Major League Ready

Good point ... Either the teams make more or I would add that the top markets would sign an even higher percentage of the elite talent. Neither one is good for fans. I toyed with ideas for lowering the cost to fans but it quickly occurred to me that was a fantasy world. Why would owners or players even consider reducing their income?

The owners are going to pay out X amount in overall expenses and that includes every non-player employee, every MLB player, every signing bonus, evedry operating expense, and every Milb player. While this is obviously a very general statement describing a very complex set of financial conditions, this is still the way it works in every business. I have literally never had a client in my entire career see it differently. If the owners were to pay Milb player as an example $60k more annually that would reduce the available funds to be paid to players. While I am open to any explanation of why owners would care if an additional $60K would go to Milb players, it sure seems that the MLB players would be the parties affected and therefore the side preventing from happening.

I definitely think you are on to something in general with broadcast rights and methodology. I have given this some thought myself. It's a rather complicated and I am just assuming there are a number of complications we probably are not aware of. That said, the current system is a mess and there has to be a better solution.

Your welcome to your opinion. Several dozen clients that are substantially larger than any single MLB team paid me to help them with these strategies. My experience leads me to certain conclusions. I am sorry if you find that objectionable.

Are you really suggesting there is not enough money in baseball to attract the top talent. We were able to attract the top talent 50 years ago. Since then the average salary has gone up 133X . The percentage of players with even remotely the same ability to make it in more than one sport is about 1 or 2 in a thousand. It's not exactly going to hurt the sport if we lose one of both of them. I seriously doubt the bonus would influence 1/4 of this already tiny percentage. So, should we take care of ALL of the thousands of Milb players or should we worry about losing one player out of a couple thousand prospective players of which there will be 10 Kohl Stewart equivalents for every 1 Dave Winfield? Have to ask the same question about college draftees. Can you provide any evidence that supports this position? The fact is that the average age of position players has gotten younger. Is there any evidence team drafting preference has shifted away from high school players?

I keep hearing this argument but the percentage being paid out is often over simplified. Here is a article that addresses this issue and there are other recent articles that come to the same conclusion. Baseball Economics Another part of this over simplification is that most teams have substantially increased their expenditure on other types of employees. This is how it works in virtually every company in the world. The players are not entitled to a certain portion of revenue regardless of what changes in the industry. The amount available for players is a product of revenue - operating costs. If the cost to travel doubles that comes out of the available budget for players the next year. Literally the way it works in every industry.

Can you elaborate? What would cause profit to decrease while revenue increases. BTW ... The best way for players to increase their income is to promote increases in revenue. It sometimes appears they don't understand basic economics. For example, if revenue increases via expanded playoffs, what do teams do with that money? Revenue has been increasing for a very long time. Did owners pocket those increases or did player compensation go up over the past 40 years? In general teams spend 85-90% of revenue. Operating costs are not going to increase as a result of an increase in playoff revenue. Therefore, the vast majority would end up going to players unless somehow teams start to operate differently than they have for the last 50 years.

The bonus structure idea was formed to get the approval of players not owners. The players are not going to agree to an increase in Milb pay because it would reduce the pool of money available to them. Milb pay has long been a black-eye for the league. So why hasn't it been fixed. The owners could easily redistribute a very small portion of their player budget to Milb players and the problem goes away. Why would they care if some of their payroll was redistributed to Milb players? The problem still exists because MLB players won't allow funds that could go in their pockets to be allocated to Milb players. That's why I thought redistributing the funds already allocated to Milb bonuses was the best approach. Everyone makes a decent living instead of only the top draft picks how may or may not every earn that bonus.

The Milb wage is unfortunate and it’s not all that hard to fix. The current arrangement is great for a very small percentage of the players. Those players get this big money based on the assumption they will someday be great. If that happens, they will make a boatload of money so why do we pay them millions before they prove anything? What if most of the bonus money was distributed in salary instead of going to a select few? I built a financial model to test this theory. Using a max bonus of $1M for the 1/1 pick, and dropping the amount by 2% per pick, the bonus at the end of round 5 is $36K. Rounds 6-10 get 30K, and 25K for the remaining rounds. This would allow the teams to increase salary by around $60K/year. Maybe it would be an additional $50K for A, $50K for A+, $60K for AA, and $80K for AAA. As bean 5302 pointed out, the revenue disparity is just too large to make it feasible to have an NFL type model. The difference between top and bottom in MLB is almost 3X. With the exception of the Patriots and Cowboys, the NFL teams are all within $100M or each other. The players are seeking a reduction in revenue sharing and a substantial increase in the luxury tax threshold so there is no way they accept a hard cap. It's hard to see how we escape this without revenue disparity increasing so decreasing the disparity seems impossible. Why does the time to free agency need to drop? I see no benefit to the game. Actually, I can't see any way it's not a detriment as it will put smaller market teams at an even greater disadvantage. Why should the fans of mid and small market teams suffer? The money to pay payers comes from fan not owners. Why should we want changes that result in us losing players earlier? The owners age based proposal seems like a decent compromise. The players reaching free agency before the proposed age are extremely well compensated.

I definitely agree on the hard cap but I think the chances of the players accepting it are extremely low. They are not agreeing to anything they think could limit their earnings. They can talk about competitive integrity all they like. The reality is they want to reduce revenue sharing and increase the luxury Tax threshold. Both diminish parity. Their demands clearly demonstrate parity is of no concern to them.

Sorry. I assumed you meant major league pitching and we all know what happens when we assume. Pitching would be great but I would be happy with any return regardless of position. An up the middle defender would be good too.

I am pondering several questions about the new CBA. What should we (Twins Fans) want to see in the new CBA. What is good for the game? Should we want the new terms to promote parity? How about the specifics of what the players are asking for as they have settled into a theme of anti-tanking and competitive integrity. They have 3 major asks. Spending floor. Sounds good in concept. I think it would have to be a percentage of revenue. A team with $50M less revenue should not have the same floor. They could use a 3 year running average. The problem I see is that rebuilding teams would take on the badly failing contracts. Contenders would dump them and use the money to buy more free agent talent. Great for players but the result is an even greater advantage for big market teams. Raise the luxury tax threshold substantially. How is this good for the game? It obviously would allow all of the top teams to basically add another top free agent without penalty. Is this something Twins fans should want? Is it good for the game? Shorter control before free agency. The end result seems very straight forward. Top revenue teams get the very top FAs a year earlier. Is this good for the game. Should Twins fans support this demand? What do you want to see and what don’t you want to see in the new CBA? I would like to see a big increase in the league minimum. Something like 800K year 1 / $1M year 2 / $1.2M year 3. That's help's all of the players not just the guys who eventually get paid big. It also helps a little with rebuilding teams spending so little. It's one sure way the players get an increase without hurting the game. I also support a floor but they need to be very creative to make it fair and prevent it from being a dump zone for bad contracts. I would also address service time issue by enhancing compensation in the final year of control. How? I am not sure. That's tricky but I think it's worth exploring.

Blaine Enlow being the 11th best pitching prospect is pretty exciting? I guess we could say the same thing about Strotman being the 15th best pitching prospect. I am going to watch a lot of Milb baseball this year.

A contender is going to trade pitching for Sano?

Is Duffy healthy because that's an interesting option?

I understand where you are coming from as well. However, there is one overriding principle that everyone who wants a quick fix ignores with the type of justification listed here or the many other forms we have seen. The evidence / history is quite clear in terms of how successful teams are build. Literally, not one person has provided an example of success yet there are countless posts insisting the path to success is a product of strategies that rarely if ever succeed. It's one thing to be unaware. It's another to absolutely refuse to look at history which is the closest thing we have to fact. Ironically, I see building from within as the best way to make it feasible to utilize free agency. I believe we will have enough home grown players + Maeda for a rotation next year. A that point we will both have more funds and a better idea of where they should be spent. Maybe that's a front of the rotation guy. Maybe that's a SS or maybe they could afford both. Basically the Rays way while spending another $60M.

You have a point. So show me examples of where a team added a couple of mid tier free agents that carried them to success in the playoffs without already having homegrown talent leading the rotation. What I see in all of these responses is a desperate desire to be as good as possible next year and a complete refusal to do what's necessary to actually build a contender. That's why people are at odds with the front office.

I appreciate someone finally providing an example. However, how are the Giants relevant in a discussion about strategies employed by below average revenue teams? They are a top 5 team in terms of revenue. It's also not fair to just generalize they were FA acquisitions in the context of this discussion. The claim here is that the Twins failed strategically because they did not sign any of the top FAs which of course is consistent with long-term expensive free agents. The Giants top performer was signed in 2020 on a 1 year $9M deal and then resigned to a qualifying offer, another 1 year deal. That's hardly the same thing as what they are being criticized for here. And, BTW, they did not resign him (even with theri revenue) when it required a 5 year contract. There other top performer (Webb) was drafted. They also got solid production from Alex Wood on a 2/$25M contract. Also not at all the same as what people are calling for here and certainly not what the Twins need to get back in contention. They do have a huge contract on the books (Cueto) which produced virtually nothing after the first year. Equating how the Giants were built or where their production came from to the strategies being called for here is a real reach, huge revenue difference not withstanding.

It does not make sense to me to insist they made a mistake or they are waiting a year unless you can provide examples of below average revenue teams that went deep in the playoffs the year after adding the 3 SPs via trade/ free agency or a combination therefore of with 2 of those spots being the top of their rotation. Lots of insistence here that the appropriate strategy was obvious but not a single example of when it was successful. For every example provided of top free agents or trades for top SPs, I will come up with 3 success stories where the team was primarily built on players they drafted or traded for before they were established performers at the MLB level. It's not a mistake to follow the best practices. Let's see some examples of below ave Rev teams that built pitching staffs through trading for established SPs and/or signing top free agents.

Snell and Odorizzi combined for 3.2 WAR last year. They are not going to make us legit contenders unless every player on the roster has a career year. From all appearances the FO is focused on building a pitching staff from within. I would hope they would not abandon that plan/focus for Snell and Odorizzi.

You are making wild assumptions. You said .... "I like Winder and probably wouldn't trade him, but you just compared 54.2 innings to a whole bunch more. Kind of cherry picked there, how about comparing AAA numbers?" My statement was pretty clear. It makes no sense to look at 17 IP at AAA when he was hurt. Turning this into not worrying about his limited IP at AA or suggesting I am making him out to be a "can't miss" is awfully dramatic. My guess is none of the prospects w/o ML experience are starting the season with the team. The 1st 6-8 weeks of the Milb season is going to be an audition to determine who comes up first. However, it's possible one of these prospects looks great in spring training and goes north with the team. It's not like they can't send him down in 6 weeks and give someone else a shot.

He only had 4 games at AAA. They moved him up and his velocity and command dropped off right after being promoted so his AAA numbers are not very meaningful.

I agree completely that what they are doing can be overlooked because of the focus on payroll. However, in the context of successful team building practices, we have to compare teams of similar revenue when debating the best practices for building a winning team. The top teams can sign 5 Chris Taylors and 5 Justin Verlanders and still the Ray's budget left over. The revenue disadvantage creates an absolutely INEVITABLE NEED to produce far more win per dollar spent. Yet, that premise is literally ridiculed here. It is often stated outright here that people don't care about wins per dollar spent which is mind boggling because it is prerequisite of success for teams at the bottom of the revenue spectrum. We just can't demonstrate the necessity of these practices without the premise of wins per dollar spent. We also have many years of history we can look back on the establish the relative success of the various acquisition methods but it does not make sense to compare acquisition practices of teams with twice the financial resource. This is perhaps a moot point because this history is absolutely ignored because it very clearly does not support trading for short-term assets and major free agent signings are virtually non-existent among successful teams in this revenue group.

Players getting paid more has absolutely zero positive influence on valuations. The factors that drive valuation are all attributed to profit, expected growth rate, risk, and sustainability. If you had a patented method for identifying and developing players that would influence future profits and increase valuation. Of course, it does not work that way. Many other teams are copying some of the Rays practices. Other teams have also hired their leadership. Teams with far superior revenue or revenue potential have an advantage that is likely to always exist. That revenue advantage provides a competitive advantage which makes it far easier to maintain the popularity of the brand. The valuation for teams with built in advantages associates with better markets, better revenue and a competitive advantage will be a higher multiple or earnings because of the capacity to increase earnings and lower risk.

I go the Milb package specifically to watch our top prospects.. Quite often I only watched the pitching side of the inning and I too watched most of Winder's games. He was quite dominant. There is a good chance he is the next man up and maybe even out of spring training if he looks good.