Major League Ready

Sure seems likely they replace Vasquez via free agency @ 6-10M. 1B is hard tom predict. I see Keaschall becoming the everyday 2B. If one of Lewis/Lee moves to 1B you would think that would be Lewis, right?

The % of WAR by acquisition method is charted below. I have only summarized the most productive teams so only have charts for Cleveland, Tampa, Oakland, and Milwaukee's highest win teams and I threw the Twins in for comparison. As you can see, none of them have come close to averaging 50% of WAR via drafting. Tampa and Cleveland have actually produced the highest percentage of their WAR by acquiring prospects. (TaP below). These teams have averaged close to 70% between drafting and trading for prospects. Tampa is 77%. Cleveland has only produced around 10% between free agents and trading for established players. 8 Oakland Athletics WINS Drafted Intl TaP Trade FA 100% Oakland 2002 103 46.0% 19.1% 25.1% 9.7% 0.0% 100% Oakland 2001 102 57.1% 11.0% 17.6% 14.3% 0.0% 100% Oakland 2019 97 24.6% 0.0% 48.6% 14.0% 12.8% 100% Oakland 2018 97 51.8% 0.0% 29.1% 19.0% 0.0% 100% Oakland 2013 96 23.5% 5.1% 41.7% 9.1% 20.6% 100% Oakland 2003 96 46.2% 21.1% 27.7% 5.0% 0.0% 100% Oakland 2012 94 8.5% 0.0% 40.1% 14.4% 37.0% 100% Oakland 2006 93 22.6% 0.0% 47.2% 8.5% 21.7% Oakland Total 97.25 35.0% 7.0% 34.6% 11.8% 11.5% 7 Cleveland Guardians WINS Drafted Intl TaP Trade FA 100% Cleveland 2017 102 24.3% 19.3% 44.3% 4.3% 7.8% 100% Cleveland 2007 96 30.5% 38.2% 31.3% 0.0% 0.0% 100% Cleveland 2016 94 33.1% 22.7% 44.2% 0.0% 0.0% 100% Cleveland 2019 93 34.0% 17.8% 44.1% 4.0% 0.0% 100% Cleveland 2005 93 7.5% 21.8% 51.4% 2.5% 16.8% 100% Cleveland 2022 92 34.2% 19.7% 46.2% 0.0% 0.0% 100% Cleveland 2013 92 14.9% 0.0% 50.1% 10.2% 24.8% Guardians Total 94.57 25.5% 19.9% 44.5% 3.0% 7.1% 6 Tampa Bay Rays WINS Drafted Intl TaP Trade FA 100% Tampa Bay 2021 100 24.5% 5.9% 54.0% 0.0% 15.6% 100% Tampa Bay 2023 99 13.8% 9.8% 66.2% 0.0% 10.2% 100% Tampa Bay 2008 97 45.7% 0.0% 33.2% 4.5% 16.6% 99% Tampa Bay 2019 96 18.6% 0.0% 45.8% 9.0% 26.0% 100% Tampa Bay 2010 96 64.7% 0.0% 22.1% 9.1% 4.1% 100% Tampa Bay 2013 92 50.7% 0 28.6% 8.5% 12.2% Tampa Bay Total 96.67 36.3% 2.6% 41.6% 5.2% 14.1% Average All 96.16 32% 10% 40% 7% 11% 5 Minnesota Twins WINS Drafted Intl TaP Trade FA 100% MN Twins 2019 101 36.3% 24.7% 0.0% 9.1% 30.0% 100% MN Twins 2006 96 39.7% 3.3% 44.3% 12.7% 0.0% 100% MN Twins 2010 94 50% 0% 21% 8% 21% 100% MN Twins 2002 94 59.8% 0.0% 35.0% 5.2% 0.0% 100% MN Twins 2004 92 31.9% 7.6% 55.5% 5.0% 0.0% Twins Total 95.40 43.6% 7.1% 31.1% 8.0% 10.2% Average All 95.85 34% 11% 38% 7% 10% 4 Milwaukee Brewers WINS Drafted Intl TaP Trade FA 100% Mil Brewers 2023 92 27.3% 0.0% 19.8% 52.9% 0.0% 100% Mil Brewers 2021 95 58.1% 0.0% 34.6% 7.3% 0.0% 100% Mil Brewers 2018 96 4.9% 0.0% 29.4% 37.8% 27.9% 100% Mil Brewers 2011 96 31.0% 4.1% 30.0% 12.8% 22.1% Brewers Total 94.75 30.3% 1.0% 28.5% 27.7% 12.5% Average All 95.30 32.3% 4.3% 38.5% 12.4% 14.6%

IDK how I missed Castro. The reason I did not include France is that his salary is so low that his replacement will cost at least $820K so there won't be any savings. They can probably afford to keep everyone. The bigger problem long-term is having so many important players coming off the same year (2028). It would very likely close their window. If they can get an equivalent replacement in Matthews / Festa / Prielipp they could sustain a very good rotation at a lower cost. I see a similar situation with OFers. At least, I am hoping Jenkins, Emma, and others will allow them to trade Larnach or Wallner in the next year and a half.. We would be taking a page out of the Ray's playbook.

Here are the numbers for changes in 2026. They project around $125M with arbitration increases. Vasquez 10,000,000 Paddack 7,500,000 Bader 6,250,000 Correa 5,833,000 Columbe 3,000,000 Dobnak 3,000,000 Total 35,583,000

Have you considered that they have 34.68M coming off the books next year. They could keep Lopez/Ryan and Ober but spending would have to go up to keep all of the players that will be ARB-2 and Arb-3 in 2026-27, especially if Lewis/Wallner and Larnach perform well. Jeffers comes of in 2027 but Duran and Jax are free agents along with Lopez/Ryan and Ober in 2028. Trading Lopez would make it feasible to keep them all. Matthews will replace Paddock. If Festa or Prielipp are also mid-rotation or better, they will be able to move one of Lopez/Ryan or Ober. Moving Lopez along with the 2026 free agents coming of would give them $55M to spend if they just maintain current spending levels. Obviously, they can't add 2+ year contracts next year if they want to cover 2027 arbitration increases. The only players coming off in 2027 are Jeffers, Tonkin, and Topa.

They are praying Paddock can string together some good starts so they can trade him and move Matthews into the rotation. If not, I would hope they move Paddack to a BP role and get Matthews up in June. I agree any trade of Ryan / Lopez or Ober is at least a year from now unless someone blows them away with an offer.

Here is the harsh reality. The Twins have far less revenue as compared to many clubs and therefore have far less to spend. Getting bargains is paramount to success. They can sign the occasional Correa / Donaldson or Lopez but the only way to combat revenue disparity is to produce more for less. In other words, find bargains. If you look back over the past 20 years, teams in the bottom half of revenue that added meaningful production via free agency did so with primarily with players that outperformed their contracts. Take a look. Pick a handful of successful teams in the bottom half of revenue. Then, go to FanGraphs and sort by WAR. Find the players acquired as free agents and then look at production/dollar spent across all the free agents on their roster. If you look at the most successful teams in terms of number of 90+ win teams in the past couple decades (Cleveland/Oakland/Tampa Bay/Milwaukee) You wont find a lot of free agent spending but you will find a lot of under $10M AAV players that contributed to their success.

They could easily swap McCusker for Keirsey. I don't see Bride or Clemens as all that relevant to bringing up McCusker. It would be a trade-off between a pinch runner / late inning defensive replacement in Keirsey for the possibility of an additional bat. Short-term, Keirsey is probably the better fit but I like the idea of seeing if McCusker can hit ML pitching. They could always go back to Keirsey or more likely Martin if McCusker does not work-out. The best case scenario would be E. Rodriguez gets going.

Let's apply a little common sense. The Padres are a contender. We want to get rid of Vasquez because he has no place on a contender. We are desperate to get rid of him because he is a black hole in the line-up but the Padres want him, why? Does that make any sense?

He has 48 days of MLB service according to FanGraphs. If he was promoted on June 1 that would be 168 days service as of the end of the 2025 MLB season.

You have a point. It's easy to make blanket statements. What would be more interesting IMO is a conversation about who specifically people would have replaced. Correa and Buxton were not really possible to move and there was discussion about Correa and a lot of people said they would disown the franchise if he were moved assuming it was even possible. Lewis? I got the impression most people thought he was a cornerstone. Walner? That makes no sense. Jeffers has been very good. It looked like they were trying to move Vasquez but let's be real. Who would want him without the twins eating most of the salary. Larnach? He was one of the bright spots the 2nd half last year. Perhaps a slight upgrade was possible but does it make sense to trade or sign a top OFer when you have Larnach/Wallner and Rodriguez and Jenkins on the horizon? That leaves 1B and 2B. They had Castro for 2B and Looks like we have a really good replacement (Keaschall) ready to go. Which leaves 1B. Yep, they could have traded for a top 1B. They did not have the budget to sign one so it would have had to be a trade. Should they have given up Matthews / Festa or Keaschall / Jenkins for an upgrade at 1B? I was in favor of moving Paddack and Castro if possible and investing that money in a bat. Would that have made any difference with Wallner / Lewis out and Correa's wRC+ at 58?

There was not even much talk of going out for starting pitching this year given the depth. Last year my recollection is the biggest push here last year was Jordan Montgomery. Point being that going out and getting someone as you say is not only no guarantee it can be a disaster.

So what. Berrios had an ERA of 8 his first year and there are countless SPs that struggled at first in the majors.

I doubt anyone would be satisfied with relying on Julien and/or Miranda. Now, had he said Correa will get going and we are really missing Wallner and Lewis. That would satisfy some of the critics but others will still expect the offense to be humming with arguably their 2 best hitters out and another in a slump to start the season. Perhaps he should had said he believes there is good reason to believe Correa will be better and we should be a lot better when Lewis, Wallner, and Keaschall are back.

You have the luxury of immunity from consequence. If a GM keeps replacing players with players that perform horribly like Keirsey, they find themselves unemployed.

I am all for giving prospects a shot but let's keep in mind many posters said the same thing about Keirsey. His OPS is 138 and wRC+ is -74. Vasquez looks great in comparison.

My guess is that they are hoping for Paddack to pitch well enough that they can get something for him while off-loading his salary. It's $5M saved if they get rid of him by game 54. Maybe they would even be willing to eat most of it if they could get a decent return. Regardless, I believe their first choice is to move Paddack out and Matthews in. I seriously doubt SWR is going anywhere right now unless the return is beyond what we might reasonably expect.

I am not arguing that Clemens is a good player. I simply don't agree that it's reasonable to expect that we have a MLB ready player ready to step-in no matter how many players get injured.

I left of Miranda because he is out due to poor performance which is different in this context but Rodriquez and Martin are good examples. You could actually make the argument they were 6 deep at 2B. (Julien / Castro / Lee / Martin / Eeles / Gasper and Keaschall). They had Bader / Keirsey / Castro / Martin as outfield depth and perhaps McCusker and Holland could be added to the list. That's a lot of back-up. This number of injuries is just nuts. I really hated losing Keaschall. He injected some life in this team. I was looking forward to getting Wallner and Lewis back with him and Buck is going better now. Those 4 playing well together would be an end to the boring baseball we have seen so far.

Your expectation is that they have a starter caliber depth after losing their primary 3B (Lewis), Their primary LF (Wallner), their #1 back-up (Castro), their 4rd option Keaschall who was doing great, their 5th option (Eeles) who is hurt? An organization is in trouble when they have to scramble as a result of this many injuries? Where exactly are they supposed to acquire a solid starter a month into the season? How many teams are willing to trade at this point in the season?

I suspect the teams with the most revenue already use their financial advantage to attract and retain the people that standout in these positions. The Dodgers have done a great job while always picking late.

Could not agree more on aggressively recruiting top scouting/development help. Pay them to come and pay them to stay. I would imagine evaluating scouts is rather difficult but I agree with the sentiment that this investment likely has a greater rate of return than free agent spending. However, it would appear most MLB teams already believe this to be true based on the increase in personnel over the past decade.

Maybe they need an "offensive coordinator" or two. One person with the sole focus of overseeing the scouting and drafting of position players and another person whose sole focus is development of position players. Obviously, they have people in similar positions. I am just throwing out a semi-serious idea because I agree they need to do something different on the position player side.

I didn't give an opinion on their track record. I gave 100% factual data. Those facts speak for themselves in terms of how the team has performed over the past 20 years. They have Machado on the books for 7 years from age 34 at 40M as the result of back loading the contract. That's selling out the future for the present. Darvish is well past his prime, on the IL now, and on the books for 3 more years after this year. The Buxton and Correa contracts are miles better than these two contracts. Boegarts was good his first year and very mediocre last year. He is getting old for a SS and he will have to hit much better to be valuable at 3B/2B. He is on the books for this year and 8 more. They did not get much out of Musgrove last year and he is on the IL now, Cronenworth and Arraez are both free agents that I seriously doubt they can afford to resign with the increase due to Machado. They are great at the moment. Maybe they will have one great year but they certainly have not been a great franchise. They absolutely sucked and got a bunch of top draft choices for several years. They get some credit for getting Tatis for nothing but that was as much luck as it was brilliance.

There is a light. The question is if the light gets turned on. Lewis back fairly soon. He may or may not be a light. Wallner will be back and he should be a light. Should we expect Correa to play like he has over his career or the anemic hitter he has been to start the year. He should provide some light. How about Luke Keaschall. That due looks like a flood light so far. I guess what I am saying is we should not throw in the towel just yet.