Steve Lein

To be honest, I'm not trading Lee in a package for Luzardo. Off the top of my head, the only pitcher at this point I would move him for is Paul Skenes, which is not a thing that would happen. I get the idea, but I also am not doing something like this. And frankly, I can see a situation where Lee moves Julien off a position. He would be an decent upgrade defensively at second base. Then there is the idea that instead of needing to make someone like Farmer, Castro, or Martin a full-time player in the case of an injury, I'd much rather have Lee available for that.

I think, if something like this were to happen where there is no way he can be left off, it's Julien becoming a full-time-ish DH and Lee slots in at second base.

I don't disagree 😅

I'm going to jump in here and note that this was a change made in editing... so not my term🤣 However, I'm not going to argue that it doesn't work, because it does. Latin to demonstrate something serves dual purposes. e.g.: along with, or plus. Lets get back to discussing Lee, now! I actually wanted to make a comparison to Ripken on this front. Lee very much gives me that kind of a vibe for his type at that shortstop position.

The penultimate prospect on Twins Daily’s 2024 Top Prospects countdown is a player you should see plenty of with the major-league team during the coming season. While he is no longer atop this board, that is no fault of switch-hitting shortstop Brooks Lee. Brooks Lee was, by general acclaim, one of the best hitters available in the 2022 MLB Draft, after spending three years playing for his dad at Cal Poly. The Twins were ecstatic to have him fall to them at eighth overall, and just two years later, he is primed for his debut at Target Field. Age: 22 (DOB: 02/14/2001 – Happy Early Birthday, Brooks!) 2023 Stats (AA/AAA): 125 G, 567 PA, .275/.347/.461, 39 2B, 3 3B, 16 HR, 84 RBI, 7 SB, 9.9% BB, 16.0% K ETA: 2024 2023 Ranking: 1 National Top 100 Rankings: BA: 13 | MLB: 18 | ATH: 31 | BP: 16 What’s To Like Like many of the prospects who rate this highly on team and national lists, Lee had been on the radar of professional scouts since his early teens. He was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the 35th round coming out of high school, and the only reason he wasn’t taken much, much higher than that (i.e.: the first round), was because of his steadfast commitment to play in college for his dad, Larry Lee, in San Luis Obispo, CA. You would be right to assume that growing up with a dad-cum-coach put Lee on a developmental trajectory few players anywhere are able to match. He not only developed the requisite physical attributes for stardom, but came to understand the game (on a team and a personal level) much deeper than your typical prospect. While he may hold some bias, take it from Larry: “That’s what the great players have. They have that ability to know where they’re supposed to be and know what the pitcher is trying to do," Larry said. "It’s pretty cool to listen to him. He talks like he’s a 20-year big-league veteran. When it comes to baseball, he’s usually the smartest guy in the room; that’s including coaches. I would hire him right now, if it was possible.” Beyond those intangibles, there’s also those physical attributes, and the main one I’m going to point out is that Lee is also a switch-hitter. While they are few and far between these days, Twins fans had been watching a pretty good one for a while now, in Jorge Polanco. While I don’t think Polanco is a perfect comparison to Lee (I’d like to think there is more Mauer than Polanco to the new guy), I do think that’s the type of floor we’re looking at. Lee is capable of hitting a bunch of doubles (Lee finished second in the Texas League with 31 on the season last year, and played 41 fewer games at the level than the guy who hit 33), 20-homer power, and good BABIP from either side of the plate. If you are into local Minnesota ties for your favorite players as well, Lee spent the summer of 2020 playing in the Northwoods League, for the Willmar Stingers. He batted .345/.393./.473 there as a 19-year-old, before breaking out in a big way for his dad’s team the following collegiate season. What’s Left to Work On Lee spent most of his 2023 season with the Wichita Wind Surge, earning a callup to the St. Paul Saints at the beginning of August. In Double A, Lee hit .292/.365/.476 in 87 games, before finishing with a .237/.304/.428 line in 38 games at Triple A. He picked up some power momentum in the final month of the season with St. Paul, slugging .523 in September, but the Twins will want to see that overall line rise quite a bit in a league where the average OPS was nearly .800. The 2023 season also saw Lee struggle a bit more against left-handed pitching than he has probably been used to. He had an .860 OPS as a lefty, versus .603 as a righty. I’ll point out that fewer than 20 percent of his plate appearances came against lefthanders, so perhaps this can just be chalked up to minimal opportunity. But it is something he will want to improve upon. In limited time the year before, his splits favored batting from the right side (.818 OPS as lefty, .935 as righty). There is also the problem of the Twins' major-league roster. Carlos Correa is entrenched at shortstop, Royce Lewis at third base, and now Edouard Julien at second. In the minors thus far, Lee has seen very little exposure to positions other than shortstop. I think Lee absolutely can play shortstop in the majors; he has put questions around that (from me, anyway) to rest. But he also should start being shuffled around the diamond this season just so he doesn’t get thrown into the fire at a position to which he is not accustomed when a need arises. He has the arm to play third, and at second base, he would surely be excellent. What’s Next Lee will find himself back with the St. Paul Saints to start the season, and barring injuries on the major-league roster, he will likely spend the bulk of his time there in 2024. From a player perspective, I don’t see any reason why he couldn’t be an early callup like Julien was last year, especially if he shows his stuff in spring training and hits the ground running back in Triple A. But from a roster perspective, the problem Lee will have is that he is not yet on the 40-man roster. Players like José Miranda, Yunior Severino, and even Austin Martin are likely to get those opportunities before he does. All that said, Lee will play for the Minnesota Twins during the 2024 season. He’s just one step on the ladder away, and has all the talent of a top prospect you make room for when he’s ready. When do you think Brooks Lee will make his major league debut? What are you excited about for his future with the Twins? Join the discussion and comment below! View full article

If he can hit at least .250, I think he's fully capable of pairing that with an OBP around .350. His IsoD in the minors is .132 for his career, peaking at .145. That's not far off from what Edouard Julien was doing in the minors as the walk champion of the universe at double and triple-A. His translated pretty well, and I think Martin's will too, simply because he also strikes out considerably less. Don't take 23 starts in the OF this way. He only played 59 total games, so that's still about 40% of all his playtime. And he didn't start doing this after he came to the Twins. His first season split between the Blue Jays and Twins, he played about 50% of his games in the outfield.

Slotting in at sixth on Twins Daily’s Top Prospect list for 2024 is a former fifth overall pick in the draft. Though he has had some missteps along his climb up the ladder, his pedigree, athleticism, and versatility has him on the doorstep to the majors as a super-utility type ready to step in at multiple positions. It seems like Austin Martin's scouting report has changed in significant ways a handful of times in his short pro career. He's survived and advanced, though, and his time is coming. Age: 24 (DOB: 3/23/1999) 2023 Stats: 67 games, 282 PA, .260/.381/.398, 11 2B, 7 HR, 30 RBI, 19 SB, 13.8% BB, 16.3% K ETA: 2024 2023 Ranking: 10 National Top 100 Rankings: BA: NA | MLB: NA | ATH: NR | BP: NA What’s To Like While there is never any guarantee that a highly-drafted player is going to turn into a superstar (or even a major leaguer, if we’re being honest), there is something to be said about why a player was thus regarded. In Martin’s case, heading into the 2020 draft, he was a leader on a team that had won the College World Series and widely thought of as the best pure hitter in the class. He'd hit nearly .400 that junior season in the SEC, as a shortstop. The Toronto Blue Jays selected him at the fifth spot in that year’s shortened draft, and he immediately showed up in the top 25 of national prospect lists. The Blue Jays then pushed him straight to Double A to start his career, and he hit .281/.424/.383 before coming to the Twins in the trade for Jose Berrios. He finished out the season with Wichita, batting .254/.399/.381 in his first 37 games with a new organization. You should notice a couple of things in those batting lines, in that the average and slugging percentage weren’t as high as one might be hoping, and that’s part of the reason he began to fall down those prospect lists. But he also got on base at a clip over .400, so there were still some things to like in his performance. From all reports, the Twins worked hard with Martin to try and unlock some of the power that was perceived to be missing, and you can see that effort going for naught the next year. Martin’s batting average dropped nearly 30 points at the same level, and his slugging sagged even farther, as he clubbed just two home runs in 90 games, ending with a .683 OPS. Even that on-base percentage that you could hang a hat on was no longer in elite territory. Is this who Martin was going to be? I’d suggest an injury to his elbow and getting sent to the Arizona Fall League to make up for missed time set him back on the right trajectory. It was clear the adjustments for power didn’t quite work before he missed a month and a half of the season, and when he came back, he was able to reset. He was fantastic in the AFL, hitting .374/.454/.482 with six doubles and 10 stolen bases, being named to the league’s All-Star team. He also split his time evenly between shortstop and the outfield, showcasing a versatility that would become more pronounced in the following season. He ranked second on his team in OPS at .936, trailing only fellow Twins prospect and breakout AFL star, Edouard Julien. For comparison’s sake, his batting average and OBP were higher than Royce Lewis’s when he took home that league’s MVP award a few years prior. I don’t think the comparisons to Lewis end there, either. What’s Left to Work On Speaking of, he and Lewis have both dealt with some of the same issues coming up through the minors with the Twins. There have been some developmental missteps (perhaps including the team trying to turn him into a hitter he's not destined to be) and some injuries. Martin’s 2023 started with another elbow injury, and the fear going into spring training was that he may have to end it early with Tommy John surgery. Luckily, that wasn’t the case, and he returned to full-time action at the end of June. Upon finishing a bit of a rehab tour in the FCL and with Fort Myers, Martin was promoted to the St. Paul Saints for the start of July and finished out the season healthy. It would be nice if he could remain as such for a full season. With the Saints last year, he hit .263 with an on-base percentage again approaching .400 in 59 games. His best month was August, when his OPS eclipsed 1.000 behind a .460 OBP and four home runs. It’s never going to be the main part of his game, but the power played in that short sample, and he also was a menace on the basepaths, swiping 11 in 13 attempts on the month. If he can continue to get on base like this at the next level, there is a very valuable player here, especially if he's capable of filling in on the grass or dirt on any particular day. While he started to show he could handle multiple positions that fall out in the desert, that was even more apparent with St. Paul last year. He started 33 games at second base, 10 in center field, and 12 in left at Triple A. He will need to continue to be ready at multiple spots if he’s going to crack the major-league lineup, so getting all the exposure he can to different positions will help. What’s Next A good start to his 2024 season means maintaining his solid walk and strikeout rates from the outset back with the Saints. As he heated up last year, those “pure hitter” reports from when he was drafted remained on display. He struck out just 43 times in 59 games with the Saints (17.1%), while drawing 36 walks (14.3%). When he’s going, he’s fully capable of a strong on-base percentage for a leadoff man, or a great one for somebody turning the lineup over. The speed and versatility will also play in ways much different than say, former fan-favorite utility man, Luis Arráez when he was cracking the majors. He may never be that superstar you hope to get with a guy drafted as high as he was (and acquired for a player as important to the franchise as Berríos), but there is no doubt in my mind that Austin Martin will put on a Twins uniform for the first time during the 2024 season. Whether that’s filling in for an injury later in the season, or even earning a spot on the Twins roster as Byron Buxton insurance to break camp like Michael A. Taylor did last year, Martin will be needed. He’s also, theoretically, a ready-made replacement for the likes of Willi Castro and Nick Gordon in a utility role whenever such a need arises. The Twins will hope to turn him from needed to unabashedly wanted in the years ahead. Are you optimistic about Martin’s future with the Twins? What are you looking for out of him during the coming season? Join the discussion and comment below! View full article

If the Twins work something out with Bally's, this will be great for availability, and a drastic change in that for Twins fans. I will still be curious the cost to get that access. I surely hope it will be lower than the $20/month for something like the Bally Sports+ streaming app, but by how much? Even then, I still don't see how they would get a rights number that is comparable to the $55 MIL deal they had, and was one of the worst such deals out there. This article was great for some clarifications, and the genuine concerns about the future. There are better details in the below article than I've found elsewhere on what Bally's deal with Amazon means, and it's not necessarily that your Prime subscription alone will get them for you. You will still have to purchase a Bally's "channel" (just like you do HBO/Starz/Peacock/Etc...). Prime Video/TV just becomes a platform where it will be available for you to do so: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2024/01/17/bally-sports-coming-to-amazon-prime-video-in-proposed-deal-what-to-know/?sh=2047db277d30

Amazon already has over like 170 million Prime subscribers. I understand they will absolutely gain some, but what even is the percentage they could at this point? They doubled their numbers every 2 years from 2013 to 2017, but haven't doubled it again since then because that type of growth isn't possible anymore. They have very little overhead left that they could even add. Amazon is absolutely taking on costs doing this. This deal gives them a "minority stake" ownership. In simple terms, whatever that % is, is the cost they'll undertake. Say it's 10%, that means $24 of that $240 RSN cost becomes their responsibility. Multiply that by 5 for starters, and it's $100 extra dollars/year in costs they're taking on. Does it make Amazon unprofitable? No. But it definitely eats into their margins, and a lot of people care about things like that (investors/stakeholders most specifically). Also, this article outlines that there will be additional subscription fees to see these games, Prime TV is just the platform they will be available on: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2024/01/17/bally-sports-coming-to-amazon-prime-video-in-proposed-deal-what-to-know/?sh=2047db277d30

There literally is nowhere, Amazon or other, that offers regional sports coverage without additional fees. In cable and Live streaming services, you have to pick the package with them (and it's always the most expensive one). National games, absolutely this would be and is a thing (see NFL). But doing that for specific teams, and basically every game on their schedule, is a whole other animal. This would be a much bigger story if you were going to get this with only your Prime subscription. (I will absolutely eat crow if my impression is wrong, as this would be an amazing development, IMO. I just don't see how they would accept those costs. They're not going to gain a significant amount of subscribers for this, when those subscribers basically already exist) I'm thinking of it this way: My prime subscription is $140/year. Your RSN service costs $240/year (and they'd essentially be adding 5 of them if the Twins sign on to something). I don't see how even Amazon can absorb whatever portion of those costs they'd be incurring without charging something for it.

You're not getting these games/coverage with just your Amazon Prime subscription. It will be a separate add-on, just like a Regional Sports Network.

I can easily lookup subscriber numbers for MLB.tv, Bally Sports+, Netflix, etc... and the metrics they use about who they reach (MLB.tv's 4% number comes from here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/742188/mlbtv-subscription-adults-usa-by-age/) and can be used well enough to estimate the numbers I put in. I also can easily find that BSN/FSN used to have around 3 MIL subscribers in one form or the other (cable/streaming/whatever else), and that it's now around 1.2 Million. And that most of those losses "came in the last 5 years" as of last March (https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2023/03/30/Media/bally-sports-north-subscriber-losses.aspx) I also am with you about finding "someone [that] does know the #'s," instead of prognosticating in a propagandic fashion, hah. The intent isn't to be exact, but for sake of the discussion I went through this exercise to speculate because I am interested in what it could mean moving forward, and how this type of data correlates to the worth of the Twins TV rights (If I am drastically wrong I will still have learned something!). And listen, I am a "die-hard" Twins fan. Heck, I write for an independent website about them! BUT, for multiple years now, I have not been willing to pay this price to watch the Twins on TV. I subscribed to SlingTV for exactly 1 month this past year so I could watch their playoff games. As I, and now another commenter have pointed out, people in general don't want to pay these types of prices for the content provided. Netflix is literally the only thing in existence that gets away with it (and like 90% of their users don't get ads). I have absolutely adapted my viewing habits to get enough out of Twitter, MLB.com, ESPN, questionably legal gambling websites, etc... to watch the Twins. As a "die-hard" that is local as well, and works a 10-minute walk away from Target Field, I much rather would spend that money to attend a game, and multiple times over at that, to get those experiences over paying that for watching on TV. The ballpark pass has been a sweet deal in that regard! I also can't recommend enough, MiLB.tv to people looking for a baseball fix. In comparison, the cost is 25% of MLB.tv ($35 vs $140) for a full season of games (and MLB.tv has the blackouts for the section of fans they need to reach), and absolutely any team/prospect I want to watch, not just one of them. I now watch more games via that than I ever did the Twins. The cost/benefit for my baseball and Twins interests has been astronomical for me as a "die-hard" with an especially interested focus on prospects and the minors. 😊

💯yup!

Yeah, I had a note about ad revenue in there, as I don't know what that number is. But it didn't make a $55 MIL fee to the Twins profitable. I also understand the argument you are trying to make, but I don't think it's nearly as relevant in this discussion as it needs to be to make a difference. Not enough people care (see my other comment). I would love that type of "package" too, but it's never going to be a thing.

Man, my brain missed a whole step! 🤣 My 500K subscriber number was also, as I generously put it, "very optimistic." They probably never come close to hitting that number (there are like 2MIL "households" in Minnesota, and hitting 25% of them I think is a provably ridiculous estimate, I shouldn't have even said it, haha). The entirety of Bally Sports+ (admittedly, one of the worst services ever created) barely has 200K subscribers across the entire country, which means they probably have less than 10K in the state of MN for the Timberwolves and Wild. Are the Twins that much more popular than them to attract that level of audience? If we use the MLB.tv level model (which is about 4% of adults in the US), that turns that number into around 175K subscribers (probably lower because of the "die-hard fan" caveat being the ones who pay this pricing). Now they're getting like $25 MIL at $20/month. How much advertising money gets added to that pool? As you said, how much does it cost to produce a game? A number like $55 MIL obviously isn't viable anymore. The available audience that can watch Twins games now, even if you add 175K subscribers to a streaming app, is about 1/3 of what it used to be not even 3 years ago, and will continue to go down as streaming continues to take more market share. Does that correlate directly to what their rights are worth? So what I'm still getting at, is I don't think whatever this number ends up as, is going to save the Twins spending potential. It's still going to lead to a lower payroll. I hope I am wrong, though!

I don't see how this improves the Twins situation from what they had with the $55MIL TV deal? Sure, it probably leads to more than the $0 they currently have to be added to their books (and maybe that's the point here), but is it even in the realm of possibility that the amount is going to come close to that number? I thought the Twins already had one of the worst TV deals out there (while still being overpaid by Diamond, as it obviously was not profitable for them), what am I missing to see how this improves on that? Relatively speaking, nobody subscribes to $20/25 per month sports streaming services. MLB.tv relies on die-hard fans that are out-of-market of their favorite teams, and they have less than 4 million total subscribers. What would you expect that number to be for Twins fans? 500K as a very optimistic estimate? That doesn't equal anything close to $55 Million, and I'd be surprised if any ad or other associated revenue would make up for it. I'd love to know how I'm wrong if I am, or what I'm missing 🤣 Is the expectation here to get like $30 MIL and think everything is still okay? That still leads to a lower payroll, right?

He gets paid by both teams. Max Scherzer's $105 MIL of his $210 MIL contract with the Nationals that was deferred is being paid through 2028 I believe. So he got paid his $43 MIL from the Mets and $15 MIL (which is the number/year with interest) from the Nationals this season.

I think I disagree wholeheartedly that this helps future players. Ohtani is the "unicorn," to use the term everyone else is. Don't get me wrong, it's a GREAT deal for him and his situation. But hell no is it a good deal for everyone else and the MLB.

If he really wanted the team to remain competitive in spite of his own earning power, he wouldn't need to utilize a loophole to accomplish it. My main issue here, is it's an obvious abuse of the rules. I would expect MLB to do something about it eventually. Then again, it's MLB so who knows... It's something exactly like this why the Minnesota Wild are and have been hamstrung with their payroll. The NHL punished them severely for the contracts they handed out to Parise and Suter, which were perfectly legal at the time they were signed, but then was deemed, correctly, that they were not in the best interest of the sport. There can not be a thing where the few large revenue teams are the only ones that can even hand contracts like this out. It's why the contract is $700 MIL, $275 (!!!) MIL more than any other player has ever received, and not $500 and simply the largest contract ever.

If he really wanted to do this he would have signed 10-year $300 MIL contract.

Not like this, they haven't. I'm pretty certain the most money that has ever been deferred is $105 MIL to Max Scherzer (of $210 MIL total). That's a whole lot different than $680 MIL (of $700 MIL total).

EXACTLY.

From what I can tell he's played exactly 3 innings in CF in his career, so no, I do not think he can play the position. Past articles I can find also talk about how he doesn't really have a position, and he started his career as an infielder (one example: https://piratesprospects.com/2022/05/yoyner-fajardo-is-a-hitter-without-a-position.html). I can't really give you a reason beyond that but will say that almost 100% of the time, if a team thinks a player is capable of playing CF, he will play there and this just hasn't been the case with Fajardo.