Major League Ready

This is not predictive. It's a measure of what happened. In other words, how were winning teams constructed. We are not talking about looking at anecdotal evidence but looking at every 90 win team, determining the percentage of WAR produced from each acquisition strategy. We can then look at how any individual organization constructed their best teams or we can consolidate the data and determine the percentage of WAR produced by each strategy across all teams. That's about as conclusive as you can get on this topic. Why do you want to know how the worst (rebuilding) teams produced WAR. They are very unlikely to invest in free agents or trade for established players. That data would be utterly useless in determining what strategies have contributed the most to winning teams.

I think you're right. One of Larnach / Wallner will play the OF and the other will DH. However, what happens when ERod arrives? If they are all healthy, I would hope that Bader only starts against LHP. Buxton, Rodriguez, and Bader would be one hell of a defensive OF.

I mostly agree with you and completely agree that producing prearb players is the key to creating payroll availability for free agents. Obviously, this is relative to revenue. In other words, it's a lot more important to the Guardians than the Dodgers. What motivated me to collect all the data was statements in the past just as you made above where fans advocate a given acquisition strategy. I wondered what history would tell us about the relative importance of various acquisition strategies. That curiosity compelled me to collect the data and organized it by acquisition method for teams with 90+ wins. I did not collect data from lesser teams becasue I was specifically interested in how winnings teams were built. Trading for prospects and trading for established players are very different strategically so I separated them. I didn't separate free agents based on high end vs low end. However, I did collect the years and AAV for all of them. What stands out when looking at these successful teams is that generally speaking they produced 1 WAR for about $3M in spend. The $20M type free agents are pretty rare. There are many more teams that got over production from $1-$10M free agents. You will find a lot more overall production from these players than the higher end players. Obviously, the ideal situation is to produce so many good prospects that you only have one or two holes to fill and the prearb players make it feasible to spend bigger on one or two players. We did that with Correa and Lopez. I am sure we all agree we would have rather filled our other holes with Alonso, Tanner Scott and Teoscar Hernandez. t's just financial reality that an average or below average team can't fill that many roster spots with high dollar players. We also agree that playing the prospects has upside. We spent roughly $10M on Bader, Columbe, and Franz. Would we have been better off spending $10M on one player. I seriously doubt it.

I look at the 5 Twins you list and I would only consider two of them (SWR / Martin) to be considered MLB level players. In other words, the others have provided no value so why include them? The quantification is obviously open for interpretation. I would suggest that every team has 14 players (without considering the IL) on the 40 man. Including any player that makes the 40 man considerably erodes this measure in terms of measuring value. Many of the players that make the 40 man provide little or no value. Therefore, making the 40-man roster is a very poor indicator or the value derived in an acquisition (draft or trade) measure of value IMO. When collecting and organizing this data, I look at the total WAR produced sorted by acquisition method. Players that have not produced are not of consequence. don't even consider them. Do we care about the relative impact on the major league team or how many make it on to the 40 man? I think it was you (and others) that pointed out they have produced a fair number of players the last few years but very few high contributing players. Great point. Is it better to produce 20 players that produce 20 WAR in a given season or 15 players that produce 30 WAR? I don't care how many they produce. I care about the total production of the players they produce.

My comments were aimed at the last 20 years, not this year alone. I have the data for every Guardians team that has won 90+ games and 44.4% of the players that produced 1.5 WAR or greater were acquired as prospects. The 23 number also makes no sense. There are not going to be 23 prearb players on the 26 man roster. You appear to be counting all the prearb players on the 40 man. Counted this way, the twins have 20 but that makes no sense. Cleveland has 14 players that are arbitration eligible or veteran contracts. That leaves 12 players on the 26 man that are prearb. 5 acquired by trade is 41.66%. Spotrac Cleveland Guardians 2025 Payroll

I like it. That would be very cool. Have we had a rule 5 pick of any consequence since Johan Santana?

These teams are successful because they continually come up with inexpensive talent. The disconnect where the Twins are concerned is that you only identify players "drafted and developed" by the Twins. Roughly 40% of the prearb players you have identified for these other teams were acquired through trade and the percentage is even higher for Cleveland and Tampa. Part of what is going on in Minnesota is they have not been as skilled as Cleveland and Tampa in acquiring prospects.

I am all for giving a guy the chance to hit opposite side pitching. However to point out Wallner's career .866 OPS without pointing out also pointing out his career splits of .510 vs 951 would suggest you don't want us to look at the whole picture. I am OK with investing in Wallner by giving him greater opportunity but let's not pretend playing him against LHP has not been counter-productive to this point.

How anyone looks at one of the best examples of sustained success in MLB and concludes they had a bad plan is absolutely mind boggling. There should be penalties (funding withheld) but forcing a team to put free agents on the field instead of developing their young talent is absurd. How many times have people posted here that they don't want the twins to be taking up roster spots with mediocre veterans. Most of us hate the idea so why would we want to force teams to do it.

We heard this same rhetoric with Buxton. Many stated this with Buxton as if it was a fact that he would leave as soon as he had the chance. It's actually more likely that the Twins won't want to extend Duran because they are not inclined to put that kind of money into a RP.

This might be the most interesting spring training in several years. It seems like there is going to be legit competition for roster spots everywhere except the outfield. Wallner / larnach are the corner OFers. Buxton and Bader are CF and 4th OFer. The INF and BP are going to be really interesting. SP gets alot more interesting if Paddack gets traded but that is becoming increasingly less likely to happen.

You are correct based on the article linked below from the Washington Times. I read this as the Rays pay the Dodgers $2M and the Dodgers pay the Twins $6M. The Twins ended up only paying $4M. Washington Times Article

Many of us, me included, wanted Hoskins @$18M as opposed to Santana. Hoskins produced at replacement level and we would also have been stuck with a $4M buyout this year. We fans sometimes prefer to forget these examples. The Franz signing has very little risk so what's the problem? If he looks really good in spring training you give him a shot. What's the down side? Julien and or Lee or Martin start the season in AAA. Lee's wRC+ was 62. maybe he should start the season at AAA. Miranda ends up splitting time between 1B/3B and DH. If they decide to give Franz a shot and he does not perform it cost them $700K to cut him after a couple months.

The non-guaranteed part escaped me when I first saw this signing. Thanks for mentioning it. This changes things a bit. I will wait until the end of spring training before forming an opinion on this deal. Right now all they have done is added an option.

Would rather give Miranda the reigns and have Julien taking reps at 1B throughout ST. I suppose there is upside given how he performed in 2021/22 but he has been very mediocre the last two years.

It may have been you that mentioned this last year and I completely agree. He was able to hit when it did not matter. However, his mediocrity does not support the contention that moderate priced free agent veterans are a waste of a roster spot and this is from a pretty darn pro prospect fan.

Has anyone seen a report on Huascar Ynoa. Would love to see him shock us all.

You're probably right but I am hoping for Rodriquez to crush it for 6-8 weeks at AAA and make his way on the big-league team. That would drastically change the lineup construction. One of Wallner or Larnach will still DH but Bader's role would change substantially. This might be a bit optimistic but I will continue to wish for this development because it would be huge for this team. He hits both LHP & RHP and is a very good defender. We will see him almost everyday. He just needs to cut down the strike outs. Anyone know if he played any winter ball?

Granted, he was a great example of a 3 outcome hitter but his OPS and wRC+ were slightly above average. Without looking up his defensive stats, he looked perfectly adequate on defense, and his ability as an above average 1B turned out to be needed. So no, I would not agree he was terrible. He is also one of several discussed here, let's not ignore the originally stated position that all of these players have been a waste of a roster spot. Santana, Solano, and Taylor were all quite good. Sanchez and Farmer were decent too. The only player of this ilk that got a significant number of PAa was Margot. Can we agree that while some of these players have been a bust, there have also been inexpensive veterans that have provided value.

I thought Grichuk was a good fit and perhaps they took a shot at him. Some players are just going to prefer to play elsewhere. Having said this, I don't remember people complaining about the MAT signing and his career wRC+ is 79. I don't think we have any shot if Buxton does not stay healthy and some of the young guys don't bounce back / step up. Therefore, if we are forced to rely on Bader we are screwed and adding Grichuk won't come close to saying us. There is a reasonable chance E. Rodriguez is up in a couple months. Bader becomes the 5th outfielder used to relieve Buxton and also provide a late inning defensive replacement / pinch runner. This is the more likely path to success. We have little chance if the core guys don't deliver. It's highly improbable any of the mentioned options would impact this team's playoff chances if we have to rely on this roster spot in the absence of the health of Buxton / Correa, and production from our young core.

Which of the six spots were not good back-ups? Margot was bad. Santana, Salano, and Taylor were quite good. Farmer was good in 2023, bad in 2024. Gallo was adequate given we ended up needing the coverage at 1B. Does Sanchez count among these additions? Which players are you thinking of other than Margot that had a substantial number of PAs and failed?

Does the players split include player benefits, and draft bonuses. If we estimate Twins revenue at 280M, the math looks like this .... Payroll ......................... $141,566,000 Player Benefits ....... 16,280,090 11.5% (Spotrac used to list this but quit) Draft Pool .................. 12,209,600 Intl Draft Pool ......... 6,520,000 TOTAL ..................... 176,575,690 61% of revenue

Good point on the Astros. I watched that with great interest back then. They absolutely cleaned house and traded away any veteran player that could yield any return and of course they were prioritizing giving playing time to players that could be part of their future. Without looking it up, I think their payroll got down to about $30M. They built a team and sustained that team through drafting and development. Most posters here favor giving prospects a chance as do I. A floor forces teams to insert free agent players even if the rest of the team is not remotely close to producing a contender. We would all hate it if it were actually in place. To say players would hate a cap is a monstrous understatement. I just don't know how we get to a floor and cap.

We all recognize spending should increase when a team is a legit contender. However, the conversation here was about the relative impact of revenue disparity. KC’s success was not a result of spending because they were in contention. KC was 13th in spending so they did not overcome this gap by spending because they were in contention. You can’t come to any conclusion without looking at how their players were acquired. Their most expensive players were Alex Gordon ($14M) and Alex Rios. Gordon produced 2.7 WAR (good not great) Alex Rios ($11M) had negative WAR. The other free agents that contributed to the team were Edison Volquez ($7.5M / 2.7 WAR) and Kendrys Morales ($6.5 / 2 WAR). Very modest priced free agents. Certainly not what we think of as big additions and certainly not the kind of additions clamored for on TD. Their best player by far was Lorenzo Cain who was acquired along with the SS Mercedes Escobar in trade for their most established player (Zack Grienke). Their best pitcher was Yordano Ventura who was an Intl drafted player and still prearb. Their only other SP to break 2 WAR was Volquez. The sum total of their contribution from free agent spend was 4.8 QWAR between Morales and Volquez.

The Marlins and White Sox were a long time ago ( 2003 & 2005). The only team in the bottom half of revenue to win since the 2005 WS has been the Royals. It's probably more accurate to say they were all in the top 10 in revenue. Without looking it up I would guess the Rangers and Nationals might have been outside the top 10 but I doubt it. Three teams (Cleveland, Oakland, and Tampa) have put 90+ win teams on the field a lot more often that others via a better model but you are absolutely right in that they were still a little short in terms of being a top contender to win the WS.