Woof Bronzer

It's in the same Tribune article. $200m for rev share alone. Assuming there's TV money, radio, advertising, etc on top of it. $210m in revenue is almost certainly light. I appreciate the work you've done on the costs but the truth is it's just a guess, we have no idea. If teams like the Pirates and Twins want to cry poverty there's a simple solution: open up the books. What do they have to hide? This results in each team taking in 3.3 per cent of the total—an estimated $110 million USD, if not more. Teams also receive a share of national revenues, totalling around $90 million USD per team.

Is this actually a thing? The Twins put time and effort into manipulating defensive stats? For what purpose?

If it's that easy to turn someone into a good defensive 1B, why has Falvey literally never developed a MLB 1B? If it's that easy to turn someone into a good defensive 1B then the Bell move is extra terrible. The Twins should just put Wallner or Larnach or any of their 17 outfielders there and save the $7m for bullpen help. Or put one of the kids there to give them MLB at bats.

You're right, I misstated the facts. The article clearly says the Pirates were able to cover payroll alone with the gate. But the article also says this does not include revenue sharing and tv deals. They get at least $210m in revenue share not to mention tv or advertising or anything else. So even by your $171m expenses math (which is a guess, no one knows) the Pirates have enough revenue in this area to be profitable as well. Based on this I think it's accurate to say the Pirates are quite profitable.

Nostalgia is a powerful drug!

Sure, but the short term 1B issue is not the difference between this team competing in 2026 or not. They could put Juan Soto there and he's not turning this into a playoff team. Paying a washed up vet on a 1 year deal and hope he bumps us from 65 wins to 66 is pointless.

I think you misread me. I don't think they should be deluding themselves into competing, because this is a bad roster that keeps showing us they aren't good enough. I want the FO to be honest about the roster and commit to a rebuild that will start us on the path to being actually, truly competitive in a couple years.

If you are trying to compete, spending $10m - maybe half your free agent budget - on a 1 WAR player is as terrible as spending $7m on a 0.6 WAR player. In order to compete the Twins need to find serious value. Signing Bell or Arraez is nibbling at the edges, an approach that led to a disastrous 2024 and an embarrassing 2025. I'll keep saying it. In order to compete the Twins need to add 25+ wins to this roster. Guys like Bell and Arraez don't do that.

The comparison isn't weak grounder to 2nd (the batter isn't trying to ground out) vs K, it's putting the ball in play vs K. If you put the ball in play you have about a 30% chance (BABIP) of avoiding an out - some of those weak grounders will squeak through. If you strike out you have about a .01% chance of avoiding an out. Hitters are about 10x more likely to get a hit on a ball in play than GIDP. Not doing something to avoid the much rarer bad outcome, and thus sacrificing the much more common good outcome, is a poor strategy. If the goal is to avoid outs - and I agree that it is - putting the ball in play is a much, much better strategy.

Play the kids. Build toward something better. Do something different.

Ah yes, as opposed to the much more mature way of looking at the situation by constructing straw men (nobody has ever said it's some easy magic fix; nobody has ever said Falvey loves losing) and insulting those who disagree with you. Thanks for being the adult, great job!

I don't love WAR either and don't like using WAR as the be all end all, which I admit I am doing a bit here. But it's a reasonable shorthand for position players and I'm not seeing anything in Bell's numbers to indicate WAR is underselling his talents. But if WAR is an outlier and his other analytics point to him being an above average player, by all means, share the data. In this instance I'd prefer to be wrong!

Unfortunately, the Twins plan is to find an additional 25 wins from last year's roster, so it's the ceiling that needs to be raised, not the floor, and wasting precious resources on a washed up AAAA player most definitely doesn't do that.

durable middle-of-the-order bat This is an interesting way to describe a player who has been sub-replacement level over the past 3 years.

Yeah I'm not a fan of Clemens at all, he's a utility player at best but some here are desperate to turn him into a legitimate talent. Serious "contenders" do not platoon replacement level players like Bell/Clemens at a premium offensive position.

Bell was a 0.4 WAR player in 25, -0.6WAR in 24, and -0.1 WAR in 23. I am using 3 bad years to reject a player. Is that enough?

There are 3 ways to add wins: internally, trades, and FA. If they are aren't finding those wins through FA, they have to either use current talent (reminder that it's a 57 win roster) or trades (reminder that Derek Falvey is still employed). So...do you think we can gain 25 wins through current 40 man roster improvements/young guys and trades?

If I am an MLB GM and I allow one good month to cause me to overpay for an average player than I am not going to have a job for very long. Isn't that what the whole sabermetrics movement is supposed to be about? Data driven decision making?

This is the kind of move that a mid market team absolutely cannot make and be seriously competitive. You don't pay $7m for a replacement level player. You play a replacement level player you already have on your payroll. If the Twins truly want to compete, they have to find about 25 wins from the team they ended 2025 with. Spending maybe half of your free agent budget to buy 0 wins on a 1 year rental is a really, really poor decision. Reason #12,523 why the 2026 Twins will not compete for anything other than 4th place in the Central.

Bad news, April counts as much as September.

At what point does "incredibly lengthy slump" just become "he is who he is?" At this point it seems more likely, unfortunately, that the incredible start to his career was the anomaly, not the slump.

Let me guess...trade all of our bad players for some really good players?

Oh for sure I'm not saying my opinion is right, who the heck knows who is right? I'm just saying there seems to be an assumption with these articles that trying to contend is obviously the best approach. This piece takes that for granted and doesn't even ask the question "should we be active in free agency at all?"

I don't know, I'd say a 57 win team would indicate a "broken" team.... This is an odd piece. I think most fans understand that the Twins don't shop in the top tier. I guess my issue with the piece is basically condescending to fans that the Pohalds are doing the only viable strategy for this team and we must understand that we cannot have nice things, it is and shall always be. Um, no? The Pohlads choose to act this way. It's bad for the Twins and bad for the Pohlads' bottom line. I refuse to buy into this fatalism that MN sports fans have drilled into them. No. It doesn't have to be this way. Adding $30 mil to the payroll "out of the Pohlads' own pocket" is the equivalent to $500 for the median American net worth. I bet the majority of TDers (with the means) would chip this in to help the team compete. Stop making excuses for the Pohlads! There is no one way to run a team; they do what they do by choice, and they are bad at it. It's quite simple. A lot of TD writers have settled on "build on the core" as the one true right thing to do. Many of us do not agree with that, because this team simply doesn't have enough talent. I don't want them to sign any pricey free agents at all. I do not want them to pretend to compete. Play the kids. Build toward something better. For the love of pete do something different. The Twins have done this "same old offseason" thing the past 2 years and both seasons ended in abject failure. Doing the same thing again and expecting different results with this talent-deficient roster is lunacy.

For sure, player development could tack on a couple more wins. But your post is sort of my point - the ceiling for this roster required not only significantly more talent and payroll, but a lot of stars aligning and things working out. You didn't mention the fact that the rest of the Central was the worst division in the history of baseball that year. Sure, everything could click, the guys who had career years last year might repeat them, the guys who had bad years will have career years, the team will be as healthy as they were in 25, the young guys will come up and be stars...sure, it could happen. And the team might win 80 games.