The Great Hambino

Having been down this road before, all I'm going to say is this: I hope you're right!

Yeah, MLB only pressured the A's after three straight years of finishing dead last in payroll. I haven't seen anything that would suggest MLB being proactive in preventing a team from running a low payroll - they'd likely have to actually put out that low of a payroll multiple times before any action took place

I thought they could potentially push his arb eligibility into 2028, but I also don't fully understand the super 2 rules. If they can't then I'm really confused

The short answer is no one. But service time manipulation isn't just about retaining control for an extra year; it can also delay the built-in raises that come with arbitration. I wouldn't put it past the Twins to be trying to push arbitration raises as far into the future as they can, especially if my theory is correct that they're running expenses as low as they can while banking on/hoping for a better structure for them post-CBA

I suppose they have to come up with a reason since they can't explicitly state the actual reason: service time manipulation

But why? What can be developed in AAA that can't be developed in the situation the Twins find themselves in. Can't be cuz the results don't matter. They matter as much in St Paul as they do in Minneapolis right now. Wouldn't it be better to get some immediate feedback on how the changes play in MLB? Instead of guessing/hoping they'll translate to MLB next year? Even if he gets shelled - which, again, who cares if he does, the results don't matter - they can identify which elements might be working better than others, then build off that into next year. And it's not like we're talking about throwing someone with limited experience beyond A ball into the fire. Bradley and Abel have already seen MLB action. Bradley's seen plenty.

I do not understand this idea that the bullpen will be fine next year just because pieces can be found cheaply. You can round out a pen with those types of acquisitions, but you can't build an entire one - including an entire back end of one - from scratch, which is what they are doing. Who is going straight from failed starting prospect or scrap-heap free agent and immediately and reliably filling the role of closer, or even primary setup man? That's what you're counting on happening if you think the Twins can be competitive next year. For those that keep on saying that bullpens can easily be rebuilt on the fly, please provide an example of someone restocking an entire bullpen this way in a year. And no, the bullpen that got traded away at the deadline is not an example of this as it was developed over the course of multiple seasons. And it really didn't turn out to be that good anyway, which is part of the reason why the fire sale took place

Family reunions on my dad's side?

There's a chance that there is someone at Target Field tonight for whom Gasper is failing to OPS their weight. The chances would be higher if the Brewers were in town

I'm pretty sure some season and career figures are getting commingled here 58 PAs with RISP is this year. I've long been searching for a good way to find an easy source for how a player has done driving in runs relative to their opportunities. The best I've found so far in the game log section of BBRef. For any given year, there's an "RBI opportunities" section that shows how many RBI a player has relative to the MLB average given the number of PAs, as well as the number of PAs with a runner on each base, also relative to the MLB average. For our friend Matt Wallner, this year his 27 RBI in 291 PAs is below the league average expectation of 33. However, he's also had definitvely fewer opportunities than the average MLB hitter based on who's been on base for his PAs. PAs with a runner on: First - Second - Third Wallner: 77-48-17 (142 total, 65 RISP) Avg MLB: 87-58-28 (174 total, 86 RISP) In other words, Wallner has had significantly fewer RBI opportunities, and fewer good opportunities, than the average MLB hitter. So if you think Wallner's driving in fewer runs than his OPS would indicate, you're right! If you think Wallner's raw RBI total has been suppressed by relative lack of opportunity, you're also right! Ain't math fun? I wish they took this a step further and presented the number of RBI Wallner would expect to have given the runners he's had on base. Comparing that number to his actual RBI total would really tell us how effective he's been driving in runs. Effectiveness is better measured by a rate or a comparison of actual vs expected than a raw total. It's why we don't give the batting title to the player with the most hits.

I don't like the assumption that we're heading to 4 4-team divisions regardless of how realignment shakes out. That just exacerbates the issue we've experienced with weak champions getting produced by a 3-division setup. I suppose this could be mitigated by re-seeding (it makes no sense that the #1 seed faces one of the top two wild cards while the #2 seed gets either the worst division winner or the worst wild card), but that's getting a little off-topic. It makes for a playoff bracket that's more fair and more reflective of the regular season if they had 2 8-team divisions in each league. Your two division winners get the byes, top 2 wild card teams host the bottom 2. That weak champ from the 4-division setup is now in the wild card mix (or left out entirely) and doesn't get preferential seed treatment by virtue of just happening to be grouped with 3 other weak teams

Here is an article that reports this all starting with Jim Crane playing golf with Joe Mauer, of all people, during the HOF induction weekend in Cooperstown, which was the weekend before the trade deadline and before Falvey had broached Correa on the subject. There's a few interesting tidbits in all of this - How was Mauer a part of this at all? Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but could this mean he's part of one of the limited partner groups? - Not only did Crane go over Falvey's head - he also went over Joe's head directly to Jim. Makes sense considering Joe sure seems like he's in over his head. Feeds into my developing theory that Joe is never actually in charge of the businesses he runs; instead, he's the family human shield they use whenever an asset is floundering (see also: the radio stations he apparently ran into the ground) - Given what has transpired since then, this passage is wild: " But Crane didn’t back off [after the Twins laughed off his initial offer]. He doubled down, framing the deal not as a salary dump, but as a strategic move to make the team more appealing to potential buyers. The Twins, he argued, could better position themselves to sell if they cleared payroll — starting with Correa’s contract." If this is true, the Twins hastily cleared all this payroll for a sale that disappeared in a matter of weeks. Yet another example of there being no plan whatsoever

Hogan Harris My dad still talks about seeing him face Crusher Kowalski at the Armory in 1971

Only came up 350 feet short

No stadium means bidding war for public subsidies development opportunities

This is all divvying up what used to be ESPN's package for the next three years. Fox and TBS have no change until 2028

I'd never want to take away your right to go postal

I don't dislike this

This is disconcerting.

I caught a bit of the Foul Territory podcast that had Dan Hayes talking about the non-sale. Didn't learn much we didn't already know, but Pierzynski did have a fun story about how ol' Carl didn't know any of the players' names. He walked up to him and called him Torii. So ... yeah. The legacy lives on!

I am too, I just don't trust the owners to willingly put a meaningful floor in themselves, which is why I push back against the idea of busting the union to achieve this. It's been a big day for arguing the minutiae within the realm of general agreement around here

You could pool all revenue and divide it completely equally, and that still won't get the budgetball owners to invest in their teams. They'll just pocket even more revenue. Those owners have already shown through their own behavior that increased shared revenue will not automatically find its way to payrolls. The players would have to be fools to trust them to do so in any meaningful capacity That high floor (and yes, accompanying revenue sharing) that the NFL has in place wasn't put there out of the goodness of the owners' hearts. It was the product of tough negotiations; a major concession won by the NFLPA in exchange for the cap.

I guess it depends on how finely you splice those individual factors. More that any one specific player? Yeah, probably More than units like lineup or rotation? I don't think so. I believe a team's talent level is the main driver of a team's success, and a manager's influence is more in the margins. Now when I say marginal, I don't mean to put down or discount that effect. I mean for most teams that aren't either uber talented or the White Sox, the teams hovering near playoff contention, those marginal differences can be the difference in making the playoffs/winning the division/winning it all. Also, managers are cheap relative to players, which means it's an area that a team on a budget can put their dollars to very efficient use. Anyway, this is a lot of arguing about a manager that no one wants to be retained.

You're not getting a floor and cap within $50MM of each other by busting the union. We know this because of the pathetic offer of a $100MM floor with no mechanism for increases that was proposed by MLB in the last round of CBA negotiations The Pirates of the world would fight against that kind of floor almost as aggressively as the players would fight against a cap. Maybe we have different definitions of what "busting" a union means. I read it as complete capitulation by the players

Wasn't trying to single out you specifically. But that statement or similar statements I think are a little more prevalent than you might realize. Just as comments that managers are meaningless are maybe a little more prevalent than I might realize. I think most of us fall on the spectrum somewhere between those two poles. You think managers matter more than I do, but I think (or at least want to think) that we fall in the reasonable section of that spectrum. And it's natural for the extreme opinions we disagree with more strongly to stick out more in our minds.