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My guess, totally just a guess based on this signing and the status of the younger players: They now are not going to trade anyone very impactful this offseason, but Lewis and Lee will be on the table for trades at midseason or next offseason. For now those guys aren't blocked by Correa yet. Lee can play his first full pro season, Lewis can rehab, and the team can see what they're getting from the current roster. If at midseason the hitters are underperforming or (more likely) the starting pitching isn't healthy or deep enough, they're better positioned to use one of the young infielders to make a big move.

"As recently as Saturday morning another offer was made, and Minnesota is not making the deal contingent upon a new physical." This seems like trouble.

I haven't frequented the threads about Bauer, but opening this one now I was glad to read this (and don't think it's hypocritical.) Yes, rehabilitation after wrongdoing and harm is better than only punishing the wrongdoer. It does more at least to attempt to avoid the same kind of harm in the future. Unfortunately our society has very little norm of public atonement or rehabilitation for men in positions of power or fame (and yeah, both those things are relative, but at the very least a pro athlete is a public figure with a kind of cultural power.) And almost no norm of public atonement or rehabilitation for sexual abuse and assault. That lack is particularly insidious for a kind of harm where so often those affected by it experience further effects of secrecy and stigma surrounding it. The less chance of rehabilitation, the less likely a public admission of wrongdoing, the more denial and secrecy continue to flourish instead. I hope all of this changes on a broader scale. In principle, yes, "people can change...when met with public disapproval of their actions." But so often the standard isn't for disapproval to steer a public figure to change, and the conditions don't encourage it if the person has the option of digging in and vague denial. If Trevor Bauer responds differently, great, but I don't see anything to suggest that he will.

Kimbrel was reported to have an agreement with Philadelphia on 12/23: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/12/phillies-to-sign-craig-kimbrel.html

First base would probably become Miranda’s long term home anyway, with reports stating the Twins front office has questions with his defense. While 3B is the more demanding position than 1B overall, the way I've interpreted the questioning of Miranda's defense has been that the Twins FO thinks he's better at 3B, in part because of lack of 1B experience. If the Twins do make this trade, a 300 plus million dollar contract might make more sense. This is suggesting a long-term deal for Devers, right? Miranda aside, 3B is also a position where Royce Lewis or (especially) Brooks Lee is likely to end up if/when either of them moves off SS. I still believe that one of Lewis or Lee can be the Twins' next non-stopgap starting shortstop, but it's maybe even safer to predict that the next longer-term starting third baseman is in the system and not far from the majors. I suppose the plan for a team signing Devers long-term is likely that he'd go to 1B before long. Investing in a good player who's proven it at the MLB level is absolutely worth it sometimes, but still, it's hard for me to see the Twins prioritizing the corner infield spots if they want to invest in a big contract. Rafael Devers will probably be the next homegrown talent to walk beyond the Green Monster Boston is still capable of running a big payroll, even if they seem to be operating with a more budget-conscious mindset lately. They've let a couple of marquee players go; that also could indicate that they'll try harder to retain Devers, so fans still have part of the last core to cheer for. It's an interesting proposition and I'm not trying to pick it apart! Just a few quick reactions as I read.

The way people have talked about Moreno, I'm surprised it took more than him to get Arizona to make this deal.

However, the new amount that Correa [accepted] is seemingly much closer to the level the Twins were willing to pay. Adding $15M per year over two years (perhaps on a player option?) for Correa when he would be 38 and 39 years old is still a significant risk. But by 2033 and 2034, even the Twins' payroll could be well north of $200M given MLB’s rising salaries. It might have been risky, maybe even silly, but $15M of dead money for those two years should not have been crippling to a franchise. Bingo. Whether the Twins decided not to take that risk, or whether the Mets, Correa and agent Scott Boras never game them that chance, is unknown. My guess, just a guess, is that this turn of events had much less to do with the Twins being hesitant about the risk than with the Mets being aggressive and opportunistic with the opening that the Giants hiccup provided. That doesn't excuse the Twins for not being more aggressive if they were even possibly willing to take the risk. As the Mets are sort of my second team, I guess I could enjoy this development - but more than anything I'm bummed that the Twins weren't the team to capitalize, and the Mets' approach is starting to teeter from "being aggressive to try to win more" to "buying a superteam" in a way that almost starts to remove the fun.

If you mean the figures cited in that tweet, I think the $1.172B figure is accounting for all Boras' clients. There are four contracts that Rosenthal cited specifically, totaling under $1B. (To be clear: the $932M total of those four contracts is still lots and lots and loooootttts of money.)

Since there have been reports that Rodón preferred to go to the Yankees, another team may have had to beat this deal at least by a bit — I'm not sure I would have wanted the Twins to go higher on both dollars and years, but $1M more per year, or a 7th year on its own? Sure, that seems reasonable, especially considering what they were willing to offer Correa.

Talk of how crazy the 13-year contract seems was on my mind and I voted no on the poll, but immediately started to reconsider. Steve Adams in the MLBTR chat today: "You're basically asserting that the Twins could offer 10/285 -- their final offer to Correa -- but not 13/350. "That premise suggests that the Twins were incapable of offering an additional three years and $65MM -- an AAV of $21.667MM that'd be owed more than a decade from now, at a time when that type of salary will probably buy ... a fourth starter? "Over the past decade, the QO ... has seen a 47.7% increase. The median MLB payroll has seen a 74% increase. MLB revenue has jumped from 7-something billion to 10.7 billion.... "The Twins could've paid Correa. They chose not to, and they stopped at a weird spot, no less. If you were willing to go to 285, I legitimately don't understand why you stop there and don't just overpay to get the deal done. It was weird, and if they thought $285MM -- which is $10MM more than he rejected from the Tigers a year ago -- was going to get the job done after the market exploded, they were kidding themselves. "Bottom line: I don't agree that the Twins had no chance. They just drew their line in the sand at a really weird point." I think this lays it out pretty well. It is kind of weird that the Twins got in the neighborhood of Correa's final ask, but not on the same block. Oh well!

From MLBTR, the Cardinals are "unlikely to meet" Rodón's asking price: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/12/cardinals-unlikely-to-meet-asking-price-for-carlos-rodon.html The Yankees "at one point reportedly hoped to limit any Rodón deals to four or five years in length," but Rodón and Boras were looking for seven years: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/12/carlos-rodon-rumors-yankees-twins-cardinals-giants.html Could offering six years get a deal done? I'm trying to believe the Twins are still in it, which may be folly.

Who was the last young core? In my view: Buxton, Berríos, Polanco, Kepler, Sanó, Rosario. Four of those six guys got extended before they hit free agency. A couple of those deals look really good for the team (/owners) now, and a couple look less so, but even with Kepler perceived as a bit of a disappointment, the trade rumors suggest that both the player and the contract have some value. Berríos...I don't know. I wanted to see him stay, and his extension from the Jays seemed like something the Twins clearly could have done. Then he was kinda bad this year. Is he going to bounce back, or did the Twins know something to suggest he wouldn't hold up, or did they get lucky? I guess we'll see over the next few years. I do believe the FO's claim that they weren't committed to trading him and had to really like the trade offer in order to do the deal. Rosario had some great qualities and some big faults. Fun player, but the Twins choosing not to get on the hook for the final year of arbitration salary for a player like that is not an uncommon kind of decision across the league. The Twins certainly have done their share of trading established players for prospects, but it's hard to look at recent years and see them truly dismantling any kind of core. Imagine if you were following the A's, say, or the Marlins when they traded their entire outfield a few years ago.

Yep, I largely agree. (The sentence you put in bold is not my words but a quote from the article, in case not obvious.) I do think there was likely an extenuating factor for Verlander at least, in that he wasn't going to sign for more than 2-3 years at this stage, and probably wanted a more obvious contender. But a lot of us thought similarly about deGrom, and he took more dollars and years to go to a worse team. In any case, yes, Rodon is realistic for the Twins this offseason in the way that Correa was last offseason.

There was never a point in which Jacob deGrom or Justin Verlander were realistic options for the Twins, and Carlos Rodon probably has too many suitors to be thought of as a true possibility as well. Maybe Chris Bassitt, Noah Syndergaard, and Nathan Eovaldi are still in play, while the trade market has an endless amount of possibilities. Bassitt has a new team already, Toronto. Syndergaard isn't better than Gray at this point in his post-TJS career, and may not be better than most of the Twins' other current starters. Eovaldi is the interesting one of that group. I don't totally agree that Rodón is definitely out of the picture, if the Twins are really willing to allocate their payroll room there.

I'm not sure whether to call this ad a pop-up or maybe an "interstitial" - it's an ad for Brex, something credit-card-related. It "pops up" while an article is loaded, but fills the entire screen so it interrupts reading altogether, and takes a bit of time to do so. I just read a page and a half of comments on a single article and in the time it took me to do so, this ad took over the screen six or seven times. Absolutely get that ad revenue keeps the site going, but this rendered it basically unreadable today.

I was really keen on Bassitt as a trade target for the Twins last offseason, and still liked him as a free-agent target this offseason. However, if the Twins are shopping in that rough tier of starters, I wonder whether they might have been more interested in Eovaldi to begin with. A year younger, has had some health stuff recently but that might make him a candidate for an incentive-based deal. It seems like, for better or for worse, that could be up the Twins' alley.

I'm hoping, maybe foolishly, that: (1) The reason we're not hearing signs that a Rodon deal could be "happening" - other than the Twins' reported general interest - is that they're focusing on Correa right now (and know they won't sign both), but there's been enough preliminary conversation for them to go back and negotiate seriously with Rodon if a Correa deal doesn't look like it'll happen (2) If the above is true, they'll be willing to stay in the bidding for Rodon if the the dollars and years go higher than they expected. It's not impossible that other teams are slow-walking pursuit of Rodon while they're talking with Correa, too...

The way the article introduces its premise totally makes sense until: The issue, though, is that this conversation was happening *after* he had been ruled out as a second baseman I do recall questions about how many innings Arráez could handle at 2B, but after he began to get starts at 1B regularly, he continued to start at second as well: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.fcgi?id=arraelu01&t=f&year=2022 If they no longer see Arráez as able to be a full-time second baseman, which seems possible, that's a different thing. I don't think that's necessarily a problem. It certainly seems like the Twins have tried to move toward keeping more players playing multiple positions and, with that, more lineup flexibility a la the Dodgers and Rays. If they can keep Arráez as a flexible 1B/2B, that can be useful for that kind of plan, even if he's not playing the most defensively valuable positions. The team could choose matchups based on handedness or on whether an opposing pitcher was more vulnerable to power hitting or a contact/OBP approach. Maybe in a year Lee or Lewis is getting starts at 3B and Miranda rotates back in at 1B. There are ways to see it working. I still would understand an Arráez trade if it brought back a better pitcher than they could acquire by other means—he wouldn't return that pitcher 1-for-1, but could be the headlining player in a deal. I'm not convinced that going for Pablo López would be aiming high enough to justify Arráez as a trade asset.

Looks like the Rule 5 draft (the major-league part) is complete: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/12/2022-rule-5-draft-results.html Half the teams made picks in the first round. Mostly pitchers. No team made a second pick. The Twins didn't lose anybody. Interestingly, even with only 15 picks overall, the Red Sox, Dodgers, Yankees, and Guardians lost 2-3 players each.

Also a quintessential Boras groaner pun about Bogaerts negotiations with the Red Sox: "Everyone around them understands the Sox without X are So-So."

Interesting to see the speed of deals pick up a bit today - Bellinger, Bell, Heaney. Not players I would have wanted the Twins to get (maybe, maybe Bell) but a few deals getting done in an afternoon could get the market moving more rapidly.

When Target Field first opened, it was observed to be a good park for right-handed power, particularly pull-heavy right-handed power hitters. Think of Josh Willingham having his best offensive season in his first year with the Twins, or Brian Dozier hitting a handful of barely-out shots to left field on the way to a home run record for second basemen. Baseball-reference sets the threshold for a pitcher's rate stats to "qualify" at 1 inning pitched per team game. If Heaney had qualified last year, his HR/PA and HR/FB rates both would have led the majors—not in the way you want, if you're the pitcher. The fact that he didn't qualify for the leader board, even if the threshold is arbitrary, tells us that his sample of innings was small and there may be some noise there. But maybe it's fair to say at least that he's somewhat prone to giving up home runs. I haven't heard so much about Target Field and RH power in recent years. Park factors can change, but any time I read something connecting the Twins with a homer-prone lefty pitcher, it raises a flag. I would be dubious about how well Heaney would do pitching half his games there.

I'll make this prediction and stick with it: Rodón will not get $150M. I think he can beat the recent contracts for Gausman, Ray, and Wheeler, which were all between $110-$118M—maybe in part because teams spend more freely this offseason—but I think those deals will be a baseline for comparison. I'll bet he gets $120-125M if it's a similar 5-year deal, or a little more or less (adjusting the AAV accordingly) if the deal is shorter or longer.

Having this guy to play SS now and evaluating that Lewis or Lee will be ready to play SS by late 2023/early 2024 is one possibility. It doesn't have to be the only scenario they plan for. The Twins haven't seemed to want to play Polanco, Gordon or Urshela at SS (Gordon a little more than the others, in keeping with the utility role he's moved into.) Not debating what they should want, just observing what they seem to want. If those guys aren't shortstops in the organization's view, then they didn't have a shortstop ready to open the season. Having Farmer and the future potential of Lewis or Lee gives them more of a plan than they had yesterday, without that needing to be THE plan. I'll miss Urshela on the Twins, but I actually feel better about that trade in sequence with this move. Plus the cost in trade, Legumina, was one of the more puzzling 40-man adds, so they just made a little roster room.

The picture at the top of this article is not of either of the players discussed in the article.