Major League Ready

Who do you think is most likely to look out for the best interest of the game? Players who have an extremely short-window to cash-in or owners who reap enormous financial reward for growing the sport and keeping it healthy. The answer is quite clear when reviewing the position of both sides during the last CBA. I am not suggesting the owners would look out for the long-term interests of the game out of love for the game. Their selfish interests align much better with the long-term interest of the game than the players who wanted to reduce revenue sharing, pushed hard for a very high luxury tax threshold, and opposed an international draft.

Streaming offers the opportunity to tailor the service that is completely unbundled. They could offer the ability to purchase a single game pass. Obviously, they would charge a higher rate. It might be $3-4 for a single game but viewers would not have to commit to anything. Per game fees would be billed to a credit card on file. They could sell 20 or 40 or 80 game packages or a season pass. Playoffs could be included in a season pass or even that could be sold on a per game basis.

For starters, this have to do with owners who answer to nobody? They are going to do whatever is best for them in the long run. If you think they are so ignorant as to prioritize short-term gains you are badly misinformed. Actually, uninformed would be more accurate.

While you are no doubt correct that injury could derail these players seasons. That same risk of injury exists for older/more established players. It's a good thing our big dollar players like Correa and Buxton crushed it for a grand total of less than 2 WAR for $48M and our other two most expensive signings (Vasquez & Gallo) sucked too. By your logic there is no hope no matter what they do.

Billionaires as a group have an exponentially better understanding of long-term value than baseball fans in general. If they don't possess that skillset, and even if they do, they hire people exceptionally skilled in this area. They also don't need the money. It is basically certain that they will evaluate the various future state scenarios and pick the option with the best long-term financial outlook.

The 1876 reference really brings this home. It's hard to calculate the impact of a blown call on the game because it depends on so many variables. We do however know the impact for a given AB. A blown call with a 1;1 count has a huge impact on an AB. The difference between 2:1 and 1:2 is huge. Obviously, a blown call on a full count decides an AB.

There are a lot of analogies that come to mind. Why did they invoke replays if calling a runner who is safe out or calling a would be hit foul a hit if this is charming. How an unfair call is charming is beyond me. A blown call absolutely changes the AB and therefore the game. Why would we want the game changed by a bad call. It's not really the umpires fault. The stuff pitchers are throwing up there these days is stretching the limits of human vision. The good news is that it would appear is that a lot of people recognize this is a wart on the game. They did a good job with the latest rule changes and they will eventually get this right.

Lewis, Wallner, and Kirilloff produced a total of 5.1 WAR. They only played 222 games combined. I don't think you are accounting for the cumulative nature of WAR. With any luck they are going to play 400+ games between them. If that happens, 7.5-10 WAR is not "insanely optimistic" Lewis is quite capable of putting up 5 WAR himself. Buxton and Correa only produced 1.8 WAR combined. Those two playing just near what was expected when they were signed would make this a different team.

Our reality (Minnesota Twins fans) and teams with similar revenue is that success is absolutely dependent upon the acquisition and development of young players. That means drafting or trading for prospects. Obviously, the more cheap players they produce the more they can spend on free agents but that well is limited when you generate 200-300M less than the top teams. There is no more money. How do you invest money you don't have? We have already invested in the form of Correa, Lopez, and Buxton. Our excess is spent. You can also do some trading of prospects if you produce enough to have an excess but trading six year assets for two year assets is a losing strategy unless you are fortunate enough to only trade away prospects that fail. Pick any team from the last 20 years with 90 wins outside the top dozen in revenue. 80-90% of their top players by WAR were drafted or acquired as prospects. Why should we focus on practices that have not yielded results? BTW ... This includes players acquired in trade before they became established players. Fans generally want it immediately, so they don't want to wait for prospects and assume established players are the answer. They fail too. I can quite clearly recall posters here absolutely going off on the FO because they did not understand that Madison Bumgarner was a no brainer and they should have offered him whatever it took. If the 2022 Mets and Padres don't cure the assumption that established players often fail, I don't know what will. I would love to have an extra couple hundred million in revenue so that our team could buy players an absorb the frequent failure associated with free agents. However, we don't have that luxury. Developing players is a prerequisite to winning for the Minnesota Twins and teams of similar revenue. I am far more worried about the execution of viable practices than what could be had with another $30M in payroll. For example, had they drafted Carroll instead of Cavaco that one decision would very likely made more difference than spending $30M on a free agent, especially during the back half of the contract. I also would like to have CES right now and SGL looked good in his first appearances.

Farmer / Castro and Martin makes for an incredibly versatile bench.

He looked good in his last 150 ABs (starting 7/25). His OPS was .901 with a .300 BA and .428 OBP. I would not be shocked if he broke camp with the ML club. I think any chance of that happening will be a product of trades yet to be seen. More likely is he sees another 150ABs in STP. Hopefully, he is even better and we see him on the big club in June.

I presume your conclusion is they are only concerned about the bottom line. If they were able to win without revenue sharing, why wouldn't they just pocket the extra money and keep on winning? I don't doubt that every franchise is focus on profitability just as players are focused on maximizing their salary. Winning generates more revenue so why would they not continue to operate as they had in order to maximize profitability? I think it's more likely they were at the end of one of the many cycles this team has gone through which has also been the norm for all of the other teams in the bottom half of revenue. The difference being a lot of the teams in the bottom half have very few winning years ever. I put together the chart below after the 2022 season. This shows overall win percentage and number of 90 win seasons for the bottom 10 teams compared to Oakland.

Yes. I would imagine we read the same accounts of revenue during covid. I was not considering national broadcast revenue given they are not impacted by the issue with RSNs and the national money does not change. I thought the context was local TV revenue given the national revenues are not in jeopardy.

A couple years ago I compiled the win/loss data back to the turn of the century for all of the teams in the bottom half of revenue. The A's had the most 90 win seasons and best overall record. Only the Guardians and Rays were anywhere close. They also had a better win percentage than half of the teams in the top half of revenue.

With ticket revenue comes concessions and apparel sales. The MLB average for a family is of 4 is $266 or $66.50/person. I would assume that couples spend more per person. However, if we use $66.50/person, a team drawing 2.5M fans would generate $166M. So, if we view this a TV vs in person attendance, teams like the Red and Twins generate far less revenue from broadcasting rights.

You apparently did not understand the premise of my post. The OP insists the 2023 team was successful because they spent at record levels. The facts are that five of the six highest paid players (Correa/Buxton/Polanco/Vazquez/Gallo) produced a total of 5 fWAR. The six most impactful pitchers were Gray/Lopez/Duran/Jax/Stewart/Ryan/Ober. Gray and Lopez were acquired through trades with relatively modest salaries. Duran and Ryan were acquired by trading away established players for prospects. Taylor at 1.5 WAR was not massively instrumental. He was important but he was also a relatively cheap acquisition. The point was certainly not that they don't need to replace Gray. The point was that they did not acquire Gray by spending big and more generally that the elevated spending had little to do with the success of the 2023 team. All of the avenues that made them successful last year are available this year.

You are not accounting for advertising revenue. The streaming fees are a relatively small portion of the value of broadcasting rights. The broadcasting fee paid to a team is going to be a product of any streaming fees plus advertising revenue minus operating costs and profit. As for the fees, $120/year seems relatively modest. That's quite a bit less than the average family spends to attend one game. They could also sell packages that would not require fans to purchase rights to the entire season.

Verlander was quite effective dialing it up a notch only when he really needed it.

So your conclusion is they want to do their best to piss off a bunch of their customers and prospective customers? I think it's far more likely they want to engage their customers on a very frequent basis via professional sports.

That would be great as a fan of the Minnesota Twins. Unfortunately, any such system would change team values by billions of dollars. It also would not maximize revenue to the league. A good team in Milwaukee is never going to generate anywhere near the revenue it does in NY / Boston, etc. The players wanted revenue sharing decreased and they fought hard to increase the luxury tax threshold so the players would also NEVER allow such a system without a prolonged strike. Any system even remotely close to what we want as a lower revenue market is never going to happen. The only way to combat the inequity is to follow practices that manage assets accordingly.

This conclusion / position is hard to understand given the number of huge contracts this off-season. Teams are taking enormous risks. Are teams supposed to just give free agents whatever they ask for? How does that make the game better? I really don't get the downside for fans given they are ultimately the source of funding for these enormous deals. It's not like the players quit playing. They just don't get exactly what they want. What's the downside for fans.

I think we are on a very similar thought path here. I really like the upside. This is something worth taking a chance. That gamble feels way better if the Twins believe Manoah is willing to put in the work. Lopez is the perfect guy to help Manoah if he is wants to be helped. I will be excited if this comes to fruition.

No doubt some guys are so talented they can get by especially at 1B. However, I think it's reasonable to question a players desire to be great when they don't even try to stay in shape? I mean we are talking about professional athletes. So, unless we don't think athleticism is important, those players are not maximizing their capabilities. If we look at the NBA, NFL, and NHL, as well as many MLB players, their diet and workout regimens are quite sophisticated. I guess I just have a lot more confidence in a player who is working hard to be great like Lopez.

A professional athlete that is not committed enough to stay in shape makes me seriously question their desire to be good/great. Lopez not only stays in shape but he is constantly working on his craft. If Toronto is willing to give up on him that makes me wonder even more if he is a headcase or just not driven enough to succeed at this level. However, there is so much upside that this is something they should definitely explore.

Here is the problem with the premise of this article. The players which made this the highest payroll team in Twins history had little to do with the team’s success. Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton, Joey Gallo, Christian Vazquez all produced very poorly. Only one relatively high paid player produced and that was Max Kepler and most people here were calling for him to be traded. Jorge Polanco and MAT would fall somewhere in between. The players most responsible for the surge were Royce Lewis, Edouard Julien, Matt Wallner, Ryan Jeffers, Alex Kirilloff, and Donovan Solano. All of whom were among the lowest paid players. On the pitching side, Sonny Gray and Pablo Lopez were the most impactful. They were both acquired in trade with a modest salary. Among the RPs, it was a bunch of low cost RPs like Jax, Stewart, and even Cody Funderburk. Of course, Emilio Pagan who was hated was the most expensive of the lot. The premise that record spending led to success in 2023 is deeply flawed. Beyond this relatively obvious conclusion, if you wanted to make a case the Twins are cheap you should have provided the payroll rank compared to the revenue rank. There is also no mention of the fact they had a revenue anomaly last year in that they had $30M in BAM money. How are we to conclude their relative willingness to spend without knowing the relative amount of money coming in? I am disappointed payroll is going down too but to conclude spending drove success in 2023 lacks objectivity. Position Player WAR. The highest paid players are highlighted.