Major League Ready

Is the goal to win the division or build a contender? You have to ask yourself why should we aspire to get to Cleveland's position when they are electing to tear it down. Their revenue generating capacity is about the sames as our so it's a good comparison.

If this were golf that one would be right down the middle and long.

It would appear a lot of teams are moving in the direction you suggest, Hopefully, including the Twins. I don't think we would have seen as much of Astudillo if they we not putting value in positional flexibility.

I would have no problem with these signing with perhaps the exception of Miller because I don't know how realistic it is to expect him to come back to close to his past performance. If Buxton and Sano both bounce back and all 4 FAs perform at out above expectation these adds would get us close to the top teams. The Depth Charts projection is 10.1 wins. Of course, this would be the gain if they were replacing replacement level players but that’s not the case. It's a net add of 5-6 wins? That gets us to 82 wins so we would need another 12-14 wins from Buxton/Sano and the other positions combined. The odds of that all working out are about the same as us getting Machado but it would not hurt us unless we are paying #35M/tr Machado until he is 38. Machado is a great long-term add and Marwin's flexibility should be an asset for as long as he is here. Murphy is a good 2 year placeholder. I see Miller as a risk but I don't have enough info to have a strong opinion. 5.2 Machado 1.7 Gonzalez 2.5 Murphy 0.7 Miller ---- 10.1

Apple made 48B in 2017 (the Twins made $23M) By your logic Apple should give $100B worth of product to their customers.What do you suppose the odds of that happening are?

If you reach a bit you could make that inference but that is not remotely the point being made here. The point is that 10M/WAR free agents are counterproductive to building a contender for teams with less than average revenue. That pointed was highlighted by the fact I provided mathematical proof. I would think people would either contest the math or acknowledge the production/dollar spent is crucial to below average revenue teams building a contender. Even the large market teams have come to appreciate the importance but as I have shown in the previous post it’s not as critical to teams with the highest revenue.. This has been a huge point of contention here. Most will just ignore the proof I just offered and continue to complain about the organization won’t do something because they are cheap when the motivation is much more likely they believe for good reason the move would be counterproductive. Instead of refuting the proof or acknowledging the conclusion on what was clearly the point you jumped to the conclusion that I “don't think they should try to compete next year?” I wrote show me a scenario where this is achieved using $10M/WAR free agents which is completely consistent with the main point I just described. The fact that I reject a specific strategy / approach does not mean I reject the objective of trying to win. The reference to other teams retooling was defining “win” and setting the bar for # of wins because a 90 win team is not really a contender and I am not interested in a plan where the likely outcome is get our a$$e$ kicked in the playoffs. Every blueprint presented here makes us better but none of them (including the $150M plan) construct a team that is realistically close to Boston / Houston / NY. Part of the point is that if we can’t construct a true contender, what’s the difference between 86 and 88 or even 90 wins. I certainly am not trading any good prospects to get from 84 to 87 wins. I will trade them when I get to 87 wins (see Milwaukee)

I would normally agree, Mike. However, most of the players receiving extension offers are players with a higher probability of success. Buxton is a bit of a unique case. I think most of us believe he can still be a superstar but there is a also a pretty significant chance he is a 4th outfielder. It's an unusually uncertain case with a wide differential between floor and ceiling. Turning down $40 or 50M would be quite gutsy as of today. It would be an extremely aggressive play on the Twins part.

You are kidding right. There is no difference I never suggested nor would I suggest now that the Twins only invest $10M now. You are making up scenarios just like Mike which is a useless exercise. Financial metrics have to be compared against like variables or the exercise is useless. My primary argument is not even how much they spend now but how effectively they do it. $10M/win frees agents are counter productive for a team with less than average income. Instead of changing the argument show me a scenario with our current team where using $10M/WAR players is advantageous. Keep in mind 90 win teams are considering tearing down because there are 4 AL teams with 97+ wins. Show me how you build a 97 win team from where we are today were you spend $30M or more on $10M/WAR players. The impact is much greater on lesser revenue teams. Boston can spend 8.92M per player on the 25 man roster. MN can spend 5.2M or 58% on a per player basis. If Boston spends 60M on three 10M/WAR players they still can spend 7.41M per player on the 22 remaining roster spots. If the Twins do the same they have 3.18M per player available or 43% of Boston. In other words, it becomes increasing difficult for lesser revenue teams to field a competitive team if they sign players producing 1WAR/10M.

Would LOVE to compare resumes.

What was I thinking ... Had they only signed Darvish and Hosmer instead of Lynn and Morrison.

The answer is extremely obvious for anyone who has ever had P&L responsibility of a 9 figure entity. Is it a better business practice to invest 50/60 or 70M on the low probability that the prospects that have struggled becomes stars or do you suppose the people who are investing that money would elect to invest once the prospects are proving to pan out? You know this how any team outside the top 10 in revenue operate so why would you ask such a silly question?

You keep changing the scenario completely. Are the Minnesota Twins even remotely near a one player away scenario. It’s not possible to have a constructive discussion if you insist on using scenarios that don’t remotely resemble our current state. We are not even arguing the same point. We can’t possibly get to a point where we are one player away without being efficient with payroll. We produced a win for ever $1.7M in payroll and we were badly off the pace AND we max payroll. To suggest the solution is adding players that cost $10M/win is horribly ill-conceived and that is a very polite choice of words.

You obviously don’t understand the correlation. The Red Sox had a phenomenal 108 win season. What if we were equally as effective per dollar spent? They spent 1.91M/win. Well …. That would equate to 68 wins in a year when the Twins had record spending. What if we were as effective as Colorado or Atlanta. Both examples would equate to 102 wins. How about if our payroll dollar/win was as good as the Brewers. That would have been 137 wins. That sounds great until we put it in the context you used. That being “winning the payroll/win championship”. In that case we win all 162 games. Why does this not interest you, Chief or the people who liked the comment? The necessity for teams with less revenue to produce more wins per payroll dollar is a very simple concept and it is absolute. Why anyone would argue against such a clear cut concept leaves me wondering exactly why. It makes zero sense.

You are making a different argument, Mike. The conversation was conceptual. I said its more important to find guys for $5M/yr that give you 2 WAR than it is to sign a 3.5 WAR guy for $35M. Any plan that produces 1WAR/$10M of payroll is self-defeating for any team other than the highest revenue teams. The Dodgers ? Yankees etc could easily add three such players in addition to the Twins available budget so it's a different equation for high revenue teams. The 7 players were simply a way to get to the same spend. If you prefer a more practical vs conceptual example. How about if we say we sign 3 FAs. One generates .5 WAR the other 2 produce 4 WAR. We have + 1WAR over the Grienke and $20M to spend next year or use for an extension or add two BP arms for $10M each. BTW ... We need a middle infielder, a corner IF and 3 BP pieces would fit. Plus Wouldn't it be great if we could ad this years version of Miles Mikolas. That's 6 players. The point being

He is 21st in wRC+ for players with 1200+ ABs over the past 3 years. That's very good but $35M/year good? Daniel Murphy was 5 pts higher.

No. It's quite suspect and I think that's the general feeling here but it still gets used often because of the summary nature of this measure. It also does not need to be precise in this context. Look down the list any year and the ranking by WAR looks pretty reasonable. In other words, it's hard to justify the gigantic cost and risk associated with this type of contract (see Heyward) for a player that has not ranked as elite in 4 years. It appears to me that one great year gives players a higher profile than 1 great year of performance deserves. Compare Harper's first six years to Albert Pujlos. It's not even close

Let’s say we followed the wishes of many and signed Greinke 3 years ago. Add Mr. Popular (Marwin Gonzalez) and the RPs suggested by Lev. Here is what we can say for sure. Add roughly $65M annually which would max out payroll. In other words, we are not adding anyone for the next 3 years and we would have to replace Gibson at the cost of his final year of arbitration. WAR for these players over the past 3 years ----- Greinke 2.2 / 5.1 / 3.5 for an average of 3.6 ----- Gonzalez .4 / 4 / 1.6 for an average of .8 ----- Allen 1 / 1.5 / 0 for an average of .833 ----- Herrera 2.0 / .1 / .4 ----- Total = 6.07 wins WAR for these players last year was ----- Greinke = 3.5 for an average of 3.6 ----- Gonzalez = 1.6 for an average of .8 ----- Allen = 0 ----- Herrera .4 ----- Total = 4.5 wins Let’s use the last 3 years instead of last year because that’s more optimistic. Let’s assume Greinke does not regress even though that is not consistent with history. Let’s forget Gonzalez is basically replacing Escobar who had two war before the deadline and let’s pretend Greinke replaces a replacement level player even though I am pretty sure Mejia is worth at least 1 WAR. We have a 500 team under this generous scenario with no available payroll for the next 3 years. There is no scenario where paying 10M/WAR is effective. We would need to spend an incremental $200M to field a team reasonably close to the top AL teams. That is the definition of an ineffective plan. Actually, I can make-up a far fetched scenario where we have several prospects play at a very high level on costs controlled contracts and we add once such player. We are a VERY long way from that scenario right now. Another, perhaps simpler way to evaluate this specific year is that we are in need of several players. If we an incremental $70M on two high profile players we pick up 7 war and have some holes to fill. If we spend $35M on 7 players that generaten 2 WAR we pick up 14 (double) WAR and have $40M to spend next year. I think it's pretty clear which approach has more value to any team, especially a mid-market or small market team.

No disagreement here, MIke. My response was targeted specifically at our inability to draft, trade for, and develop SP which is an entirely different point. We need to develop more than one good SP per decade.

Segura has more WAR than Bryce Harper over the past 3 years (11.2 vs 11.8) Brian Dozier had more WAR than both of them (12) Harper had one huge year four years ago(2015) with a WAR of 9.3. Since then he has been good but not great and $300M was not enough? Finding $5M FAs that produce 2 WAR is a lot more important than signing guys that average 3.5 for $35M/year.

We have been less than mediocre developing pitching and that failure has resulted in us fielding teams between mediocre and horrible. We keep looking for the easy road to success. That does not exist for a team with less than average revenue in a geographically undesirable location. Here is a complete list of legit Ace SPs that signed with a team that profiles as stated above. --- Zack Greinke (overlooking of course the geographically undesirable part) Here is a complete list of legit Ace SPs that signed with a team that profiles as stated above that did not sign a billion dollar TV contract the year before. ---

I usually agree with you but not where Greinke is concerned. What are the odds of a SP not declining during his age 36-38 seasons? That's not an upside play. We heard the same arguments about trading Nolasco for Shields. Occasionally you get a Verlander or Clemens but the vast majority of times, age 36-38 is a downward spiral. He was good for 3.5 WAR last year at 35. You are right about Murphy vs Gallo. Gallo could conceivably improve his contact rate. Therefore, he could improve. Their is also a possibility he becomes Chris Davis as others have suggested. Davis was much better than Gallo and now he is one of the worst hitters in the league. I just can't justify trading away several prospects to get a 2.8 WAR player with serious warts when we already have a similar player in Austin, plus one of the best 1B prospects close to being ready in a year when these acquisitions are are unlikely to elevate us to win the division and when we would be decided underdogs against whomever we are up against in the playoffs.

Lev has already allocated the $$. I just made a couple adjustments that would leave the overall spend roughly the same depending on Arizona's willingness to eat salary. In terms of what's a reasonable budget, Forbes old revenue and profit reports are no longer available. Averaging several years made it possible to make a fairly reasonable estimate of operating costs. I did find 2017 revenue and profits and of course we can always find starting payroll. What I don't have is 2018 revenue so I compared 2018 playoff teams against 2017 revenue. Of course, some of the teams like Milwaukee increased revenue in 2018 which overstates payroll as a percentage of income. Here's what we do know. *** Payroll for all 30 teams averaged 45% of revenue in 2017 and 43% in 2018. *** The 8 playoff teams from 2018 average 39.5 of 2017 revenue. *** One team was over 50% (Astros 56.6) but I would guess their 2018 revenue increased from 2017. *** All others were under 50% *** Five teams above 55% in 2017 (Miami 73% / Detroit 71% / Baltimore 63% / Toronto 57% KC 57%) I would say we should consider 50% fairly aggressive spending. The teams above 55% were train wrecks that had been competitive and generating high revenue and then fell off rapidly.

This team looks to be about 7-8 wins better if all of the free agents perform. Allen and Herrera would both need to bounce back too because they had poor seasons. If it all works out that gets us to 84 wins. If Buxton and Sano both bounce back we would have a legit shot at winning the central which would be an incredible advancement in just 1 year. I had to think about this plan overnight because it’s no small feat to put together a plan that can accomplish this within a viable payroll. My problem with this plan is two-fold. One is the overall risk and specifically the risk associated with Greinke. Betting on age 36-38 seasons for SPs is a very low probability bet. The second is trading away that many prospects for a very low probability of making the playoffs. None of the FA performed last year and all would have to perform plus Buxton and Sano would have to both bounce back significantly. The odds of all of these players performing as we would hope are very low. I would go with Charlie Morton instead of Greinke, especially if he could be signed for 2 years. That would be his age 35-36 seasons as compared to age 36-38 for Greinke. Replace Gallo with Daniel Murphy and keep a role model around for the younger guys. Your original plan is 1-1.5 wins better if Greinke and Morton regress at the same rate but history would suggest Greinke’s regression would be more significant. These adjustments surrender no prospects, eliminates Greinke’s age 38 season, and adds veteran leadership. *** There are a couple other viable 1B options I just like the idea of Murphy setting a good example. We have some guys prone to take really bad ABs and Mauer is not going to be around to demonstrate how it should be done.

Gray has 3 years of control according to Baseball reference, not 2. You are projecting him at his current level of performance which is sensible. However, this is the kind of guy you trade for because you believe he has upside. There is little point of this team pursuing him the FO does not believe he has significant upside. I presume that's what the Brewers were thinking with Yehlich. Wheeler has 1 year of control and this team has no business trading assets for ANY player that will only be here through next year.