Greggory Masterson

From what I was able to find--yes! Minnesota was using the Golden Gophers name for a couple decades prior to the Black Gophers. It wasn't unusual for Black teams to take a local team name as their own. One of the funniest was the Atlanta Black Crackers, named after the all-white Atlanta Crackers.

Seventy-eight years before the Twins brought a World Championship to Minnesota, and even before the Minneapolis Millers won the 1911 American Association Championship, the Twin Cities boasted a baseball team named National Champions. Image courtesy of Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports (Max Kepler wearing St. Paul Gophers retro jersey in 2019) Black baseball existed separately from white baseball back in the early 1900s, mainly at the regional level. Twin Cities businessman Phil "Daddy" Reid met future Hall of Famer and founder of the first professional league for African-American players, the National Negro League—Rube Foster. The two formed a friendship that led Reid to start his own ball club. This club, however, would not be a regional team, gathering players from around the Twin Cities. Instead, Reid wanted to build a team that could compete with the best teams in the Midwest, so he hired Walter Ball to scout the country to find the best players willing to relocate to Minnesota. Many of these players had recently been released by the Leland Giants of Chicago, a team recently taken over by Rube Foster. Among those players were team captain George Taylor and pitcher Clarence "Dude" Lytle, who led the team to astounding success. Although reports differ, the team played approximately 110 games that year with a winning percentage of around 85%, including a stretch of 36 consecutive wins. The team played any challengers willing to take them on, whether Black or white, including the St. Paul Saints of the American Association. Foster himself—a great pitcher who earned his nickname "Rube" after besting the legendary Rube Waddell in a 1903 exhibition—took the mound for the Gophers in the deciding game of the series against the Saints. Roster rules were a bit laxer in those days (except for the whole not-allowing-Black-players-to-play thing). Foster would return again in 1908 to pitch for the Gophers in a game against the Hibbing Colts, throwing a no-hitter. The team brought in a few notable full-season players, including George "Rat" Johnson (he also went by "Chappie"; please, George, save some good nicknames for the rest of us) and Bill Gatewood, who joined Lytle in the rotation. The team experienced similar levels of success, winning about 75% of their approximate 120 games, though they did lose their season series to the Saints. The Gophers were reaching the peak of their popularity. Teams from around the Midwest were lining up to take their shots at beating the juggernaut of a team—and paying good money to Daddy Reid for the privilege of losing to them, more often than not. The club also drew large crowds at their game, but not just because of their ability. At that time, Minnesota was 0.3% Black, and although the percentage was higher within the Twin Cities, many people had never seen a Black man, let alone a Black ballplayer. Some of these players had parents who were born in slavery. There was a novelty to the game, and although the players were not allowed in "organized baseball," the average person wanted to watch these young men play. In 1909, the team continued to grow, as the Gophers and Foster's Leland Giants took a scouting trip into the South to find adding star brothers "Candy" Jim and "Steel Arm" Johnny Taylor and a three-fingered pitcher named Julius London. Also among those joining the team that year were a spit-baller named Archie Pate, veteran Bill Binga—a defect from the cross-town rival Minneapolis Keystones—and Minnesota legend Bobby Marshall. That year, the St. Paul Colored Gophers, at the pinnacle of their talent and popularity, would take on their greatest challenge yet—the Leland Giants. Since Foster's control of the team began, the Giants had been widely regarded as one of, if not the best, colored baseball teams in the country. Behind Foster on the mound, the team was nigh unbeatable. The series was to be five games, held in St. Paul, with the winner declared as the "Black National Champions," as proposed by Foster. There was no tournament to be played, just the team widely considered the best in the country, squaring off against one of the most popular teams in the area. Notable and respected people from Chicago made the trip by train to see the two talented teams face off. Unfortunately, the Gophers could not use Foster as a ringer for this series. Fortunately, he did not pitch for the Lelands, either. The series went all five games, and the Gophers clinched the series in a nail-biting 3-2 Game Five victory. Foster, always gracious in defeat, was quoted saying, "No man who ever saw the Gophers play would think of classing them world's colored champions or would think the playing ability of the other teams was very weak." The Giants handily won Game 2 and Game 3 by scores of 8-1 and 5-1, but the Gophers' wins came in 10-9, 4-3, and 3-2 games, meaning the Giants outscored the Gophers 26-19. (Of note, the Gophers won Game 1 on a walk-off home run by St. Paul's Bobby Marshall, who would go on to become the NFL's first Black player.) Still, Foster's calling the games "exhibition contests" after the fact was probably a bit too far. Arguably the greatest player to don a Colored Gophers jersey became the team's most prominent critic. Other teams around the country also objected to the Gophers being declared Black National Champions—given that there was no tournament or governing body. Still, such was the state of baseball at the time. Eleven years later, Foster would go on to found the Negro National League, the first step in officially organizing Black baseball. In the meantime, if Major League Baseball was crowning a World Champion every year while preventing Black players from playing, maybe the term had no meaning anyway. The Colored Gophers would play the 1910 season before many of their key contributors moved on. In 1911, the team played under the name Twin Cities Gophers, then the St. Paul Gophers in 1913, and the Minneapolis Gophers in 1914 and 1916. Daddy Reid died of a heart attack in 1912, combined with the difficulty keeping young men in the Twin Cities, opposed to other, more favorable, US cities. The organized Negro Leagues were beginning, but an official team never laid roots in Minnesota. Between the 1920s and 1950s, when the Negro Leagues ceased to exist, Black teams called the Gophers popped up in the Twin Cities from time to time, though none as successful or long-lasting as Daddy Reid's club. Still, notable players would come to the Twin Cities to play against the Gophers, such as Ted "Double-Duty" Radcliffe in 1942, who earned his nickname by pitching in one game of a doubleheader and catching the other. Like many similar teams at the time, the Colored Gophers ended with a whimper, but they were instrumental in furthering the game. They brought Black baseball players from around the country to build a talented and entertaining team in Minnesota. Their existence was intimately tied to one of the most significant figures in baseball history, the Godfather of the Negro Leagues, Rube Foster. One of the biggest plays in their history was courtesy of the first Black player in the NFL, Bobby Marshall. And they were champions. View full article

I’m not terribly excited about Celestino’s 2023 prospects, but I’ll gladly take a bet that he will play outfield for the Twins this year. Name your price!

Some matches are made in heaven. Others are made at One Twins Way. Image courtesy of Nick Wosika-USA TODAY Sports When Michael A. Taylor signed with the Twins in January, the defensive outlook on the outfield entered the absurd territory. Taylor is a Gold Glove centerfielder joining an outfield that already features two Gold Glove outfielders in Byron Buxton and Joey Gallo. The three occupy the top three spots in Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) since 2020 among outfielders. Max Kepler, a great fielder in his own right (22nd in DRS), is slated to get most of the time in the right field. He joins Buxton and Taylor in the top 9 in Outs Above Average since 2020 (OAA; 8th, 9th, and 6th, respectively). If defensive metrics aren't your thing—they're far from perfect—do this mental exercise. Close your eyes and think of a defensive player that you would rather have at each position. (No, you can't say "Juan Soto," despite his being a Gold Glove finalist in 2022; be honest). The list for each is probably relatively short. To be in that type of position at all three spots is special. Because of the presence of four elite defenders, the Twins will be able to consistently mix and match to put a quality outfield behind their pitchers every day. All four players mentioned above can play serviceable-to-Gold-Glove centerfield. Gallo has won a Gold Glove in both corner positions. Taylor has left and right field experience as a role player in Washington. You can then add to that group reserve outfielders Nick Gordon and Trevor Larnach, who have been solid outfielders early in their careers, and Gilberto Celestino at Triple-A, who has the tools to be a good outfielder himself. All listed names except Larnach can provide centerfield defense for the team. If you need more convincing, check out Ted's case for the Minnesota outfield being the best in baseball in 2023 and Theo's discussion on the centerfield depth. I'm not here to make those cases. Instead, I want to make the case that bringing Taylor in to complete an elite outfield defense is a perfect fit for the current roster. Baseball teams, more than teams in almost all other sports, can be built by acquiring the best talent, regardless of fit, given the independence of baseball as a sport. As your uncle or drinking buddy has probably told you at least once, "There's only one ball in the NBA." Baseball doesn't fall victim to that issue. Joey Gallo, for example, was signed this offseason because the front office believed they could get value out of him; roster space be damned. However, not all player acquisitions are based on taking the greatest talent. No team can survive throwing seven left-handed first basemen out into the field, no matter how well they hit the ball. These additions can be need-based complementary, as they depend on the team's current state, altering it to be better. Carlos Correa's signing may fall under the Sign as Much Talent as Possible scheme, but it was also need-based, as it filled a gaping hole at shortstop. The Christian Vazquez signing also falls into the need-based category, as the team lacked a player they felt comfortable relying on for 95 starts at catcher in 2023. Both players are talented but more valuable on a team like the Twins, which had a pressing need at each position. Not all complementary acquisitions are based on need or upgrading at a position, though. Some are more context complementary. Take, for example, the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field. Big bats and speedy outfielders complement the playing environment in Denver, so finding a player who checks those boxes can be considered a complementary addition because their value to the team goes beyond their true talent. The same idea can apply to personnel already on the team, such as the popular idea early this offseason of finding a left-handed catcher to pair with Ryan Jeffers. Andrelton Simmons is not very useful if there aren't a lot of balls hit in the infield. In that vein, compiling a squad of elite defensive outfielders compliments the current pitching staff quite well. The Twins do not have a groundball pitching staff. Only two pitchers—Jhoan Duran and Jorge Lopez—qualify as groundball pitchers (greater than 44% groundball percentage, per FanGraphs). Among the 13 pitchers slated to make the Opening Day roster, only five had a fly ball percentage (FB%) lower than average (35%), with Pablo Lopez (33%) being the only starter below 35%. Joe Ryan (54%), Bailey Ober (51%), and Tyler Mahle (48%) each had a sky-high (no pun intended) 2022 FB% in the rotation—higher than the Twin's all-time starting pitcher leader in the statistic, Kevin Slowey (min. 150 IP). Caleb Thielbar (47%) and everybody's favorite fly-ball-giver-upper Emilio Pagan (40%) paced the bullpen in allowing shots into the outfield. The Twins ranked 14th in FB% in 2022 at 37.5%. Extrapolating last year's stats onto Steamer projections for innings thrown in 2023, the pitching staff would have a FB% of 39.3, a rate just below Michael Pineda's career rate with the Twins (39.5%). That 39.3% would rank 9th among teams in 2022. More projected innings from Ober and Mahle would explain the increase, among other minor personnel changes. Will the Twins lead the league in 2023 FB%? Probably not, but they're likely to give up more than the average staff. That fact makes the Taylor trade (and, to a lesser extent, the Gallo signing) more exciting. Elite outfield defense is only beneficial if balls are hit to them at an above-average rate. If the team gives up fly balls at the same rate as Michael Pineda, the outfield will have plenty of balls to track down. Free agent bullpen arms like Matt Wisler (57%) or Matt Moore (39.4%) may even look more appetizing. This newly-constructed outfield helps the Twins as much or more than it would help any team. Although many fans expected the complementary fourth outfielder piece to be a righty with some thump, the Twins zagged to ensure that their outfield defense would be good-to-elite, no matter which of their top 7 outfielders took the field each day. Their fly-ball-happy pitchers will love them for that. Not even raindrops stand a chance. As a bonus bit of fun, can you imagine this zany outfield alignment suggested by Mike Petriello on Twitter featuring Buxton and Taylor roaming the outfield with their elite range and former third baseman Joey Gallo in short right against an extreme-pull lefty? Too bad the Twins have two of the usual suspects playing for them right now. View full article

I don't have any fun tips, but I will say you should make sure not to leave early. I did that in 2011 and the Brewers made a big comeback. I can no longer consider myself a true baseball fan after that.

Miranda had put on weight in the minors, which likely contributed to his power, but the approach change also played a huge factor, so I’m not sure how much of each led to his development. I also haven’t seen what he looks like now, nor do we really know if it was enough weight loss to noticeably sap his power. When he gets moved to first or DH in the next year or two, if the bulk is needed, he can do it then. He likely only has a couple of years left before he’s pushed out of third, regardless of his defensive chops. So I’d call him the third baseman of now.

That was actually the most frustrating part. He wasn't missing extended bouts, he was in the lineup almost every day, and it was clear that he was going through something--with no warning as to when he would need a day off. Because of this lack of warning, far too many fans started seeing it as an incompetent handling of his status or there being no plan at all, at it wasn't warranted. If I were ever a GM or something like that, I would never say anything public so that I didn't open my big yapper and say something I shouldn't, so I guess this FO is more transparent than I would ever be.

There was very little information given early in the season. The Rocco quote in question was given July 14th, which, to my recollection, was the first time they pulled back the curtain, over 2 months since the original scare. In the meantime, the club rarely if ever gave updates on his status, treatment, or expectations, which is what has fans so frustrated (beyond the fact that fans weren’t able to watch Buxton, which is quite the treat).

I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure that it would make any difference. Whether or not they say "It's our fault," "We were bitten by an uncontrollable injury bug" or anything in-between, they still should be judged by their process and results. Latching onto the contrived things they say to the public is just noise. One strange finding that's relevant to this conversation is that leaders who apologize for their mistakes are actually viewed as less competent on average for the same type of mistake, as opposed to leaders who don't apologize or don't even acknowledge their mistakes at all. I, personally, would love a completely transparent view and active feedback and self-assessment being communicated, like you suggested here, but even if it did happen, I think the reaction would be worse than you would expect. How much the fans' reaction should really matter is debatable, but it's still worth considering.

I do want to be clear, referencing object permanence wasn’t a dig. It was an example of how brains develop. I was hoping no one ended up taking it that way. The aim of this article was to challenge the tendency to latch onto public statements and whatnot and see them as representative and meaningful, as opposed to what we can actually see (transactions, results), so I think we’re on the same page here.

$500 may be too low for the amount of grief the shrink would have to sort through

I think most have some sport psychology presence. Many times they won’t be listed on the directory because they’re a consultant or a private firm. Bringing someone in from outside the org helps players, because they’re more open with people from outside the team.

Our brains play tricks on us. One is forgetting things exist when we don't see them. Image courtesy of © Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports The human brain is fantastic, but it doesn't have the power to consider everything. For example, before you read this sentence, you ignored that you could see your nose. Your mind had been ignoring that because it's not essential. Cognitive psychologists refer to our brains' shortcuts as heuristics or cognitive biases. There's nothing wrong with them, but they're important to remember. They play a part in the way we watch sports. There are popular shortcuts that many people know about, such as anchoring, where we tend to base our opinions on something more in a first impression than information we learn later. I won't name names, but some schmucks may still think Miguel Sanó could be an MVP based solely on his 2015 rookie campaign. Confirmation bias leads us to latch on to evidence that supports our preconceived notions over evidence against them. Perhaps another person supports their disdain for Miguel Sanó because of his many strikeouts, ignoring his 500-foot moonshots. If this stuff interests you, check out this very approachable list of a few dozen different biases and heuristics). There's a well-known bias that explains what I'm going to discuss, so I'll dip into developmental psychology for this discussion. Two episodes from the last year or so stand out to me when I think about how our brains consume sports, not so much because of what happened, but because of people's reactions. 1. After a disappointing 73-89 2021 season, owner Jim Pohlad gave the front office an A+ grade. 2. During the 2022 season, the Twins were not completely transparent about Byron Buxton 's schedule as he worked through knee pain. In both episodes, fans and media were in the streets wailing and gnashing their teeth. Both instances were frustrating, but were they worth the consternation they received? One of the points in an infant's growth that developmental psychologists have identified is the development of object permanence. If you've ever played peek-a-boo with an infant, you will have seen it in action. When the adult's face hides behind the hands, then reappears, the infant gets excited because, before the face reappears, they didn't think it existed anymore. Infants struggle to understand that things they don't see can still exist. It is a bit wild to think about. Sometimes I'm, as an adult, convinced that I don't own buffalo sauce until my wife points out the bottle in the fridge and the bottle next to it from the last time I didn't think we had any. But enough about buffalo sauce, how does object permanence pertain to what I'm talking about here? In the first example, many fans took Jim's comments to mean that he genuinely had no issues with how the season went and was perfectly pleased. Because this was, for the most part, the amount of information fans had to go off of, it seemed like his complete thoughts on the topic. We, as fans, are not privy to the conversations behind closed doors between an owner and upper management of the team. Heck, others in baseball operations aren't made aware of every conversation. We can forget that. Instead, we latch on to the soundbite and forget that the group is constantly communicating for the other 364 days a year, working toward their shared goals. Because we don't see it, though, it doesn't exist. Please don't read this as me saying that there shouldn't be criticism of the group. We sometimes pay too much attention to the tiny bits of interaction with which we are privileged. The second example, regarding Bryon's knee, is a bit more egregious. Following his knee flair-up in Boston last April, his presence in the lineup was a bit scattershot, which was obviously frustrating for fans—if for no other reason than that fans want to see the best players play. However, there was a common attitude that Byron's seemingly haphazard presence in the lineup was evidence that there was "no plan" for him to play. Why? Because the team did not make any statement on his status on a day-to-day basis. In reality, the team was monitoring his knee and its pain and range of motion daily—adjusting whenever needed. It makes sense that no team personnel would make an official statement regarding his expectations because the situation was developing. This lack of information led some fans to see the handling as incompetent, and they believed that the team lacked a plan for getting him back out there. Instead, behind the scenes, Buxton spent hours every day working on getting his body ready to compete. His situation was fluid, and the team was adapting to new information daily. But we, as fans, had no explicit information telling us this, so instead, because we couldn't see it, our brains told us that nothing was happening. Perhaps there's an argument that teams should be more forthcoming with information so that fans can make more informed reactions. Still, we would have blind spots that our brains would fill in. It's important to remember that pro sports are filled with professionals working full-time jobs. The people on the other side of the glass spend their entire days making decisions about the team that we watch for four hours a day with a rain delay. They want to win more than you want them to (with minimal exceptions). If we fall into the trap of believing that what we see in press conferences or public statements is the entirety of the situation, our opinions can become relatively uninformed. Some people may be incompetent at their jobs and worthy of criticism, but that criticism should be based on what we can observe rather than the gaps our brains fill in. Remember that even if we don't see it, things are happening. View full article

An examination of the Twins roster in Derek Falvey's seventh year reveals four fundamental philosophies the organization has embraced. In our last chapter, we look at the organization's trend of trades for players with multiple years of team control. Image courtesy of © Nick Wosika-USA TODAY Sports As opposed to their approach to free agency, the Twins have shown more flexibility in trading for players on longer deals, especially pitchers. Some of these "longer deals" are arbitration years, again mitigating risk, but Kenta Maeda had four years remaining on his deal (though it was an incentive-laden deal), and Sonny Gray had at least a buyout for 2023 if he broke down or didn't perform. It appears that the team vastly prefers making trades for players with team control, targeting those players over one-year or half-year rentals, which can explain some inaction on the trade market, especially around the trade deadline. The table below excludes some trades that were for very marginal players (including the most recent trade for six years of A.J. Alexy ) or players traded for cash, but I still kept Ildemaro Vargas in the table because I like typing his name. As can be seen, very few of their trades have been for players in the final year of their contract. Michael Fulmer and Sergio Romo were deadline deals in which the Twins gave up marginal prospects, and the Twins signed Romo to a contract that offseason (and still could do the same with Fulmer this year). Jaime Garcia was hilariously flipped a week after he was acquired. Sandy Leon was a minor league veteran traded for another minor league veteran. Gary Sanchez was acquired to fill a hole at catcher, but also to offset the contract dump that sent Josh Donaldson to the Yankees, and he came to Minnesota with Gio Urshela, who had two years of control. Other than those four deals that cost the Twins very little, every other trade for an MLB player brought back players with multiple years of team control. These types of deals are much more palatable to the team and are clearly their priority when trading for major league assets. They seem to not value a single year of team control as valuable enough to give up any of their top prospects, or most recently, Luis Arraez . As a bonus, the years under team control, whether through arbitration or contracts signed with their former teams, are often quite team-friendly. Similarly, they work to sign current players to team-friendly contracts, though those are rarer, having only happened six times. Three of the current holdovers from Terry Ryan's time are only on the team because of extensions signed by the current brass. In 2019, Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco signed five-year contracts with team options. Even if they did not work out, the total money devoted to the two was a low risk. The third holdover on an extension is Byron Buxton, who also signed a team-friendly deal at $15 million guaranteed over six years. Most recently, the team signed Chris Paddack to a three-year extension for $12.5 million , hoping that he rebounds well from his second Tommy John surgery, another low-risk move given the money. The other two extensions look, in order, rough and laughable. Miguel Sano signed a three-year extension after his huge 2019 campaign with an option for 2023 that was declined. Randy Dobnak, who signed a five-year, $9 million extension with two team options. Much has been made about the move, though with an average of under $2 million per year, who cares? So that's it. That's how the Twins have chosen to construct their rosters since 2017. It's fairly straightforward. Develop a team of young, cost-controlled talent, target veterans to when needed, trade for players with multiple years of team control, and fill in the rest of the holes with one-year deals, except in very specific circumstances. This approach leaves a good deal of flexibility in both monetary and prospect capital. However, it still has to work, and those assets need to be spent effectively. Seven years in, the group has a team and farm system completely of their own construction. They spent seven years creating space to take a big plunge, and now it's happened with Carlos Correa. Going forward, the club’s performance will be entirely dependent on moves made by the current regime. Does anything stand out to you after having seen these transactions laid out? How do you feel about the way that Falvey and Levine have built this team? View full article

Waiver claim from Seattle. I didn’t write much about waiver claims, but they have gotten a number of solid players that way, most predominantly Cron and Wisler, off the top of my head.

Cron was actually a waiver-wire pickup. Going through all of the transactions makes you remember a lot of things that you forgot, like that Chris Giminez signed a MiLB contract before the 2017 season, never played a minor league game and caught 59 for the Twins, signed with the Cubs in the offseason, then was traded back to the Twins at the waiver trade deadline.

I've seen a fair deal of clamoring for Gordon to hit leadoff, so I wanted to throw his information out there. He's a free-swinger who doesn't walk much, though he is fast he sees the fewest pitches on the team (13th both past and projected), and his OBP is low (11th projected, 10th 2021-2022). His speed is second in projection to Buxton, but middle of the road between 2021/2022, because he was not a good baserunner last year. This is all with the caveat that, even if the Twins did choose their lineup based on an algorithm, it would be much more intense than a silly rank-ordering system like I did here. Just wanted to share what Gordon looked like in this exercise.

An examination of the Twins roster in Derek Falvey's seventh year reveals four fundamental philosophies the organization has embraced. Today we look at the organization's obsession with one-year contracts. Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports This is where the group leaves the biggest footprint. In the Falvey-Levine era, most of the veteran fill-ins discussed in Part 2 have come in the form of one-year contracts, or contracts with vesting, team, or mutual options for the second year. Based on my research, the breakdown in the length of free agent contracts can be seen below, prior to the second Correa signing, sorted from most recent to least recent, again color-coded by position. One-year contracts are something of a default option for most clubs. No-harm-no-foul, small commitments have a short-term risk. However, this club has shown a special proclivity for the one-year deal. This pattern emphasizes the importance of the farm system producing fruit in this organization. If the decision-makers refuse to find longer-term pieces in free agency, they need to be sure that their internal options are enough to win more games than they lose. They have made a few longer-term commitments, but those situations were special exceptions, such as shoring up the catching position with Jason Castro in 2017 and Christian Vazquez in 2022. Carlos Correa's three-year deal was a one-year deal with insurance, should he suffer a significant injury or forget how to play baseball, a risk the club was willing to take given his talent and clubhouse presence. Although the Josh Donaldson contract does not reflect favorably on them in hindsight, like with Correa, they saw his off-field presence to be valuable (i.e., “He’ll bring intensity”) regardless of his performance, which was expected to be high as well. As can be seen in the table, they do often try to get a bit of extra value out of these one-year deals—especially for bounceback candidates—in the form of options. Most recently, in 2022, they added team options for the Dylan Bundy and Chris Archer signings. If either of them had regained their past form, the team could have brought them back for about $10MM each, The options, though, however, have rarely been exercised, suggesting more duds than bouncebacks. The only option exercised by the team was for the second year of Nelson Cruz ’s 2019 contract. The Cruz signing has been the best in the Falvey-Levine era, netting 6.3 fWAR for about $18.5 million over his first, two-year deal. Exercising that option was a no-brainer. The majority of those moves have not paid off anywhere close to as well as the Cruz signing. A few times each offseason, they make attempts at players on multi-year deals. Before Donaldson and Correa twice, those attempts have not borne fruit. However, their steadfast adherence to their strategy generally prohibits them from the biggest move. As with many of the one-year deals, the Twins' signings of Donaldson and Correa were due in large part to other clubs' wariness over injury concerns. They instead made their interest known and provided a lower offer as a fallback. They attempted the same to no avail, for instance, with Carlos Rodon, Zack Wheeler , and Yu Darvish. Those types of moves, though, would largely prohibit future moves of a similar magnitude. Without the Donaldson trade, they likely would not have been able to sign Correa the first time around. It is possible that spending more money to land Wheeler would have precluded them from future flexibility, so they likely see value in never overextending themselves, especially on pitchers. For this reason, it’s imperative that the Correa signing pays off, because they likely will not have the ability to sign even another Donaldson-like contract in the near future. Given that the chips have been pushed in on a player like Correa, I feel pretty good about the odds, but all that needs to happen is the spontaneous combustion of an ankle to sink the ship. What are your thoughts on the one-year approach with specific exceptions? View full article

Good eye—this is just the 40 man roster. Martin hasn’t been added yet. In a couple days I’ll be going over their trade history on the Major League side. Cave isn’t discussed because he was traded for as a MiLB player at the time of the trade.