The Great Hambino

The time has come for the players to accept a salary cap. 80% of the league already treats the luxury tax as a cap as it is, so they might as well get some concessions from the owners (salary floor, shorter arb period, higher minimum salaries, etc) while they're at it.

My favorite character in my favorite baseball movie. He had too many great lines to count. One that doesn't get enough love is "About time, it's 8-0" after Ricky Vaughn drills a Yankee in the back. Denzel robbed him of that Best Supporting Actor Oscar RIP. He made baseball more fun

A third generation owner running a team into the ground ... can you imagine rooting for a team like that? Must be awful

Definitely. Among the many issues plaguing MLB is the jump from draconian market suppression in the player's first six years to a true free market after that. Arbitration attempts to close that gap but does a pretty poor job of it. To bridge the gap, we need a higher minimum salary, shorter arb time period, or both. The owners want more revenue sharing, but the players don't trust them to use that revenue sharing on player salaries (and given the actions of the owners over the years, they shouldn't). A floor is the mechanism that ensures the owners use their revenue sharing on payroll. The other changes to pre-free agency salary structure ensure that the labor market doesnt get out of whack. The arbitration system was developed to allow cheaper teams cost control on their players for the start of their careers. This isn't needed if they get the revenue sharing necessary to fund their rosters ... as long as they actually use it to fund their rosters

I think that's more due to the randomness of a baseball postseason than any indication of overall equity in the sport relative to the NBA. The NFL is certainly its own animal. The Timberwolves are in a situation where they are finding creative ways to not go too far over their cap, or second apron, or whatever it is (I don't have the PhD in economics required to understand the NBA's salary cap rules). They're actually being reined in to keep their roster spending in line with the Lakers and Knicks. Try replacing the team names in that sentence with Twins, Dodgers and Yankees. That sounds like something that's about as likely as me being the Twins' answer at first base

Agreed. A cap, a legitimate floor, and substantial revenue sharing are all needed to fix this. It doesn't work without all three elements, and all three parties - players, big-market owners with their own RSN, and other owners - will have to be willing to work together to get there (at this point, the concerns of the two groups of owners are so divergent that they might as well be different parties from a CBA negotiating perspective). The cap will get most of the headlines in the next round of negotiations, but I think the willingness to agree on a floor will be the biggest barrier to coming to a workable solution

At least no one will have to watch it since no one can watch the games. I hope no one shows Manfred the movie Baseketball. He'd react to that like Cartman reacting to the History Channel

Agreed. The Twins don't exist to cater to the preferences of their players. If Jax wanted to be a starter, he should've performed better when he had the chance. The most likely outcome of moving him to the rotation is that both the rotation and bullpen are made worse. If you're the Rockies or White Sox, sure, give it a whirl. But this is not the kind of move that a team pretending to care about competing should make

I'm a big hall guy. To me, there is no small hall/big hall debate. That debate ended in the 70s when they allowed Frankie Frisch to put all his buddies in. Relative to other eras (especially the 20s and 30s), ballplayers from 1970 on are very underrepresented in the hall. So to me, I was a little surprised to struggle coming up with 10 yes votes from the ballot. I feel like most years I'm trying to decide who to leave off to keep it at 10. I guess the steroid backlog has mostly cleared out by now. I also draw my arbitrary line in the sand on steroids at the Mitchell Report. There is a fair argument to be made that, before then, steroid use wasn't technically cheating (can you break a rule that doesn't exist?) and was even embraced by MLB (chicks do, in fact, dig the long ball). So instead of saying Barry Bonds (for example) doesn't deserve to be in the hall, I say baseball deserves to have Barry Bonds in its hall. It's how I justify supporting Bonds and Clemens and not A-Rod and Manny. Anyway, off my soapbox and on to my list of 8: Ichiro (should be unanimous, but so should like 50+ other guys over the years) Sabathia Wagner Andruw Jones Utley Beltran Buehrle (the goalposts for starting pitchers are going to have to move along with starting pitcher usage) Pettitte (I've really waffled on him over time) Tough omissions: Bobby Abreu (truly borderline for me), Felix Hernandez (lacking the volume of Buehrle/Pettite) Bonus round (veterans/old timers/eras/whatever they call it now): Honestly, all but Garvey and Tommy John. But especially Tiant and Dick Allen. I hope the two Negro Leagues nominees get a fair examination - I know nothing about them, but the career summaries I've read sound really impressive.

They've struggled with these ever since they lost Scott Baker

Said "Yes" to people named Pohlad

The ESPN article on these moves says that part of St Peter's "strategic advisory" role will be helping the Pohlad's with the sale process, so perhaps Falvey will not have to worry about that.

Considering the Vikings have already traded away most of next year's draft (just a first, a fifth, and Cleveland's fifth remain), I'm fine with them letting it ride with what they have. 2025 was always the target for full-go competitiveness post-Kirk anyway Also, if you want to see something truly terrifying, check out the 2025 tab here

I have a dog by way of marriage (stepdog?) named Tippi. She's 50% Vizsla, 50% pit, and 100% idiot. But she's calm and gentle with our 2-year-old, so she's a lovable idiot.

I don't know how to get this data, but I would want to include in the results PAs where the batter put themselves in a 2 strike hole by failing to get a bunt down. It's a failure of process, even if not always a failure in result - though I'd have to imagine results would suffer as well

This Five Guys strategy works great ... in a world of perfect health. The Twins do not live in this world. Setting aside a pair of catchers, you have 11 position players for 8 spots. If you're devoting three of those spots to platoons (let's call them the Six Platooners), then you sure don't have much margin for injuries. If one of the Five Guys goes down, it's safe to assume whomever is getting the call from St Paul won't be trusted to fill their Five Guy role, so one of the Six Platooners (or the other catcher, which opens its own can of worms) have to be able to fulfill it. Roster limits require it. So it's bad news if none of the Six Platooners can handle a Five Guys role. Painting yourself into this corner is how you end up with a short bench, suboptimal bench options, and a team pinch-hitting OPS of .541. Not an ideal result for a team that pinch-hits like it's going out of style. In a sense, the Five Guys position player slots (great name btw Riverbrian) have something else in common with a starting rotation beyond the number of slots: you need at least 7 you trust in the role to really be secure. If you have seven "Five Guys", now you have some roster flexibility in the inevitable event a top hitter has to go on the shelf. So, whomever they have earmarked for a Six Platooners role in Plan A (no injuries) they need to: a]identify who they most trust to fill a Five Guys role, and b]GIVE THEM A CHANCE TO FACE SAME-SIDED PITCHING so they can be prepared when they need to step up into a more prominent role

I do wonder if there's going to be some surprisingly attainable players in free agency with half the league looking at reduced revenue and more teams seeing it coming in the near future. Not the Soto-tier of guys obviously, but some quality mid-tier players I think will be sitting there as spring training opens wondering why their market never materialized the way they thought it would. Could be some bargains to be had

I can say from personal experience that this is 100% accurate. Everything is a blur in the immediate aftermath; it wears on you over time, especially as would-be milestones pass by. All things considered, i think it's amazing he was able to play as well as he did in the early part of the season. So, yeah, I'd tender him. Setting aside everything above, you don't get rid of catchers when you have two viable Major League catchers in your system.

To non-tender AK, I think at least one of these things would need to be true: 1. There is a reliable in-house plan at 1B. Miranda? Larnach? Julien? Lewis? Severino? All potential options, but none are reliable or would require significant offseason work to be considered reliable. Unless Santana or a similar free agent is brought in before the tender deadline (which I don't expect to happen), then I don't think this is true. 2. The space is needed on the 40-man before Rule 5 guys need to be added. Others here know better than me on this subject, but the consensus seems to be that there's plenty of space on the 40-man as is. I don't think this is true. 3. There's no value to be squeezed from AK as a trade piece. The Twins aren't the only franchise that thinks they can fix someone else's broken toys at a discount. I don't think this is true. 4. The cost breaks the budget. Even with the Twins financially tying one arm behind their own backs, $1.8MM doesn't sink the budget. If they had to eat it all by moving on from him later, would that be ideal? No. Would it be cost prohibitive? Also no. So, I don't think this is true. So, I think he should be tendered an offer since there's no pressing reason not to at this time. This doesn't mean that they shouldn't be open to pivoting if things change, or that he should be part of the primary plan at first. But he's still a pretty cheap piece with some maneuverability. If they do lock down a plan at first that doesn't involve him, he can be traded. Even if they can't find a trade for him, his option allows for him to be stashed in the IL (either Injured List or International League) if/when a body is needed at first/DH

What is wrong with you? What kind of person does something like that? By that, I mean being friends with a Yankee fan

BRef says Freeman was 1 for 3 with a double coming into tonight against Cortes, FWIW

I think the graphic showed Ohtani 2-12 against him. Don't know if that makes it a good enough reason, but I guess it's a reason

Baseball is great

Where's his Lebron jersey? It must be in his fourth stepmom's laundry machine

Oh boy. We're talking about a player who over the last 4 years: - Slashed .231/.278/.396/.674 while playing mediocre corner outfield defense - Accumulated negative WAR - Was given up on by three different franchises (Cleveland even had to kick in cash for the right to be the ones to release the empty husk of Pablo Sandoval) - Was getting paid as much as $9MM/year for these accomplishments - Finished 2024 playing in the minors If you're arguing that this was the missing link between the Twins and playoff success ... I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree. That his replacements have stunk does not change the fact that he has also stunk in a much more expensive fashion.