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I thought the rumor that year was that Greene wanted to go to Minnesota or San Diego but not Cincinnati. But that could be that he wanted to go to San Diego for the organization and/or location (being from southern Cali) or Minnesota for the cachet of going 1-1, I suppose... so maybe the point remains that he would have taken full slot to sign.

Yes to all that, but also, the absence of a slot value in the 11th round is exactly why teams will try to offer a bit more $ to get a better player there. Since the slot values only go through 10 rounds, signings after the 10th only count against overall bonus pools and aren't "over slot" per se, so teams will try to get perceived higher-upside players who are still left at that point and offer higher bonuses than in the previous few rounds. But it does make sense that there would be more risk of not agreeing on an amount with that strategy, and with earlier picks affecting how much pool money is left.

Even if the narrative of "The Twins don't push their prospects" is not always true and somewhat overblown, It seems likely that Toronto's sending Martin and Woods Richardson to AA to start this season is a more aggressive assignment than the Twins would have made. Is there a chance of any conflict between the Jays' and Twins' development plans for those players, before and after the trade?

Giolito has gotten 1/3 as many outs as Burrows on 1/15 as many pitches

They've won Jax and Ober's starts - am I expecting too much to start thinking about sweeping the Astros on their, umm, turf?

Jax putting on a pitch-to-contact clinic so far. Five innings, one hit, one walk, zero strikeouts. Between that and piling up runs with small ball, this is a throwback game. Edit: Castro just hit a homer. OK, so two hits.

I also wonder if part of the reasoning for making moves like this now is: Players who'll need to be added to the 40-man roster this offseason can come up in September without using an option (if I remember correctly). The Twins have a few of those players who should be on the verge of a debut (Miranda, Ryan, Winder) but they'll need to make roster space for them. So in a losing season, the next few weeks are the time to evaluate more marginal 40-man guys, and to use as much roster space as you have to cycle through them before you need to make room for more long-term additions.

Agreed. It's not about development or upside with Refsnyder, but he hasn't cooled off yet this year, nor has he done anything to suggest that he's not currently the Twins' best 4th-outfielder option.

Realized a short while ago that the Twins are playing the Cardinals this weekend. In all seriousness, since this is such a low-wattage trade and the only Twins trade of this deadline with current major leaguers going both ways, I wonder whether they (and maybe the Cards too) prioritized making a deal with the squad that was already in the same city.

Definitely a surprise, but maybe the teams that were seriously in on that kind of starter—stable mid-rotation guy, not a huge upgrade to most contending rotations—had already gone elsewhere for their needs? E.g. the Phillies got Gibson for another year; the Mets got Trevor Williams for less than Pineda would have cost in trade; etc.

At the same time, with Maeda's contract as inexpensive as it is, how bad is the bad side of that contract? He's probably not going to have another 2020, but I think his inconsistency this year might mean that trading him now would be selling a bit low. His good starts this year show the upside that's there. I would like there to be someone in the Twins' rotation to give them a chance to win on a regular basis.

Berríos was set to start for the Twins tonight. If I'm not mistaken, this deal will open a spot on the 40-man roster. Any chance we see Winder debut tonight?

I'll be interested to read this, but what I remember reading about Martin was more that he was a good athlete who could play a valuable defensive position, not that he was necessarily a likely SS. So "lack of defensive fit" isn't a huge knock, IMO.

Martin reported included while I was typing that. Not bad.

Whoa! I didn't want the Twins to trade Berríos, but if they were going to trade him, the Blue Jays system seemed to have a lot of potential to pluck from. https://www.mlb.com/prospects/bluejays/ There are four current/potential shortstops in their top 10 on this list. I'd hope to get one of those guys, ideally one projected to stay at SS, in addition to Woods Richardson. Guess we'll know soon enough.

Very much agree with the broad point of this article. I think the contract estimate cited here underestimates what Berríos would take or could get. Nola and Severino signed their deals when they were much farther from free agency, right? That kept their prices down. It seems like those deals have been thrown out there as comps for Berríos for a couple years, but I think it always would have taken more to extend him. Since reports have said the Twins were trying to negotiate an extension, I hope they were serious enough to go higher than $12-15M per year.

The only reason the Twins would do that deal is to buy prospects, right? Donaldson is more valuable than Hosmer, probably on both sides of the ball but certainly in the field, and if blocking a younger player at 3B is your concern, that certainly seems to apply at 1B/DH where Hosmer would play, too. So I'd think the prospects coming back might be only 1 or 2 players, but their value would be significant.

This has been basically my feeling all along, but as trade deadline speculation continues, I only believe more that the Twins should not trade Berrios. This is considering all that's been said and written about "a talented roster that was expected to contend," Pohlad saying there won't be a full rebuild, etc. While there's probably an element of positive spin in all that, it's not totally unrealistic. Many of us expected the Twins to contend too, and I have to think the front office is still considering different ways forward and isn't truly set on a rebuild yet. It's possible that 2019 and 2020 relied too much on peak performances that players won't repeat, but the baseline of the roster is not untalented. If anything, the talent is too heavy on the hitting side, light on the pitching side. And speaking of pitching talent... this also makes me think of the Johan Santana trade. Some circumstances were different, but that was also a team that expected to contend, spent a season floundering, and had a front-end starter who seemed set on testing the market as a free agent. The front office felt pressed to make a move or else "get nothing for" Santana. Then the team contended again the next year and it's very likely that they would have benefited more from even one more year of Santana than several seasons of the players they received. Finally, I know the front office has their own internal evaluation of the talent in the organization and the likelihood of Berrios departing, based on private dealings with him and his agent, and getting talent back by trading him may be the sensible move. But something about it seems...uncreative. Sure, a front office can distinguish themselves by evaluating other orgs' players well and getting good talent back in a trade, but trading a player approaching free agency because you don't think you can retain him is, in itself, formulaic. Basing any given move on trying to get absolute maximum value from a player as an asset in a market of baseball talent is formulaic. Especially for a team that really needs pitching and hasn't developed a lot of it - rolling with Berrios (and Maeda) to keep a stable floor for the rotation, rebuilding/retooling as needed around them, and even finding a way to contend seriously to sign Berrios in free agency ... that would be creative problem-solving. I'd like to see this front office try it.

Gore has been a super-touted pitching prospect in the past, but I've read that his recent performance has been iffy. That's a lot to bank on if you're trading the best pitcher you've developed in years. If it's a 1-for-1 swap, I think the Twins would be the ones to say no.

Dick Mountain and the Metropolitans: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/07/rays-trade-rich-hill-mets.html It seemed unusual at first look that the Rays were offloading Hill after loading up their offense with Cruz yesterday, but apparently he hasn't been pitching very well lately. The Mets need more help given all the injury woes on their starting staff, so maybe they see something in Hill's recent performance that they hope to fix.

A few random thoughts - writing this as Atlanta has just picked 24th. - The first round is soooo slow. Every year I notice this and every year it still exceeds my expectations of how slow it's going to be. - The middle to late first round is more interesting to me than the top because this is when players who conceivably could make it or could have made it to the Twins are being rumored about and coming off the board. - I pay exactly zero attention to amateur baseball except for starting to get an idea of who players are when mock drafts and previews start to come out, a month or two before the draft—so I have no real knowledge of what or who makes a good pick, just half-baked opinions based on the various sources I've seen. So far, of names that seemed like they might have been around for the Twins, the college pitchers taken with the last 2 picks (Cusick and Williams), McGreevy (18th) and Painter (went all the way up at 13th, but had been lower in some mocks) are the players who I had an eye on. - I've been looking at the Fangraphs draft night chat where they're saying that college pitcher Ty Madden is "the steal of the draft" at this point, falling farther than expected. Only 2 more picks for him to get to the Twins. Maybe...?

Gil has advanced farther through the minors and has maintained or boosted his performance since that trade. His value in trade has changed, and he's less of a wild card than he was then (though it's still inherently risky to project what value a MiLB player will have in the majors). If they really value Gil, the FO shouldn't be letting the optics of something that happened a few years ago limit them in a deal. (....That is, if you think their best move is to trade Berríos, which I don't believe to be true.)

Probably part of the answer to this is that if and when the Twins trade these guys, some of the return has to be players who are ready to play in the majors. Not to the exclusion of farther-away guys with higher upside, but certainly balanced with those.

This is totally a sidebar to the main discussion, but are the Dodgers seriously actually paying Scott Kazmir (who, since he last played for them, has been out of affiliated baseball, rejoined a different MLB team, and been cut from that team) right now? Ha.

Yep. Clearly with that trade they were choosing between Wade and Cave. Both lefty-hitting outfielders, projected as backups whom they wouldn't mind starting for a stretch. I thought it was a questionable decision, but certainly not impossible to understand - Cave had spent more time in the majors and had hit OK, and it seemed like the management trusted him more in CF. But Wade's on-base skills plus decent overall offense and a bit of defensive versatility definitely would have had a place on this roster. It's kind of a surprise that Cave tanked as badly as he did, but not a surprise that Wade has been playing well.