Richie the Rally Goat

Well said! The word I think fits is “accessibility”. The stats are spurned. So many of the people in baseball badmouth the game for what it is. The pace is slow, good luck to you having somewhere to watch it streaming or on TV. Ticket prices are bonkers high. the game is inaccessible, no wonder. no one cares.

That’s a low bar

In ‘07 through ‘09 we did a flex 40 when my wife was in college, she got student tickets, and we sat in the LF nose bleeds $5 for my seat, $2 for hers. So 40 games for around $300 for 2 tickets. I taught her how to score, we had dollar dogs we were broke, and a Twins game was cheaper than a movie and the gopher shuttle dropped us free a couple blocks away. good times!

Agreed, and #1 on the list, health, could repeat the injuries that have repeated themselves several times. You’re injury prone until you’re not and it can change in a heartbeat, just like G-Cinco, but it can repeat too.

That and blind luck

The “holy cow” still stands. I can’t see this FO spending what it takes to get an impact reliever in free agency.

I don’t think Arraez and Kepler plus PTNBL gets you Devers, and I wonder why Boston would want Kepler. The Correa idea might be what happens w/ the Mets, but it seems the train has sailed w/ the Twins. I like your thought process though

“At the end of the day, The AL central is wide open. The Guardians and White sox haven't taken massive steps forward and are still easily within reach of the Twins. If we avoid being battered by injuries like last year, this team could win 90 games and be right in the playoff mix.” this is true, but outside of Mahle, all of the players that were a contribution to the “battered” impression were players that had extensive injuries prior and are still on the team. I don’t understand how one can make assumptions of better health and improved record, with a roster that is thus far, worse and lots of injury questions still. 81 wins projected by fangraphs seems optimistic with the balanced schedule upcoming.

Good questions! This team has felt in limbo for quite some time.

I disagree with the premise that paying a free agent 10+ years is stupid. It costs the total contract. MLB player contracts are fully guaranteed and incentives are limited to games played, can’t be based on outcomes in the games, so for all intents and purposes, the total dollars and how to work out when the payments happen. when you are specifically looking at the “when” part, the years, ignore the length of the player contract and just look at how the team pays the bills. Lights, facilities, what have you. That sell 2 million tickets at an average $54 per person is 108m plus TV contract, probably a bit more than that. Call it $250m to $300m in revenue including advertising revenue as a guess. Operating costs are the first thing that comes out of revenue, not sure what that is, but with a hundred plus employees of $50k per year salaries, it’s at least 15 mil per year the Twins (or the Mets) clearly can’t pay a full $300m contract on day one. $315 mil is what Carlos Correa costs. If the market couldn’t bear the $315m, the prices couldn’t sustain the growth. Teams can however pay that salary over time. Now looking at the career of a baseball player. Verlanders are extremely rare. Most players reach free agency around 29 to 30, and play until 35. 6 years at 315 mil Would be 63m per year, still difficult to pay considering revenue. The team still had to pay other players too. 10+ years, bringing that salary to 25-28m per year, most teams sell half their tickets as season tickets and can flow that cash in season, basically selling it before they pay for it. Whether or not the player will play for 10 years is irrelevant.

I loved Puckett as a child. Now all my Puckett memorabilia is gone (including autographs), replaced by Hrbek. I’m sad every time I walk past that statue and it turns me off of going to Target Field. We can acknowledge his excellent play on the field without putting him on a literal pedestal as a misguided hero. I can tolerate a lot of things, but will not abide in abusive people. I will not ever watch a Twins game if they sign Bauer. If they do, I’ll root for the Brewers, and you’ll find me at brewerfanatic instead.

Well done Stu!

In 2022, the youngest team was Cleveland at 26.42 years average, the oldest was NYM at 30.68. The Mets got older keeping the team largely intact and signing Verlander. The Twins in 2022 were 28.42 falling in the middle third. With only a partial roster shown, the Twins would be somewhere in the 26.3 to 26.5 YO range depending on how they filled out the 26 man and which fill-Ins came from STP. Considering everyone ages a year… that’s quite the significant shift, from middle third to likely the youngest or second youngest team in the MLB.

bright lights of Houston huh? Annually yes he’s making less, but tax-wise it’s 1% difference between NY and MN and total contract is 10% higher. Correa nets 8.5 to 9% more in NY aggregate. Also, to your point of not just about the money, Mets won 101 games last year, and signed Verlander and Nimmo. Good chance of winning a WS as a Met, Twins? Much lower

Even if they did sign Correa, and it’s still possible the Mets back out and Boras/Correa comes hat-in-hand, and Falvine look like geniuses (point made by@KirbyDome89 maybe the Twins priced the injury into their offer) this is a worse team. Farmer is a significant step back from Urshela in the extra infielder position and Vázquez is a massive fielding improvement from Sanchez but a slight step back with the bat. The Manfred ball isn’t going anywhere, so they flushed $11m down the toilet on 4th outfielder who hits left handed and they still need to carry Kyle Garlick on the 26. It’s still a worse team and now to actually make improvements they have to swing trades, which puts the “sustainable success” thing at risk.

Good point!

Good job Twins FO taking a breath and asking to dig deeper on the medicals. I’ve been hard on Falvine, but not getting sucked in was a difficult choice, and probably a good decision. It does raise questions why the team didn’t have better medicals on Correa than the giants…

@Cody Christie you said “intriguing”

Mateo would be a great guy to snag off the waiver wire, and waive him again to sneak him through to the Saints as Farmer insurance. The Twins should not give up resources to acquire Mateo unless it’s another PTNBL/Cash deal.

2 years 30m seems like a significant delta

who cares if spending 11m fixes 4th/5th outfielder? Speaking of foolish spending… they still need a RH hitter in the outfield. they still need hitters (plural). Farmer is a huge step down from Correa, Vazquez is fine hitter for a catcher, While this team may have the best (when healthy) 2-5 rotation, Sonny Gray is not the guy I want starting WS game 1. as things sit today, this team is worse than the team that went 78-84 with all the same injury questions.

Starting with 300M, made way more sense than what they did. Correct, don’t bid against yourself, but then if you were never prepared to offer more and actually compete for a guy you knew was going to get offers in excess of $300m, they shouldn’t have fiddled around to begin with. this FO beat themselves by failing to improve the roster in free agency that they actually had the resources to compete with. They went all-in and single-mindedly focused on a guy they had no chance to sign while letting the Free Agents they actually had a shot with, go elsewhere. They made this a lose-lose situation for themselves. If their 285m offer was everything they could offer, and had no more room in the budget for anything else, then they’re really, super-incompetent. If 285 was all they were going to offer to begin with, had room in the budget for other players, but ignored those needs to focus on Correa, they’re naive and incompetent. I have been a staunch supporter of this FO, but they apparently learned nothing last year about multi-tasking and flexibility.

Great post! Welcome to TD!

Because, in the big ticket contracts, the total is what the agent and player care about. AAV matters to the team, total dollars is what the player and agent care about. Correa wanted the highest dollar amount possible, Bonilla day is fine with him. $28 per or 26, it’s all huge money and plenty to live like a king. The 315 is generational wealth that his grandkids maybe great-grandkids won’t have to work a day in their lives. But to the team that 8 years 315 mil is 39 mil per year vs 26 mil per on 12 years. 13 mil per year gives the team tons of flexibility. They’re paying 315 no matter what.