Major League Ready

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.

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.