Major League Ready

You are really reaching. Edwin Diaz and a player that has literally never played an inning of professional baseball are two entirely different things. A player getting paid while they are injured is an entirely different thing. BTW .... I don't know if it's fair that Diaz gets paid when he is not paying but there is ABSOLUTELY no way the players would ever concede that benefit so there is no point in discussing it as a potential solution. I don't know that there is any real threat of players gambling their career on playing independent baseball. However, did you notice this model allows for an infinite degree of variation to account for such concerns. You could start the bonuses at $3M and you still have an $800K at the end of the 2nd round while paying every player after the 6th round $50K. This model still allows for a $30K increase to every full season Milb player. 1st and 2nd round draft picks are not giving up $1-3M to play independent ball.

How many are going to play another sport? This is a hyperbolic argument. We hear about every top prospect that could be drafted into another sport and they are a tiny percentage of the players that are actually top prospects in 2 sports. Name 5 from the last 10 years. Then, how many of those players with the potential to earn hundreds of millions will decide based on their draft bonus. If they are not in the top half of the first round, the money is not that consequential especially if there is any indication they are more likely to succeed in baseball. Their perceived relative ability to succeed in one sport over the other is more likely to influence their decision. What difference does it make if a player stays for another year of college or plays independent ball. How does that impact the product we pay to see? How does it change MLB at all? Why should players get paid on perceived value? They are going to make an insane amount of money if they actually live up to the perception so why should they be paid on perception. How is it fair that Mark Appel get's $6.35M to fail and many prospects get less than $100K to succeed? This union is totally focused on stars and the rest get the scraps. If the money paid to perceived stars that fail was allocated to all players, Milb players would be well compensated. It sure seems to pay the enormous money when players actually earn it while taking much better care of all the other players who make these league possible.

I would advocate that a larger piece of the pie goes to Milb players regardless of how they fund it but make no mistake where that money would come from. Like every other business, if the spend more in one area, they will spend less in another. The owners are not going change their total spending level. They would reallocate MLB salary expenditures. That's why the players association has not made higher Milb pay a priority.

I always assumed the players association promoted the current system because why would the owners care if the money was distributed more evenly? They also get rid of the PR problem associated with low Milb wages.

Really, how many top athletes can get drafted high enough in another professional sport that this would matter. We are talking about maybe one person a year and a signing bonus of $3-7M is not necessarily going to sway the few guys that get drafted that high because they have a good shot at making two or three hundred million. Most are still going to go wherever they think they have the best shot a enormous wealth. Beside that fact, this has absolutely nothing to do with what "the best players" make. We are talking about signing bonuses before a prospective player every plays one inning of Milb much less what they make as MLB player. This would not impact one iota the compensation for MLB players. Quit paying guys like Mark Appel $6M before they earn a thing and you could afford to play EVERY player a decent wage.

I thought about the guys with other options. Is the game really going to suffer in 1 guy every couple of years elects to go to the NFL? Consider the tradeoff. The reason I came up with this model is I was wondering how we could pay every single Milb player a good wage. The guys that earn the big bonuses are obviously the guys that become great players but those guys are going to make generational wealth and retire in their 30S. Why is the system all about them while ignoring the other 95% of players. The model I am talking about pays every player after round 6 a $50K signing bonus and more than double the current proposed system. Just to be clear, not the existing system but would double the proposed system. AAA players would make close to $100K. It would be very easy to take compensate every Milb player quite well. The players and owners have elected to pay a select few a lot and the rest very little. All they need to do is reallocate.

The problem is not how much teams spend on Milb players. The problem is that two-thirds of the money goes to 10% of the players. Last year MLB team paid out $291,408,490 in draft bonuses and as we all know most of those players fail. There is an alternative. If they made the max bonus $1M and dropped the bonus just 1 percent per draft slot, they could increase the average pay to Milb players by 48,706.53. If they made the max bonus $500K, the increase would be 69,228.29 on average. In other words, AAA players would get paid roughly $100K not the proposed $38,500 assuming AAA players would get paid a little more than A/A+ players. Obviously, this could be tweaked. If you prefer to have a 2M top bonus, the pay increase would be $36,594.33 at all levels. If you make the increase $50K at AAA and $22K at A ball you end up with roughly a $67K salary for AAA.

I am not sure what to make of Paddack either. My take is they have Lopez / Ryan / Ober next year and will need to fill two spots and come up with some depth. Paddack / Varland and SWR are the most likely candidates. One or two of Festa / Raya and Prielipp could be ready too. Perhaps not to start the season but by mid season. Dobnak and Balazovic are the long shots. Henriguez could end up being long-relief and a spot starter. Where I am going with this is that they don't need to sign a guy to fill the rotation. If they sign a free agent SP it should be a top of the rotation guy.

Where this gets trick is if the guy they really want to extend is Lopez, especially if Lopez is inclined to sign here. They still need to fill 3 spots. Of course, kind of have an extra (Ober) right now and Paddack will be back.

Coulombe has appeared in 194 ML league games has a whopping total .5 WAR. He isn't going to win games either. I will take my chances with Winder / Megill / Henriquez or even Dobnak who are all much younger and can be a long-term solution. Varland / SWR would also be better than Coulombe and it would be a way to prepare them for a role next year and several years to come. Coulombe has no value beyond being a band aid if several guys get injured.

Perhaps because they could use any of Ober / Winder / Varland / SWR / Sanchez / Dobnak / as multi inning RPs if they need more depth plus they have Megill / Henriguez / Ortega / DeLeon and several other non-40 man guys in STP.

Are you saying two will be gone because they will resign one of Mahle / Gray or Maeda?

I would love to see the trio of Ober / Varland and SWR pitch so well that they force or at least influence the Twins to trade one of the pending free agent SPs. Maeda seems the most likely of the three to get traded. The thought being they need to test these young guys this year given we have three pending FAs.

I also thought Jax looked good this spring. His breaking balls look improved.

That would mean a healthy rotation for most of the year. I am OK with that scenario. Ober can be brought back the last couple months of the season to strengthen the BP in the unlikely event all of our SPs remain healthy.

You could make the same statement had they signed Correa / Judge / Turner / Verlander and Scherzer. You could say Houston appears to be a good team based on this logic. Until they play the games it only "appears" they are better. This is fan speak rhetoric as I see it. Injuries happen and players sometimes underperform but that as of this moment it's a better team than last year.

So we should not care or be pleased that they improved the roster because games are not played on paper?

His odds are looking good. Hoffman and DeLeon sent down yesterday.

Failed ventures are your example of the twins benefiting? You are really reaching.

That's a low bar.

Looking a little deeper, according to the star tribune (Phil Miller) Hoffman has several opt outs. I am pulling for DeLeon. He could soak up some innings and protect the rest of the BP.

According to MLB trade rumors Sanchez is the only twins player with an opt out. Players with opt outs

Sorry, that's not how it works. These variations are not cumulative. If you are off 15% of travel cost and off 15% on facilities cost you don't add them together. If travel cost is 10 of total operating cost your estimate would be off by 1.5%. If you are off on every estimate by 15% you are off 15% in total, Given we know the exact amount for player payroll and draft bonuses. There is zero variation on over 50% of total cost. Therefore, if we were of 15% on everything else, we would be off by a total of 7.5%.

What forms of spending could be channeled to Pohlad owned companies? 60-65% of their spending is on players. The next largest expense would be non-player personnel. They don't appear to own hotels where the team stays? They don't own the networks where advertising would appear. The entire gain from owning an advertising firm would be the net gain from one account (the twins). If that advertising firms has a 10% bottom line the net gain is 10% of the fees paid to manage their account not the entire spend. I would assume they lease office space from United properties but that's not exactly an enormous expenditure relatively speaking. Do you have any examples or is this just pulling this out of the air?

I don’t think they have painted themselves into a corner, Doc. Mahle / Gray / Gallo / Taylor / Pagan / Maeda / Solano come off next year. That’s $44M. They also have a team option with Kepler which would bring the total to $52.5M. They are also likely to replace Polanco in the next year or two so we are up to $60M. The team has a good chance to be better for the next several years which would increase revenue and let’s hope they can increase TV revenue as well. Of the group leaving, only Gray and Mahle will be difficult to replace and you could even say Mahle has yet to contribute. One of the pitching prospects needs to step up and they can use half of the $60M coming off to land a very good free agent SP.