Major League Ready

What free agent OFer other than Martinez would that describe?

It's pretty easy to calculate actual cost. What I am wondering is how they are forecasting and determining market value. Has there been a considerable gap in forecasted vs actual performance. Of course, this includes how long the player will add significant value. It seems like there was a tendency be overly optimistic. Does WAR even have any significant role in contract valuations. Honestly, I have never dig into it by it seems highly suspect. How accurate has Streamer been? I have never seen a metric this suspect used in any form of valuation in any other industry. Are we seeing an adjustment this year? There are more business school educated personnel in front offices now. There appears to be an adjustment in-process this season. Are the front offices finally recognizing the odds of defying aging and the cost of losing cost controlled players. It will be very interesting to see how this shakes out in coming weeks.

Are the estimates you referenced in the highlighted part of your post the average production per WAR after signing or are this calculated based on the price free agent signed and there war for 2-3 seasons leading up to free agency? I think you are confusing production per WAR with what players are signing for in comparison with this historical WAR. For example, Lorenzo Cain averaged 4.6 WAR over the last 3 years. He signed for $16M/year which equates to 3.8M per WAR. Zack Cozart signed for $12,666,667 per year. His war the previous 3 years was 2.97 which equates to 4.265M per WAR Chatwood was hurt sand missed a lot of time so it's hard to go by his historical numbers. Streamer projects him at 1.9 WAR which equates to $6.666M per WAR. There is a lot of variance but the premise that the market value is $10M per war is not accurate unless they are signing them even though they expect their production to be half their historic rate. One would think they are basing their offers on the previous 2-3 years productivity and the end result has been much poorer than expected.

That's a very one-sided point of view. There have been numerous players who received enormous contracts and failed miserably to deliver. Those payers don't give back a dime and the premise of them doing so is never even a remote consideration. The union would go nuts. It might even be a result of injury but why is it fair that the team absorb 100% of the risk associated with injury or non-performance. To say the owners should pay beyond market on a new contract with all the uncertainty associated with these big deals is wildly biased.

Why do people keep insisting that the window will close once Buxton and Sano are past their arbitration years. Why can't we extend one or both, What if Lewis comes up in a couple of years and is better than both of them? Then, we have Buxton and Sano in their prime plus Lewis. Why can't we have a pleasant surprise or two. Judge was not a top 50 prospect. Why can't Rooker or Thorpe or Graterol and Romero step up big time? The window does not need to close in 4 years.

There is absolutely no inference we should blow it up. My position has been consistent. Continue to develop and acquire young talent until we are actually seriously positioned to contend. (ie Houston)d) We have a long ways to go to develop the starting rotation and bullpen of a contender. Cole would help but our pitching staff as a whole would still have a long ways to go to be on par with teams that are serious world series contenders. Our strength is our young core which still has plenty of question marks. Santana, Dozier and Mauer could all be gone next year. This team is by no stretch of anyone's imagination in a window of contention and we do not have the revenue to buy it. Trading away long-term assets for players with 2 years of control is a great approach to mediocrity. It only makes sense when you need a final piece and we are not close to that point. Cole and the assets we gave up for him will be long gone when we are there or could have been there had we not given away the assets that landed him. Get Darvish and then trade for Archer if you are going to push in your chips. At least then you have 4 years to enjoy a better team and if the rest comes together we probably contend for a couple years.

Cole is a good SP but it would take him and Kershaw to give us a chance to win the division so we would be expending considerable assets trying to get a wildcard. The wildcard used to mean you earned a playoff series. Now it means you get a one game shot at getting a playoff series. In addition, the contending teams have better #1s so we would still be poorly positioned for a playoff run. Plus, we would still need a major overhaul of the BP to be even close to most of the contender's bullpen. So, expending good assets for 2 years of Cole makes no sense to me.

Question 1 - I think the odds makers have answered this question or we could ask ourselves what we need to add to be competitive with Cleveland first and foremost because you don't go all in for a chance to get to a 50% chance of getting to a playoff series. Then, we need to consider what we would need to be competitive with Houston, NY, and Boston. If we are honest, we could gut our farm system and max out our payroll and bot get there unless a few of the players we already have make big steps forward. Cole does nothing to position us for a playoff run so why give up inexpensive long-term assets for Cole? Question 2 - I don't really know but if we are to let him go it should be part of a package for a player that enables us to better compete in the playoffs.

The position/complaints vary but how was anything other than a major acquisition going to change our chances in the playoffs. If the complaint is that we traded Garcia and Kintzler, Again .... what is the point. We did make the playoffs so it's hard to understand the argument that they would have helped us make the playoffs. I am guilty myself of asking things like why didnt the go after Keven Maitan. Turns out we did and he did not want to come here. It's likely there are many of these scenarios that we don't find out about.

Because fans have wildly unrealistic expectations. We ignore that Detroit simply refused to trade Verlander within the division or that he would have refused to come here or perhaps did refuse to come here. Fans also have an extremely short-sighted view .... Damn the future, let's go all in on our 5% shot and make it a 15% shot even though it cost us our future. My firm has a a word for that when we evaluate management teams and practices. The word is incompetence. We ignore that the team DID reach the goal they would have hoped to achieve had they traded away important parts of the future. Instead, we increased assets while getting to the playoffs. If the premise is we could have traded for enough assets to win a series against the Yankees or Astros, someone needs to show me the plan that would have made that happen. The net was a gain in assets that should help future contention and we made the playoffs and somehow quite a few people see this as a failure.

The odds makers were giving the twins something like a 5% chance of making a one game playoff in order to get into an actual playoff series. To characterize this as the Twins being in a good position is a very colorful interpretation. This is management 101 and to paint the decision to improve the long-term instead of depleting assets for a very low probability of success is a fanatical position as skilled leadership doe not ignore the odds.

Everything you have pointed out is very fair. It would have actually lowered the dollars paid per WAR had I used 2 years and I would agree that teams are definitely going to weigh the newest information more heavily. Had I added some common sense in cases in terms or whether to use the last year, two years or 3 years, the amount per WAR would have come down. I only used the 3 year approach because it was conservative and others could not suggest I was cherry picking. The point I am making is not this granular. It's this simple. It is crystal clear that a model paying $8M per WAR is not sustainable for even the largest market teams. To say its reasonable or sustainable for all of the teams in the league is to ignore many economic and business principals. I guess it's this simple .... If the MN Twins or any team of similar revenue produce at a rate of one WAR per $8M, the probability of success is extremely low if FAs are relied upon to any significant degree.

OK Let’s look at ALL of the players who received contracts of 3 years or greater last year. That would be the definition of assessing market value, right. I used these players because they obviously were the best positioned of all of the free agents. I also picked the best players because I don’t think most TD participants are much more interested in the Johnny Cueto types as opposed to Jason Castro. Yoenis Cespedes … 4.4 | 27 | 6.136 Jason Castro … 1.43 | 8.167 | 5.711 Josh Reddick … 2.5 | 13 | 5.200 Justin Turner … 4.23 | 16 | 3.783 Ian Desmond … 3 | 14 | 4.667 Dexter Fowler … 3.1 | 16.5 | 5.323 Edward … 4 | 20 | 5.000 Mark Trumbo … 1.65 | 12.5 | 7.576 Kendrys Morales … 1.4 | 11 | 7.857 Ivan Nova … 1.4 | 8.666 | 6.190 These 10 top free agents averaged 5.74M per war. It’s probably an anomaly but Trumbo / Morales & Nova brought that average up. The other 7 players averaged 5.12M per WAR, RPs Bret Cecil … 1.13 | 7.625 | 6.748 Aroldis Chapman … 2.666 | 17.2 | 6.452 Kenley Janzen … 2.333 | 16 | 6.858 Mark Melacon … 1.8 | 15.5 | 8.611 Average … 7.167. Top BP arms got a premium last year. I suspect this average comes down if you look at the masses but I am not interested enough to look them all up. Is the market data from all of the FAs able to get 3 year contracts adequate evidence for you?

Agree completely while qualifying that the 5 or 6 largest markets have enough incremental revenue to absorb contracts that go terribly bad as long an equal number of them work out. All we need to do is observe which teams sign these enormous contracts. Small market teams rarely (almost never) sign these kinds of deals. It is very obvious that mid and small market GMs agree with you.

A better measure of market value would be what free agents actually get paid comparted to their average WAR for the previous 2-3 years. Here are examples of contracts from 2016 & 2017. I mostly used players in their prime to get a reasonable measure and averaged their WAR over the previous three years to determine market value/WAR.. I did use David Price at age 32 and I omitted the year Cueto had only 60 IP. I threw Jason Castro in just to add an example of that type of player. Year | Average War | AAV | AAV per WAR 2017 Yoenis Cespedes … 4.4 | 27 | 6.136 2017 Jason Castro … 1.43 | 8.167 | 5.711 2017 Josh Reddick … 2.5 | 13 | 5.200 2016 Jason Heyward … 4.86 | 23 | 4.733 2016 David Price … 5.63 | 31 | 5.506 2016 Johnny Cueto … 4.43 | 21.67 | 4.891 2016 Justin Upton … 3.46 | 16 | 4.624 It is clear that the market does not value free agents anywhere near $8M per WAR. These players averaged 5.257. My guess is that RPs might bring this number up a bit. Cespedes missed some games which brought down his salary/WAR. If we use 2 previous years instead of three his value is 5.55/WAR which is very consistent with the others. BTW … Mike Napoli got 7M on a 1 year deal in 2016. That’s about the best comp I can come up with for Mauer. Totally different player but a similar caliber 1B.

This valuation has been thrown around here quite a bit. Is one WAR worth $8M or is one WAR the average production of free agents? Those are two quite different things. If we attempted to build a team on this premise, the payroll required to build a 98 win team would be roughly $400M. Our team has to average about $1.5M/WAR. No team can actually afford a $400M payroll, therefore I don't think one WAR is actually worth $8M, especially to teams with 50 or 60% of the top teams.

How are you calculating this value?

I hope they are out trying to trade some of the guys we have been talking about that need 40 man protection for international dollars. You would think that's feasible given these players are considerably closer to contributing at the ML level and not as big of a crap shoot as 16 y/o international players. It still might not matter. I would have to think NY offers more appeal and more income potential in endorsements.Our hope might be allowing him to DH if NY won't make the same promise.

I am a big proponent of extending our core. However, any plan that start with the assumption all of these players are willing to extend has a very low probability of success. Add to that how inconsistent they have all been and it’s a bad idea in concept. I also think you are light on the dollars and it’s not financially feasible to extend them all at what they are likely to cost. These decisions can be mad over the next couple years and that additional time should facilitate better decisions, especially given none of them has sustained a high level of play. Dozier – Extending Dozier is not where I would invest given the depth we have in high ceiling middle infield prospects. Buxton – We still have no idea if he can hit for more than a 6 week period but I would extend him at this price if he is willing. Sano – Just not a guy I would bet on at this point. Take another year or even two to determine if Sano is a good long-term investment. Rosario – I would sign him for that kind of money in a heartbeat but it will take considerably more. He is a good bet to maintain his offense now that he has improved his plate discipline from horrid to below average. He will be great if he can develop average plate discipline. Kepler – I had a man crush on Kepler but I want to see him bounce back before I invest long-term. Rooker might be a better option than Kepler by 2019. It makes a lot of sense to approach this next year or later unless the terms were very favorable. Berrios – I doubt he signs for this kind of money. Regardless of the exact dollars, I would want option years on any pitcher. History is very clear how risky pitchers are on long-term deals. Polanco is also worthy of consideration. I would be more apt to extend him than Kepler right now which is part of the reason this should be approached over the course of the next couple years. Our payroll is roughly $85M. We can go get Lynn, Cobb or maybe even Darvish and a couple relievers. This would make for a very good team, especially if this core continues to improve in a manner consistent with core players worthy of an extension. Next year we have $44M coming off the books if we don’t pick-up Santana’s option. At that point we are going to be in a much better position to determine where to invest. We will be doing so in a year with an exceptional free agent class. We will have had another year to determine the best extensions candidates and there will more legitimate pitching prospects (SP&BP) reaching ML readiness than we have had in a long time.

We just need to keep in mind the word from which fan is derived. We should not expect that a certain percentage of fans are not going to exhibit cold rational thinking. Along with a few other posters, I posted the reported odds of the Twins making the playoffs shortly after the deadline. Most people have played a little poker in their life. You just don't keep betting on a very low probability hand. Yet, a few people insisted the Twins should have bet on winning even when presented with those odds. I would not be too concerned that you can't make everyone understand the rationale of the FO.

Our staff needs long-term solutions at this point. This team is never going to be a contender until the starting rotation is solidified and we are a very long way from that point. These one years deals are great fort a pitcher to rebuild his value but unless we get a couple options year these bounce back deals do little to solidify our staff. Go get Cobb and 2 relievers.Start the season with Erv | Berrios | Cobb | Gibson & Mejia. Give Gonsalves | Romero | Littell and maybe even Slegers a chance to win a spot. We need some low cost guys to produce because Erv might not be here next year. Unless we get lucky for once with prospects, we are going to need to replace Erv. The good news is we will have his salary and Mauer's to fund another FA. I don't want to go into free agency next year wondering about the same SP prospects. If these guys step up, we could use the available dollars on whatever piece we need in terms of position players. If the SP prospects get a chance and fail, it will be clear to the FO and ownership the need to spend in free agency or trade away prospects. Personally, I like Ohtani for the second add to the rotation.

For starters, even with Arrieta, we are not on the same plane as the Indians, Astros, Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers, Nationals, and Cubs. Beyond that reality, our core won't even hit 30 in that timeframe. Many people are making the point that if we manage our assets wisely we can extend the most important players like we did with Mauer. We also have a very deep system that should produce low cost players for the next several years. The window is only 4-5 years if our assets are managed poorly.

When you say contend ... Do you mean we should be a contender to get to the World Series or should we win the division or do you mean we should contend for a wild card spot. It makes quite a bit of difference in how we should approach the season. There were a lot of fans here who thought we should trade away young talent a couple years for Tulo, Shields, LuCroy, etc. because we were ready to contend. We are still not close to the level of Houston, Cleveland, Boston, and NY. For this team to contend beyond a 2nd wildcard they would basically need 80% or more of the following to occur ..... One of the top FA SPs Santana can't decline at all. Berrios has to step it up considerable We need the best version of Gibson all year Mejia needs to step up. Need to add 2 very good BP arms Hildy and Busenitz can't sophomore slump Sano needs to stay healthy and improve his approach Buxton needs to be far more consistent offensively Polanco needs to be much closer to the great 6 weeks he had than the rest of the season. Kepler needs take a step forward. An aging Mauer needs to maintain his level of play Dozier needs to remain in a Twins uniform. Need a great year in terms of avoiding injuries That's a lot of contingencies to say they should contend. I seriously doubt the national media is going to say this team should contend. We need to make room for May (Long relief is a good start) and eventually give Gonsalves, Romero, and a number of BP arms a chance to establish themselves so that this team can become a true contender. Let's get that done this year instead of being a perpetual pretender. It does not make sense to position a world Championship as the only thing that matters and then take an approach with very little chance of getting there.

Is the man/woman who finished second in his/her class at Harvard making five million dollars a year a loser because someone finished higher than him/her or because there are athletes that make 5X that amount. Sorry, I don’t find the “everyone who did not finish 1st is a loser” to be very enlightened. How does one look at their own life with this type of outlook and not be disappointed? The Championship or bust philosophy is one that is certain to bring disappointment nearly every year. I refuse to approach something that is supposed to be entertaining that way. I would much prefer to have a very good product to watch most years than to have 20 years of futility followed by one world series win and back to mediocrity or worse. Everyone is welcome to their own viewpoint. I just prefer to appreciate great teams or anything else great even if they are not the very best.

One team does not define likely outcomes and nowhere did I suggest we should construct a team the way those twins teams were built. Did Cleveland and Detroit have multiple playoff runs during the periods mentioned. How about St Louis who by the way have been one of the most profitable franchises over the last 20 years so they obviously had additional spending capacity? Let's not get away from the real point which is building a team that is a perennial playoff team vs pushing all your chips in to maximize your odds during a very short window. Are you OK with 20 years of futility like the Royals and Pirates had before having a brief window of contention? The just go for it approach is fine for fans but the people that get paid to lead organizations don't get to such a position by ignoring the long-term impact of their decisions.