Cris E

There will not be overt collusion like there was in the past because it cost them a lot of money and left good talent off the field. Modern Totally Not Collusion might get a few guys some lower contracts but all will get an offer and all* will play. Or maybe after last season most will still see a raise because who is kidding who, there's tons of money out there. * All not meaning everyone of course because some people are sleaze and could damage club reputations so Bauer and many other domestic violence types are out but the DWI guys are OK and don't press me on this because it's complicated and/or maybe not thought out too well. Can I go now?

The Twins don't really have any catching depth. It's very unusual to only use two catchers in a year and our next man up is quite young so he should be playing every day, not sitting on the bench with the big club watching games. This is making things up to get clicks, not a serious trade. Hope you enjoy the traffic from Boston though.

“It will use its Prime Video platform to offer direct-to-consumer access to MLB, NBA and NHL games, including pre-game and post-game content of its various RSNs on a local basis.” So that Local Basis weaselry could mean just about anything. Are they keeping blackouts, selling this to fill in the blackouts in MLB.TV, only selling it locally or what? And for how long? Is this a new model or a one year bridge to a new MLB plan? The dollars don't indicate that this will replace the cable money, so it's can't be forever, but the equity stake by Amazon says they think there will be a longer term for this deal. This is a mess, but at least the Twins are in a spot to negotiate their own road out of it with a clear eye to what is coming from MLB next year. They may be the bellweather of that plan, so we'll have to wait to see what they sign for this season. Time's a wasting with only a month to spring training, so expect something in the next six weeks so they can show the ST games.

I see a couple likely things happening between now and April 1: 1. Someone will get hurt during spring training and this problem gets less acute. It's inevitable. 2. I can't see Gordon making the team without some serious injuries to clear a path. He's just not good enough to justify losing someone better. That said, Larnach and Miranda and Martin will all have to play their way on to the 26 man roster. But I do expect one of these three to take Gordon's spot. 3. The trade thing is real, so I expect Polanco to be on his way somewhere for pitching. That moves Julien to 2B with Farmer covering him against tough LH, plus it makes room for anyone else who forces their way onto the roster to get ABs in the DH spot. I do not expect Vazquez or Kepler to be moved because we're less able to fill those holes, plus the contracts are not as attractive to other teams. 4. The MAT role as CF caddy only needs to be filled by a part-time CF. It could be Castro I think, but then we have to hold on to Farmer to have a real UT to cover SS. I think that makes Martin a AAA CF until Buxton inevitably goes on the DL, at which point they decide if Castro or Martin is playing better and ready to take the job. I kind of think Martin would get it, but these are young players so it's just a guess how things will be going months down the line. 5. They are still short at least one bullpen arm. Maybe Alcala will suddenly appear out of the left field corn. Maybe one of the scrapheap arms will turn into Brock Stewart. Maybe Polanco turns into a solid LRP.

They had players who could run last year, but Rocco was playing conservatively to keep guys healthy. So I don't expect Byron or Royce to steal much at all, but I would expect to see more than just Castro allowed to run around out there. There were periods in 2023 where we didn't have a ton of infield depth while Polanco and Lewis were out and he was hesitant. Hopefully this year we might be free to run as much as the roster depth justifies. There are enough extra IF and OF that we can take a couple risks. (I still believe Rocco's experience with injury and illness during his playing days completely colors his roster management and directly leads to his concern with rest and recovery during the season.)

Regarding the original question, I think Lee would be as close to untouchable as I would ever admit in many organizations. But we signed Correa to a long-term contract so Lee won't reach his peak value as long as Carlos is starting at his best position. Lee hits very well for a SS but doesn't carry a big enough bat to stand out at other position, and if he has to play at 3B for the next three years he's not going to be as valuable as if he'd hit the same way at short. So if I'm the Twins this spring I might listen to offers with a little more open mind than if I were another team that had Brooks Lee coming into his own at AAA. That said, he's tremendously valuable so the only offers I'm entertaining are for similarly big pieces. Luzardo? Sure. Shane Bieber? No. Kirby? Before lunch. Woo? Slow down, have you seen Polanco's power numbers?

If MIA needs offense then they shouldn't be interested in debris like Gordon or unneeded pitching like Festa, They should be pushing for as many bats as they can fit into a trade like this. And if MIA is under financial pressure (like the Twins) then they don't want Kepler at $10m. They should be far more interested in cheaper options like Julien, Lee, Lewis, Wallner, Larnach, Kirilloff, Martin, etc. To move an inexpensive arm with remaining control they want to get more of the same in return, not the last year of Kepler's deal. And that still only addresses the Meyer v Kepler, Gordon, Festa part of the deal and glosses over how Luzardo would also be a fair throw-in. It's miles from serving the Marlins' needs.

Har. Kepler had a hot 12 weeks in the past three years, Gordon's "hot" season was barely league average and he's not an infielder anymore, nor is he young, and Festa has three games above AA ball and is only a 45 grade prospect. As a 50 grade prospect with a much better track record in the minors Meyer alone is almost worth those three, and Luzardo is miles ahead of him. This is a laughably bad trade even if Kepler was under team control for three more years at a decent cost.

I think the quantities might be similar, but the rate of serious injuries to pitchers is far, far higher so you need more of them.

Well there are percentages in the aggregate and then there are what individual hitters see. When there's no book on a hitter then the aggregate will apply, But when it's utterly clear that someone can only hit FB or never recognizes a change or whatever then professional pitchers will ruthlessly exploit that. Larnach may only ever face "tease" fastballs to try to get him to expand the zone until he demonstrates that he can hit the breaking stuff and offspeed pitches in the zone. If he, for example, slows down his bat and starts hitting everything away then the pitchers will adjust again and bust him up and in. It's a constant battle of adjustments and he still has to make his first changes to prove he belongs. I say he's still quite tradable. MN could take lottery ticket young arms or an injury-prone vet at little salary from a weaker team with playing time to let him work it out. PIT, OAK and COL all need talent without high costs and would happily take him in.

When the market heats up enough to increase the values of studs like Castillo and Alcanterra you know the Twins are not the only ones who will notice. There will be other great offers made for those stars that'll burn the eyebrows off any MN front office guy that hears them. It's fun to think our guys might be making one or two of those offers, and moving good players in recent years like Arreaz or the hitters CIN received gives some hope, but honestly my expectations are around grabbing a second tier guy in the Miller/Woo/Cabrera vein. Very good, very useful, but not a #1. EDIT: For the record I could see an overpay like Lee, Polanco and a major league ready pitcher like Varland/SWR for Luzardo. It seems like too much and not enough for both sides, so somehow fair.

Burnes is going to cost a fortune in free agency and MIN is not going to pay it, so it's a one year rental plus a QO draft pick. Brewers are trying to pack the pipeline so they can keep whipping out these youngsters like the Rays or Braves, so Polanco would only be there to sell tickets for the next couple years, not the centerpiece of a deal. Polanco and a talented kid (Festa OR Prielipp OR SWR if they like his famous resume) and a AAAA starter like Winder/Sands/Balazovic/WhoDoTheyLike to provide rotation insurance, especially now that they traded another SP earlier today. I mostly want to shop off the multi-year rack where Peralta or Woo or Miller or Luzardo or other big fish lurk. (Sorry about the metaphor wipeout.) Then I'd unwrap a Julien or Lee or Erod to get a stud. This payroll tweaking should mostly be a Farmer to the Giants, Vasquez and $$$ and Walner to Rays for Randy A sort of stuff.

Of course you take this deal, and you might even overpay to get this deal because the cost of good SP has risen so far the past few years. But that's exactly why SEA doesn't make the same deal. Now if they are having deeper money problems than they're letting on and they can get Snell to sign a deferred deal and they can move Castillo for a good return (Lee, Lewis, Erod - ouch but that's what we're talking here) then sure. But that's a lot of If.

Blech, just bite the bullet and trade for Burnes or Peralta. It'll cost and then you can play. I agree that Polanco fits well in MIL, but picking up inconsistent or injured guys or prospects doesn't fit *our* needs. We're trying to compete here, we are totally in our window of being in the playoffs and playing deep into October. If you trade Kepler then yes, you need more OF. But if you move Polanco you have his replacement on the roster and can think solely of the pitching, not the hole created.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.