Major League Ready

I have been asking myself the same question. I think the way it works out is that if someone believes he can repeat 2023 (4.6 fWAR) and offers an impact prospect, he will be traded. If not, I think they are better off to keep him as a mentor to the many young pitchers we already have and those that will be here soon. Pablo / Zebby / Bradley / Festa and SWR has plenty of uncertainty but could be pretty darn good. They would be a middle of the pack team if those guys performs as we believe they can perform. Jenkins and Culpepper come along and spark the team in the 2nd half and they it could be entertaining baseball.

Agree with those who put Larnach at the top of the list. They are not going to let Wallner go with 4 years of control unless someone makes an offer they can't refuse. They will want to get a look at Roden and Outman for the first couple months because they have Jenkins, GG, and Fedko at AAA and Rosario will probably be joining them. Larnach would just be in the way of them auditioning all of the candidates who could upgrade the Twins OF by 2027 or even as early as the middle of 2026. I think Jeffers stays because there is significant value to keeping a familiar catcher for Zebby / SWR / Festa / Morris / Abel and others become the main stays of this staff.

In the words of John McEnroe .... You can't be serious!

Teams trade good pitching, especially in a period when they are not contending. This has been especially true for the most successful teams in the bottom half of revenue. Are you just not aware this has happened often or are you choosing to ignore it? The only small market team (KC) to win the WS in the last 20 years acquired their best player (Cane) and a good SS (Escobar) by trading a pitcher (Greinke) that was better than Ryan.

Doc, l thought you had a lot of good points. Let's discuss the two points you made above. I see the union as being very focused on things that mostly benefit the elite players. The great young players that you discuss in point 3 are eventually going to make a 100 or 200 or 400 MILLION dollars. In the last CBA, the league created a $50M bonus pool for prearb players that is divided up among a handful of players that are the most likely to go on a make huge money. They could have just negotiated a higher minimum or made the distribution much broader. While I have no problem with them getting a bonus, I just don't see this as a problem and 95% of the prearb players get nothing. Once again the league focused on the top 5%. They could have given a $500K bonus to 100 players. Now the floor. If the Twins continue the sell-off and go full rebuild, they will be around $75M in payroll. Do we want veteran SS blocking Culpepper, a veteran FA OFer blocking the myriad of OFers we have that are near ready? Do we want them to replace Ryan and Lopez with free agents that would be far more expensive for the same production. How does a modest revenue team rebuild under such a system? As fans we call for the young guys that can contribute to future success to get a shot. This would definitely stifle rebuilding. There are ways around it like taking on bad contracts but is that what we would want the Twins to do next year. Take on a couple dead weight contracts that take up a roster spot. Another problem is that there are a handful of teams that would be losing money or breaking even at $150M in salary. That would effectively make the value of those teams near zero. It's incredibly unfair and would probably result in several lawsuits against the league.

If you look at Fangraphs. They have him at 1.6 WAR for 21. His OBP is quite a bit lower this year but you also have not considered defense. If you look at Fangraphs defensive rating, he has a negative rating that is detracting from his overall WAR. I look at the .316 OBP with very low slug along with poor defense and base running and the Fangraphs WAR seems about right.

Buyers don't think in terms of the next two years. Let's also not forget attendance has been mediocre and that's the kind of attendance mediocre teams get. The only way to really draw big is to put a true contender on the field and a more exciting brand of baseball would also help. They were going nowhere with what they had so why would any potential owner see the best route for increasing revenue as doing the same thing and expecting a different result. They may or may not succeed but the path they have chosen has a much higher upside than the path they were on. Houston has grown their revenue substantially. How did they start their improved play and growth? They gutted it to the studs. If I recall correctly, their payroll was around $30M. A low payroll is a byproduct of a rebuild. You are assuming it's a byproduct of a desire to lower payroll. It is also possible the FO viewed a rebuild as the best long-term move for the franchise. My guess is it's both. I can see Falvey pitching the Pohlad's that this strategy will improve profitability for a couple years and build a team that will generate excitement and more revenue for several years. Pohlad's say hell yes, sign me up.

I track this information annually for 90 win teams. I don't have numbers for Cleveland 2025. Players that produced 1.5 WAR or more for Cleveland in 2024 are listed below by acquisition method. # Acquired by: WAR % of WAR 3 Drafted 9 33.0% 1 International Draft 6.5 23.8% 5 Acquired as Prospect 11.8 43.2% 0 Trade for Proven 0 0.0% 0 Free Agent 0 0.0% TOTALS 27.3 100%

I appreciate where you are coming from but let's examine for a moment if we have a different type of prospects now. In other words, have the learned and adapted. They have Jenkins, Rodriguez, and Fedko that are all much better athletes. GG is a great contact hitter with decent power. Rosario has great power with a reasonable K rate. GG and Rosario are not great defenders but better than what we have. They should be fielding a great OF by the middle of next year. Now the IF. They already have Keaschall. Royce's defense is above average now. I am 50/50 on him bouncing back offensively but he should bounce back to where he is at least not a liability. Culpepper seems to be above average at every aspect of the game. His development is really key. So far, so good. That would move Lee to a utility IFer which would be a great role. Of course, there is still hope he becomes an above average bat. We are already really deep in SP prospects. Plus, they will get 4 good prospects by trading Lopez/Ryan. One top 50 INFer and one top 50 SP prospect would really improve the odds of success. Of course, there will probably be a couple of top 100 type prospects as well. Here is the key. What's the alternative? I would not want to purse strategies that are less likely to succeed regardless of who's in charge. I would not be inclined to believe those same people would get better results following a plan with less likelihood of success.

That is a very good question and just goes to show that these are emotional responses. As you know, it makes them worse over the next two years and it's possible it has zero effect 3-5 years but it can't make them, worse. However, trading players like Ryan and Lopez bring back the kind of players that will have impact 2-10 years from now. Some people are ignoring the many examples over the past couple of decades. The Brewers got their best SP (Peralta) for 1 year of Adam Lind. The Guardians got Kluber, Bauer, and Clevinger as prospects. They got several years of service from them and then traded 1 year of Kluber for Clase and 1 year of Clevinger for Naylor, Quantrill, and Arias. Greinke was traded for Cane and Escobar. Joe Ryan and Jhoan Duran were still prospects when acquired and there are many other examples.

It comes down to if you think this team can truly contend in 2026. They were nowhere near contenders this year before they traded away their highest paid player and 4 very good BP arms. I just can't look at the current situation given how poorly they played and the deadline trades and come to the conclusion that prioritizing the near term is the best course of action. Their best shot at success is transitioning Keashall / Jenkins / Culpepper and some combination of Rodriguez / GG / Rosario / Fedko, Tait, and a couple others that have a shot at being very good MLB players. This will take a year and a half. They can keep Ryan and Pablo during that period and possibly be fringe playoff contenders or they can add the haul they would get for Pablo and Ryan to the previously mentioned list. That strategy has very good potential to be far better team in terms of position players for a 6-8 year period. They will need to replace Pablo and Ryan from the dozen SPs Eric listed. I like the odds of that happening and they are likely to get another top pitching prospect back in trade that should be among the very best of that existing list. Someone is going to say they are just prospects. True. How have all of the best teams in the bottom half of revenue built contenders. They converted enough prospects into MLB players. Players drafted or acquired as unproven players produce 80% of WAR for the vast majority of these teams. Would anyone argue that odds of success increase with an extremely deep prospect pool?

OK. Are wRC+, OBP and slugging also "wildly flawed". A high BA with a modest OBP and very low slug is simply not valuable. He is also a poor base runner (25th percentile for speed). He is a poor defender (5th percentile for range). How is that valuable and why on earth would we utilize FA budget to get it? Convert any one of the current MLB OFers or one of the numerous OF prospects that are near ready. That would be a good winter assignment for our OFers. It would increase their value to have the flexibility of playing OF and 1B.

He might end up being a better defensive version of Willi Castro.

I would give Fedko an opportunity. It would give him a chance to prove he can hit at the major league level that he might not get otherwise given the number of OFers we have that are ready or near ready.

He is going to end up with roughly 1.7 WAR (in total) for the last two years. Probably around .5-.6 this year. How will that help? Outman produced 3.9 WAR his 1st season which is better than Arraez has ever done. Should we believe Outman is going back to 4 WAR? It's possible but I sure would not bet on it.

The Saints are going to be stacked with pitching next year. If the Twins only trade 1 of Ryan/Lopez/Ober and fill out the rotation with Matthews / Bradley and one of Abel/Festa/SWR that would leave Festa or SWR or Abel plus Morris/Rojas/Raya/Prielipp/Ohl and Ohl at AAA. That's 8 guys that deserve to be at AAA, 2 or 3 that deserve to be in the majors. This assumes they don't get a AAA SP in return for whichever SP is traded. Does Culpepper stay at AA? Do they start converting a couple of these guys to RPs or do they have the guys on the bubble pitch a 4 innings per outing.

I am not arguing for a cap. The luxury tax is a better vehicle because the money is partially distributed to players. My point is that a floor is not viable given the enormous disparity in income.

You are not following. MLB has a far greater revenue disparity. The floor would have to be under $150M because some of the teams can't spend that and remain profitable. Their franchise value of a business making nothing is nothing. A floor is viable for a league who started that standard a long time ago before revenue disparity got out of control. Are the players going to accept a $200M cap? That's what it would take in order to get to spending parity similar to the NFL/NHL.

No argument here but we are where we are. The top teams are not going to give away their advantage competitively or financially. Getting them even close to equal would be an enormous financial redistribution and that's never going to happen. Something more modest would still help but the players fought hard against that last time. You may recall they wanted to reduce revenue sharing.

Sure, in a fantasy world where the top teams were willing to just give away a third of their revenue so that fans in small markets are happy. That's just not remotely realistic.

We would all love revenue sharing that diminished the revenue disparity such that it was roughly equivalent to the NFL. Well, those of us in markets that produce less revenue. The problem with this is the top teams would lose a billion dollars in value and of course the bottom teams would gain a billion. There is no way in hell the top teams are accepting a massive loss in value. The revenue disparity has grown wildly and now is somewhat at the point of no return. They did try to manage it with the luxury tax but if you recall the players were very insistent on raising the luxury tax levels significantly.

If that were the case, teams in the bottom half of revenue would go from being very disadvantaged to having not a prayer in the world. Whatever level of parity we have today would be greatly diminished. Teams like Milwaukee and Tampa would be completely screwed. What if the Twins had not gone into rebuild and your concept was in place. The Twins next year would have had Ryan/Ober/Duran and Jax in Arb2 and Jeffers in Arb3 and other members of the BP would have been Arb2. There is absolutely no way the twins could afford those players so what you are lobbying for is good for players but it would destroy any chance the Twins or similar teams have of building a team and keeping it together. I heard the same type of stuff during the last CBA period. Some fans are a lot more concerned about players maximizing their income than they are about maintaining a reasonable level of parity. From your other posts you obviously understand the advantage the large revenue teams have so I don't understand why you would take this position. The big markets have dominated the last 20 years and accelerating salary levels earlier would be devastating to the smaller markets.

So, with the Twins rebuilding, would you want them to be required to sign veterans? Those veterans inevitably block prospects. There are only 26 spots available. How do you set a floor where the Marlins and Pirates can still make a profit and have that floor push the Rockies to spend what they could afford?

They just traded away Duran, Jax, Varland, Stewart, and Correa. In doing so, they punted 2026 and probably 2027. Of course, 2027 is also very likely a short season. Then, there is the fact they have a catcher that has been better for the last two years. I sure hope they won't be giving up significant prospect capital for Rushman or any other player who will be a free agent in 2028. Sign a decent free agent back-up for 2026 and push making decisions on this position until the end of next season when the future will be in better focus, including the likelihood of a 2027 season. Maybe it makes sense to extend Jeffers at that point and a back-up is generally available in free agency. Giving up significant future assets for a player under control for 2026-2027 is the last thing they should do. If they had not traded away the players mentioned above, and we were a player away, this is not a game changer given we have a catcher that has been better for the last two years. I guess we are going to have a number of articles about making 2026 better from the opening bell. 2026 should be about where we are at the end of the year, not the start.

Jenkins is going to play a max of 21 games at AAA, He would have to have video game numbers at AA and AAA to warrant calling holding him down manipulation. His number at AA were good but nowhere near what Bryant accomplished. Bryant had an OPS of 1160 at AA the year before he made the big-league club. in 2014. He was promoted to AAA and had an OPS of 1057 over 70 games. J It will not be a blatant manipulation even if he has an 1100 OPS. The new CBA will be agreed upon after Jenkins debuts unless things go terribly wrong. There is not going to be retroactive application of service time.