Jim Crikket

Well then maybe the questioner should have specifically asked Keith when he thought Gibson would be "Major League ready" instead of when it would be reasonable to expect him to be in the Twins rotation! Seriously, though... I wonder about the "built up durability" thing and what he means by that. I'm not even sure how one goes about building up durability. Stamina? sure. It could be that he's referring to the choice the Twins will have to make about just how they decide to utilize Gibson's ~150 innings. I'm certainly curious to find out the answer to that myself.

Encouraging. Then again, the standard for stuff being ready enough now to warrant consideration for a spot in the Twins rotation is... well... not high.

I would imagine there are also differences between the Twins being recipients of revenue sharing dollars while playing at the Dome and being contributors of revenue sharing dollars at TF, but because the Twins are uber-secretive about their finances, we'll never know. And as long as they're unwilling to share even the broadest levels of information about their revenues and expenses, as far as I'm concerned, they're fair game for critical speculation as long as they continue to try to pawn off a crappy product on the field to their fans as being Major League Baseball. If they put a high quality product on the field, I don't give a damn how much money they line their own pockets with.

I dunno. To me, the lack of an option is pretty much a deal-breaker. Forces the Twins to assume way too much risk. Say he struggles early in the year but gradually regains his command/velocity and starts to dominate in the final months, which would be fairly typical of a Tommy John survivor. Suddenly Baker's ready to hit the market with a head full of steam, while the Twins got one mostly lousy season out of him and are back to the drawing board. If they truly walked away because Baker wouldn't do the option for 2014, it might also say something about their expectations of contending next year. If things played out the way you described (and I agree it's quite reasonable), I'd be fine with that and I believe the Cubs will be fine with it, too. In that event, if your team is contending at midseason despite Baker's slow start, his improved performance is probably just what you need for the second half of the season. If you're not in contention, there would be no shortage of teams more than happy to eat the remaining $2-3 million of his 2013 contract and send you back some talent on top of that to take him off your hands. I do agree that the Twins unwillingness to sign him without an option likely says more about their expectations for 2013 than it says about anything else... and to me that sucks.

How many of those WS titles were won with the same manager who had to deal with the first team after the fire sale? (It's a legit question... I honestly don't know and don't feel like looking it up.) One would hope that those running the team were up front with Redmond about their plans to blow the team up when they hired him so he'd know what he was getting in to. That would be the ethical way to do things. That said, you'd be hard pressed to find many people who would define the people who own/run the Marlins as being highly ethical, so who knows what they did or didn't tell Redmond? It's probably a good situation for a first time manager like Redmond, though. Even if ownership expectations are unreasonable, the rest of baseball knows what a crappy hand he's been dealt and if he can have even marginal success, it will enhance his job prospects with other organizations when his owner's unreasonable expectations eventually send him packing in Miami. And of course he got a 3 year contract so he's not going to starve for a few years anyway, regardless of what happens.

Are the Twins the Nishiokas of Major League Baseball? Howard Sinker writes in a new "Section 219" blog post that he believes that's what they've become. http://www.startribune.com/sports/twins/blogs/179406521.html?uccb=1352991646248&cr=1 He's also cutting back his season ticket package. Anyone else doing so? Since I'm an out of stater, I'm not a season ticket holder, regardless of the talent on the field. That said, I made zero trips to Target Field in 2012 (after making several trips a year for the prior several years) and unless the Twins do something to convince me they are willing to try to compete in 2013, I won't waste my money on trips in 2013 either.

The point is that the Twins could do the same thing... they could add players that would generate greater enthusiasm by the fan base and thus with advertisers. But nibbling around the edges of the talent pool won't bring an extra nickel of revenue in. To sell more tickets and advertising, they would need to be bold enough to convince people they're serious about getting back in the hunt this year. That's what the Jays have done and there's no reason the Twins couldn't do the same thing.

I believe a team with the Twins current financial resources SHOULD be able to "do both" if they are smart enough to identify the right trade and FA targets. I'm also not sure that it's the veterans like Willingham and Span that are necessarily the only "trade high" candidates. Are we absolutely sure that Parmelee's value right now isn't at its peak? As beckmt pointed out, teams are looking for the young, controllable, players as much as (or more than) veterans who, despite having relatively team-friendly contracts, are still going to be paid several million dollars per year. It's just as likely that someone like Hicks is at his peak value as it is that Span might be. It just depends on what kind of player your potential trading partner wants. My issue is that it's time we as fans stopped accepting the arbitrary ceiling that the Twins place upon themselves as being a reasonable payroll limit. There's absolutely no legitimate reason the Twins couldn't afford to sign Sanchez to a long term deal AND a couple of other legitimate starting pitchers to higher dollar, short term (1-2 year) deals, even if it meant a $125 million payroll (say 60% of revenue) in 2013-14. Why? Because by 2015, they're almost certainly going to be looking at something closer to a $70 million payroll, which will be far below their 50% of revenue target. The Twins can afford to compete now AND build for 2015 and fans have every right to expect them to make a legitimate effort at doing so.

that's true... technically Loria was only responsible for one post WS championship dismantling, although pretty much the exact same thing happened after first Fish championship under prior ownership.

You can view the page at http://twinsdaily.com/content.php?1175-Twins-Should-Follow-Blue-Jays-Bold-Lead

From what Joe C wrote, it sounds like the issue was more in the option year that the Twins wanted and Baker was hard set against than the dollars. That may or may not change the resulting feelings, but the piddly amount of money doesn't seem like the culprit (especially since the incentives the Twins were offering made it possibly a larger contract dollar-wise). If that's the case, then it's even sillier to have let him get away. Do you want an option? Of course! If it turns out his best offer is your offer with a team option, good for you! You've got a chance to turn this in to a really good 2 year deal. But if another team is willing to give him a solid 1 year deal without the option and you pass on it over that? Good grief. We're not talking about a contract here that was going to be so big that it would preclude the Twins from doing anything else. It's just the Twins being stubborn... again... and being willing to suck on the field rather than stretch their conservative financial principles.

Since most FAs sign with the team that offers the most money, in pretty much every case that means that every other team thinks the team that signed the guy "overpaid" and the only way to avoid doing so is to pick over the bones of the leftovers in February. So, sure, Baker got "overpaid" according to the Twins' views and those of every other team besides the Cubs. It's fine that the Twins didn't re-sign him if, in fact, they go on to fill out their rotation with better pitchers. But I don't see them doing that if they're going to refuse to ever "overpay" because if avoiding overpaying is your priority, you won't sign anyone with any talent. And if it turns out that they still have a gaping hole in the middle of their rotation all because they didn't want to overpay Baker or because he wouldn't give them a team-friendly 2014 option, that would just prove to me that Terry Ryan's doing nothing but blowing smoke up our collective butts about how serious he is about improving the rotation.

Did the Cubs overpay? Or are you (and many of the rest of us) undervaluing players this offseason perhaps by not taking in to account many teams being willing to use a bit of the MLB tv rights windfall that kicks in next season? After the past couple of seasons, I think players and agents are smart enough to know that when they get an offer they think is good, they need to take it. Waiting around has bitten more than one player in the butt recently. I don't blame Baker at all for his decision. Whether I blame the Twins for not being willing to pony up is a question I don't think I can answer yet. If, in the end, they end up with 3 new starting pitchers at least as promising as Baker, then that's great. Everyone gets what they want. But if it turns out the Twins are unwilling to cough up what it takes to get better starting pitchers than Baker and they're left scraping the bottom of the bargain bin in January because Baker got a couple million more than they were willing to give, you're damn right I'll blame the Twins for letting him go over what's really a piddly amount of money in the grand scheme of things.

Sure those contracts may have been tough in a couple of years. But look at it this way, starting in 2014, the Twins are getting more ADDITIONAL revenue every season than they are going to owe annually to Joe Mauer. They're also likely to have an entire starting outfield making minimum salaries. Seriously, who among what's projected to be a starting position player for the Twins in two years (besides Mauer) will even be arbitration eligible? This team is going to have so much money off the books within two years that it is absolutely obscene that they are pinching pennies now.

I used to think that trading Willingham was a good idea, now I am not so sure. Detroit is going to own this division for a few more years and slap hitters are not going to beat them regularly. I like a good OBP but we need the power Josh provides. If this move doesn't cement that the Twins should build for 2014 and 2015, I don't know what else would convince Twins fans... Really Seth? Torii Hunter? - he of 37 years old, declining range and 16 homers has pushed you over the edge into throwing in the towel for next year? I usually am on the same page as your takes but I don't get this one. Delmon is likely to put up better offensive numbers next year (we won't go there on defense). At $13 mil per, they can have him. There is a better than even chance that one or both of the years is a complete waste either due to injury or just plain old losing the skills due to age. Yeah I think that's putting an awful lot of value on Hunter, too, Seth. Did anyone really think the Tigers WEREN'T going to try to improve on Delmon Young in their outfield? Acting like they just added Hamilton or something is a little over the top. You don't send up a white flag in November. The Twins have a ton of money to spend, too, if they want to do it. I don't know what the hell "building for 2014" even means. They have little to no decent starting pitching in the organization that will be top of the rotation quality by 2014, either, so if they aren't willing to go out and get that now, what the hell makes anyone think they would do so in 2014? The Twins have no excuse for not being a team that reloads, rather than rebuilds. They can and should be expected to compete EVERY season and when they don't, they should be expected to address any shortcomings immediately. Using money as an excuse for not doing so should have stopped the moment the trucks drove away from the loading docks at the Metrodome. It's becoming tougher to understand how so many otherwise knowledgable fans are continuing to buy the line of crap the Twins front office spouts about payroll limits and revenues.

First, thanks for the comment Linus. I was surprised to see it because I THOUGHT I scheduled this post to go up on Twins Daily tonight (I generally hold off at least half a day after posting on Knuckleballs before posting on Twins Daily, but I screwed the scheduling thing up this time). I know I read that Terry Ryan said he had had a few conversations with the Marlins about various players, but it's impossible to know for sure what those conversations were exactly, I guess. Did the Marlins really want something the Twins didn't have, like a high-upside pitching prospect? No idea. But the package the Jays got would have addressed many of the Twins immediate needs and clearly it wouldn't have required that they drain all of their top prospects to get it done. It probably came down to money and that's something I'm just getting really tired of hearing.

Totally disagree...The Pohlads are not my favorite choice for owners either, but I would take them any day over Loria. Loria is a shameless pig and a thief. He's a leach on major League baseball and if I were another owner I would take any steps necessary to have him removed as owner of the Marlins I've never been one of the knee-jerk over-the-top critics of Twins management and ownership, but I've just got to say this much: While what Loria is doing just one year after opening his new publicly funded ballpark deserves all of the criticism he's getting, I think what the Twins have done over the past two years is not a lot less reprehensible. It's a matter of degrees, certainly, since the Twins jacked up salaries for one year and, since then are apparently allowing it to fall back while making little effort to field a championship caliber team over the course of 2-3 seasons, rather than just one, as Loria is doing. The Baker deal and the Hunter deal, both going for about twice what some folks (including the TwinsCentric crew) projected, along with the Jays' trade, clearly indicate to me that SOME teams are willing to step up immediately and start spending money now rather than waiting until the new MLB media rights deal pumps the additional $25 million in revenues in to their pockets. Spending 50% of revenues on MLB payroll was quite possibly a very legitimate business model for the Metrodome Twins. I've never believed that their expenses rose so much at Target Field that maintaining that model was necessary. There's certainly NO reason that holding back half of the $25 million in additional media revenues that kick in during 2014 is necessary. If the Twins do nothing but shop in the bargain bins and nibble around the edges this offseason, without making any legitimate effort to improve the product on the field in 2013, their ownership very well may deserve to be lumped in with the Jeffrey Lorias of the world. Twins fans, especially those who are paying for most of their new stadium, deserve better just as much as Miami residents do.

This article was originally posted at Knuckleballsblog.com. I’ve been feeling under the weather the past couple of weeks and that tends to make me grumpy. I’m feeling much better, but apparently the grumpiness is not wearing off quickly. The Toronto-Miami trade announced Tuesday didn’t help my mood much, either. http://knuckleballsblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/grumpydog.bmp Grumpy blogger We really should have seen this coming. It’s not like Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria has never cleaned house before, right? True, in the past, he’s dumped his high-priced stars after winning World Series Championships and pleading poverty because he didn’t have a shiny new stadium like other teams did. But in retrospect, we really can’t be surprised that he is once again overseeing the complete dismantling of his roster. What did surprise us, however, was that this time he unloaded almost his entire remaining cadre of recognizable stars on to one single team and that team was the Toronto Blue Jays! All-Stars Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle and Jose Reyes are now Blue Jays, as are Emilio Bonifacio and John Buck, who’s actually returning for a second engagement in Toronto. The Marlins are also sending a few million dollars in cash along, but not enough to even make a dent in what I’ve seen estimated to be $160 million of remaining salary owed to the new Jays players. In fact, it appears the cash included in the deal is primarily just to cover most of Buck’s salary. In return, Toronto sent the Marlins Yunel Escobar and several young (read: cheap) players that are several years from their first big paydays. A couple of those players are legitimate prospects that could eventually play major roles on a Big League roster, so it’s not like Toronto didn’t give anything up in the deal. But this is a Minnesota Twins blog, so what does any of this have to do with the Twins? Simply this… the Blue Jays, like the Twins, saw themselves at or near the bottom of their Division after yet another disappointing season and faced some choices concerning how to change their fortunes. They could promote young talent from within the organization to fill some of their needs and look to fill a few other holes via trade or fringe free agents… or they could find top-shelf talent available on the trade market and use some of their better young prospects to acquire it. They obviously chose the latter path. As Twins fans, I think we’re entitled to pose the question, “Why shouldn’t the Twins do the same thing?” I know we’ve been brainwashed for years by the Twins to the point where we now believe that the only way for the Twins to become competitive again is to trade away established stars like Denard Span, Justin Morneau and/or Josh Willingham for the starting pitching so desperately needed and middle infield help that certainly could stand to be upgraded, while replacing the departing players by backfilling with young guys. That’s what the Twins have always done. It’s a much more accurate description of “The Twins Way” than is the long-established myth that they play sound fundamental baseball between the lines. The Blue Jays, however, have examined a very similar set of circumstances and decided instead to be bold. Of course, it helped that they found a crazy-assed owner who overpaid for several stars a year ago and now wanted to dump them all. So let’s return to the question posed… what would keep the Twins from doing the same thing the Blue Jays did (other than the obvious… an ultra-conservative management team)? Do the Twins not have young talent comparable to what the Jays had? I find that hard to believe. Most of the Major League ready players sent to Miami appear to be nothing more than temporary fillers to replace the guys they gave up and only two of the prospects appear to be even potential above-average ballplayers. One of them is a Jake Marisnick, a “five tool” outfielder who’s probably going to repeat AA and the other is lefty starting pitcher Justin Nicolino, who has only had one year of full-season minor league ball. Nicolinao is arguably a better pitching prospect than the Twins have in their pitching-poor organization, but the Twins appear to have several outfielders with greater value than Marisnick. Is it a money issue? Let’s put it this way… it probably IS a money issue in that the Twins under current management have never been inclined to take on the kind of salary commitments that Johnson, Buehrle and Reyes represent. However, it SHOULDN’T be a money issue. The Blue Jays had an opening day payroll in the mid 80 millions a year ago, without the benefit of a ballpark like Target Field. They barely cracked the 2 million mark in attendance and even that was about a 10% increase over 2011. But here’s the thing. The new national media rights deal for Major League Baseball is going to put something like an additional $25 million in revenue straight in to the pockets of every MLB team starting in 2014. Does that mean that teams like Toronto and Minnesota should just go indiscriminately crazy and overpay a bunch of has-beens and never-weres? Of course it does not. But it should open the door for teams to rethink their past operating models. The Twins have historically told the public that their model is to spend about 50% of revenues on their Major League payroll. That goes back all the way through the old Metrodome days when the team had one of the worst revenue streams in MLB and it has continued through the “boom” years of their new ballpark. If they hold to that model, only half of the “new money” from the media deal will see its way in to their payroll budget. But why should that be the case? What additional expenses come with that $25 million in additional revenue? Absolutely none. It is simply “found money” that comes with no strings attached and if the Twins have indeed been realizing revenues at twice their MLB payroll, it represents at least a 12.5% increase in revenues! I’m sorry, but I simply can’t buy any excuse that might be proffered for why the team should not sink most, if not all, of that money in to putting a better product on the field. But wait… the Jays, while not drawing as many fans as the Twins lately, are at least seeing their attendance rise over the prior year while attendance at Target Field is dropping off dramatically. So shouldn’t the Twins be more conservative? Heck, no! Don’t you think the phone lines going in to Toronto’s offices are heating up today with people signing up for 2013 ticket packages? Reasonable debate may be offered as to just how many additional wins the new Blue Jays players can be expected to add to their record, but the Jays front office sent a clear message to their fan base that they intend to get serious about ending their also-ran status in the AL East. I refuse to believe the same wouldn’t be happening at the Target Field offices of the Twins today if it had been Terry Ryan who had pulled off a similar deal yesterday. I’m fine being patient for a few more weeks to see what kind of improvements Ryan can make to the Twins roster. After all, even if he did want to follow the Blue Jays’ lead and pull off a similar monster deal, there aren’t many crazy owners like Jeffrey Loria out there. Even the A’s, who can almost annually be counted on to trade away anyone with a pulse, are reportedly looking to add talent this offseason rather than trade away what they have. But Twins fans should not have to listen to more crap from the front office about how payroll doesn’t matter and how $85-90 million is more than Terry Ryan ever used to have at his disposal so there’s no reason to spend more than that now. That’s complete and utter bullcrap. If the Twins want more people to attend games in 2013 instead of fewer, there’s one way and one way only to accomplish that. It’s not by adding pitching at the expense of having to trade away a number of your best position players and it’s sure as hell not just by adding a drink rail in right field. You get more fans at the ballpark and more viewers on television and more sales of your merchandise by making bold moves to improve the crappy product you’ve put on the field for the past two years. The Blue Jays finally seem to get that. I’m not sure the Twins ever will. - JC

This article was originally posted at Knuckleballsblog.com. I’ve been feeling under the weather the past couple of weeks and that tends to make me grumpy. I’m feeling much better, but apparently the grumpiness is not wearing off quickly. The Toronto-Miami trade announced Tuesday didn’t help my mood much, either. http://knuckleballsblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/grumpydog.bmp Grumpy blogger We really should have seen this coming. It’s not like Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria has never cleaned house before, right? True, in the past, he’s dumped his high-priced stars after winning World Series Championships and pleading poverty because he didn’t have a shiny new stadium like other teams did. But in retrospect, we really can’t be surprised that he is once again overseeing the complete dismantling of his roster. What did surprise us, however, was that this time he unloaded almost his entire remaining cadre of recognizable stars on to one single team and that team was the Toronto Blue Jays! All-Stars Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle and Jose Reyes are now Blue Jays, as are Emilio Bonifacio and John Buck, who’s actually returning for a second engagement in Toronto. The Marlins are also sending a few million dollars in cash along, but not enough to even make a dent in what I’ve seen estimated to be $160 million of remaining salary owed to the new Jays players. In fact, it appears the cash included in the deal is primarily just to cover most of Buck’s salary. In return, Toronto sent the Marlins Yunel Escobar and several young (read: cheap) players that are several years from their first big paydays. A couple of those players are legitimate prospects that could eventually play major roles on a Big League roster, so it’s not like Toronto didn’t give anything up in the deal. But this is a Minnesota Twins blog, so what does any of this have to do with the Twins? Simply this… the Blue Jays, like the Twins, saw themselves at or near the bottom of their Division after yet another disappointing season and faced some choices concerning how to change their fortunes. They could promote young talent from within the organization to fill some of their needs and look to fill a few other holes via trade or fringe free agents… or they could find top-shelf talent available on the trade market and use some of their better young prospects to acquire it. They obviously chose the latter path. As Twins fans, I think we’re entitled to pose the question, “Why shouldn’t the Twins do the same thing?” I know we’ve been brainwashed for years by the Twins to the point where we now believe that the only way for the Twins to become competitive again is to trade away established stars like Denard Span, Justin Morneau and/or Josh Willingham for the starting pitching so desperately needed and middle infield help that certainly could stand to be upgraded, while replacing the departing players by backfilling with young guys. That’s what the Twins have always done. It’s a much more accurate description of “The Twins Way” than is the long-established myth that they play sound fundamental baseball between the lines. The Blue Jays, however, have examined a very similar set of circumstances and decided instead to be bold. Of course, it helped that they found a crazy-assed owner who overpaid for several stars a year ago and now wanted to dump them all. So let’s return to the question posed… what would keep the Twins from doing the same thing the Blue Jays did (other than the obvious… an ultra-conservative management team)? Do the Twins not have young talent comparable to what the Jays had? I find that hard to believe. Most of the Major League ready players sent to Miami appear to be nothing more than temporary fillers to replace the guys they gave up and only two of the prospects appear to be even potential above-average ballplayers. One of them is a Jake Marisnick, a “five tool” outfielder who’s probably going to repeat AA and the other is lefty starting pitcher Justin Nicolino, who has only had one year of full-season minor league ball. Nicolinao is arguably a better pitching prospect than the Twins have in their pitching-poor organization, but the Twins appear to have several outfielders with greater value than Marisnick. Is it a money issue? Let’s put it this way… it probably IS a money issue in that the Twins under current management have never been inclined to take on the kind of salary commitments that Johnson, Buehrle and Reyes represent. However, it SHOULDN’T be a money issue. The Blue Jays had an opening day payroll in the mid 80 millions a year ago, without the benefit of a ballpark like Target Field. They barely cracked the 2 million mark in attendance and even that was about a 10% increase over 2011. But here’s the thing. The new national media rights deal for Major League Baseball is going to put something like an additional $25 million in revenue straight in to the pockets of every MLB team starting in 2014. Does that mean that teams like Toronto and Minnesota should just go indiscriminately crazy and overpay a bunch of has-beens and never-weres? Of course it does not. But it should open the door for teams to rethink their past operating models. The Twins have historically told the public that their model is to spend about 50% of revenues on their Major League payroll. That goes back all the way through the old Metrodome days when the team had one of the worst revenue streams in MLB and it has continued through the “boom” years of their new ballpark. If they hold to that model, only half of the “new money” from the media deal will see its way in to their payroll budget. But why should that be the case? What additional expenses come with that $25 million in additional revenue? Absolutely none. It is simply “found money” that comes with no strings attached and if the Twins have indeed been realizing revenues at twice their MLB payroll, it represents at least a 12.5% increase in revenues! I’m sorry, but I simply can’t buy any excuse that might be proffered for why the team should not sink most, if not all, of that money in to putting a better product on the field. But wait… the Jays, while not drawing as many fans as the Twins lately, are at least seeing their attendance rise over the prior year while attendance at Target Field is dropping off dramatically. So shouldn’t the Twins be more conservative? Heck, no! Don’t you think the phone lines going in to Toronto’s offices are heating up today with people signing up for 2013 ticket packages? Reasonable debate may be offered as to just how many additional wins the new Blue Jays players can be expected to add to their record, but the Jays front office sent a clear message to their fan base that they intend to get serious about ending their also-ran status in the AL East. I refuse to believe the same wouldn’t be happening at the Target Field offices of the Twins today if it had been Terry Ryan who had pulled off a similar deal yesterday. I’m fine being patient for a few more weeks to see what kind of improvements Ryan can make to the Twins roster. After all, even if he did want to follow the Blue Jays’ lead and pull off a similar monster deal, there aren’t many crazy owners like Jeffrey Loria out there. Even the A’s, who can almost annually be counted on to trade away anyone with a pulse, are reportedly looking to add talent this offseason rather than trade away what they have. But Twins fans should not have to listen to more crap from the front office about how payroll doesn’t matter and how $85-90 million is more than Terry Ryan ever used to have at his disposal so there’s no reason to spend more than that now. That’s complete and utter bullcrap. If the Twins want more people to attend games in 2013 instead of fewer, there’s one way and one way only to accomplish that. It’s not by adding pitching at the expense of having to trade away a number of your best position players and it’s sure as hell not just by adding a drink rail in right field. You get more fans at the ballpark and more viewers on television and more sales of your merchandise by making bold moves to improve the crappy product you’ve put on the field for the past two years. The Blue Jays finally seem to get that. I’m not sure the Twins ever will. - JC

I can't imagine any pitching good enough to be enthused about coming cheap, Seth. Whether it's young pitching coming in return for prospects or veteran pitching signed as FAs, if what Terry Ryan brings in to help the rotation actually are solid additions, it's a safe bet that a ton of complaints will register that the price was too high. If anyone believes that TR can trade one of his surplus outfielders straight up for high-end starting pitching, it's a sure sign expectations are out of whack. I do believe Ryan will make a deal or two but I'm convinced the price is going to really hurt.

Yeah it's a big leap to assume from that little tweet that it means the Twins would need a replacement for Willingham in the Braves deal. It's just stating the obvious, if they trade him, they'll need to replace his bat somehow. John, what worries you about Teheran? I haven't looked at these guys in depth, but just glancing over them last week I thought he looked like he might be someone worth trying to acquire. What am I missing?

By the time the Twins traded Hardy, they already had signed Nishioka, so it wasn't exactly a surprise. While he hadn't been an All-Star by any means, with the Twins, he certainly was an improvement over what we'd seen at SS prior to his arrival. Nishioka was an entertaining sideshow initially, but even among those of us who didn't see Hardy as being terrific, I think the reaction was more along the lines of, "OK, you think this is an improvement... you'd better be right." Obviously, the Twins weren't right and the fact that the players they got in return bombed just made things worse. I'm happy for Hardy that he's been having success and congratulations to the Orioles on getting the best end of this particular trade.

2 years $29 million plus his $4 million option buy out spread over 4 years. He can also earn a $15 million option for 2015 if he stays healthy enough to pitch enough innings over the next 2 years.

In the Handbook, you wrote that there would be a team who thinks Jake Peavy's injuries are behind him. It turns out that team is the White Sox. Your projection of 4 years/$56 mil had the annual salary just about right, but he signed for just 2 years and $14.5 mil each. He also gets his $4 million option buyout spread over 4 years and can earn a $15 mil option for 2015 with enough innings pitched. I didn't really expect the White Sox to shell out that kind of money.