IndianaTwin

Completely non-baseball-related, but with two young-adult sons in the mix, we name our cars to keep track of them. "Cory" and "Carl" were purchased from friends with those names, for example, and our current Nissan Murano has been dubbed "Rav 5," because it's a little bigger than the Rav 4 we were looking for. So, you may be interested in knowing that you share a name with one of the vehicles in the IT motor pool. After adding a manual transmission Accord to the fleet, we named that one "Stick." Which made it make logical to dub the automatic transmission Accord "Teflon." After all, it's non-stick.

Though technically, when one consider that "Fingers" is plural, Hand is, at best 2.5 times better. But that's still pretty good.

I like this way of thinking about it. And for a combined $10M-$12M, I'd take that quartet of relievers over spending the same amount on Liam Hendricks. Add Mark Melancon, Brandon Kintzler to the mix of possibilities, plus my favorite, Jeremy Jeffress and his 139 career ERA+. James Paxton could be among your starters bouncing back from injuries group. Another archetype you might consider is the "Veteran Placeholder," preferably on a one-year deal, and potentially non-tendered. Think Cron, Schoop, Morrison, and Marwin. I'm not sure there's great fits here, but the targets here may be Andrelton Simmons or Jonathan Villar.

Just Between You and Me, thanks for pulling this out of the vault.

Combined response to Matt, Doctor Gast, and MLR, from someone who hasn't mastered the MultiQuote button. Again, I get why it makes "sense" to assume that budget will go down based on revenue projection and that that's the general assumption for most teams. It may well happen for the Twins as well. Or it may not. In my work, I often remind people that a budget is first and foremost a planning document. It's not hard and fast. Good budgets aren't locked, and when circumstances call for it, you loosen the budget as easily as you tighten it. One thing I've been impressed with in this regime is their willingness to be opportunistic, including zigging when others zag. They focus on value and make gobs of moves, but on their timetable. Last winter, for example, while they were most certainly working within broad parameters, they seemed more focused on finding perceived "value" than on staying within a fixed number. We may not have liked exactly how they made each decision, but they made a good-faith attempt to address every need they had with a good value. That included a trade on Maeda and waiting until the price seemed right to sign Donaldson. One of those worked out better than the other, at least for last year. That included giving the QO to Odo and signing Hill. One of those worked out better than the other. And there was Clippard, Wisler, Chacin, again a mixture of results, but all good risks by their definitions. Those are also examples of their tendency to make multiple moves to nudge the needle rather than focusing on the splashy move. All that to say that to me, none of these options really fulfill all their needs. For example, one of the things they did well last year was entered spring training with 10 viable starting options, seven vets and three rookies, as I recall. This isn't a critique limited to you, Matt, but I'm not sure that I've seen any projections on TD that went beyond six or so deep as starting pitcher options. So while they may well shoot for a decreased budget, I think there's at least more than the proverbial non-zero chance that they will match or even exceed last year's total when they consider what the needs are and what's committed. They may well wait Cruz out, for example, but if they get to a point where they've committed $122M, Cruz falls to their target, and they still don't feel like they are where need to be, I think they'll plop down the remaining amount needed, even if it pushes them over the "budget." As an overspend, I think letting Rosario go was as much about the timing as it was the dollar. They didn't want to commit to an overspend that early in the offseason. If it was a February decision and they knew where they were elsewhere, they might have run with him. Pohlad seems to spend money when it's called for. He looks for value, but keeps the focus on the overall goal (including doing "corporate culture" things like paying minor leagues for a full season and giving to BLM). He most certainly is working from a revenue projection, but he's also smart enough to see the opportunity of a ton of revenue coming their way in 2022 if they strategically zig and go over budget far enough to have a legit shot at taking it all. And similarly, while they most certainly are looking at current revenue projections, they also most certainly are NOT looking at just one-year budgeting cycles. If they ended up close to a projected $140M after committing to Donaldson in 2020, they very well may have been targeting $150M in their two-years-out budget for 2021. They knew it was a four-year commitment to Donaldson, not a one-year commitment. The 2020 season is now a sunk cost, and a Pohlad doesn't approach his 2021 feeling the need to make back his losses on 2020. So even if you take a 10 percent cut from a planned 2021 budget of $150M, for example, you're still talking $135M, not $125M. So that's why I vote for "none of the above," but I'm not smart enough and haven't been following closely enough to have an alternate proposal at that level. I just don't think that they will try to shoehorn 12 spots (more really, when depth is considered) into just $40M when there's a division and more to be won. (Edit to add: Maybe another way to say it is, Pohlad seems like the kind of guy who would say, "Look, COVID has really messed things up. We don't know how things are going to play themselves. Revenue might be way down, but it might not be down as much as we think. Let's not overact. Go conservative on that $150M plan we had for 2021, and if we come up short on the revenue side, we'll deal with that later.")

It’s easy to speculate on why $125M makes sense, but have Falvey, Levine, or Pohlad actually said anything that points to a cut, let alone 10 percent?

Alas, the only Jeremiah to show up in baseball-reference, Jeremiah Reardon, played for Cincinnati. It would be great if Jeremiah was a Bullfrog.

Is there a Robert Un O. Fishel Award?

To play the Sod Poodles, for example, you can take off right after the game and easily get to Amarillo by morning. Or go up from San Antone.

That was my thought. Turns out Wichita's longest ride would be 10:56 to Corpus Christi, but Springfield, Mo., which is already in the league, creates the longest drive. It's 12:34 from Corpus Christi to Springfield. Springfield is also 10:28 from Midland. Only three of Wichita's drives will be longer than 6:30. For context, Cedar Rapids has had a 9-hour drive to Lake County (Ohio), 8:37 to Bowling Green, and 7:42 to Dayton.

Shakespeare: A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Indiana Twin: A Cleveland baseball team by any other name still stinks.

I don't subscribe to Baseball America, but here's a Cubs' bloggers summary of an article outlining the minor league alignments going forward: https://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/2020/12/11/22170088/mlb-realignment-minor-leagues-move-iowa-out-pacific-coast-league?fbclid=IwAR3GaRbkPENzYbZwOMtzVU1wJLcMza4UmDrKaMjB86T4lyFFKVTheJdfp74 The outline described makes sense. Has anyone seen things to the contrary? It suggests a "Midwest" AAA division, including Columbus, Gwinnett, Indianapolis, Iowa, Louisville, Memphis, Nashville, Omaha, St. Paul, and Toledo. Gwinnett is the outlier, but the alternative is to have it and one of the others move to a group that's East/Northeast. And with Gwinnett so close to Atlanta in an airplane league, they make the most sense to be with the Midwesterns. I'm guessing most of those cities have direct flights to Atlanta. If indeed a "Midwest" division holds, with 10 teams, playing two four-game series in a full-round robin would be 9 opponents x 16 games = 144 game season. It's been a 140-game schedule recently in AAA. As a northern Indiana resident, I'd welcome two Saints trips each to Toledo and Indianapolis each season. Louisville and Columbus are within five hours. Elsewhere, in anticipated moves, Wichita would be in a 10-team "Texas" League. The Midwest League drops to 12 teams and the Florida State League drops to 10.

The Wichita Linemen.

I don’t pay for Baseball America. Is there a list of teams that have not been contracted. I’m particularly curious whether Clinton, Quad Cities and Burlington survived. I know they have been considered for the chopping block. Edit: Found my answer. Clinton and Burlington gone. Quad Cities moving to the Royals

That's actually understating the remaining obligation. Though the contract was $118M/5 yrs = $23.6M/yr., the years weren't even. It was $21.5M last year and $22.5 in 2021, but the remaining years are $26M, $24.5M, and $23.5M. That means the remaining obligation is $96.5/4 = $24.125M/yr. And the original contract was for a 30-year-old. Now he's a 31-year-old, so in theory you missed out on what should have been his best year if he follows a normal aging pattern. AND you have to give up something of value to get him, instead of a doing it as a free agent signing and only giving up a draft pick. So, to affirm what you've said.... Not happening. Now if you get Philly to take on part of the contract, then you can revisit the conversation, but it still seems doubtful.

Phillies owner John Middleton: “If they offered me Babe Ruth, I wouldn’t trade (Wheeler).” Well, yeah. The Bambino’s been dead for more than 70 years.

Dear Mr. Lenz: You missed one. Sincerely, Mike Clevenger, Tyler Olson, and Cody Allen Cleveland Baseball Team

I want to argue for him, but his best credential is that he might have matched Koufax. But Koufax is seen as one of the weaker HOFers by many. And his peak was higher than Santana's in having a couple of 10+ WAR seasons. Comparing Cy Young finishes also isn't apples to apples, given that awards for each league didn't start until after Koufax retired. Additionally, writers only voted for one person, so there were many years when there weren't five pitchers getting a vote. Koufax was the unanimous winner in the entire majors in all three of his wins. There's no way to know the answer to this, but though Santana was unanimous in the two AL Cy Young's, I'm not sure he'd have been unanimous if it was combined. And though he should have won in 2006, it probably wouldn't have been unanimous. What I'm struck by in JAWS is that while his peak is thought of as very high, his JAWS7 (7 best years) only puts him 61st among pitchers, including 42nd among the 66 HOFers if he were included. In reality, he was only dominant for about four years when he was at 7.1+ in WAR, with another three years in the 4.1-5.0 range. If it was his peak that was going to carry him, I'd want it to be somewhat higher than the midpoint of HOFers (50.3, compared to his 45.0) or even in the top third or so (which would take about 54). So no, I don't think so.

Count me among the people who were hoping he would be back. That noted, I've said on multiple occasions that the two dominant themes I see in this front office are: 1. Focus on winning each decision by a little bit, knowing that the sum of all the decisions is what matters, not the splash of a single move. So while I'd rather have kept him, I'm going to withhold judgment, assuming that they will find a sneakily efficient way to redeploy the salary.* 2. Allow maximum flexibility, and don't paint yourself into a corner with expensive and/or long-term contracts that you'll regret. I think this checks the box. Since the decision had to be made at the beginning of the off season, I can understand them saying, "Let's free up the cash to be able to jump on a sneakily efficient signing/trade when the opportunity arises." If this decision was being made in March, after the dust settles elsewhere, they may have handled it differently. *And the "sum of the parts" approach is why I'm not going to get hung up on any single decision they make.

Agreed. There's tornados, sure, but in my experience in Kansas, the wind never "surges." It's constant.

I’m in.

Yep, I was going to call TwinsDaily 1A if it wasn’t on the list. Thanks to everyone who participates with good intent.

Maybe another column is coming, but I’m not yet convinced Kirilloff is a better extension candidate than Lewis. Kirilloff had success in 94 games at AA as a 21YO In 2019. Lewis had less success in his 33 games at AA in 2019, but was a 20YO and also tore up the AFL in 22 games. Kirilloff apparently looked good enough at St. Paul for the Twins to take a flier when they had an injury need. Do we know how they thought Lewis looked at St. Paul? Would they have given Lewis the same shot if Polanco was hurt? Depending on the answer to that, Lewis may only be a partial season behind Kirilloff, if at all. He’s also a year younger and at a much more premium position defensively. Additionally, the Larnach presence makes Kirilloff closer to being redundant. All that to say, no, I don’t think I make the extension offer. I let another year play out.

I so want to extend him, but with concussions in at least 2014, 2019, and 2020 and migraines in 2017 and 2018, I don’t think I can commit to 2023.