Major League Ready

I sure hope not. He is not nearly a big enough bat to be kept as a DH. You might be right, this sounds like something the Twins would do.

It very difficult to create excess value paying free agent prices. Milwaukee understands that a team with 1/2 the revenue of other teams needs to create twice as much production per dollar spent. Berrios has produced 1 WAR per 13.7M so far. His salary goes up substantially the next two years so it probably gets worse. How much additional value would they have created had the traded for Tolle?

Joe Ryan has already gone through the Jose Berrios crossroad. Berrios was traded when his value was high. Joe Ryan is already a long way down the road of less value. The similarity between the two is that the Twins did not get the value they should have for Berrios and almost certainly will not get the value they should have out of Ryan.

The NBA has restrictions. The NFL does not. perhaps MLB should take note and follow the NFL example so that they don't create the issues to raise. Maybe it makes sense to have different rules for the floor than the ceiling.

You are making the assumption that the new system is not transitioned. That makes no sense because it would potentially lead to the problem you mention and many more. The big budget teams would have to discard several players. It would be chaos. I hope the league and the MLBPA are not that inept, Even if they were that inept, it would not be hard to work around. For example, the Twins could give Jeffers 4/75 paid 35/35/5/5. They could extend Pablo for 3 years with 80% paid the first they year. They could make a similar offer to a 1B. What would be the penalty if a team was under the floor? What if there is a provision that money is paid to the players retirement fund or split among all of the players within $250K of league minimum? Teams would not be forced to enter terrible contracts.

This would be absolutely fantastic. What a total game changer this would be.

No. I am pretty disenchanted and therefore just not giving it as much thought. I am just disgusted because I think the organization absolutely could not have done a worse job of managing assets over the past couple of years. They could have been really well-positioned had they managed in the model of Milwaukee or Tampa. I also think Tom Pohlad's no half measures and we are dedicated to putting a winner on the field is just a bunch of BS. How can you make that claim and continue to slash payroll. The models for success were on display this fall. He not only proved he does not understand those models but he also did a 180 in the midst of a rebuild which is the definition of incompetence. I never thought ownership was a big problem but I certainly do now. Having said all this ... I think my roster would conceptually be very similar to Riverbrian.

I like it. I hope Tom Pohlad will back up his statements in a meaningful way. I will have to see it to believe it. I don't believe they will spend unless the CBA requires it.

I just hope it's over $50M.

Because it burned Falvey once? No!!! I don't know that I would go so far as to "bail on the concept entirely". However, high dollar RPs has been the worst free agent investment in baseball. If they had everything else they needed to be a true contender, it might still make sense but that's not the case.

There is a famous saying... Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it It's one thing to say we should not avoid trades or free agents because some don't work out. It's quite another to avoid the type of acquisition that fails at a far greater rate. Choosing the strategy that has the greatest rate of failure does not make much sense. We also have shing examples of successful strategies for low revenue teams. We can't say we support the theory of following their practices and then completely ignore how these teams built rosters. Sometimes we have to recognize it may take more than one year to be a true contender. When they demolished our BP, they set course on a path that was going to take a couple years to rebuild.

I agree there are always opportunities to trade someone like Larnach or Ober / Kremer. Those players are not bringing back a player likely to be an impact player. However, the teams we keep talking about manage to find value. We thought Megill had no value and the Brewers found a closer on a WS teams. Their best opportunities to trade for really good prospects were Ryan, Lopez, and Jeffers. They managed that as poorly as possible. Who do you think remains on the 40 man that has significant value that would not be trading a year or two now for the chance to build a sustainable team?

Very little about baseball or roster management has certainty. It's quite possible to have a substantive conversation without certainty as long as we acknowledge the uncertainty. We don't need certainty to understand the Twins had assets with value to trade and they managed to squander that value about as badly as possible. We don't need certainty to compare the way the Twins manage assets to the Brewers / Rays, and Guardians. We don't need certainty to understand the Twins have failed to put a contender on the field and that is in part due to their inability to create value as Riverbrian has pointed out.

Completely agree. The team was in a very different place last year. I wrote a number of times that they were very well positioned to shake up the roster and build a contender in much less time than it normally takes. What could have been had they stayed on a rebuild path and made some wise decisions. They are part way down that path today. Keaschall looks like a building block and a few rookies gave us some hope they are part of the next core. The difference for me is that they have this cluster of starters that will be free agents next year. I have been saying for a couple years that they needed to address that situation because losing 3 SPs to free agency in one year is bad asset management. Now it's even worse with Kremer. They needed to trade either Pablo or Ryan for a SP that could replace them.

I did not see a team ready to "make a serious run at this thing". Not unless they are willing to add $75m to the payroll and I don't see that happening. I am hoping they quit playing for this year and start managing their assets with building a contender in mind. Had they done this in the past, we would have Tolle and others for the next several years. That would be better today and have stability in their rotation for the next several years.