Major League Ready

He hit 199 in 2021 and produced 4.2 WAR. I would be very happy with a repeat.

When I first saw the announcement, I wondered if the calendar had rolled a head to April 1st. This deal makes no sense. There has to be other deals are already in the works. However, Verlander got a prove it deal after TJ for $25M and Bellinger just got $17.5M. Gallo once upon a time produced at a level that would pay $30M on a long deal, especially with his defense and flexibility. I think a big part of this is also Gallo's ability to back-fill CF.

Cavaco is my most hated move of this FO. Corbin Carroll was the best available according to multiple sources. He has 70 grade speed and a 65 hit tool. I had never saw him play but still couldn't believe they passed on him after ready the scouting reports. He is the #3 prospect in MLB and Cavaco is dead weight. What really adds insult to injury is that Carroll would be the perfect fit on this team because he could back-up Buxton with nearly the same defensive ability. Simply never understood Jay. I just figured the scouts must have seen something I could not. Stewart is understandable. That's the risk drafting a HS pitcher that high.

Dare to dream! I could believe in a different level of aggression because they would be at about $100M if they let Kepler go and paid Nola an AAV of $30M.

I hear ya but regression is more inevitable than injury. It will be Gray's age 34 season at the start of however many years he gets. Will he be effective when he loses a couple MPH off his fastball? He just does not impress me as a pitcher who will be effective at age 35+. Of course, I could be dead wrong. A lot depends on how much opportunity SWR and Varland get and of course how they look. Paddack plays into this as well. Where I know we agree is that we would both prefer to have Nola even if it meant filling out the rotation between Ryan / Ober / Paddack / Varland / SWR and Winder.

I stand corrected. Perhaps I am holding on to memories that are no longer accurate. I have no confidence Correa would have made a difference anytime soon. I would move Kepler and Maeda and then see how it goes this year with Wallner / Varland / SWR and perhaps Martin. Then, be ready to unload Gray at the trade deadline as well as Mahle if an extension is not in the cards because his health concerns or an inability to agree to terms. One of Polanco or Arraez also goes if a good return is available. That gives us all kinds of room to spend in 2024. Nola is a much better risk. Philly has a lot of big financial obligations, perhaps we can pry him away.

We don't differ greatly but the two of us have a different idea of the relative importance free agency plays into building a contender. You generally present it as an absolute necessity. People here lose their minds when we don't get big names. The facts are that other clubs have done a much better job than the twins while literally never signing a high dollar free agent. What they have done better than the twins historically is trade established players for near ready MLB talent. For example, Cleveland did not go through a lengthy rebuild. They traded established players they could not extend. Oakland has done this consistently as has Tampa. We are starting to see this with the Twins. Duran and Alcala are just starting to make an impact and we will see what the Berrios trade yields. It just does not matter what they do in free agency until they produce talent. Somewhat ironic is the fact that the better they produce talent, the more discretionary dollars they have to spend on free agents or better yet extensions which generally speaking are much more productive per dollar spent. IE. Ramirez vs Correa

No. Instead of getting better at the practices that have proven the most effective, let's follow strategies that have never been effective for teams in the bottom half of revenue. Perhaps we should more carefully examine what has worked for other teams. You say this approach but do you know the biggest difference between Cleveland / Tampa / Oaklands and Minnesota?

I guess I should have prefaced Maeda with "assuming he is healthy". They might wait until the deadline and establish he is healthy. Ideally, Paddack will be back by then and add some depth. Kepler has decent value. He is not fetching a good SP but there is value in other forms. Established players are traded for prospects far more often than they are traded for other established players and that's the form a trade for Kepler would likely take.

Gray is an UFA after this year according to Spotrac.

Pay $12M of his salary and someone will take him.

Here is where I was going with this. let's say they do trade Kepler. They could end up substantially below their payroll capacity. Spending the payroll room on basically buying a prospect or two would be nice.

How about we trade a dozen balls for Donaldson and a good prospect and then flip Donaldson while retaining 60% of his contract cost.

Kepler and Maeda get traded if they can find a decent return.

I could only find 9 contracts of 8 or more years that have reached their conclusion for position players. I calculated the average WAR per year for the back half of these contracts. For contracts with an odd number of years, I used half of the middle year. The results may ease the pain of losing Correa on a 13 year contract. 7 of the 9 averaged less than 1 year over the last half of their contract. As ugly as the 8-10 years contracts have been, these 13 year contracts taking a player past age 40 are likely really ugly. fWAR bWAR Derek Jeter 4.42 4.16 Dave Winfield 1.98 2.22 Joey Votto 0.82 0.92 Alex Rodriguez 0.77 0.64 Robinson Cano 0.26 0.22 Albert Pujlos 0.15 0.21 Jason Hayward -0.05 0.30 Miguel Cabrera 2.60 -0.27 Prince Fileder -0.18 -0.18 Averge 1.20 0.91

It would be huge if two of Varland / SWR / Winder prove they are here to stay over the course of 2023. That would give them 4 prearb starters plus Paddack at a modest sum. They could afford to sign anyone they want. Obviously, they still need to convince them to come here but they will have the money to spend.

That's basically what Cohen is doing. Man it would be great to have an owner willing to operate at a loss of 10s of millions. We all share your wish! However, the other owners determine their budget based on how much revenue they produce, just like you and me and every other business on the planet, including non-profits. If I were to speculate on the budget without the benefit of projected revenue and operating costs, I would look at the fact the Twins revenue has been about $40M under league average the last few years, and hope they would be aggressive enough to spend league average.

He was the best option available unless you want to give up the haul Oakland got for Murphy. There is a reason Oakland has the best winning percentage of any team outside the top 5 in revenue since the turn of the century. They got 4 MLB ready players for 2 years of Murphy. I will take Vazquez for 3/30 and look forward to finally having a great defensive catcher 4-5 days a week.

After hearing / reading this statement many times, I wondered just how influential each method has been in the past among winning teams. So, I compiled data in the form of WAR by acquisition method from the best teams over the past 20 years. I have many examples from mid and small markets. I want to collect large market data for comparison. Then, after the holidays I will post the data showing the relative impact of each type of acquisition. I can tell you this .... Trading for prospects has been far more impactful than trading for established players for teams with below average revenue. Trading prospects for elite players is virtually non-existent among the examples I have gathered. The interesting thing about free agency is that the better a team is at producing prearb talent, the more budget they have for free agency. It would be accurate to say that player development enables or drives a team's ability to spend in free agency.

Kepler does not have nearly the impact of an elite arm so they don't need to get back an elite arm for trading him for the trade to be a good move. What if they get an MLB ready catcher? IDK who that would be, but the point remains. Making room to play Wallner could (not should) improve the team regardless of the return. Those are the kind of moves that have made Oakland/Tampa successful.

By far the most influential factor will be revenue increase/decrease. Inflation is not going to drive revenue up. It will likely have the opposite effect and it will drive up operating costs. The good news is they are getting a $30M from the sale of remaining BAM ownership. They could spend an extra $30M this year with the understanding there would be no money available to replace Gray & Mahle and of course they need to cover arbitration increases.

Not that much. How many passed balls per game? How does Narvaez or any other catcher compare in that stat. I would assume working with pitchers and calling a game is more important than either of these stats but that's a really tough one to quantify.

Did you read the explanation Chpettit gave? Rather than double quote I just inserted it below. “But the RBI stat isn't measuring what people who like it claim it is. It's not at all hard to find BA with RISP stats. Or % of runners driven in stats. Or any number of combinations of outs, bases occupied, game situation, etc. stats that show who the actual clutch hitters are while RBI does nothing of the sort. For example: In 2022 Jose Abreu drove in 75 runs while Jose Miranda drove in 66. However, Abreu had 679 PAs to Miranda's 483. Miranda drove in 16.1% of the baserunners he had on during his 483 PAs. Abreu drove in 13.8% of his. Guy on 3rd, less than 2 outs? Abreu drove in 39.4% of his runners, Miranda drove in 47.2% of his. If I catch 200 walleyes over the course of a summer and you catch 150 am I the better fisherman. Well, if you fished 15 days and I fished 20 days, I would say no. I just had more opportunity to fish. What are we really looking for? We want a player to convert opportunities, right? Two players can drive in the exact same number of runs where one has 50% more opportunity. Those players are not equally adept at driving in runs because they both drove in the same number of runs. Measuring the percentage of conversions as Chepettit19 has explained here is a far better measure of productivity than simply using total RBI. Put a different way, using the one stat that actually counts runs does not provide any measure of effectiveness unless it's pair with the number of opportunities to drive in those runs.

Over 2-3 seasons, I will take Miranda and the nearly $19M per year in salary to be invested elsewhere. The difference is they can sign Rodon vs a retread. Miranda plus Rodon >>>>> Abreau and retread. For those that would prefer a couple high leverage RPs ... That works too.

Great post! There are obviously stats that are much better measures of effectiveness driving in runs. Apparently, this is not lost on most "stat heads".