Greggory Masterson

You know what they say: When you have five second basemen, you don’t have one. Image courtesy of © Brad Penner-Imagn Images If one asked 100 fans what the Twins' positions of need are ahead of 2025, the most common answers would probably include first base, right-handed outfielder, lefty reliever, any big bat, and maybe a backup center fielder. There are questions and a lack of depth at each of those positions, both at the MLB level and in the high minors. Few have placed second base high on their list of concerns. That's understandable, but we may be overlooking the position to some degree. Although the position may not lack the depth of the other spots further up the list, it features as many—if not more—questions. At present, there’s a long list of guys in this organization who could play second base, and some of them could play it pretty well, at least in theory. But each of them comes with their own concerns. FanGraphs projects the group to be middle-of-the-pack but doesn’t project any one player to man the position for even half the season. Brooks Lee Lee appears to be the frontrunner for the Opening Day job. He’s a recent first-round pick who was touted as a near-MLB-ready infielder on draft day. He smacked around minor-league competition and debuted less than two years after being drafted. It’s almost a foregone conclusion that the former top-35 consensus prospect will get the job. But he was bad last year. Rookies often go through it, and he certainly did. His OPS+ nearly matched Christian Vázquez's, and although he looked good with the glove (especially at second and third base), you can’t get by with backup catcher offense from an everyday player. It might be a little presumptuous to expect Lee to figure it out and be at least average at bat. He did start his career strong, with a .947 OPS through his first eight games, but he slid down to a .585 OPS by the end of the season, in just 50 total games. Back problems plagued the beginning of his season, and he was briefly shut down with biceps tendonitis in August. It’s hard to know what we’ll see from Lee. Edouard Julien Last offseason, Julien was in far better standing than what Lee is now. Coming off a season in which he had a .381 on-base percentage and hit 15 homers in 109 games, Julien was slated to bat first and play second every day, at least against righties. His defense was mediocre, but he showed big improvements on that score in 2023. He seemed to have a chance at being a long-term asset. But then 2024 happened. Seemingly incapable of pulling the trigger on pitches he didn’t love, Julien was 16th in baseball in taking called third strikes (47), despite only having 301 plate appearances. His batting average started with a 1, and his on-base percentage started with a 2. Add in his unimpressive glovework, and you’ve got a mess of a season. There’s definitely a future wherein Julien recaptures some of the promise from his rookie year, but it’s hard to count on it happening. Even if it does, he might also be needed at first base. Willi Castro Castro has been one of Minnesota’s most dependable players over the last couple of years, though he’s not without warts. The 2024 All-Star didn’t finish the season well, but overall, he was solidly above-average as a hitter and became the first player ever to log 25 appearances at five different positions—shortstop, center field, third base, second base, and left field. If push comes to shove and Castro maintains his average-ish offensive output (which is no guarantee), he could certainly be a fine starting second baseman. But that takes some of his value away. Having a player like Castro who can plug a hole almost anywhere on the diamond is very useful. He’s been a fill-in for Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton, and Royce Lewis in the wake of injuries. Suppose he needs to temporarily take over a position that way again in 2025; history tells us he will. In that case, the Twins land right back where they started with Lee or Julien at second base—which is an issue, especially if they’ve played badly enough that Castro has already taken their job. Austin Martin and Michael Helman I’m gonna make this quick, because there’s not a ton to talk about here. Both Helman and Martin are guys who could feasibly carve out a niche in MLB in the very near future. For now, at least, that’s probably as a bench player who can bounce around the diamond and provide a little speed. But if we hit the point in the season where Castro is already the primary second baseman and there’s an injury, we might be seeing a lot of these guys at second. Not great. They’re fine—but if there are justifiable questions about both Lee and Julien and the team can’t count on Castro to fill in for months at a time, these aren’t names that put you at much more ease. BONUS: Royce Lewis The Twins have toyed with moving Lewis to second base, perhaps to stay there for years. There’s merit to that move, as Lewis’s arm is probably the weakest part of his profile, and it seems like Lee is a better long-term candidate to stick at third base defensively. So, there might be a switch here. But that just shifts the question over to third base. Now you’ve still got questions about Lee, and the next guy is José Miranda (who will not be playing second base; I do not care what his Baseball Reference page said he did at Wichita in 2021), who has his own questions and creates a void at first base. Sure, it works out if Lee works out, but you can say the same thing with the original configuration. BONUS: Luke Keaschall I guess this is the X-factor, if you’re looking for one. Keaschall is a consensus top-50 prospect who has played first base, second base, third base, and center field since being drafted in 2023. He’s 21, but he looked great at both Double-A and High-A last year and has received a good bit of attention as a potential target for other teams in trade talks. He might be able to slide in this season and become a productive second baseman. But that probably won’t happen until the second half, if it happens at all. Keaschall is also recovering from a torn UCL that required Tommy John surgery last season. He might be restricted to first base or DH next season. It’s hard to count on him being the savior of a broken positional group, but I guess we can throw him on the pile. BONUS: Payton Eeles Eeles went from Indy ball to Triple-A last season, and I'm pulling for him. I haven't seen enough of this kid to feel anything amounting to confidence that he's the answer at second base. For everyone's sake, I hope we don't reach that point. BONUS: Christian Vázquez Just kidding. After reviewing these names, I’m not sure how much recognizing the problems or questions actually matters. It’s doubtful that the Twins are going to bring in a starting-caliber second base-only guy, with a picture as crowded as this one. But maybe it’s a consideration as they try to scour what’s left on the tree this offseason. There are more pressing needs, but it just seems like we’ve glossed over a position that probably has more questions than first base or righty outfielder. It could be an ongoing storyline this season, and I hope for the team’s sake that second base produces at least an answer or two. View full article

Are the Twins better off if they just run it back? Sweet Lou, Cody the Malcontent, and Ol Gregg go over RosterResource's projected 26-man roster, discuss where the Twins sit after 3 months of no major moves, and answer mailbag questions. They also discuss potential areas of weakness, position battles, and tough decisions the Twins will have to make regardless of any upcoming moves. Cody also doxes himself, Gregg confuses national holidays, and Lou has somewhere else to be. All that and more on Twins Off-Daily! Listen using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twins-off-daily-podcast/id1741266056 Listen using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4tb78XlurcPTYYSsARdbD7 Listen using iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-the-twins-off-daily-podcas-167548600/ Listen using Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/nvclbt0w Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@twinsdaily View full article

I would be shocked if the Canterino starting efforts weren't over

You'll generally see an arm like Prielipp move pretty quickly, but we're talking about about a college arm that was pushing #1 in the draft before injury. For instance, Fangraphs already had his slider as a 70-grade offering before he was drafted. Not all prospects are like that, even high-end college arms. Second, part of the reason that starters are held in the minors is to build up their arms to handle a full-season workload and pitching every 5 days, which they often don't in college. For a guy like Prielipp who might max out at 60 innings on a normal recovery plan next year, given that he hasn't thrown 60 in the previous 4 years combined, it makes a little more sense. It worked with Crochet, but again that's in part because he's one of the guys who immediately had the stuff to make it work. During that draft evaluators had him pegged as the one guy most people were confident could actually move to the majors for a playoff run.

It’s been on many fans’ shopping lists, but it really doesn’t seem like the Twins will be bringing in a left-handed reliever. Maybe one reason is that they already have a candidate with a higher ceiling than most potential targets. Image courtesy of © Gary Cosby Jr. via Imagn Content Services, LLC Even if you knew the name Connor Prielipp a couple years ago, you may have forgotten about him since. The Twins used the 48th overall pick of the 2022 MLB Draft on the southpaw out of Alabama. The Twins were ecstatic to take a chance on Prielipp, who entered the season as a candidate to be the No. 1 overall pick but fell to the Twins in the second round due to an elbow injury. I’ll give you 10 seconds to get your jokes off about the Twins acquiring another guy with bad medicals for a discount. Yes, yes, I know. I remember Tyler Mahle. You don’t forget Tyler Mahle. You know what, I’ll name some myself. Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton, Kenta Maeda, Chris Paddack. Now, let’s get back to business. Prielipp, despite the questions, still had one of the highest ceilings for a pitcher in the draft, and after selecting a low-risk guy like Brooks Lee in the first round, the team probably felt a little more comfortable taking a gamble. Picks flop all the time, so why not take a chance on a potential frontline starter? Well, after throwing two innings in 2023, Prielipp went under the knife again. There were more concerns about his elbow. This time they inserted an internal brace. The internal brace is a newer procedure that addresses the same issues as Tommy John surgery. Now, obviously, Prielipp has missed a lot of time. He threw 13 and two-thirds innings between 2021 and 2023. He’s been labeled with the injury-prone red flag. But it’s worth considering how warranted that label is right now. Prielipp has effectively had one injury that has kept him sidelined for most of the last four years. He had a UCL tear. The surgery didn’t do its job. That’s not really the same as having a string of injuries or chronic soft-tissue issues. It’s one injury that’s taken a long time to recover from, and we’ve gotten pretty good at treating elbows. That’s not to say that the injury isn’t a bad thing. It definitely is. You’d prefer he’d have had one elbow surgery, or—even better—none. But it’s worth reserving a little judgment until he’s actually recovered from his one injury. Prielipp did make his triumphant return to pro ball last summer, and it looked good. We’re limited in what information we can gather from games in the low minors. Here’s some stuff that we do know. He started nine games. He never went over three innings pitched. He never reached 50 pitches. He dominated. He allowed one baserunner across two innings in each of his starts in Rookie ball and Low-A Ft. Myers, striking out nine in four innings. He struck out 32 hitters in 19 1/3 innings (41.6 K%) at High-A Cedar Rapids, with a WHIP under 1.00 and a 3.26 ERA, though he walked 10% of the batters he faced. His DRA- (a stat that controls for factors including defense, park, and opponent quality) was a 58, with 100 being league-average in his seven high-A starts. I know, I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel for this information, but that's all we've got. He embarrassed low-minors hitters. But that doesn’t mean he is ready for the bigs, of course. Unfortunately, we also have limited data on how his pitches looked. We know that in his one start with Ft. Myers, he threw about half fastballs and his slider and changeup about a quarter of the time each. His slider is his calling card, and for the only game we have metrics on, he was throwing it 86 MPH with three inches of glove-side movement and negative two inches of induced vertical break. It’s already MLB-ready, with public evaluations grading it out as a 60- or 70-grade pitch on the 20-80 scale, better known as plus-plus, bordering on elite. Scouts noticed it wasn’t quite as lively in his return, but it was still a great offering, and it might take a little time to get it back, anyway. His four-seam fastball is also nice, and he was throwing it 94-96 MPH in the game we have access to. Scouts have generally said it’s already MLB-ready, but it will never be on the same level as his slider, though it might already be a plus pitch. The changeup was a work in progress in college and will likely continue to be, but it’s already at least usable and sits around 86-87 MPH with an intriguing 16 inches of arm-side break. And here’s the beautiful thing about pitchers: if the stuff plays, it plays. If healthy, Prielipp might not need much time to prove himself. Like many recovering from elbow surgery, his biggest hurdle is probably his control, which was already the weakest part of his profile. But it’s not unreasonable to think that after six weeks or so of minor-league ball in 2025, he could be knocking on the door to the big leagues. There’s some optimism that he could still eventually be a frontend rotation piece. That optimism doubles as an apprehensiveness to move a 24-year-old to the bullpen, even temporarily. However, given that Prielipp has thrown 58 total innings since high school in 2019, spending a year in the bullpen might not be the worst thing for his development. He’s not going to be throwing beaucoup innings, even if he’s healthy and in a rotation. There’s a clear argument to not waste any of those bullets in Double A. That phrase often gets thrown around, used to mean “burn him out before his arm falls off,” but that’s not necessarily the case here. If he’s going to be getting used to throwing again, and the stuff plays in the bigs, why not is the question. Many worry that good arms sent to the pen never come out. But Prielipp is a special case, and we don’t have to look far to find a player who made it work. Garrett Crochet went straight from the draft to the 2020 White Sox bullpen because he was ready for it. He spent all of 2021 in the pen, mainly as a lefty short relief guy. He missed 2022 due to elbow injury, before returning to the pen in 2023. There were questions, as recently as nine months ago, about whether he’d ever start. Now we know how that turned out, as he was a deserving All-Star in 2024 and made 32 starts. Why not give Prielipp a similar chance if he is healthy? He might be destined for the pen, anyway. But he’s also got the ability to be substantially better than internal options Brent Headrick and Kody Funderburk today. There's maybe one remaining free agent I’d prefer as the lefty in the pen over Prielipp, if he’s healthy. I guess that I need to keep adding that disclaimer because it’s the key here. But why not? Even if the Twins make a trade for a lefty option, it’s almost assuredly going to be someone in the Steven Okert mold. Just turn Prielipp loose and see what happens. View full article

I’m almost in agreement here, though Correa’s contract should be 1.33M lower, López, should be 250k lower, and Buxton should be 142857 lower. Those figures include signing bonuses, which have already been paid out but are denoted as evenly spread across the books (8M/6 for Correa, 1M/1 for López, 1M/7 for Buxton). I would assume those aren’t actually counted by the team as a payroll expenditure after the sum has already been paid (the most recent payment was the second half of Correa’s bonus ahead of the 2024 season, and now all are paid off)

As much as I want to give a clear answer, I know that that would be dishonest. My own calculation for Opening Day payroll comes in around 132M, but I shouldn’t pretend to know that that’s the number the Twins also have OR if it’s the calculation they care about.

Some say the Twins’ current payroll is $142. Some say it’s $127. My uncle Lenny says that back in his day, ballplayers paid for a nickel and an opera ticket. In an offseason dominated by payroll discussion, agreeing on a number is probably worthwhile, right? Image courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images On X/Twitter last week, BrooksGate, a popular account that posts a lot of interesting tidbits and stats of questionable legitimacy, tweeted a graphic detailing year-over-year changes between the payrolls of MLB teams, comparing teams’ current payrolls to last year’s. Strikingly, the graphic showed that the Minnesota Twins have cut their payroll this offseason by nearly $27 million from where it stood in 2024. Among the hundreds of people who responded to the post was Jon Becker of FanGraphs, who pointed out that Spotrac, the source of the figures, does not factor in pre-arbitration salaries (i.e., minimum-salary players who fill out the rest of the roster), only counting the guaranteed salaries. Our own Matthew Trueblood also pointed out that the two sets of numbers described different types of data: competitive balance tax totals (CBT; which include penalties for spending above certain thresholds) and 40-man roster payroll, making a comparison foolish. Apples and oranges. Coincidentally, a few hours before these tweets, the Twins Daily Slack channel was trying to answer exactly where the Twins’ payroll figure stood after the team’s 11 arbitration settlements. It’s a pretty important figure for the discussion and narratives this offseason. A difference of a couple of million dollars might be the difference between the Twins adding any outside talent or … no outside talent at all by edict of ownership. And it seems every source that lists a payroll total gives a different number. As a reminder, here’s the information we’ve been working with this offseason. After slashing payroll ahead of the 2024 season for reasons you might personally find justifiable or egregious, depending on your persuasion, Minnesota's Opening Day payroll was somewhere around $130 million. After the 2024 season, one of the first bits of news about the 2025 season was that the team would not be further reducing payroll. So we’ve collectively, as a fanbase, been using $130 million as our rough estimate for what payroll will be next year. The problem for the Twins is that their estimated Opening Day payroll for 2025 was somewhere between $130 and $140 million on the day the season ended. Although they shed the salaries of players like Max Kepler and Carlos Santana, veterans Pablo Lopez, Chris Paddack, Carlos Correa, and Randy Dobnak were each due guaranteed raises in their contracts, and 13 other Twins were due raises in arbitration. There has never been a declarative statement as to what payroll figure the team is looking for, and last week, newly minted General Manager Jeremy Zoll indicated that the Twins do not need to shed salary before Opening Day. However, early-offseason suspicions and subsequent inactivity (I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but the Twins haven’t added an MLB player this offseason) have converged to suggest that they don’t have much room to work with. Now, “they don’t have much room to work with” might be enough for some people, but the most pedantic among us crave a little bit more information. There are estimates of where the Twins payroll sits, which helps us daydream clearer if we know the official number. However, as mentioned, there are several different sources of this information, each providing a slightly different number — sometimes within the same source. So why do these numbers vary from site to site? Well, different people find different calculations valuable and meaningful. For example, competitive balance tax totals are important to some teams but meaningless for a team like the Twins. They don’t spend enough to care about those totals. It’s not worthwhile for a Twins fan to check those. Let’s start with Spotrac, preferred by many for their easy-to-use and aesthetically pleasing user interface. They provide two figures: current payroll allocations ($127,486,190) and projected total allocations ($137,766,190). Neither figure is what we’d typically call an Opening Day payroll. To calculate current payroll allocations, Spotrac first adds up the guaranteed contracts for players signed through at least 2025 (remember this includes Randy Dobnak). This is a total of 18 players now that the Twins have settled with their arbitration-eligible players. They also add in signing bonuses, which total about $2 million owed to Correa, Buxton, and Lopez. These bonuses are given toward the start of the contract (i.e., they’ve already been paid and aren’t a money factor this year) but on these books they are evenly spread across the whole contract for accounting purposes (mostly for CBT purposes, so it really doesn’t matter for the Twins). They also include contract buyouts in this figure, which is $450,000 to Kyle Farmer and Jay Jackson this year, but buyout money is typically counted the year the contract is signed, so that money also shouldn’t count toward next year’s payroll. You can run over to the Twins Daily payroll blueprint tool to see the slight variation after excluding signing bonuses and buyouts. Do you see what I mean when I say this is complicated and not necessarily accurate? The buyout money and signing bonuses are counted in this total, but that’s not a factor in practice. Do you know what this number doesn’t include, though? The rest of the guys on the roster. This estimate accounts for the 18 guaranteed-salary players, but there are 26 players on a team. And one of those 18 is Randy Dobnak, so in reality the Twins would fill out the roster with nine additional minimum-salary players (approximately $800,000 to each). Those nine are not represented in the current payroll allocations figure. If you think that the nine minimum salaried players explains the difference between current and projected payroll allocations, close, but no cigar. The difference between those two numbers is the equivalent of 12.85 minimum-salary players — about four more than you’d need to fill out a roster. Where do those guys come from? Well, players get injured. And when a player is on the injured list, he still gets paid. So if Correa misses a week, he continues to get paid, and a minor leaguer gets called up. Let’s just say it’s Michael Helman. If Correa misses 10 days, the Twins pay both his salary and Helman’s prorated minimum contract salary (about $47,000 for ten days). Those add up during the season, especially for a team as injury-prone as Minnesota. Spotrac assumes they’ll pay the equivalent of about four players’ worth of salary to players filling in for injuries. And that’s where they get the larger $137,766,190 projected total allocations number. It includes the guaranteed money, the rest of the roster, a guess for how much time is lost to injury, and bonuses or buyouts that don’t actually count for this season’s total. It’s a mess. Cot’s Contracts similarly projects year-end payroll. Their calculation uses the equivalent of seven additional players from the minors as injury replacements over the course of a year (i.e., an average of seven players on the injured list throughout the season), raising that total money a bit higher. Cot’s, though, also includes estimates for how much players on the 40-man roster will make while playing in the minors, totaling $2,604,000 in additional pay to account for. Cot’s also includes the signing bonuses (which were paid at least a year ago) in their year-end payroll projection total ($141,970,190). Unlike Spotrac, Cot’s does include an Opening Day payroll figure, which comes in at $134,011,190. This number also starts with the guaranteed contracts, but it actually includes the rest of the roster, fixing that problem. The nine minimum-salary players make up most of the $7,959,000 difference here. However, it still also includes the already-paid signing bonuses, which isn’t helpful. Speaking of unhelpful, Cot’s also has a CBT projection that’s of no use to the Twins, at least until they double their payroll. Moving on! Finally, let’s look at the figures that FanGraphs’ RosterResource's payroll figure: Estimated 2025 Payroll. For the Twins, that number is $140,181,190, not far removed from Cot’s. Two factors can explain the difference. First, FanGraphs, like Spotrac, includes buyouts, so $450,000 for Farmer and Jackson. Second, they factor in a little less time lost to injury—but still around seven players’ worth of time. There’s also CBT stuff at the bottom of the page, but once again that doesn’t matter for the Twins. Don’t look there. It’s not worth anyone’s time. So that was a lot. What do we do with this? Well, first, it’s important to recognize that these books are wonky. There’s more than one way to skin a cat here, and we’re not even sure which number Twins decision-makers use as their own guide. There’s a difference between what payroll is on Opening Day and what it is at the end of the year, and that’s before considering midseason subtractions or additions via trade, waiver claim, or free agency. Given the Twins’ current situation, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Opening Day payroll is what matters most right now. Rumors continue to swirl around a potential sale, and even if these hypothetical new owners, whoever they may be, don’t come down from the heavens ready to open up the pocketbook, that’s not really the current owners’ concern. If the sale is as imminent as we expect, allegedly before Opening Day by some rosy estimates, then Opening Day payroll is what we probably care about. At the very least, we owe it to each other to discuss the team’s payroll on equal terms. If one person cites Spotrac’s $127,486,190 current payroll allocations and another cites Cot’s $141,970,190 year-end projection, you’re not having the same conversation. At 127 anyone would agree there’s immediate room to add at least a little something. At 142 no one is getting their hopes up. The true number that matters here probably lies somewhere in the middle, but closer to 130 than 140. Again, we still don’t know on the outside what the magic limit is, but it’s worthwhile to talk about the same numbers as we argue with each other about what moves should be made. View full article

I didn't realize you were messing with me. My bad

I think you missed the next sentence talking about Donovan Solano, unless he's now a corner outfielder who can play some center and played bad in Colorado. Clearly I'm talking about a useful bench role player who makes around 2M as a free agent, not Randal Grichuk specifically.

Correct—I didn’t mean Grichuk himself; I was just talking about that class of players, trusting that the Twins choose correctly

The Twins appear to have saved money in arbitration this offseason, and although it only came about $2 million under projections, that savings carries extra meaning for a team up to its waist in mud. Image courtesy of © Matt Blewett-Imagn Images After three years of service time (or when just shy of that threshold by a month or so), MLB players can automatically start making more than their standard minimum salary, until they reach free agency after six years of service time. If the team and player cannot come to an agreement on what their salary will be, they can appear before an arbitration panel. By and large, though, the team and arbitration-eligible player can come to some sort of agreement. The Twins had 13 players eligible for arbitration this offseason. That’s half of their roster. Although these players tend to earn less than equally skilled players on guaranteed contracts, the team at least knows how much those guaranteed contracts will cost them. The Twins gladly pay Joe Ryan and Bailey Ober less than they’re paying Chris Paddack, but at least they’ve known for years what Paddack will cost in 2025. For Ryan and Ober, they just learned that last week. Five of the 13 arbitration-eligible player cases were determined early in the offseason. Alex Kirilloff retired, so we don’t have to worry about that. Jorge Alcalá had a team option for 2025 that was exercised, skipping his arbitration eligibility. Justin Topa, Michael Tonkin, and Brock Stewart all agreed to deals on the deadline to tender contracts (i.e., anyone who wasn’t non-tendered by that day has to be paid), in a series of deals that reeked of “Take this offer or find somewhere else to play on your own.” MLB Trade Rumors (MLBTR) provides salary estimates for arbitration-eligible players, and these estimates are generally held as the industry standard for those among us who don’t have access to teams’ internal projections. The deals for Alcalá, Topa, Tonkin, and Stewart combined to come in about $600,000 below the estimates, which is a good start but not abnormal for take-it-or-leave-it early final offers. The other eight contracts were announced by a combination of Darren Wolfson and Dan Hayes on Twitter on Jan. 9, the deadline to agree to terms and avoid having to submit figures for an eventual arbitration hearing. MLBTR's estimates were largely accurate. The site’s biggest underestimation among Twins was Jhoan Durán’s, which was settled at $4.125 million, about $400,000 above their $3.7 million estimate. Overall, though, the site trended toward overestimating Twins salaries, with Ryan, Ober, and Royce Lewis’s final numbers coming in between $600,000 and $800,000 below the projections. In total, the Twins’ arbitration-eligible players (excluding Alcalá, given the player option) earned approximately $2.4 million less than MLBTR foretold. It’s totally possible that this number was right in line with what the Twins’ front office had projected internally, but let’s assume that their projections were close to the $33.3 million total that MLBTR had. In truth, there’s reason to believe that, at least from a spending perspective, the Twins took a more conservative approach and planned around more than that figure, so as not to bite off more than they could chew ahead of 2025’s payroll limitations. Now that these salaries are set, the Twins benefit in two ways. First, there’s cost certainty. They no longer need to fumble around with rough estimates of their current payroll. Public estimates have ranged from $132 to $144 million this offseason as to where the payroll would stand without any talent being traded away. Now, though, they have a number. There is no sliding scale. There’s another easily imagined reality in which the arbitration-eligible players made a collective $5 million more than they did in this reality. They no longer have to guess. No longer having to guess means that they can start making real plans for appropriate payroll. Honestly, there’s a chance that some of the team’s inactivity this offseason is because they were waiting to know how much nearly a third of their current roster, making up about a quarter of their committed salaries, will be paid. If they indeed plan on moving Paddack, for instance, they would be more likely to seek deals to move his entire salary if their projected Opening Day payroll clocked in at $142 million. If the projected Opening Day payroll was $132 million, they would probably be more open to retaining some of his contract, which means sending cash along in a deal but getting a better player back. But until the numbers were finalized, they couldn’t know that. The second benefit is the obvious one: they have about $2.5 million available that they were not projected to. In a typical offseason, that’s a negligible amount. But for a team that still seems to be above the Opening Day payroll people have assumed they are aiming to get to, that goes a long way. Although some may speculate that the Twins are not in a mad dash to reduce payroll, it’s been a safe assumption to expect Opening Day payroll to be around $130 million. After the Twins’ newly settled contracts, their projected Opening Day payroll is about $134 million, according to Cot’s Contracts. That number would have been about $136.5 million using MLTR’s projections. It could have been higher than that, had negotiation not gone the team’s way. Let’s use Paddack yet again. He’s making $7.5 million this year, no matter who he’s playing for or who’s paying him. At this new figure, offloading his entire contract, or even part of it, can be enough to get the Twins under their necessary threshold. If the Twins retained, say, $2 million of his contract in a trade, they’re still in a better financial position than they would have been if they traded his whole contract but owed the MLBTR projections. Suddenly, there’s more breathing room. Let’s say they can still move all of Paddack’s salary, as they always planned to. Well, now, they have $2.4 million more than they had planned. Again, that’s not world-changing money, but if they have one big fish they’re trying to reel in this offseason, an extra couple million dollars might make it possible. Furthermore, Randal Grichuk made $2 million last season. Donovan Solano made the same the year prior, and only signed for $3.5 million with the Mariners on Monday. That money under projections can be the difference between an MLB veteran sitting on the bench over Michael Helman right now (assuming the Twins sign the right two-million-dollar guy, of course). It may not seem like big news, but these figures represent some of the most meaningful news the Twins have gotten or produced this offseason. It’s a low bar, sure, but it means a ton this offseason. View full article

We're back! And no, nothing has happened! Sweet Lou, Comrade Cody, and Ol Gregg are joined by Tom Froemming to talk about the Twins' lack of action this offseason. Will fans show up under new ownership, will the Winter Meltdown feature bingo this year, will Chris Paddack ever be traded, and many more questions are answered this week, to varying degrees of quality. Listen using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twins-off-daily-podcast/id1741266056 Listen using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4tb78XlurcPTYYSsARdbD7 Listen using iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-the-twins-off-daily-podcas-167548600/ Listen using Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/nvclbt0w Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@twinsdaily View full article

Where is Cristian Pache

I'm not one to sit here and gas up Twins. Nearly every list that has come out so far (it's still early) have both Jax and Duran in the top 10 ahead of 2024. Steamer has them both in the top 8. That doesn't mean they'll finish the year as top-10 relievers, but there absolutely are not 6 other relievers in the Central who are better than Jax and Duran. I'll give you Clase, and I'll listen to arguments about Cade Smith.

Listen, I’m not gonna say they’re the best pen, If we can’t understand why their December projections like a bullpen with 2 top 12-15 relievers in baseball, several setup caliber arms, and no abject disasters in their top 8, I think we’ve lost the point. Also other pens will catch up as FAs are added. As for the second point, I’m glad I didn’t write that one. I’d have some ‘splainin to do

I’m fairly confident that they could clear up all of Paddack and more than half of Vázquez. Also keep in mind that teams can send cash in trades to make the money work. Guys like Diaz and Lowe might be it of their budget, but it’s at least mildly feasible

This is an additional wrinkle, but for this discussion I just focused on how FG divvied up the playing time, and they project Lewis to almost exclusively play third base. If you add in the Twins’ noncommittal approach with Lewis’s position, then these ideas carry even more weight because there’s potential playing time at either second or third.