Major League Ready

I liked the way you summed this up Doc. Pitching should be the first priority. How that goes down will dictate what they have to spend elsewhere. It makes a big difference if they trade for a guy on a prearb contract or Tyler Glasnow. I don't think Glasnow is going to happen but the point remains the same. I don't see Kiermeir signing as a 4th OFer. He is going to sign where he continues to be a primary player. If they really believe Buxton's knee will be fine, I could see Harrison Bader. Great late inning defensive substitution and he has a career .821 OPS against LHP so he could start against LHP or pinch hit late in games. He will be much more affordable.

It's nice to be able to load up against LH pitching but an OFer would be a better fit for this roster. We also need to consider that Severino and Miranda are at AAA. I understand neither of them is a sure thing but why trade away assets while blocking them.

Good player but this makes very little sense to me unless Lewis is moving to the OF. Why would we trade for someone who plays a position where we have considerable depth? If they are giving up prime trade assets, it should be for pitching.

There are 4 open spots on the 40 man. I believe we are going to see 3-4 pitchers added and a couple position players get traded. So, the balance is probably going to shift. Could we see a rule 5 player drafted on Thursday. I kind of doubt it but so be it if a good prospect is available.

Perfectly reasonable take despite the persnickety response you got. Looking at it in a slightly different way, we could say they have 5 guys for sure. (Duran / Jax / Stewart / Thielbar / Funderburk) Varland probably goes to the BP if they are able to land a quality SP and a depth guy. I know Alcala has not been able to say healthy, but he is a pretty decent middle inning reliever that us optimists can hope finally has a healthy season. I also believe Sands has what it takes to stick. Canterino is a wild card. That leaves the other guys for depth. Not ideal but not horrible. My guess is they will look for the next Brock Stewart and the allocation of funds to the BP will be a byproduct of what they are able to do on the starting pitching side.

They had $30M in BAM money that has been largely neglected in this conversation. They also know they had the flexibility to trade Polanco, Kepler, and Farmer or decline their options. In Farmer's case non-tender. Of course, they also signed Gallo to a 1 year deal plus Gray and few others were in the final year of their contracts. In short, they spent based on their capacity last year knowing they could adjust to this year's capacity as that was determined.

Their history certainly supports your point. Their standard practice is to trade established vets for guys in the high minors or players that have started their major league careers but have not established themselves to any great degree. I would hope Falvey learned from his tenure in Cleveland to not trade good assets for guys with one year of control. I am very helpful Seattle loves Polanco and/or Kepler as part of a package for one of their young SPs.

Do you understand that hitting is also important? Why would you only show the value of fielding. You are obsessed with defense to the point where you can't or won't see the whole picture. The last value in this chart is total WAR. The real irony is you point to the importance of Solano when he is at best equivalent to Julien in field and according to Fangraphs, worse but you support him because he is an older player. You need to look around the league. 1 Edouard Julien MIN 109 408 16 60 37 3 15.7% 31.4% .195 .371 .263 .381 .459 .366 .348 136 0.3 17.9 -3.8 2.8 2 Ryan Jeffers MIN 96 335 14 46 43 3 9.9% 27.8% .213 .359 .276 .369 .490 .369 .334 138 -1.8 13.4 2.3 2.7 3 Max Kepler MIN 130 491 24 72 66 1 9.2% 21.6% .224 .288 .260 .332 .484 .348 .363 124 -3.5 10.5 -0.8 2.6 4 Willi Castro MIN 124 409 9 60 34 33 8.3% 24.2% .154 .328 .257 .339 .411 .327 .306 109 6.4 10.9 0.4 2.5 5 Royce Lewis MIN 58 239 15 36 52 6 8.4% 23.0% .240 .354 .309 .372 .548 .393 .349 155 0.1 15.7 0.5 2.4 6 Matt Wallner MIN 76 254 14 42 41 2 11.0% 31.5% .258 .328 .249 .370 .507 .377 .376 144 1.6 14.8 -4.5 1.9 7 Michael A. Taylor MIN 129 388 21 48 51 13 6.7% 33.5% .223 .278 .220 .278 .442 .308 .311 96 2.3 0.2 3.4 1.7 8 Kyle Farmer MIN 120 369 11 49 46 2 6.2% 23.3% .152 .311 .256 .317 .408 .316 .312 101 0.5 1.0 3.0 1.6 9 Jorge Polanco MIN 80 343 14 38 48 4 10.5% 25.7% .199 .310 .255 .335 .454 .340 .351 118 1.7 9.1 -5.5 1.5 10 Donovan Solano MIN 134 450 5 43 38 0 8.9% 22.2% .109 .366 .282 .369 .391 .338 .349 116 -2.7 6.2 -9.1 1.2 11 Carlos Correa MIN 135 580 18 60 65 0 10.2% 22.6% .169 .272 .230 .312 .399 .309 .329 96 -9.2 -11.8 3.5 1.1 12 Christian Vázquez MIN 102 355 6 34 32 1 7.0% 23.1% .095 .279 .223 .280 .318 .264 .265 65 -4.4 -19.1 16.6 1.0 13 Alex Kirilloff MIN 88 319 11 35 41 1 8.8% 25.1% .174 .337 .270 .348 .445 .343 .333 120 0.8 8.4 -11.2 0.8 14 Joey Gallo MIN 111 332 21 39 40 1 14.5% 42.8% .262 .244 .177 .301 .440 .320 .302 104 1.0 2.5 -6.5 0.7 15 Byron Buxton MIN 85 347 17 49 42 9 10.1% 31.4% .230 .253 .207 .294 .438 .311 .320 98 4.8 4.0 -8.6 0.7

These 3 players are important but this team turning into a true contender will depend on a number of other things going right ... 1) Finding additions SP depth including another well above average SP 2) The BP - Does Stewart remaining effective / Thielbar defy aging / Alcala finally staying healthy / Adding depth 3) Wallner / Kirilloff stepping up, staying healthy and maturing as players. 4) Piecing together a complimentary bench. The pieces fit together well last year. 5) The next wave of young players contributing and giving a similar boost to last year. We need a couple of Martin / Severino / Camargo on the position side and one or two of the young pitchers with question marks (Raya / Canterino / Festa / Balazovic / Winder) stepping up would be big. 6) Trades that fill holes and compliment the roster. 7) Health.

Julien and Jeffers were #1 and #2 on the team in WAR so your statement makes absolutely no sense. Also Julien's defense has improved significantly on defense. Do you watch the games? He was not a liability at the end of the season. He improved enough that his OAA was 0 for the year after starting odd negatively. Players can improve defensively. You repeatedly prove that once you form an opinion about a player on defense they can't improve and they are worthless.

The Twins won the division by 9 games. Solano and farmer combined for 2.8 WAR so this is a huge stretch. They were not critical to making the playoffs and they won't be that hard to replace.

Maeda will turn 36 a couple weeks after the season starts. It's a rare thing for SPs to dominate at age 36. I hope the Twins are looking for more ceiling over what he is likely to be as opposed to what he has been.

Every year people on this site panic when all of the team's needs have not been fulfilled by Dec 1. I think we can be very sure the FO is aware of the need created by the departure of Gray and Maeda. Does anyone really think they will do nothing and rely on internal options? The question is not if. It's how? Will they clear payroll space and sign someone or will they trade or will they do both.

I would guess that the FO views Lee as a considerably better prospect. I was just pointing out we might not be giving Severino his due. I think the only way they trade Lee is for a young / cost controller SP with 4+ years of control as would be the case with one of Seattle's young pitchers. No way should they trade him for 2 years of control. See Tyler Mahle.

This is a little different given the amount of time removed from the surgery. The team has a fair amount of information based on his rehab and he made it all the way back to the ML level. Of course, they will continue to monitor his off-season activities so they should have a reasonably good idea of what to expect from Paddack. That said .... How many SPs make 30 starts these days. Teams expect the need for depth, and I expect we will see moves to provide that depth.

No. The parameter or the point of contention is not how many teams engage in a trade. It's how often does a team trade away a top prospect which is roughly somewhere in the neighborhood of once every 30 years.

$10M per WAR is the average production for free agents. Therefore, it is the average cost of 1 WAR in free agency. Cost and expected value are two different things and interpreting this as the expected or accepted value is misguided. For starters, a team with half the revenue of another team must produce twice the per WAR number as the higher revenue team for that investment to have equal productivity. In other words, the targeted production from free agent spending depends on the level of revenue they produce. A more practical to way to look at this is that a player expected to produce 2 WAR is not getting a $20M AAV. They are going to get roughly $12M. That’s the target but all of the bad contracts significantly inflate the average WAR/$$ spent. Did the Angels expect Traut would only produce 3WAR/season? A really gppd team produces about 50 WAR. If they produce just 30% via free agency that costs $150M. How many teams can be successful with this model? The ratio also seems to be higher for free agent pitchers and elite position players. This makes sense based on scarcity. Plus star players impact interest in the team and butts in seats.

I would not call last year a great success. They were pretty good, not great but where did their production come from? Sonny Gray and Pablo Lopez made a combined total of %17.5M. Their highest paid players produced next to nothing. The six highest WAR position players made a total of $15M with over half of that going to Kepler and the best RPs made the league minimum. I don't how we would come to the conclusion their success was a product of spending.

It is warranted to a degree and I know squat about this surgery but hopefully Wabene is correct about the high success rate. That's very encouraging. I am going to hope for the best. Let's not forget that just last year a whole lot of people said Kirilloff was cooked for good. What a boost it would be to get 100 games from Buxton. What they do about CF will tells us a little about the team's confidence in him returning.

Every owner has other sources of income. That's why they are owners. How many of them have ever in the history of the game intentionally operated at a loss. There has been one, Peter Seidler. Of course, he never spent lavishly either until he knew his time on earth was coming to an end. We expect players who earn multi-generational wealth over the course of a 10-15 year to act in a manner to get every penny they can from this game. Asking an owner to make nothing for a year or two would be one thing but expecting them to lose money is naive and entitled. If they are going to take tens of millions out of their own pocket, I would hope they would donate that money to a much more worthy cause than POTENTIALLY winning a couple more baseball games. Let's be fair and measure the Pohlads against all other owners in terms of how much of what they take in are they willing to spend on payroll. Just once, I would like to see one of the people who constantly whine about payroll support their position with some sort of evidence like we would in assessing the performance of any player.

We hear insistently that the problem is the Pohlads are cheap. Yet, those who post this NEVER offer any form of proof that the Pohlads spend a smaller percentage of team revenue than other teams. Nor do they show any sources that project the Twin's to make more money than the other teams or even the same amount of money. I looked up one year, 2022. I was lazy and just did the teams with +/- 10% of the twins revenue. However, I have done this for several other years in the past and as far as I can tell these rants are the product of an unwillingness to actually get informed before drawing a conclusion and/or complaining. TEAM REV Payroll % of REV

IDK, if you owned two businesses you would not be obligated to fund a failed business with the funds from a successful business just as you would not be obligated to fund it with personal funds unless you had a personal guarantee with a lender. There are numerous entities that own multiple separate businesses, and they are treated separately in the eyes of the IRS and the law,

Let's not count Correa and Buxton out just yet. Correa went from a career wRC+ 125 to 96. Should we believe it's over for him at age 29 or did he just have a bad year. The most recent news on Buxton is also encouraging. These two represent roughly one-third of the team's payroll capacity so it is crucial they perform. There is no way of getting around how detrimental it is to get virtually no productivity from two players representing roughly 1/3 of total spending capacity. You can't spend it twice. If they had the $48M, they could sign any SP they wanted and have plenty left over for a high leverage RP. Therefore, to say it won't impact the team's ability to improve defies any form of logic.

Without spending a lot of time looking into this situation, it would appear there are two different companies. Diamond Baseball Holdings who purchased the Worcester WooSox and Diamond Sports Holdings. Apparently, they are entirely separate organizations which means they would not need permission from the bankruptcy court to purchase this team. Again, I am not an attorney, and we have limited information, but it would appear the sale went through because they are legally two different entities.

Buxton just might play CF this year. Byron Buxton Update