Major League Ready

Because you are making an assumption that their payroll could not accommodate any long-term contracts and that was obviously not the case. Before signing Correa and Vasquez, they only had one significant long-term contract that was not coming off the books after 2023 and that was Buxton. They had options on both Kepler and Polanco. Had they not signed Correa and Vasquez, they would be at $71M right now even while keeping Kepler so to say they could not afford a long-term contract is silly.

You are criticizing them for making those signings so it's rather hypocritical if you believe they were in the best interest of the team, especially given the team was shedding more payroll than they were adding with Lopez/Paddack. It's actually what we would all hope they would get done so it's not fair to say they should not have signed them. They obviously didn't sign Kepler last year either and retained an option for this year so he was in effect on a one year deal with an option for this year. IDK why you would even bring him up. They obviously made a good decision and again you want to criticize them for that good decision.

They used almost 50 players. If you look through all of the sections on Spotrac you will see how much salary was payed to injured players and retained salaries. They also put people like Winder / Sands / Celestino / Balazovic, etc in Minor League Salaries. I looked at it quickly. Maybe it's only 9 million or maybe it's 12. A couple million bucks was not the point as much as that lots of numbers are being thrown around as long as they fit a narrative without proper context and comparison. The real head scratcher is that I looked on Spotrac and the 2023 summary I used showed $156M and the Spotrac summary you showed was $159M . The one you used is on the top and I was looking at the one further down. I have not tried to figure out the difference yet. 2023 Payroll Totals PAYROLL TYPE BASE SALARY SIGNING BONUS INCENTIVES TOTAL SALARY TOTAL ADJ. SALARY Active Payroll $81,059,350 $125,000 $800,000 $81,984,350 $77,967,521 Injured List Money $71,296,550 $1,476,190 - $72,772,740 $71,263,008 Retained Salary $3,421,766 - - $3,421,766 $3,421,766 Buried Minor Salary $7,307,100 - - $7,307,100 $3,452,245 Active Total Payroll $163,084,766 $1,601,190 $800,000 $165,485,956 $156,104,540

This is the last thing I thought would come from you Mike. The only long-term deals they signed last year were Lopez and Paddack. Would you prefer they had not extended them? Those salaries are covered by the departure of Gray/Mahle/Maeda and Pagan. Not to mention they did spend over half the money on one year deals. (Gallo/Taylor/Solano).

No. Once again, you are only looking only at what you want to see. You are comparing a total of all of the players paid last year to the 26 players that will be on the opening day roster. I am not going to take the time to go through the details to get an exact number but that amount was roughly $11M last year which makes the appropriate comparison more like $149M. The Spotrac number appears to assume Dobnak makes the 26 man. They are $740K shy if this is not true (see below). which is a 20.9% reduction.

The $112K number is for 19 players. You purposefully omitted the projected number which includes an estimate for the other 8 players assuming Dobnak does not make the team. You are also using the total salaries for all the payers that were paid last year as compared to the 2024 snapshot which of course does not include the expenses that have not occurred yet. That amount is roughly $10M. The 2024 team will spend a similar amount but that's not in your comparison. This is not an apples-to-apples comparison. It's really quite easy to only use information that supports a particular point. It's a little harder to sift through the information to present an accurate representation of the situation.

People said this over and over so I collect the data for all of the Rays teams with over 90 wins. I simply pulled up Fangraphs for that year sorted by WAR and took the top producing (impact) players and determined how they were acquired. The 2019 Rays got 45.8% of the WAR produced by this definition from players acquired as prospects, I define prospects to include players that are unproven at the ML level. Only 18.5% of the WAR was produced by players they drafted. I have 2021-2023 as well and the percentage was equal in 2021 and the % was higher in 2022-23. The Rays trade excess like Polanco / Willy Adames. They also do a good job in getting the most out of players but the Rays success is not because they draft better. The greater influence is their willingness to trade current productive assets/excess for future value and they are great at acquiring players that are close to being ready.

You seem a lot more qualified than the guy who wrote the article.

IDK all that much about bankruptcy law but I would think Bally's had to satisfy the court in settling with the Guardians and Rangers. The Twins no longer had a contract. Therefore, their negotiation was purely about the market for their TV rights. Those other teams would appear to have been in a better negotiating position so it does not necessarily stand to reason the Twins took the exact same percentage of reduction. It did not seem like the Twins had any serious suitors for their broadcast rights. Just a point of clarification .... At this point, they cut payroll by 20%, not 30%. We will see if that's the final number in the next couple weeks but there is no need to exaggerate.

Which team with equivalent financial resources would you like them to emulate? The four that have won the WS since the turn of the century are the dBacks (2001), Marlins (2003) the CHWS (2005), and the Royals (2015).

I was being a bit facetious here to make a point. The team's relative success/failure took a big hit because the highest paid players (Correa / Buxton and Vasquez) all performed very poorly. Not only is their little complaint but there are a whole lot of people going off the deep end as if spending is absolutely crucial to success. The larger point is that the players are looking for every dime they can get even when they don't earn it and we are also talking about someone making generation wealth and retiring at 35. I would like a lot of businesses I patronize to not care about profit. That would be great. What I object to is people publicly trashing a business for acting like a business and expecting that business to operate to a different set of standards then the other MLB teams. It seems appropriate to collect information that confirms the team retains more income than other teams and present it before publicly disparage the team and their owners. Is this an unreasonable expectation?

You did not account for local revenues that are split with visiting team. Can you point me to the source of the $200M revenue share. I did not see this in the article. This article 2022 Revenue Sharing states the share is $110M/team. I will look for other articles.

You are absolutely right. I should have said the most factual data I could find. Better? I was thinking in broader terms with all of the other data I have complied that is factual. For example, the roster construction of every playoff team that was in the bottom half of revenue or the WAR produced by every free agent SP to get a 5+ year contract since the turn of the century or the combined win records of every team since 2000. No doubt the revenue sources are estimates. I still think that's a lot better than going off the way many people do here without attempting to gather unbiased information.

So you would rather follow KC who has been horrid for 23 of the last 25 years? If that's you thing, great. I watch 120 games/year and I want to see a good product as often as possible. Anyone could shove all their chips in (gut the farm system) and create the best opportunity to win a WS theoretically or would we have a better shot at winning a WS by getting their often and getting hot at the right time.

We know exactly what the payroll is so that's fact. I thought it went without saying that these are not audited financial statements. It's an unbiased source providing an estimate. The TV revenue is widely reported and I think the attendance records are pretty accurate. The only real assumption is the average ticket price which is also not hard to find. We are talking about a small percentage of the information that is not rather easily estimated. By firm did many far more complicated estimates with under a +/- 4% variance when audited against actual results. You are now just being petty because you don't want to acknowledge the information.

You are correct, sir! This is a summary since 2000 with number of 90 win seasons, overall win percentage and WS wins. This is sorted by 90 win seasons. The 2nd list is by win percentage. By win percentage

That information came from Statista and Forbes. The Teams are not handing out that information.

I don't take hard positions without facts. Quite often when people make these proclamations here I wonder if the facts support the boldness of their conclusion/position so I gather the information needed to reach an informed conclusion. It has become harder and harder to find sources. Forbes provided this information ever year but the older information can no longer be accessed if you want to look back and compile the information for a number of years. I had a Statista account once upon a time. They produce revenue summaries every year and payroll can be found via several sources. Here is 2023. The Twins ranked 11th in Payroll as a percentage of revenue. I also have net profit for 2022 via Forbes. The Twins ranked 25th in net profit for 2022 according to Forbes..

It's ironic that we repeatedly hear followers here say they don't want to spend money on the team. Yet, they expect more spending. Many have said they would not pay $20 month while asking for a free agent that gets paid $5M/month.

I don't think there should be public funding but the premise that this is the differentiator is very hard to believe. Do you understand that if there was no public funding that expense would be paid for by reducing player salaries?

Sure would like to see your hissy fit backed up with supporting data. In other words, show us the Twins spend less per dollar of revenue than other teams. My bet is that you have never bothered to validate your opinion because if you had you would know this isn't true. Never ever has anyone here ever backed up this kind of irrational dribble with actual fact. It's also curious that we seem to readily accept that the vast majority of players are fighting for every dime. We accept that it's a business for them but we don't accept a business owner treating it like a business. Why the totally different response to players?

I understand the direction of the Mahle comments. I only mentioned by position at the time because I got pounded for being against it. Supporters followed the logic that they were in 1st place. My position was I don't give a crap what place they were in. They were not a team worthy of investment and I think that was proven beyond a doubt. I remember the Buxton threads quite well. There were people lashing out at the FO saying these guys were completely out of touch and "not serious" if they did not offer Buxton $150M in guaranteed money just for starters. Obviously, this was far from a unanimous position but most people wanted to keep Buck and were happy with a $15M/year quarantee. With Correa, there were plenty of people who felt we should pony up even when it was 12 years. I was OK with it when they went to 6 years but there was still a very small minority that did not want to make the $200M investment. Right now they look pretty smart but I think there is a good chance that investment will look a lot better this year. There was even a little of the "I am out" as a Twins fan if they don't spend the money for these players.

They were 22nd in revenue in 2022. The number for 2023 should be out in the next 6 weeks. They should be up a couple places and I suspect they should be around 18th on average.

The majority was very adamant about signing Correa. The language was strong and the sentiment was that it had to be done or we were not an organization serious about winning. I think he will bounce back and I sure hope he does because his product at $33M AAV is a disaster for an organization with other $300M in revenue. If you look back on the Mahle discussions, I was very much opposed. He was not a true difference maker and more importantly that team was not worthy of that level of investment. We would be in much better shape now and for several years had the FO not opted to trade away future production for a team that had a bunch of injuries and simply was not very good. MLB network had Steer as the #10 rated LF and CES could end up to be an absolute beast not to mention they would both fit in on this team perfectly.

There is an assumption here that spending in free agency is key to a modest revenue team winning a WS. History does not support that conclusion. There have been 4 teams with equal or less revenue compared to the twins to win the WS this century. (since 2000). I have roster summaries depicting method of acquisition for all of them except the 2003 Marlins. Free agent played a role but none of them were major expenditures. It was either guys somewhat outperforming their contact like Edison Volquez or more modest 2 year type deals. There is one team that really hit on free agents and that was the 2019 Nationals. They obviously had enough incremental revenue compared to the twins to pay for the 2 elite free agents that carried them but they are the closest thing to the twins in terms of revenue that achieved success through free agent spending. There is a persistent assumption that free agent spending is key to the Twins winning a WS but the last 25 years or more does not have a single example of elite free agents leading the way to a WS for a team like the Twins. The example below is the 15 Royals. The way I set this up is to determine the acquisition method for the teams top players by WAR. I use a break point of 1.3 WAR for RPs and 1.5 WAR for other dependent upon the team. TaP is traded for as prospect. This includes players that have made it to the MLB level but never produced the minimum WAR established in this criteria. The Royals only had one significant free agent in terms of performance and that was Edison Volquez who is far from the type of free agent being called for on TD. He was actually a player most here would not have wanted. He had not done much at all in the past 6 years.