Otto von Ballpark

Pineda served a sentence that was collectively bargained, for an offense which MLB could prove with hard evidence (the failed test).

This is veering off topic, but why are MLB players responsible for paying minor leaguers?

You can call out the players all you want, but if they're protected by a contract you collectively bargained with them, then you're not going to accomplish much except antagonize them. (And if you call them out too far, you're opening yourself up to a difficult legal defense.) Given that the cheating was also directed by / blessed by management, I'm not sure it accomplishes much to go after the players either.

I'm sure it's technically possible. But that's a different question from, can MLB implement it correctly? Given they seem to have a lot of trouble with relatively simple things like quality control on the production of their baseballs, etc.

Any mention of Marwin Gonzalez in the report? Marwin was among the Astros batters who knocked Darvish out of the second inning in both games 3 and 7 of the 2017 World Series, despite a largely ineffective postseason at the plate otherwise.

I suspect Logan Morrison may not exactly be reliable source here, but... If the Astros sign stealing pre-dated 2017, then Jason Castro would have known about it when he came over here. (Maybe even Grossman, if it really dated back to 2014.) (Note that Cora and Beltran did not join the Astros until 2017, so this is one of the iffier parts of Morrison's claims.) For the post-2017 stealing, Marwin Gonzalez would have known about it when he came over to the Twins last winter too. And I wouldn't be so quick to assume that all the Twins are "clean" either. It may not have been as wide as the Astros did it, but if the practice was common enough around the league as Logan Morrison says, it's certainly possible that individual Twins sought it out too.

Although if you let players on the field use technology, that just shifts the sign stealing activity from watching video to intercepting communications! Hopefully they could manage to figure out a secure system, though. They probably have to eventually anyway, to securely relay automated ball/strike calls to the umpire.

If the Mets tried to fire Beltran, I suspect they'd still owe him his full salary at minimum, and perhaps prompt a legal fight there too. Since he hasn't been penalized by MLB, it might be hard to claim it is just cause for firing him now?

The burden of proof would be insanely high if MLB tried to penalize any players. It's doubtful any real punishment would stick. (And as Nick alludes to, the investigation may have only gotten this far because they players knew they themselves couldn't be seriously punished.) It does call into question the popular narrative that Beltran helped the Astros decipher pitch tipping, like with Darvish in the 2017 World Series. Maybe he had a little help in doing that!

But wasn't this FO largely responsible for the "one starter under contract on Nov. 1" situation in the first place? By this logic, their 2019-2020 offseason would have been worse if they had managed to trade for Stroman at the deadline, or extend Odorizzi earlier, or sign Corbin last winter, etc. I think they've dealt with it adequately, at this point, but again, it's a situation of their own making, so I can't really give them extra credit for their work since Nov. 1st.

Why is Nov. 1 the date of comparison? Virtually every team in baseball is "improved" now compared to Nov. 1, so it doesn't seem like a particularly meaningful distinction.

FWIW, if the QO stays the same after 2021, it's possible we could have wound up with 2022 control at similar cost to his 2022 salary and 2023 buyout. Edit to add: not that this is a bad deal for the Twins -- it's likely pretty fair for both sides. I don't think Sano was necessarily looking at a big FA payday anymore.

I wouldn't necessarily call Thames a comp yet either, but Thames and Sano had virtually the same number of PA last year. Thames had more games but he was appearing a lot as a pinch hitter in the NL. I wonder if the better comp might be someone like Castellanos? He's been a pretty good hitter the last two years, but his market is pretty limited due to position and defense.

This is a non-factor. The current CBA is in effect through the 2021 season, when Sano was scheduled to reach 6 years service time and free agency anyway. Edit to add: although we did effectively buy out 2 FA years when you consider the 2023 option.

The "foreign professional" cutoff is actual 25 years old now -- a few years ago, they upped it from age 23 plus 5 pro seasons, mostly to suppress Ohtani's eventual contract. Shouldn't much matter for Colás, who's only 21, turning 22 in Sep. 2020. And I don't think the Twins have much left in their 2019-2020 bonus pool, do they? This article suggests they may only have about $600k left, although I haven't been following it too closely: https://www.mlb.com/twins/news/international-prospect-signings-july-2-2019

The international signing rules changed with the start of the 2017 signing period. Before then, teams could exceed their allotted bonus pools and incur penalties. That's how Moncada and Robert and others signed big contracts. But starting in July 2017, the bonus pool became a hard cap, and teams were no longer allowed to exceed it. That's why Ohtani had to take a much smaller bonus when he signed in Dec. 2017.

Also worth noting, despite being tabbed as a potential "two-way" player, Colás has never pitched professionally. And he's already 21 years old. Hard to imagine a development path where he's anything more than a reliever on the mound. And as noted above, his batting stats were primarily from the Japanese minor leagues. (Although I guess the more time he takes to develop as a hitter in the US minor leagues, the more time he could develop as a pitcher too.) By comparison, Ohtani was batting *and* pitching in the Japanese *major* leagues by age 18, and turning in star performances at age 19.

No one here was denying any universal concept of valuation. It was relative to Donaldson, the subject of this thread, and that the Twins might be clinging too tightly to their assessed value of $85 mil compared to, say, $100 mil, in the context of their needs and available resources. Their replies likely made no sense to you because they were staying on topic, while your posts and points were not. Now let's stick to the topic of Donaldson, please.

If you're responding to people making points in a Donaldson thread, and completely ignoring the context of the Donaldson discussion, perhaps you aren't the one who should be accusing others of ignorance. As a mod, this is a warning to everyone to keep things on track. Discuss Donaldson, not other posters, and not generic ideas that have nothing to do with Donaldson.

I'm skeptical that this is a better or more attainable allocation of resources than signing Donaldson for 4/100 or thereabouts. 1. Odorizzi is already guaranteed 1/17.8 -- looking at the FA market this offseason, I don't think frontloading $3 mil makes any difference in whether he is willing to add a 2/36 extension on top of that right now. (And if it was, you could always do a corresponding backload in a Donaldson deal -- $22 mil this year, more later.) 2. We've been trying to sign Berrios for a year-plus, and he hasn't signed yet. I suspect the difference there is more than just how much is front-loaded, in which case you're basically asking the front office to exceed their existing valuation of Berrios instead of exceeding it for Donaldson. That's just shifting risk, and at best improving the 2023 team at the expense of the 2020-2022 teams. 3. Respectfully, Moreland isn't good. I don't particularly want to give him a job at any price, it is doubtful that he improves this team. 4. We've already considered Price and other salary dump trades, and nothing has materialized so far. So again, if you want something done today, you're essentially just asking the front office to exceed their existing valuation of Price etc. instead of Donaldson. Or if you're waiting, hoping that Boston's or whomever's valuation drops in the next month to match yours and you can strike a deal, there's still significant risk a deal never happens and those resources are left unspent, and the team thus unimproved. 5. Minor league contracts aren't guaranteed, and rarely involve significant sums unless performance bonuses are reached -- in which case, the money isn't really directly related to Donaldson's salary. The Twins would probably be happy to go over budget $2-5 mil if a guy like Sanchez is a healthy and effective SP for the whole season to earn those bonuses.

As I understand it, the criticism of "assessed value", in this thread, is that it's perhaps unwise to stick too close to a 4/85 valuation when 4/100 or thereabouts could land Donaldson, improve the team, and we're not confident there's a better imminent alternative for those resources. Let's keep the discussion within those specific parameters, rather than expanding it to generalities and extremes.

But players who have already done well through age 33, like Donaldson has, tend to do pretty well at ages 34-37 too. I've linked this before, and it's good reading on the subject: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/what-to-expect-from-josh-donaldson/ To summarize, Donaldson's historical position/performance comps at age 33 and ages 30-33 had the following average performances from age 34-37: 34: 3.4 WAR 35: 2.9 36: 2.1 (but 3.0 median) 37: 2.4 There's still risk in this or any contract, of course. But "mid-30s age risk" is actually a lot greater for the guys *younger* than Donaldson, whose mid-30's are still a few years away and whose performance might fall off significantly before they even get to age 34. For example, Longoria's bat started fading by age 31, etc.

Why would you assume that when Wolfson reported $80-85M?

That's my guess. If the Twins are indeed at $85 mil and the Nats are already above that, it's not necessarily a bad strategy for him either.

Puig his 7 HR in 240 PA vs AL teams last year, vs. 11 HR in 201 PA vs the mighty NL Central. Only 2 HR, 0.5-0.6 WAR, and a .380 BABIP after his trade to Cleveland too. You can sign him for St. Louis if you like him so much.