Major League Ready

I guess there is always a market for a guy like Ryan but it seems like more legit contenders are looking than other years which should make for a good return. It will be interesting to see if Milwaukee gets an impact prospect for Peralta. Of course, Peralta only has 1 year of control so we will have to assess how much more Ryan would be worth. It sure looks like this is fan appeasement and they can then go ahead and trade Ryan at the deadline. If he is having a great year that might work out fine. However, what if he is having a bad year or even worse as you point out, he gets hurt, we could end up with nothing. If we had a reasonable chance, I get it but our odds at the post season are really low. A whole lot of things have to go really well.

I guess I understand (sort of) why they signed him but that is a frightening reality.

Apparently, with Vazquez reaching FA, they thought the lineup would be out of character for the Twins if they did not have one of the worst hitters in the league on their roster. It's only Jan 4th but it sure looks like they are pretenders appeasing fans by keeping "their core together and building around it".

I agree with your post but I would not lump the A's in with the Pirates. They have done a pretty good job with limited resources. The table below has win percentages for all 30 teams over the past 20 seasons. Win % Yankees 0.579 Dodgers 0.567 Cardinals 0.550 Red Sox 0.544 Braves 0.543 Cleveland 0.519 Giants 0.519 Astros 0.515 Phillies 0.515 Oakland 0.513 Angels 0.512 Blue Jays 0.504 Mariners 0.502 Cubs 0.502 Mets 0.501 Brewers 0.500 TWINS 0.500 Tampa 0.496 Rangers 0.491 Dbacks 0.487 Padres 0.481 Nationals 0.481 White Sox 0.480 Reds 0.473 Tigers 0.470 Marlins 0.465 Orioles 0.458 Rockies 0.450 Pirates 0.448 Royals 0.443

No surprise. I have posted several times that the only one team in the bottom half of revenue (2015 Royals) has won the WS in the past 20 years. I made these posts because occasional people will use that as a valid measure of success which makes little sense given its rarity. This is the present day reality. The question is do we want to take our chances with the type of teams the Brewers have put together.

I keep hearing the failure is a product of being cheap. However, they have spent more than the other teams in the division and as much than most teams with similar revenue. The conclusion that the primary problem is spending just does not track with the facts. I see the problem as not drafting well enough and not managing their roster and assets like Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Tampa. Those teams are all spending significantly less and getting much better results. Does spending another $30M equate to equivalent results? Building a winner requires periodic rebuilds. Even with considerably more revenue, the Red Sox and cubs just went through rebuilds. The Twins organization appears to be unwilling to do what's necessary. They are using duct tape when they need to build a new foundation. Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Tampa have their ups and downs, but they do not waste their opportunities to build long-term assets by moving short-term assets. If we look at their trade practices and results compared to other modest revenue teams or even all teams it would appear their practices are more effective.

I am not sure which one, but Jenkins will replace one of the corner OFers.. Your preference seems pretty inevitable. Who ends up the 3rd primary OFer after the deadline? That's a lot harder to predict. Who would you bet on? (Erod / Gonzalez / Roden / Larnach / Wallner / Mendez / other) Lots of candidates. That would be a good poll for TD.

Baseball Reference and FanGraphs have Buxton at the exact same WAR of 9.2 for the last 3 years which is the period of time his salary went to $15M. That's just under $5M/Year which would be pretty good if he were signed as a FA. It's certainly a lot better than Correa who produced 6.5 bWAR and 8.2 fWAR for 2.29X Buxton's salary.

Actually, those teams have traded away very good established players with short-term control even when they expect to win. Milwaukee won 92 games the year prior to trading Corbin Burnes and 93 they year after trading him. Cleveland traded away Lindor in 2020 which was the Covid season but they had a .588 win percentage. They won 93 games the year they traded away Kluber for Clase. They got Kluber as a prospect by trading Jake Westbrook. So, Westbrook turned into 6 years of Kluber and 6 years of Clase. It's a sacrifice short-term and it has the risk of producing nothing but it also has a very high upside. That's the type of risk modest revenue teams need to embrace.

My recollection of the practices of successful modest revenue teams is that they don't trade away cost controlled assets unless they have a team that is definitely a contender. Even then, it's rare. If they want to spend another $60M, great. That would be far better than trading away their future. The only option worse than running the status quo out would be to denigrate the future to "go for it with a roster that is not remotely close. They would have to trade away several of their best prospects to enhance this roster anywhere near a serious contender. That's a really good way to insure continued mediocrity or worse.

How many wins do you think they have if they don't spend $20M on a SS and 2 RPs?

While at the same time the new guy in charge is saying he does not believe in half-measures. The off-season isn't over but so far, all indications are they will follow a course that exemplifies a "half-measure".

I agree completely and didn't mean to suggest IKF makes this a 75-win team. Filling our holes with players like IKF and Bell and RPs of a similar stature might get you to 75 wins. So, if that's the goal, signing this type of player might get you there.

If your goal is to win 75 games, then IKF or players like him are a good solution. I would like to see them do something that is not destined for mediocrity.

I am not sure I follow. IKF would not be replacing Kreidler. He would replace Lee who produced .3 WAR last year and IKF produced .7. We sure have low aspirations when signing a less than 1 WAR player is considered a positive. We know if the sign a guy like IKF, they will play him instead of getting Culpepper up who might actually be a solution to the problem.

So, they don't have bad players. They have players playing badly. I guess that's one way to look at it and that hope that bad players can become good is appealing but it's not a good doctrine by which to manage a roster. We all know what they say about doing the same thing and expecting different results. I see a hole at corner OFer, 3B, SS, and probably 1B, and a giant hole that is the BP. That's a lot of holes.

I have been asking the same questions for a couple years. The top revenue teams are not going to agree to just give away a large portion of their competitive advantage along with enough revenue loss to drop the value of their franchise by 25% or more. I hear a lot of ideas that would be nice for those of us that are fans of mid and small market teams but like you I just don't know how you resolve this problem. I thought keeping the luxury tax down was possible last CBA with all the concessions owners made especially given a lot of that money goes to revenue sharing but the players were not bending even a little.

I am not in the least defending the current direction but as I recall, when Santana and Bader were signed, the majority of this board said they were terrible signings and had similar criticism of the FO.

Draft bonuses and player benefits are around $40M. If they have an operating profit of $30M which is modest, that leaves around $100M for operating expenses. I would estimate personnel cost of roughly $70-75M which leaves $25-30M for all other operating expenses. Seems about right.

Good point. It begs the question ... what can we take away from each player's 2025 that might suggest who will be better this year. @Brock Beauchamp pointed out Arraez made very weak contact. How much consideration should we give that stat? Was he fighting injury or just not squaring up the ball? I like to look at 2nd half numbers to see how a player is trending. Arraez wRC+ was 105 and Bell was 139. Should we put anything into the difference in their 2nd half performance?

There is only one pool of money. Therefore, if you give the guys at the bottom more, it will take away from the guys at the top like Harper. If not, they would have voted to give Milb players more money a long time ago. It's not like the owners will just accept less profit. The Dodgers and many other teams could easily make more profit if that's what they wanted to do. Virtually every team spends in line with revenue while maintaining a reasonable profit. There are a lot of industries with a higher average return on capital. The only two teams that could spend significantly more are Pittsburgh and Miami. People seem to forget that the players wanted to reduce revenue sharing and pushed hard for a higher luxury tax threshold during the last CBA. The problem with a floor and a ceiling is that a floor has to be financially feasible for the lowest revenue team in the league. Therefore, spending would not increase for all but a couple of teams and the difference between what they are making and what a minimum profit level would be is insignificant. We are probably talking $25M for a couple teams. Even if the ceiling was $220M, there are several teams that would have a $100M advantage. There are 7 teams that spent over $220M last year. If the amount was lowered to $220M, the incremental decrease in payroll would be $350M. The couple of teams spending below what would be a reasonable floor would not remotely make up for the difference. I just don't see a cap and floor as a solution the players would accept.

Great example in Boston. I am sure Bloom's approach was not popular in Boston but he has set them up for success. I also agree with Falvey putting himself at risk which is why I think this is coming from ownership. Falvey had an easy sell. Picture this. Falvey goes to ownership and tells them they are perfectly positioned to rebuild in an unusually short period of time. They already have a lot of major league talent with 4-6 years of control. Jenkins / Culpepper / Rodriguez can be transitioned this year. There are a few other guys like GG and Tait that have a good chance to impact the ML club. They have several SP prospects and they need innings at the ML level and those who don't make it can be tested in the BP. Here is the key, they have great trade assets that should add impact players. Many bad teams don't have this trade capital. On top of that the 3rd pick next year. BTW ownership The additional assets acquired in trade will give us the best shot at sustained success. This approach will improve our chances of building of a true contender. It also accelerates the process of building a real contender. Double BTW ownership, this approach is guaranteed to be profitable. The bonus for Falvey is that he buys a couple more years for himself. If Falvey is pushing this approach, he either thinks he is bullet proof or he is not thinking about job security. He also is not thinking about building a real contender.

The lackluster approach can be explained by the budget but aggressive when you are bad is to reload/rebuild like the Cardinals are doing. Is Falvey telling them the best way to build a contender is what the Cardinals are doing now or like Cleveland and Tampa have been doing for a decade or two? If it were about money, that’s an easy sell because a rebuild would gut payroll and make the team quite profitable for not just this year but the next couple of years at least. So, is Falvey picking a direction that he thinks will save his job or is it ownership, especially the new partners trying to placate fans with a strategy that is likely to fail?

I too have noticed the moves the Cardinals have been making and have to agree their direction is much clearer than the Twins. They have failed to make an aggressive move when they have a real shot and now they are failing to be aggressive when they have almost no shot. I say almost because there is always the very slight chance that everything goes right. What I would like to know is if this is Falvey or is this ownership including the new partners placating fans by putting a 500 team on the field. Is Falvey just trying to save his job because I can't believe he thinks adding some mediocre talent to a less than mediocre team is going to end in a playoff run.

Don't let the guy who traded for Ryan and Lopez be the guy to trade them?