10 years...and half of them have just happened. That says to me that some teams are changing the market, but it's unclear whether this changes it for the whole league. If the new "market rate" is 12-14 year contracts at top of the scale AAV...then yeah, Twins probably won't be paying market rates for great players. But I suspect only about 8 teams in baseball will. So what's the real market?

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.