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Cris E

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Everything posted by Cris E

  1. Cris E
    Seattle is at a point where a couple main parts in the lineup and a couple veteran fill-ins can make them very formidable for a long time. Their pitching pipeline looks good so if they can crank out a decent offense they should be able to do what MN did last year, and once in the playoffs you never know. So I shoot for a good pitcher today, but not one that reduces their chances. I offer a veteran that can play now and has some control remaining and I throw in a youngster that will sustain their roster for years to come. That looks like Woo/Miller for one of Polanco/Kepler plus youth, but we only have like one guy where this works. So how about something different, maybe Kirilloff and Polanco for one of those pitchers plus a lottery ticket kid? We've got guys that can take the 1B innings: Miranda will be fighting for time, Larnach looking to stay healthy and prove himself, Farmer still hoping to play regularly, and if Lee forces the issue possibly even Julien despite working himself into an average 2B glove man. The infield is crowded with more coming, so if Kirilloff gets the Mariners excited you have to listen.
  2. Cris E
    That works because Apple only picks two games a week and makes an event out of them. If they were flooded with 12-15 a night for half a year and had to raise the payout substantially for the opportunity they wouldn't be nearly as pleased with the numbers. As far as ad revenue goes, baseball works best selling local ads that can play off the fans' relationship with the club. And until the post-season, most national games won't draw viewers that aren't fans of one or the other participant. So maybe games on Apple or Amazon should be produced and marketed towards the local clubs and merely broadcast nationally. But as streamers make up more of the viewership there will be more day-after speed viewing where most ads are completely skipped and we'll have to see how advertisers react. Whatever, I hardly expect a 3x increase in subscriptions at a price point anywhere near the cost buried in a cable subscription, What was the ESPN tax, $8 per household? RSNs were about the same I think. MLB teams are not going to sell their games for $8 a month. So as they shed the cable subsidy they are going to need to charge 3x just to tread water, and to grow beyond the old income level will be very hard at $20-25 a month.
  3. Cris E
    Broadcast for free on Channel 45? Offer games on Amazon Prime? How would that work? Whatever the final deal, it needs to provide enough value to companies to justify a payout that would benefit the team. How does giving away games on Prime justify more than a few million dollars in payout? Where are the ad sales on Channel 45 that'll drive a payout over $5-10m? The cable deals worked because bundling gave a huge subsidy to the sports contracts that unbundling cleanly removes. You need separate subscription dollars to replace that piece on top of viable ad revenue. Who is going to advertise on an anonymous mid-week Amazon Prime game between third and fifth place teams? It won't be local car dealers and air conditioning contractors, it'll just be the same crap that's underwriting FreeTV and that won't justify $40-50m. Just because Amazon is wealthy doesn't mean the Twins will see much of that money without good justification. They didn't get rich throwing around stupid money. A new deal has to be centered around good money from the streaming partnered with some money from broadcast. But the biggest change might be the new lower dollar figure from local deals. Less income from those deals and more from national deals may become the new norm, and you could reach it by having MLB produce their own games and not have a third party in there trying to turn a profit. Sell the games locally for far less and also sell the streaming as the main revenue driver. That's the future.
  4. Cris E
    Sounds like his injury is in his hat, not his sleeve. Hard pass without someone who intimately knows him and his situation giving some very hard evidence on specific things that can be changed to bring him back. Or offer a bag of balls for him to see how close they are to cutting him. If he has a bad spring he might be looking at a second year of this and the fewmets could really hit the windmill. at that point he might be more amenable to coaching with a second season going down the tubes. But generally I don't think TOR is a good match for us since they really don't look to be moving good pitching. If we want good starters there's a short list of teams to court and the cost will be high. Making up nonsense like this doesn't change that fact one bit, it just draws clicks until the players start to move.
  5. Cris E
    My suspicion is that large market teams are gambling on a change to the luxury tax rules. Consider the Dodgers' payroll this year and ten years from now. They are well over the tax threshold already even paying Ohtani only $2m, and the rules say that the higher you are above the line the higher the percentage your penalty will be. So assuming that they continue to be near the top of the league in payroll, in ten years they'll be paying perhaps twice the $68m that they're deferring today. (For example today the amounts over $275m get taxed at 90%+, which will hurt.) You can try to handwave this away with some present value mumbo jumbo, but the fact is the inflated future value is what's getting taxed so you have two problems: socking away enough cash now to write Ohtani his $68m check in ten years and then socking away enough more to write another $60m check to the league, and this to pay for a guy pushing 40 who may or may not be on your roster. Oh, and then plan on doing that EVERY YEAR FOR TEN YEARS. $120m every year for a decade for a guy that isn't playing makes the Pujols deal look like a treat. Bobby Bonilla couldn't cover the postage on this deal. The mind reels. Again, I suspect the team is anticipating a change to this tax model.
  6. Cris E
    It'll probably depend on what the market offers up. If they can get a better deal on one over the other they'll follow that rather than cling to youth or awesomeness. My guess is they want someone to slot in over Ryan/Paddack, and the thing they'll end up fussing over is how much it costs to get more or fewer years of control. I think the price will be high because they want the big arm and the price delta will be around how long they get to keep him.
  7. Cris E
    He makes more sense than Max because you can clearly identify his replacement. I don't know how the outfield would look if there was a Kepler-shaped hole out there this spring, but we already know that the lineup can thrive without Polanco. He's been a great Twin and I've enjoyed watching him play, but rosters are living things and the calendar is turning, turning, turning.
  8. Cris E
    I keep Lee because of his high floor, not his high ceiling. But I think his thicker body projects better at 3B and he'll need to hit a lot more to have top value there, so I would totally move him for the right big deal. Think Lee for Arozarena AND Glasnow. It solves Tampa's SS problem and two of our problems with the real risk being Glasnow's ability to throw more than 120 innings and the lesser risk of our embaressment if Lee becomes awesome or Correa breaks down and Castro or Lewis has to take over at SS long term.
  9. Cris E
    You can stay with your "self-imposed budget cuts" if I can go to "catastrophic collapse of broadcast revenue" sixteen times a day. Be advised it makes everything annoying to read.
  10. Cris E
    PIT is not trading the only guy on the roster who has thrown 100 innings without getting some pitching back. Send Varland and it might be a discussion. Oh, and @tony&rodney is right, Bader and Carlson are duplicates. I prefer Carlson, so pool that $7m with the $6m from Moore and go get a decent starter.
  11. Cris E
    Garver is a bad idea because he gets hurt all the time. Last year's great catcher health was an aberration because teams rarely get through a season using only two catchers, We can probably expect that luck to drift back to normal next year, and replacing Vazquez with Garver would only hasten that. Edit: They should keep Vazquez unless some organization short on catching gives us decent value in trade. We'd end up replacing him with junk, that junk would still want to be paid so the savings wouldn't be great, and we'd still have a crowded 40 man. What's the point (unless he's really ticked off.) If they can swap him for Goldschmidt or something where the dollars work out then I'd be happy to fill a hole that way.
  12. Cris E
    What's the point of this post? Are you complaining that ownership isn't spending enough or that they're spending too much or they change their budget when the income changes? There's no industry-wide solution to the end of the RSN model and yet the games must be paid for, played and broadcast, so the organization is carrying on until a broader, multi-billion dollar fix can be assembled. One team with below-average revenue can't fix what's affecting almost half the league. Anyway you're doing this backward. The end of the TV deal has been coming for years, but instead of cutting back early the Pohlads took a shot at signing a top talent at a discount. They assumed risk in signing Correa, and they did it above budget at a time when the RSN money was in peril. Yet in this thread people are complaining about them not spending money or investing in the club. They aren't ever going to make some folks happy so I think they just keep on with what they say in public: evaluate next year's income, make a budget and work hard. With the passing of leadership from Jim to Joe Pohlad the signs are that the budget may be going up, so take things at face value instead of all this trust and confidence nonsense.
  13. Cris E
    Buxton gave them a huge discount because of his limited availability. Here's a thought exercise: what would he be worth in the markets of the past few years if he could play every day and wasn't standing on one foot when batting? Here's a hint: a healthy Byron Buxton is worth at least twice what he's being paid, probably a lot more. Correa took a huge paycut for his medicals and we're still paying him 6/$200m, yet Byron is making 7/$100m. Quit complaining about Buxton's deal,
  14. Cris E
    Gordon's only potential value to any team is if he can be made into a functional CF, and the Twins would want to do that in St Paul. Alas for Gordon it may be that the plan is to make Martin a functional CF in St Paul and the innings pinch might not work for him. They need to find someone who is short a CF and has the time and roster space to create one. I'm thinking the Jazz Chisolm Experiment in MIA is worth reconsidering, for example. But there's nothing for him in MN. He got a great shot in 22 because of injuries to others, and he missed his shot in 23 because of injuries to himself. The history of baseball is littered with the careers of guys who watched their window close due to injury and Gordon might end up being one. He seems like a likeable guy so it's a bummer, but it's hardly a new story. Send him out asap to get him as good a shot as possible while he's still young, but they shouldn't expect much of anything back.
  15. Cris E
    I think there are a lot of teams out there clinging to the same RSN wreckage as the Twins, so dumping contracts will be harder this year than most. So I'd probably hang on to Vazquez unless someone came calling for him specifically and I'd try to move Farmer to a team with middle infield issues that's not on the Diamond Sports email list. I'd trade Kepler while his value is high. He was brutal until after the all-star break, and his second half was way out of line from the work he'd been producing since 2019. Quick, while everyone has October in their eyes, send him out! Last point, the payroll is already at about $125m and the guess was it would end up in the 120-140 range, so they only need to cut a bit if they want to add more. OTOH they do like their December Surprises, so I expect both a trade and a pickup of some famous name.
  16. Cris E
    So explain to me how the middle chunk of this essay where he returned to St Paul, discovered how to hit breaking stuff and regained his power, and finally displayed this in his limited opportunities in Sept, logically leads to Larnach becoming a disposable fourth outfielder. That's more than a little inconsistent. You keep him and let him build back some value. You wait to see if Wallner stays strong or goes all Miranda in his sophomore year. You see if Kepler is still here for April 1. Unless a team comes calling for Larnach with flowers and chocolates there's no reason for low value dumping like this; he's got an option and there's room on the roster to wait. EDIT: Trade Kepler now when everyone remembers his last two months rather than the thirty that preceded them.
  17. Cris E
    Bellinger! What are they projecting, 6/$125m? That's almost half what they paid the cripple Correa last year, and the books are pretty clear going forward. We got room to roll the dice, and he plays 1B too. So what if no one has any idea how he'll perform in any of the next five years? Who cares if he's another LH bat in the lineup? It's a big name and our boys love the annual splash deal, so don't be surprised if removing Gallo and Grey and trading Polanco open up room for something wild.
  18. Cris E
    Bellinger flitting between 1B and CF solves all! Just put all the available money on Red and spin the wheel, baby. C'mon, live a little!
  19. Cris E
    Strong pitching, some runs, clean D, a little luck, deep pen, this is looking like it could be a fun month.
  20. Cris E
    Jax then Duran.
  21. Cris E
    Come on Kep, this is the playoffs.
  22. Cris E
    Twins are catching some breaks, but I always say it's better to be lucky than good (and it's best to be lucky AND good.)
  23. Cris E
    Theilbar uses his powerful mind to offer a 250' foul ball. (dude, do not do that.)
  24. Cris E
    Grey is at 85 pitches right now. Think he gets to open the inning?
  25. Cris E
    I think every runner in the park is going to be extra vigilant the rest of this evening.
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