Major League Ready

I was thinking almost the same thing. My thought was you take that deal if someone is willing to trade a really good RP.

So is Guerrero Jr. and the expectation for him is instant success. Of course, he is just getting started but his wRC+ so far is 22.

You want to write-off a 20 year old kid for demonstrating a little bravado? I definitely don't agree with what he said but that single incident won't sway me from rooting hard for him becoming a prominent part of a future twins rotation.

Odorizzi / Gibson and Pineda cost a combined 23.625M this year. The 3 of them cost another $10M as FAs if they meet expectations this year and could be a little more than that if Gibson repeats last year and Pineda meets expectations. Having said this, I think you are still ignoring my point that part of the gap in our thinking is that I think it takes at least one guy that is a solid 2. I don't even know if we can come up with one but if we do the total dollars associated with SP jumps. You also ignored my question of which SP prospect is likely to be better than the mediocre SPs( Berrios excluded) we have now and which position players are going to be upgrades over Cron and Schoop? This still ignores the Twins will likely also need to invest in a BP arm or two. We simply disagree on the likelihood of upgrades coming from within next year. The guys that will make a difference are 2021 or 2nd half of 2020 IMO. I hope I am not only wrong but way off in this opinion.

You have a point about the starting pitching. My mindset was that they would need to sign a Mortonsen / Happ type free agent SPs because anything less was not going to get us into contention but you are right that 2 Odorizzi's would not cost in excess of $25M. I think Rogers will get a decent bump if he continues to perform close to as he has the last half of 18 and the start of this year. Our basic difference in opinion is you see us shedding payroll and replacing it with MiLB talent. I definitely do not see that happening with more than 1 SP. Graterol, Alcala, Jax do not look to me like they are ready to contribute next year. Maybe Graterol if he has a great year. I think we need to sign two free Agent SPs to replace the exiting 3 SPs and they will be more expensive than the existing options if they are going to be good enough for us to contend. What SP prospect looks like he would be an improvement over what we have? I also don't see a Schoop replacement that will be ready next year. I did forget about Reed but they will have to spend money in the BP. I guess I just happen to agree with the 30 GMs who have felt that the cost and risk associated with Kimbrell could be better placed elsewhere.

The Twins are at $121M in Salary. $17M/YR would put them at $136M which is at the very top of what teams with equivalent revenue spend. Next year … They will lose 3 starting SPs next year that collectively make $25,625,000. Replacing two of them will cost more than the current salary level. Berrios, becomes arbitration eligible and will get a sizeable raise. Rosario , Sano, Rodgers, Buxton, and May all likely get a significant bump. Polanco and Kepler contracts increase by $500K each or an incremental $1M. I would guess we are looking at roughly $20M in arbitration increases or more if these players perform the way we hope or good enough to make us contenders. They are also going to need to replace Cron and Schoop. Cron could be retained but that would involve an increase as well assuming he plays well enough they want to retain him. Is there an infielder that will be ready to replace Schoop next year? Maybe. They only place we are certain to reduce payroll is catcher with Castro’s contract expiring. If you are a very short-term focused manager who ignores the future, Kimbrel is the move you make. If you are trying to build sustained success, Kimbrel is not an effective or measured utilization of payroll. Kimbrel has produced 1.5 WAR or greater once in the past 4 years and he is about to turn 31. Certainly not over the hill but he is at the point where performance tends to begin declining. Along term deal makes no sense and there will be better places to spend $18M/yr with a much better chance of upside in terms of production.

I did the exact same thing hoping the optimism of Perez comes to fruition. Plus, Buxton has looked good and that could bump us up a bit too.

Orioles are in first position for waiver claims, right?

I doubt you would see any impact on ticket prices. Teams have X dollars to spend on players. If every team decided to double MiLB salaries it would come out of MLB player salaries which is why they players union has not pushed the issue. The current average salary is around $4.4M. Doubling MiLB player salaries would equate to that average MLB dropping to roughly 4.3M assuming revenue is stagnant going forward. I assumed something in the CBA dictated the amount that could be spent on MiLB players. Apparently this is not true and the other teams would be wise to follows Toronto's lead.

I did not mean to dismiss the differences. My point was that employees don't get paid more in any other industry based on revenue growth which some contend they are entitled. Let's not forget the players portion is guaranteed and the premise of splitting proceeds is always done before covering operating cost. How does that make sense. If we look at Forbes and Statistica for 2017 (2018 N/A yet) the Twins had 261M in revenue, 108M in player payroll, and $23M in profit. Therefore, operating costs were roughly $130M which means the players portion of revenue after cost 82.4% and ownership's retained 17.6% of the available funds. That seems like a pretty good portion going to players does it not? I would add that the current generation of players did not create this massive opportunity. To say they are responsible for this revenue and therefore deserve this massive payday fails to recognize the are the recipients of very good fortune of which they did not create.

Name another industry where the employees demand guaranteed contracts and an equal cut of the revenue. Of course the equal cut premise makes no sense because the players are not paying the operating costs. If the owners and players split net operating income equally the players would be in for a huge compensation cut. Let's keep this in perspective. Teams are still willing to pay very high AAVs and they are willing to pay that for as long as the player remains productive. The players are stomping their feet because because they want extremely high AAVs regardless of if they perform and they want contracts that give them a couiple of years of additional compensation when they almost certainly will not earn it. Again, a ludicrous concept in any other form of business. I find it difficult to support the premise hundreds of millions is not enough and top players should get an extra $40, 50, etc million after they no longer perform at a high level. In all likelihood the money will be spent, it will just be redistributed to players who's production warrants the compensation.

Some fans obviously think that baseball as an industry should not be subject to free market principals. Of course, had that been the case, nobody would have funded this league and we would not have baseball as we know it today. Player compensation was adequate to attract all of the top talent and the public certainly did not think they were underpaid. Had player compensation remained commensurate with 1969 levels, players would earn roughly $161,000 on average. Of course, they make 25 times that amount. I would say the industry has been incredibly kind to MLB players. Too bad minor league players have not gotten a small piece of the pie. To be fair, the Nippon league pays about $600K/year on average so $161,000 would not be adequate to retain players. However, if they player compensation was one-quarter of today’s rate, I doubt the supply would be impacted. What if at the end of this CBA the owners said we believe all of the teams that got stadium money should repay it. So, the league is going to take 10% of the revenue from each team and distribute it the states that funded stadiums. That would equate to about 1.3M per player on average. In other words, player compensation would have to drop to an average about $3M/player. Now that would be fair. The players would scream bloody murder but the public paying for stadiums so that players can be paid hundreds of millions is ludicrous. Now what if the owners said we think MLB should help the homeless, veterans, battered women, etc and we are going to distribute another $750M or roughly $1M per player to help these people in needs. Now the average salary is $2M. Do we lose any players because they are unwilling to work for an average of $2M/annually?

You apparently did not understand the point. Microsoft and several other companies grew as much or more than MLB. Compensation to their employees did not grow at 7X the adjusted rate of inflation. Businesses don't pay more or less because of changes in revenue. They pay an amount sufficient to attract and retain employees. Would MLB players go do something else if the average comp was 2.2 instead of 4.4M annually?

Does your employer increase wages in parallel to growth in profit? Employers pay an amount that is sufficient to attract people over other options and retain them. The next best option to MLB is the Nippon league at about 1/10 of MLB. You are expecting MLB to operate differently than every other business. Employees are not entitled to a share of the profits in any other industry.

You really think the teams, the league and leadership / promotion of the game had nothing to do with the success of this industry? You live in a very one-sided world.

I can appreciate shortening the years of control would be good for the players but I am quite concerned it would be bad for the game and really bad for small markets. The big markets have easily double the spending capacity for players as compared to small markets. What's the effect on mid and small markets when they lose key players a year earlier? I would start with a raise to MiLB players. Talk about not getting a piece of the pie ... MLB player salaries have grown at roughly 7 times the adjusted rate of inflation. They have done extremely well and MiLB players work for peanuts. Next raise MLB minimums to something like 750K / 1M in the first two years and start arbitration a year earlier.

The FO might not see Rosario the same way he is seen here. His WAR has been modest other than the the first half of last season. He played like an elite player for that period but that period was significantly better than any other period. The league adjusted and that period of excellence was followed by a period of equal length where he was absolutely terrible. He was the least productive of any of the regulars. Obviously, he was a pretty good player prior to 2018 but I would not expect the FO to ante up in a big way based on a half season.

I understand where you are coming from I just don’t agree it’s all the same. If the contracts mentioned were shorter, those teams would have had hundreds of millions of incremental dollars to spend while losing very little production. If those teams maintain the same level of spending, that will absorb even more of the available talent. This is not a theory, it is a certainty if we accept the premise they would continue to spend at the same rate. The other probable difference is that those teams become even better because of the propensity for poor performance in the latter years of these contracts. In other words, those exceptionally poor producing players will be replaced by players that likely perform better. Therefore, the big market teams absorbing this talent will be better which is a tangible difference between the two scenarios.

Front loading the contract basically negates the benefit of the two option years.

Albert Pujlos produced .4WAR over the past 4 years Price Fielder – Produced .4 WAR over his last 5 seasons Melivin Upton – Averaged .38 WAR over 5 seasons Josh Hamilton produced .4 WAR over his last 3 seasons Jason Heyward, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Chris Davis all would be cut. Annabal Sanchez produced .73 WAR over the last 3 seasons of his deal. Cueto and Zimmerman have been under 1 WAR per season the last couple years. CJ Wilson produced 2.2 WAR over his last 3 seasons. There are also several high-end RPs that produced less than 1 WAR in the last year of their deals and other players who produced adequately enough to make it debatable if they were detrimental. Had these players been on shorter deals, those teams would have had even more money to absorb an even greater portion of the FA market. Perhaps more importantly, they could have improved their teams if not saddled with these bad contracts. Therefore, I don’t agree the result would have been the same. Those teams would have had even greater dominance over the FA market and in all likelihood would have have improved their teams if those players were not under contract.

The inefficiency of LT deals limited the advantage to the teams who could afford to sign them. Even the biggest revenue teams run out of available payroll dollars. That inefficiency will be diminished with shorter term contracts giving the large markets greater productivity from their FA expenditures.

AAvs have grown at a very strong pace and Teams are still willing to pay those high AAVs. The only difference is that history has proven that the team will get burned more often that not. So, the reality is Teams have learned that these contracts often hurt the team badly and they are adjusting. They are still willing to pay as long as a player is productive but the players want to be paid regardless of contribution. So, to answer your question, they can make a ton of money for as long as they produce. Seems fair to me.

I should have elaborated but I was short on time. He is a fantastic player, no doubt. The only point is that the numbers you cited include a year where he had almost double the WAR of any other years. He has been a 3-5 WAR player with the exception of 1 year. That's very good but there is a reason the interest has been somewhat limited and I just thought the context you used was shining the best possible light on this subject.

How about the last 2 years ... 26th best player

The owners could pay an 1/4 of what they do now and lose 1% of the available players. Do you think players would not work for an average of $1M/year. There highest paid alternative outside of MLB is the Nippon league which is about an 1/8 of what they get paid now. The average pay of MLB players has grown at 7X the adjusted rate of inflation in the last 25 years and more than that if you go back further. I would say MLB players have done great and let's not forget that both sides continue to allow MiLB players to work for peanuts. They are all (players and owners) greedy bastards.