Major League Ready

The Diamondbacks also started $37M below the twins 2023 payroll and that included $18M in dead money from Bumgardner. They now project to spend $128M. You are seeing only what you want to see.

They have the exact same career wRC+ of 111. Their OBP is the same. Polanco 20 pts higher average but Suarez far more HRs. Even the old stand by stats suggest they are very equal offensively. I know defensive metrics leaves some room for doubt, but Suarez is a fair amount above average and Polanco is slightly below average.

It seems to be a reasonable omission because Lewis is the star people come to see. He has all the intangibles. Fans love this guy for good reason. It just seems very unlikely they would trade him. Plus, who's to say Lewis does not move to 2B. Perhaps his athleticism would be even more valuable at 2B. Who knows, the OF still could be a possibility as well. Also, if Lee can play SS, he can definitely play 2B. I think it's all moot because they are trading any of these guys this year. Circumstances can and likely will change by next year but for now neither guy is going anywhere unless it's for a very good cost controller SP and the odds of that are low.

That's pretty simple. Julien was a rookie with a weakness that he worked on. His defense was bad but it was very obvious he got a lot better. The eye test showed it and this was consistent with Statcast. The way to measure Julien's defensive ability is where he ended up not where he started. For some reason you insist on ignoring his improvement?

Lots of angles to look at this one. IDK if their plan was to have Solano be the short-side platoon. Seems like it would make much more sense for farmer to be the short side of that platoon. Regardless, they found other people to take those ABs and Julien only took 46ABs against LHP. I think that they will give Julien a shot a LHP but if he fails while crushing RH pitching, I believe they will be able to distribute his ABs between Farmer, Miranda, Martin, Severino, maybe Prato or even Buxton as a pinch hitter. Julien is the better hitter against RHP and Polanco has a career .96 wRC+ against LHP. That's not very hard to replicate with platoons especially given Polanco is a below average fielder at this point.

Suarez produced 7.3 fWAR over the past two years. Polanco produced 3.3. Granted, Suarez played 312 games but availability does provide value. Suarez has also produced 3.9 fWAR or more in 4 seasons. Polanco has one such season. I think it's a reasonable comp.

Lee had an OPS of .603 against LHP last year. Julien's was .649 in AAA.

I don't think most people that are saying pump the brakes a little are being overly critical. What I see is people saying he does not have elite tools or elite results so far. Is this not accurate? I think it's fair to say he is a very good prospect, but he has some proving to do before being promoted to the ML level given he was well below average at AAA. Just a sidenote ... Why isn't Severino getting any love? Granted, he has defensive limitations, but his batting stats were quite a bit better than Lee last year.

The twins won't move either unless they get a great return. I don't think the fact that after this year we have $70M invested in 3 players for the next several years and several players entering arbitration is being considered in these discussions. We are going to need all young prearb talent. Now, if a whole bunch of guys pan out and we are so fortunate as to have so much young talent we don't have roster spots, we should reevaluate.

You make it sound as if a top 10 pick is an automatic all-star. Gavin Cross who was picked right after Lee was below average in High A. Jacob Berry who was picked 6th was below average at AA. Elijah Green (pick #5) was below average in A ball. He is only 20 years old but we are talking A ball. Some here are saying Lee might end up being above average but unspectacular. Not ideal but a lot better than picking Cavaco over Carroll or Stott.

I hope Lee proves me wrong. The tools and results just don't look elite to me. I see him as a good prospect and an above average ML player but I don't see a dominant prospect or an all-star type player. Look what Wyatt Langford did in comparison. Again, I would be really happy to be wrong. As I was reading the other posts about Polanco it occurred to me that the Twins have a bunch of players becoming arbitration eligible this year and next. More importantly, Lopez and Paddack get big raises. Even with Vazquez and farmer coming off, they have roughly a $20M increase in 2025. This is going to impact how they manage this roster. They have to create some depth from prospects and waiting until the last 2 months of 2024 is very risky.

I agree with this take in general. There is always an injury that allows players to be brought up and players get scuffled around to give players who are ready a shot. It certainly is not as simple as player X is ready so move over player Y. The established player has earned that spot and the prospects need to prove they deserve the spot. They generally get an audition like Arraez and Julien. Then once they have shown they belong, the young guys get inserted over guys like Schoop and even Polanco. Rosters are adjusted and teams like the Rays / Guardians and some others take the opportunity to trade established players for prospects to help sustain success.

The answer is not a black and white given all the circumstances that go into the decision of when to promote a prospect. However, if you look at recent twins history and the history of every other team around the league, teams find a spot for players when they are ready. The trend is becoming even more aggressive. This is especially true with position players. The Twins found room for Arraez and Lewis as soon as they were ready. Julien has taken Polanco’s spot. He is the starting 2B. Why is this true? Because the single most important aspect of building a winning team is developing prospects. This is true for any team. Just look at the Dodgers vs the Yankees right now and it becomes increasing important as revenue is reduced. The 2nd greatest contributor to building a winner (historically) has been trading for prospects. This reality drives the practices of teams like the A’s, Ray’s and Guardians and you have seen it lately from the reds and Orioles. The Ray’s traded Willy Adames at the end of May to make room for Wander Franco. They did not even wait for the deadline. Some fans are always going to hate trading an established player. There were people here who insisted we should have kept Donaldson and Urshela. Some still complain about Rosario even though he has been mostly terrible since leaving. The Rays replaced Adames with an equal or better player and improved their team for several years by getting Drew Rassmussen. The team is obviously better for it. The best case scenario for any team, especially a team in the bottom two-thirds of revenue is to replace a veteran with an equal or better young player. That player will contribute for a longer period of time, be injured less, cost less, and hopefully bring back another player that contributes. It is the ideal scenario. So, yes, you make room when a player is truly ready.

The revenue disparity has existed for a very long time. It exists because putting the star players in big markets and having big market teams dominate maximizes revenue. Ownership and players both like it as is.. The players were pushing to cut revenue sharing during the last CBA. The owners did try to hold the disparity in check during the last CBA but the players pushed very hard to elevate the luxury tax threshold. This most recent increase has widened the gap and the dodgers drove as bus full of money right through that gap,

Both sides of this argument have merit. Canterino has never been able to log a lot of innings but it's also not a good idea to convert a guy that can be a starter into a RP. Good starters are the scarcer resource. I also am inclined to give weight to the medical professionals advising the FO. We should recognize we don't have all the pertinent information. In concept, I like the idea of him starting and then going to the BP if he pushes his innings limit even though it's a best case scenario.

You picked 8 out of hundreds and you used Streamer. Do you think Kiermaier's agent was negotiating based on 1.2 from Streamer or 3.9 from baseball reference. One was what he actually did last year. The other an estimate. More importantly, it's not the estimate of the party making the offer. Bader had the worst year of his career. The Mets were willing to bet he would be better next year and they only had to give a one-year contract which has a very different risk profile. I could go on but what is relevant is that the measure you are using is calculated based on production per dollar spent. It is not for a sample, it's all free agents as opposed to you picking examples. It's not a reflection of estimated value it's actual production per dollar spent.

You are confusing the average cost per war with value. Teams are not making offers anticipating a cost of $10M/WAR. The failure rate with free agents is so high that it inflates the cost per WAR well beyond what teams anticipate but teams don't offer $30M/year to a player anticipated to produce 3 WAR. In addition, the threshold teams are willing to accept is going to be significantly different for a team producing $600M in revenue vs $300M in revenue.

He was almost exactly league average last year. His OPS was .726 and wRC+ was 99. Are we being a little hard on him. Seems pretty reasonable he could make some tweaks and be above average. That might look pretty good as a bridge to Rodriquez and Jenkins.

By frame to you mean weight? I looked at their definition but it's hard to tell why they differ so much. They should be relatively close based on other stats. The had almost the same wRC+. 136 for Juulien and 132 for Arraez. Julien's defensive metrics are a bit better. Julien's fWAR is 82% of Arraez but he had 78% of the playing time as Arraez. Given WAR is cumulative, this makes sense in rough terms. Julien's bWAR is only 53% of Arraez which does not make sense.

I would guess demand is greater than supply at driveline and I would also guess that many teams are developing their own version of driveline.

I might be missing something here but I think you are looking at a bWAR metric for batting only. fWAR considers defense and when defense is considered Arraez and Julien had about equal WAR. If Julien's defensive continues to improve, that gap between the two metrics will continue to widen unless Arraez also improves defensively.

The one thing we can say about roster construction that is absolutely certain. The Minnesota Twins have to get twice the production per dollar from their roster as the top revenue teams. That does not mean free agents can’t contribute to building a roster. Oddly enough, the more successful they are at developing low cost players, the more they can spend on free agents. However, finding players with higher production per dollar is still going to be paramount to success. Zach Eflin is a great example from last year. His AAV is 13.33M and they got 4.8 WAR from him. That’s 2.78M/WAR. Charlie Mortenson was a great example back when the Rays signed him. He had a relatively modest AAV and did not have the risk associated with a long-term contract. The reality is that teams like the Twins very rarely sign a player like Correa because spending that high of a percentage on one player makes it very difficult to construct a complete team. If we examine the construction of successful low and mid revenue teams, we will find a handful of free agents that contributed but the overall WAR from free agents or established players acquired in trade totally 15-20%. The other 80% comes from drafted players or players acquired before becoming established at the MLB level. Some of them were MLB players but not established. This is not theoretical. This is history. The takeaway is that the Twins absolutely cannot be successful without being far more productive per dollar spent than the top revenue teams. So, why are we angry when they won't follow a model that can't possibly be successful?

Really interesting "stuff" Tom. I would have liked to see him at driveline this off-season. It seems like his weakness is the fastball. Perhaps they could help him find more life and more consistency with his FB.

I hope you are right. We could use the OF depth Larnach could provide and Miranda was one of the best players on the team for quite a stretch in 2022.

How would you feel if they traded him for a good AAA prospect and then reinvested the $10.5M plus another 5-10M in a starting pitcher? That would put them at $125-130M in payroll which seems feasible. What if they traded him and Kepler for prospects and used the money to bring in Hoskins and a BP arm?