Major League Ready

2013 attendance was down by roughly 300,000. I don’t know the average cost of a ticket or the net effect on parking and concessions but I would guess we are talking a net decrease of roughly $12M. You would think sales of Twins merchandise also takes a hit when the team sucks so I am going to guess revenue dropped to $200-202M. I have never been sure if this number is before or after payroll taxes. I am assuming before. That gives us 225-227 in revenue. 227 * 52% = 118 – 59 = $59M The catch is, as I understand it, they base the payroll on previous year’s revenue. Therefore, the new TV revenue might not be considered in the budget until next year. Actually, it might be very wise to leave some room for spending in 2015 given we are hopeful several questions will be answered in 2014. Willingham’s contract will be off the books in 2015 but some players are going to get raises that might take-up most of that $7M. It would be nice to have $20M or so to spend in 2015 when it has become more clear which of our young players are for real. I expect they will spend in the neighborhood of $35-40M. Anyone care to guess what the following FAs will bring in terms of years/dollars. Ervin Santana Tim Lincecum Ubaldo Jimenez Phil Hughes Scott Kazmir Ricky Nolasco Scott Feldman Josh Johnson I did not include Garza because he was trouble in the clubhouse when he was here and he has been trouble everywhere else he has been. I can’t image they would even entertain bringing him back.

I absolutely loved Johan when he was here from the moment he arrived. However, I can't for the life of me understand why we should seek a solution in a 35 year old guy who did not pitch in 2011, had a 4.85 ERA in 2012 and did not pitch in 2013. He is a great athlete and I guess there is a chance he could make a comeback but I am curious as to your thought process here.

I will join you in disagreement but I don’t think purposeful misrepresentation is worthy of the respect you have shown. If a student does not provide credible research it is poor work. Providing a link does not change the fact this was purposefully misleading. This would not be tolerated within a professional environment. To label this a great post is truly sad.

Well, you can't complain about signing $6M/yr guys and then say I would have signed Liriano, Colon and Feldman. You could make a semi-reasonable case for Sanchez but signing away a FA from a team he wants to stay with is not a very reasonable position. I don't think too many people would say Grienke was realistic. He was simply out of reach, especially last year with a few more years of rebuilding ahead of us. Lohse was a pretty ideal except that he was not coming back to Minnesota. He was the perfect fit but unfortunately that bridge was burned. Steal Kuroda away from the Yankees? That was not going to happen. That leaves three 2nd tier FAs, at the market felt there were 3 based on what they got paid. They all performed rather poorly. Jackson 8-18 ERA of 4.98 4/52M Dempster 8-9 ERA of 4.57 2/26.5 Harren 10-14 ERA of 4.67 1/13

What would you have done differently last year? Specifically, which FA SPs would you have signed?

All elite players drive revenue but I think Mauer might have a bit more impact being a hometown boy. He was a better risk given his age and body type. He is going to be 35 at the end of his contract. Who knows, he could have problems like Morneau but I like our odds with him better than a guy who will be 39 or 41 if Cano gets what he wants in terms of years. Prince is a surprising athlete given his build but I could see him being a roster problem for 3-4 years. I would love to see the Tigers sign Cano to a 9 or 10 year deal. They will be really tough for 2-3 more years (while our young guys are entering the leauge) and the Twins will not have to worry about them for a few years.

If that is what you get out of this post, any further discussion is pointless. Let's be reasonable. I don't see anyone suggesting the Twins should not sign free agents. The general theme is not sign 5+ year guys. I have stated on a few occasions they should be very agressive on the best quality FAs that can be signed to 2-3 year deals and even 4 years of the situation is right. I asked before and I will ask again, give me examples of teams in the bottom half in terms of revenue that have signed top free agents that were not resigns. Let's make this reasonable given there have been $150M-250M contracts in the past few years. Lets say anything over $60M.

I only have two years or revenue numbers and I am not going to take time to look beyond 2011 & 2012. Had Tampa bay had an additional $100M in revenue they would have ranked 3rd in 2011 and 5th in 2012. At any rate, being affordable is a relative term. Technically, any team could afford to sign any player depending on your definition of afford. The Ray’s and the A’s don’t sign them because their production/dollar of salary is poor. Elite free agents have a very poor production/salary ratio. If you are the NYY, LAD, or Boston, you can afford between 8-9M/player on the 25 man roster. The next tier (PHI,CHC,SF) you can afford somewhere between 5.5 and 6.5M. The Twins can afford roughly $4M and the Ray’s $3M per player. If you are the Twins and you sign two FAs for $40M/yr and you already have Mauer, assuming a $110M budget, you have 2.14M/player for the remaining 22 roster spots. The economics just don’t work even under the best case scenario that the player produces for the length of the contract. When I said the Twins should focus on getting as good as the A’s and Ray’s at frafting and developing talent, you asked why developing talent and signing FAs could or should not co-exist. Now you say Oakland and Tampa Bay does not need to sign free agents because they are good at drafting and developing. I am confused. Additionally, one 4 year 36M player does not make for a practice. A Cespedes type signing is a very rare occurrence and a 4/36 for an international player where the contract will encompass the players prime is a very different thing than signing an injury prone Ellsbury to 5-6/110-130M. VERY different. How many examples can you come up with of teams in the bottom half of the league in terms of revenue signing players to the type of deal Ellsbury will receive? I can’t come up with one in the last few years. They all went to top 10 revenue teams. 2nd tier FAs can be acquired on 2-4 years deals and those can make sense for the Twins anytime, especially right now.

Draft pick compensation was a bigger part of it prior to the CBA. Why do you think Tampa Bay and Oakland do not sign FA pitchers? For that matter, does it make sense to you why they look to deal their best players when they are approaching free agency? I don't mean this to be a precursor to my answer, I am wondering why you think they manage their roster in this way.

Trading Dozier makes no sense to me. What happened to all of the talk about not selling low? He is not going to bring a front of the rotation pitcher now Why take on risk. These types of moves are desperate. The last thing we need to do know is panic and take on risks so that we can be mediocre next year at the expense of future years. Get Rosario up here at find out of he has a ML bat. He can play in the outfied will that is being determined and we can give him some playing time at 2B. That approach at least allows us the opportunity to benefit from the best case scenario. That being Dozier plays they way he did for the last two-thirds of 2013 and Rosario demonstrates he can be a great player in this league. That would signiifcantly improve the return that would be gained if Dozier or Rosario were traded. We could also see if Rosario can play 2B and at the same time experiment with moving Dozier back to SS. Making these decisions to early just increases the odds you get it wrong.

I can't come up with a good reason to keep Doumitt. Willingham, I can see a few reasons. 1. His $7M is not likely to matter in terms of budget so there is likely to utility in terms of managing budget. 2. If he bounces back to somewhere near 2012, he could net a decent prospect. 3. He appears to be a good clubhouse guy and we already lack leadership. 4. He likely won't be blocking anyone. Even if all of the "prospects" are playing as well as we could hope, he can DH. I see no reason to keep him after the trade deadline. Move him for whatever you can get, including nothing if that's all his performance warrants.

Farm System 24 Trade 9 Free Agents 7 These numbers reflect that Chris Archer and AJ Burnett were trades. I could be wrong but I thought the Yankees wanted to get rid of him bad enough to pay $20M of his remaining $33M contract to trade him. It gets more interesting when you look a little deeper into the 7 FAs. Of the 7, four of them had a combined salary of $16M annually and were on short term contracts. Ryu & Capuano at $6Meach, Colon at $3M and Liriano at $1M. These guys are often referred to here as dumpster diving. Grienke and Lackey were the only two that fit the “high profile” description. The other, Ryan Dempster at 2/26.5 was somewhere in between but he was the worst performer of all 40 of the SPs on play-off teams. So, out of 40 team, two SPs (5%) were high profile FAs. Only 4 of the 8 teams had free agents at all. Two of those teams had one FA each with a grand total of $4M guaranteed to them combined. Two teams (LAD and BOS) had five between them. Of course, they are the #2, and #3 teams in revenue. So, I would agree with those that the best organizations draft well. I could not disagree more with those who conclude the Twins should be all the more aggressive in FA because they don’t draft well. That is the poorest solution possible. We need to fix the root problem, not pursue the avenue proven to the most ineffective and inefficient. Kwak hit in on the head. What better investment could we possibly make than to improve the staff, strategy, and processes associated with developing SPs?

To be fair, retention of an existing player is significantly different than signing an actual free agent, especially when they are extended well in advance of becoming a free agent. Players in those cases are eliminating the risk of injury. When the choice is signing a contract that has you set for the rest of your life vs assuming the risk of waiting for free agency. There are just so few elite players that actually make it to free agency. The list below is from the past few years. If we look back at the past few years, it is very difficult to argue that it is very difficult for teams outside the top half in terms of revenue to land a marque free agent. Zack Grienke LAD Josh Hamilton LAA Albert Pujlos LAA CJ Wilson LAA Yu Darvish TEX Adrian Beltre TEX J. Papelbon PHI Cliff Lee PHI Prince Fielder DET Victor Martinez DET Adam Dunn CWS Jason Bay NYM Matt Holliday STL Carl Crawford BOS John Lackey BOS Jose Reyes FL Mark Buehrle FL The Marlins landed Reyes and Buehrle in whatever you want to call what went on that year with the Marlins. I am pretty sure the plan was that if they were not contending right away (generating $$) to jettison those players for prospects. That's a pretty effective way to add a bunch of young talent to your system. Nick Swisher in Cleveland is one you could argue either way in terms of his status. I doubt anyone else was going to give him $14M/yr so there is proof that a slightly above average player can be signed by over paying. The next tier, let's say top 11-25 is probably a different story. Those guys are definitely more attainable by teams outside the top revenue markets.

In a word, no. When there is a model that is clearly the most effective, and your organization has not performed in said function, you need to "redouble" your efforts to improve in the area that is the most effective, not increase you efforts in a less effective model.

How about Adam Walker? Could he be considered a sleeper?

You are absolutely right. They might not have traded Gordon. I offered that only because some have suggested (probably correctly) they had to make move when they did because they would not have been able to affford to keep their core together when they reached the arbitration years. I love Gordon but that's how I would have played that situation given KCs budget. They could afford to retain their core and had a very nice group of young pitchers. It is also in keeping with the sell high theme that has been discussed here of late. They would have had an equivalent player + a couple nice prospects unless I misjudge Gordon's value + addition financial capacity to retain Hosmer and others. No, this is not about our team but the two situations in terms of orchestrating the timing of a rebuild, maximizing assets, and the need for patience are very similar in IMO.

OK, I have to agree your long-term perspective here but I don’t think their emergence of these players is relevant to the subject at hand which I thought was the wisdom of KC trading Meyers, Montgomery, and Odorizzi for Shields/Davis. The value proposition in that transaction was 2 years of Shields/Davis for six years of Meyers, Montgomery, and Ordozzi. Their remaining value in that deal is one more year of Shields/Davis. That’s what they traded for in this transaction. If you are correct that Zimmer and Ventura are legitimate replacements for Santana and Shields, KC pushed the orchestration of this rebuild IMO and it will likely prove to be a big mistake. Instead of a two year run with shields/Davis, they could have had the following scenario. #29 Zimmer, #31 Montgomery, #34Ventura, and #45 Odorizzi for 6 years instead of Shields/Santana/Davis for 2. These players would not only be assets for an additional 4 years, they would net a payroll flexibility/availability in the neighborhood of $25M Retaining Meyers would have allowed them to trade Alex Gordon. KC could get some pretty nice prospects for Gordon, gain another 8M+ in payroll flexibility while inserting a roughly equivalent player. Gordon is a little better right now in his prime as compared to Meyers as a rookie. Meyers is likely the better player in the long run. With the $33M, KC can cover all of the arbitration increases and now have several years of their core in their prime. They also would have gained the prospects from trading Gordon. Instead, they panicked for a short-term gain. They also have Manaea who could find it again and be a top 25 prospect. #40 Starling and #46 Mondesi. They could also potentially trade Escobar now that his cost will be going up and gained more prospects and more salary flexibility. Starling is a Rosario level prospect. You have to believe he makes them better. Had this scenario played out, they could afford to extend Hosmer, cover their other arbitration cases ’s and probably still have some money left over for free agent additions. The net is that they lost Meyer, Montgomery, Odorizzi, and some additional prospects (had they traded Gordon) from what should be a pretty good team for a few years. Would they have made them a contender? Only time will tell but they very likely would have been better for several more years had they not rushed the process.

I am not quite sure of your position here. Are you saying these two (Alex Meyer) equivalent prospects will be able to match Santan's production this year. Therefore, KC will have an equivalent chance to make a playoff run this year or are you saying they will be fine long-term?

I am glad you pointed out that it is a common occurence here to site the Twins spending habits pre-Target Field in arguing a current point, whatever it might be. It will take a few years and the completion of the rebuilding process before we can determine if the FO is willing to spend the additional revenue. Everyone seems to have forgotten the first thing they did with their increased revenue was sign Mauer to a 184M dollar contract. And, I thought that a lower payroll was considered a normal product of rebuiling given a rebuilding team is going to have more players in pre-arbitration years. I wonder if the Houston fans expect them to go out a drop $70M in free agency so that they are at their max budget?

I have never suggested and I don't think anyone else has suggested they not spend. In the context of the keys to building a consistent winner on a mid-market budget, free agent spending is not all that important in relative terms. We should all be far more focused on what went wrong in drafting and development. I am far more concerned with what they have done to improve scouting, drafting and development personnel as well as the processes associated with these functions.

No, if you would signed the free agents mention, you would have spent your entire budget and would have to hope for improvement from within. You would also need to hope the performance of the FA you hired did not decline. For the record, I think they should spend the money. I don't think anyone advocates the Twins should ignore FA. Based on the reports from last year, the Twins were very active. We can say they did not get the job done if you think the job is signing a FA at any cost. I think the job is getting production per dollar spent because you are going to get beat if you don't given many other teams can outspend us. Sometimes the best moves are the ones you pass on. Having said the above, this has little to do with the point I was trying to make. FA spending gets more attention and division than any other topic and the numbers in the previous post are very telling IMO in terms of the relative potential impact of FA for a mid-market or small market team. As the A's and Ray's have demonstrated, drafting and developing talent, especially SPs is the most fundamental element of sucess in MLB. I am far more concerned about scouting, drafting, development, and locking the right players up early in the manner utilized by the Rays. I don't care if they ever sign a $12M/yr FA as long as they draft and retain the right talent. Follow the same model as the As and Rays with an extra $30 or 40M to spend on retention and we would be in great shape.

I have this perception that FAs are generally not a very good value and that they are unlikely to get us over the hump so to speak. Of course, we all know that it is not hard to put together numbers to support whatever you like. For example, we are all aware that there have been many failures with FA SPs but it is not my goal to prove that it can be a gigantic failure. So, let’s save SPs for last. Let’s look at the top position players from the past two years. I was interested to see what they produced in terms of WAR and also their production per dollar spent. In other words, how much salary does it cost to add one WAR in free agency. -----------------Years/Salary - AVE --- War -- $/WAR 2013 J. Hamilton- 5 - 123 --- 24.6 --- 1.9 -- 12.9 2013 M. Bourn -- 4 --- 48 --- 12.0 --- 2.0 -- 6.0 2013 N. Swisher- 4 --- 56 --- 14.0 --- 2.4 --- 5.8 2013 BJ Upton--- 5 --- 75 --- 15.0 ---(0.6) -- N/A 2012 A. Pujols-- 10 -- 250 --- 25.0 --- 0.7 --- 35.7 2012 P. Fielder--- 9 -- 214 --- 23.8 --- 2.2 --- 10.8 2012 Jose Reyes- 6 -- 106 --- 17.7 --- 2.2 --- 8.0 2012 A. Ramirez- 3 -- 36 ----- 12.0 --- 1. 4 --- 8.6 TOTAL ....................... 908 ---- 144 ---- 12 AVERAGE ......... 5.8 - 113.5 --- 18.0 --- 1.5 11.8 per 1 WAR WAR production for this group was 1.5 wins/player at a cost of 11.8M per WAR. What about FA pitching? I think it is safe to say that had Ryan would have gone wild and signed Greinke and Jackson, many fans would have done back flips of joy. The two of them produce a combined WAR of 4.9 with a combined salary of $37.5/yr. . So, if we spend $60M on free agents and our success is on par with the last two year’s FAs, am I being pessimistic to believe it won’t help much if we spend 50M?

It would basically be the same as trading Will Meyers, right? Except, at least KC was doing it to take a crack at the playoffs. Price and one other quality FA starter and we would be respectable but unlikely to be in contention unless we had a bunch of things go right.. That is going to put big pressure on KC to retain Santana. If he leaves their chances of getting to playoffs deminishes substantially and they might have traded Meyers for an unsuccessful single season playoff run. I can't imagine KC is not going to get outbid for him. I would not mind if we were the ones who outbid them.

What is the word on Johnson in terms of projected contract? Is he likely to pursue a one-year deal in an attempt to rebuild value or look for a team willing to take a chance on him?

I think it would help get this done if it could be written off the first year. And, I recognize they are two separate transactions. GAAP would generally require the expense be recognized consistent with the benefit, service, etc. I think that is pretty clear the life of the contract. The risks scares me a bit but wow what a boost this guy would be to our team if his ability transfers to MLB as some have projected.