El Roacho

The biggest problem I have with letting Baker go is that it apparently came down to the option year. By losing him over that, when he apparently wanted to come back here according to earlier reports, you lost out on a guy who was going to have incentive to stay healthy and pitch well. Yes, they lose that option year if he does outperform the value of his contract, but, they would also be in a better position to re-sign him should he end up pitching well. With Baker leaving the only real conclusion I can come to is that they must have not really cared for him to come back either way or had a lot of faith that he would pitch well enough for one year. For as much bashing of the 'Twins Way' is done here and on other boards, I can't for a moment believe that this was solely the outcome of an option year. Lastly, it is really difficult to 'overpay' for a player in F/A. The market is usually close enough between teams that it's more about opportunity, comfort, wanting to leave, etc, then it is dollars. Additionally, where do you draw the line at 'overpaying' and 'overbidding' with someone? If we find out that Hunter had offers of 2/22 and 2/24, do you really think the Tigers overpaid or outbid? For me, in my opinion, to really get into an 'overpay' type situation, in free agency, is for a team like Minnesota, Houston, Pittsburgh, etc, to just completely blow other offers out of the water to lure a player. Teams coming off a few seasons of futility would probably have to 'overpay' to land a substantial player. The only way someone like Greinke or Hamilton would be in a Twins or Astros uniform next year is if their offers were 50% more than the next best offer or they had a burning desire to play for a team that is 3 years away from being relevant.