Major League Ready

That's a stretch but even if it has merit, it would have made more sense to make a similar trade last year at the deadline. I doubt they would have put that kind of value in a Mahle type SP but at least we would have filled the biggest hole on this year's team instead of investing in a mediocre team that was injury depleted.

Agree. This year's team might be even more worthy but the cost will be high because their hole is probably going to be a playoff level starter. Similar situation to Texas last year.

The deal wasn't bad based on Mahle's talent. It was bad because they gave up substantial future value for present value when the team was unworthy of investment. In other words, the investment had no value at substantial cost.

You make a good point Mike. IDK how much injury played a role in his performance the last couple years. Perhaps they were convinced Margot is simply healthier than he has been. We just don't know until we see for ourselves over the next couple months. It's also always a bit of a guessing game with this type of player. MAT was terrible offensively 2018-21, a little better in 2022 and then had a career year last year. Duval was mediocre in 2021, bad in 2022 and then good last year. I don't pretend to have any answers on Margot, just theories.

I absolutely agree that it's great to have a surplus to trade but we traded away to invest in a team that proved to be unworthy of such investment. The national media loves Steer and some are very high on CVES. MLB network listed Steer as the 10th best OFer in MLB. He would not start over Wallner in the OF against RHP. He would play a Castro type role. The two of them would offer tremendous flexibility. Steer’s career OPS against LHP is .937 with a wRC+ of 148. His combined OPS was .820 last year. He is a far better player than Farmer for less money and another 5 years of control. Farmer is a good fit. Steer is a great fit and a better player. We just see this one differently. CES is still unproven. Again, I am listening to some of the national guys who think he is going to be a beast. He started out pretty mediocre but he was raking the last six weeks (100 Abs) of the season. His wRC+ was 155. He ranked 21st in MLB right behind Bryce harper for that period. I would much rather have that potential for the next 6 years even though he is still unproven.

Pretty hard to follow that logic when they did spend the $11M when they signed Sanatana and kept Farmer. It's not a projection, it already happened, correct? The fact that you ignored the far more impactful aspects of my post (Steer/CES/SGL/Povich) and interpreted the $11M in the worst possible light would suggest you were focus on finding something to complain about. Do you or do you not think the team would have been better with Steer/CES and SGL and Povich as SP depth regardless even if they pocketed the $11M?

That is the nature of these trades. It's short-term assets / production traded for long-term assets. That's generally not a good asset management practice and historically, winning mid and small market teams are built on trading for prospects, not trading them away. Just look at the Twins recent history. They traded two rentals to teams that accomplished nothing for Duran and Ryan. We traded for Mahle and Jorge Lopez who are not only gone but produced nothing. We also acquired Fulmer at that deadline. We gave away Cano who ended up being an all-star, 6 years each of Steer and CES who look to be very good MLB players, Sawyer Gibson-Long who did not look that great in Milb but was very good (2.70 ERA) in his initials MLB exposure. Cade Poviich is also said to be looking ready to contribute for the Orioles. We would be a considerably better team had the FO not invested in a team that simply was not a contender regardless of the fact they were in 1st place. Had they not bought at the 22 deadline. Steer would replace farmer and CES replaces Sanatana. Steer is a better bat and plays INF and OF. CES has way more ceiling as a hitter. Povich and SGL would be starting depth. Plus, we would have $11M to invest elsewhere.

This is very good news. His ceiling just went up. However, it appears from the graph that the arm slot has reduced the break in his off-speed stuff. The fastball looks too straight. Hopefully, this is just a SSS thing.

If they were not comfortable with Martin yet, it was a pretty sure thing that they would not sign an OFer that could not cover CF. It also made a lot of sense that they focused on splits against LH pitching. Margot has better splits than anyone you mentioned. This is their career OBP and wRC+. MAT 310 / 99 Duvall 301 / 100 Margot 341 / 109.

Also a good point. You guys are on a roll. My guess is we see a lot of guys in that role over the course of the season. I hope Buxton is so healthy we don't see him in that role as much as we expect.

Reasonable point but Castro did have an 801 OPS against RHP last year. They could also give Correa, Lewis, Julian, Kirilloff or Wallner a day off from the field and have them DH while one of the four you mentioned plays in the field.

My guess is he is insistent upon 2 years and the Twins don't want to roster him for two years. I doubt it has anything to do with the AAV he is asking. They might also be serious about cutting down the Ks.

Exactly what I thought upon looking over his splits. I hope they got an interesting prospect because this does not move the needle much.

You called me out and insulted me in the process so I defended myself. All I asked for was an accurate representation of the facts and you damn well know this is the case because I listed them in specific detail. I invited you or anyone else to disprove these points which is the polar opposite of insisting on my way. You can't disprove any of the things I brought up so now that you can't keep the discussion within a context of your liking, you don't want to discuss it. You have just clearly illustrated my original point that many posters here are simply ignoring anything they don't want to acknowledge. Apparently, my preference to accurately represent these issues is problematic. I am happy to have a payroll discussion if it's based on accurate representations and valid financial constructs. You are further proving the lack of desire here to have a discussion on that basis at which point I don't see the point of perpetuating the same conceptually flawed explanations of the situation. Prove me wrong a show us all the error in the points I outlined but don't refuse to play and then accuse me of being unwilling to have a reasonable disagreement about the facts. Several of you willing to take shots at me but not a single person willing to debate the actual points I made.

Where are you coming up with $8M? That information was sealed by the court so are you speculating, or do you have inside information you are sharing in violation of that order? Regardless, I would assume they are like every other business, and every player, meaning they are in for the $$$.

As someone who forgot this little fact, the Twins signed Correa last off-season. They may not have spent big on Castro, Solano, and MAT but those were quite good. Where they failed to get much was their biggest spends Correa / Vasquez and Gallo.

You want to talk about only if you talk about it in the context of badly flawed financial concepts. Do you want to discuss it based on accurate comparisons? If so, tell me how the 5 flawed concepts I just listed are not flawed.

It's not that hard to figure out but instead of proving your point you have done like the others and just thrown out an assumption. All we need to do is compare opening day payrolls. This is their opening day roster as per MLB. Press release: Twins make final roster moves, finalize Opening Day 2023 roster (mlb.com) The post I responded to was using $159M. The opening day roster was actually $150. (see below) I constructed this using the opening day roster reported by MLB and salary figures form Spotrac. There is a $9m discrepancy which changes the ratios that were thrown around here significantly. That opening day number from last year also misrepresents the comparison because the numbers being used had $0 for players on the injured list. Last year we had $7.5M in dead money for Mahle. I saved the best for last. The 2023 opening day roster included replacements for Polanco, Kirilloff, and Lewis. The 2024 number does not have any injury replacements. That difference is a little over 2M when comparing 2023 to 2024. The combined total is $11M. I was not just "throwing around" a number. I looked before I criticized as opposed to your approach of saying "I would argue that $11M is significantly lower" based on assumption that you understood the numbers without looking.. There is a lot of that kind of assumption and even misrepresentations made here. They misrepresentations might not be intentional but they are inaccurate non the less. Why are people so opposed to an accurate portrayal of the facts?

This response exemplifies why it’s time to move on. That “spreadsheet” which was nothing more than a simple calculation offered absolutely no opinion on spending level. It simply illustrated how to do the math and that posters were using a very flawed financial construct to determine how much payroll would need to be reduced to make up for losses in revenue. The fact that you object to this being pointed out and portray it as a defense of the Pohlad’s is why it’s pointless to have these conversations. Some of us with financial backgrounds have attempted to point these things out but posters refuse to even acknowledge some errors that are pretty basic. What is the be learned by continuing a conversation based on badly flawed concepts? I don’t see any point. Let’s go over the examples. The first one that was brought up over and over was the $30M in BAM money. Many posters here were unaware. That’s an honest mistake until it’s pointed out numerous times and people, including all of the writers here ignore it because they don’t want to accept it. JD-Twins in this very thread said he was “tired of hearing about BAM money”. This is about as factual as it gets. Another example is when posters insisted if revenue went down by let’s just say $40M, payroll should only go down $20M because the organization generally uses 50% of revenue as their target. The math simply does not work that way. Let’s say someone makes $6K/month and pays $3K month in rent (50%). 2,400 (40%) goes to food / vehicle pymt / gas / other monthly expenses. This would be a parallel to operating expenses. The other 10% goes to 401/savings. If your income goes down by $1,000, will moving to a different rental that is $500/month cheaper cover the difference? Does the fact that the $3K was 50% of revenue matter? Of course not. This is rather simple financial concept. Yet, it was constantly misused here. Another example is when the difference in spending was calculated as the current payroll vs ending payroll from last year. The ending payroll includes all of the payments to those who fill-in for injured players. The Twins used something like 48 players last year. It’s not a huge amount but $7M or $8M changes that percentage substantially. Another example is once the BAM money was pointed out so many times it could not be ignored, people started insisting that they should not have used one-time to sign long-term deals. This was a silly argument given we know with certainty that all of those contracts fit within the budget guidelines outlined by the FO. I don’t really know what could be more obvious but some people still attempted to portray this as incompetence. Another example is people insisting that the Twins should rank 14 or 15th in spending because they have the 14 or 15th ranked market. The only rank that counts in terms of supporting payroll is revenue. You would think this is about as obvious as it gets but apparently not. One could argue they could or should generate more revenue but using market rank to justify spend is not a reasonable financial construct. Another that’s not as cut and dried is we just want them to take it in the shorts for one year. The problem with that premise is that meaningful free agents require multi-year contracts. A really good FA would ensure a 2025 payroll at or near record levels with uncertain revenues. We would also have an unmanageable percentage of payroll in two players if a major FA was signed. It would also make it very difficult to extend our young core which is a far more effective practice than signing free agents. The last concept is an interesting and much more nuanced conversation. The others can and have been proven mathematically. You choose to ignore the opportunity to better understand these concepts others cheer you for it. It’s one thing to not know the financial constructs. It’s another thing entirely to intentionally ignore them when an explanation is offered. That’s when it’s time to move on.

Yet another article whining about spending. Baseball is here. Can we move on!

It's not remotely debatable if it's a good idea to spend money that won't be available in the future. The problem with you point is that they didn't spend money that was not going to be viable this year. They are below the threshold we spent with the long-term deals in question accounted for. We also know with certainty, they have $16M coming off next year to cover the increases to Lopez and Paddack and that Paddack and Vasquez come off the following year. Cmon Mike, you are a generally a really reasonable guy and this is not a reasonable criticism.

IDT anyone believes Helman is making the team out of spring training but it will get real interesting if he puts together 2-3 months playing at AAA like he did before getting hurt. Can you imagine a bench of Casto, Martin, and Hellman with Hellman playing to level we have seen flashed in the minors. As long as we are dreaming, now imagine Severino or Miranda stepping up. Holy cow that's one heck of a 26 man roster.

That was the common theme here but shouldn't the criteria for sacrificing the future be the relative chance of a playoff run? Being in 1st place is not one in the same. I was dead set against investing heavily in that team. It was not a good team but the rest of the division was terrible. So, technically they were contending for a division title but they certainly were not a contender in reality. As T&R points out, the injuries had already turned what was a questionable ability to contend into a non-contender. Making that kind of investment should be done because of an opportunity to go deep in the playoffs, not because “they were in first place”. The total future cost is yet unknown. We do know we got absolutely no present value nor was there any value then. There is a significant cost today. Steer would be a a valuable player. MLB network has him as the 10th best LFer and he would provide flexibility as well. CES is less proven but he was crushing it at the end of last season and he would also fit very well on this team. IDK how good Sawyer Gibson Long is going to be but he was great in his initial handful of games with Detroit. Yesterday, I heard the MLB network guys praising Cade Povich. His numbers have not been great but they thought he would add value for the Orioles this year. Just the cost of Steer and CES would be a lot but if one or both of these pitchers are even average major leaguers, the cost of that decision to invest in a non-contender is enormous. We sit here and worry about signing a free agent to a 1 year and that’s absolutely inconsequential as compared to this kind of mistake. Fans love the idea of going for it so much that they overlook the fact the team proved to be completely unworthy of that investment and that the costs looks extreme. We would look far better this year and for several years with CES and Steer plus that pitching depth even if some of those players were eventually traded.

Can you answer a question? How is this relevant to anything I have said?

Yes, I did. I make mistakes too and I was thinking that was 2022 and of course he needed to be resigned.