Trov

Many a casual fan will say "who" when they see the name. The deep minor league following fans will know the name. For those who have not followed him this year, he is 24, 5 foot 5 inches, one inch shorter than Jose Altuve. He is in his first year in any MLB affiliated team. He went 4 years of college and always put up good numbers in college, but never at any major schools. Mainly, you see a guy his size and just assume they do not turn into MLB players. I am sure some scouts would say if only he was 6 foot. He went undrafted and played independent ball last year, putting up decent numbers, less than college but still good. He started independent league again this year, in 6 games he hit 3 HR and had OPS over 1000. Then the Twins signed him. He started in low A Fort Myers, a pitcher league generally, and he lit it up. Over 34 games he slashed .331/.448/.517. He was moved up to high A, where he did not slow down much. Slashing .275/.473/.425, that was over 13 games. Then fans were shocked when he quickly went to AAA over other prospects like Keaschell who has been tearing up AA, but is only 21. What has Eeles done at AAA this year? He is slashing .268/.411/.451. in 24 games. He has walked more than struck out. He has similar numbers, OPS wise to current MLB players Miranda, Martin, and Wallner. Of course Wallner has much more power than all of the others. He is doing better than Julien who took world by storm last year in his call up, but faltered much this year. On defense Eeles has played all over the infield, 3b, SS, and 2b, as well as 3 games in LF. There is no way he will be super high on prospect lists due to his age, lack of pedigree, and his size, but if he continues to play like he has this year, we will see him on prospect lists and may be seeing him in a MLB uniform next year. He will be another fun story of the kid that never gave up, not that he is old, but sure has to be having some scouts wonder how they missed on him. I am not saying the kid will be some super star, but if he was drafted out of college in higher round we would be talking about him along with several other prospects. The fact that he walks more than strikes out, can steal some bases, and has enough pop to hit a HR, 7 in minors this year in 70 games, if you add the 3 from the 6 games of independent ball that is 13 in 76 games. He is not just a singles hitter. I have read his defense is not great, but he is more than just a 1b or DH guy. Personally, I would put him somewhere around 10 to 15 in rankings, without looking at recent drafted guys. He is ahead of Schobel who MLB had him this year before draft at 11.

I do think on defense he has taken a step back, which may be intentional in his part, not pushing it full bore anymore, or it could just be what his body can now do. He has always been injury prone, and injuries tend to tick up even more as players age. However, if he can play CF at even average level, still has elite arm, and hit at plus level he will be worth his contract. In regards to the DH thing, it has been talked about for years that is not an easy thing to do, and many legends who moved to DH part time would hit much worse as a DH than as a fielder. It is a mind thing, that when in field you can get your mind off your hitting, but when you are just hitting, it is harder to get out of your own head. Which makes when you find a true good hitting DH they are worth more than some think.

Cobb is a lottery ticket salary dump for Giants. He has yet to pitch this year, and have no clue if he has anything in the tank the rest of the year. If we made the move fans on here would tear the move apart as a terrible trade, unless he does come back to pitch well, but even at his better days he is still a mid-rotation guy. He would have slid into at best our 4th starter. That assumes he even can come back from his injury.

I do not see Erceg as some savior of a pitcher. He has been good but not great, and is not a proven talent. We have seen pen guys blow up after trades, remember that Lopez guy we traded for after a great first half?

This is not a post for or against current spending by the Twins, or any team. I wanted to post about how there is more to the cost of running a team than just player payroll. In MLB there is not set amount that will go to player payroll, but NBA has a 50/50 split, NFL is close to a 50/50 split, of revenue to teams and to players. Not sure NHL revenue sharing split. MLB is only sport of the major sports that do not do a revenue sharing split, but seems like for a team to feel break even or profitable 50/50 seems fair. That being said, the 50 percent that would go to team is not just money in hand, but has to go to other expenses. When I see people post on here, many seem to forget that. In baseball, there is not only the MLB player payroll, but all the minor league guys, along with international signings and draft signing bonus money each year. Minor league is not huge, but at 165 per team on average of 25K per player, that is 4.125 million right there. That does not include the housing cost the minor league players have now. Add in the signing bonuses, varies on teams, but Twins was over 12 mil this year. International signing varies depending on team again, but Twins were in the 6.5 mil pool. Looking at non MLB player money but minor league guys, and signing bonus money, assuming all was spent, that is about 23 million. That is just to pay the players that do not play at the MLB level. Looking to other costs. It is not free to run the lights at the stadium, which one article I found suggests it will cost over 1 mil for that. There is also cost of all the rank and file employees, not sure how much that would be, but lets assume 100 employees averaging 100K, that may be way low or high not sure what an employee gets paid there, but if close that is 10 million there, but the team also has to pay taxes for like payroll taxes, unemployment taxes and the like as well. We should assume they give out benefits too like health care and retirement perks, like most employees, that adds more expenses. That includes the club house guys, the grounds crew, the ticket sales people, the janitors that clean the offices, the travel people so on and so forth. Then there is the actual travel expenses at each level. At MLB level, lets assume there are like 40 people that travel with team, and they all get their own room, maybe some share. If on average each room costs $200 a night, might be low in some cities and high in others, but that is 8K a night, and estimating 90 nights, 81 road games and some off days on road, that is 720K, add in per diam estimate 100 a day, maybe more, that is 360k. So over 1 mil just for basic travel expenses. Then there is the club house meals, the cost of actual planes and buses to and from games on the road. This does not include the cost in minor league levels as well. Then there is the cost of front office personnel who make millions, coaches and managers at each level, millions more. There is the cost of advertising, cost of giveaways, and even the cost of basic overhead like printer paper, office equipment and so on. When you operate a business at the level of MLB there are a lot of little expenses that start to add up to very large expenses. I am not saying any team is overspending or underspending on players, not defending or attacking the Twins payroll. However, I read comments and articles estimating how much money the Twins may have to spend and they look at just MLB player payroll as the only expense of the team. Many people talk about how after getting a new TV deal Twins did not spend any more money, but it is possible that money that came in, which is only half because other half is shared with the rest of the league, may have mostly been spoke for in other expenses spread across many things. Recently there was talk about team getting up to 15 mil, if it helps product on field, and that may be more tied to spending on players payroll, as the MLBPA agreed to take from competitive balance tax to do that. But other income sources may have been earmarked for other expenses, and to assume it can be spent on something else is wrong.

The reports the Braves file include the area around the ballpark. They break it down from baseball revenue, and non-baseball revenue. You ask about the valuation of a team going up despite possibly losing money. Well, we have seen many social media companies value increase in the market, but report that they are losing large amounts of cash each year, explain that.

I think people forget that SD had to take out a loan of cash on hand to pay their players. The worth of an owner does not mean they have the cash on hand. Much of the worth is based on what people claim a company is worth. For example, Elon Musk just lost like 16 billion in worth the other day, because the stock price of Tesla dropped. First, he did not lose 16 billion cash, the stock he owns value dropped. Just because someone has something they say is worth x, does not mean they can get that in cash for it. First, it takes a buyer to pay the asking price. This happens a ton in business deals where a company that has no actual assets get valued at a number, and some wonder how. Many times it is based on possible value you can get out of it but not actual assets or cash in or out. If the Twins operating cash is dropping, they will need to cut payroll to pay employees, or they will need sell off other assets, or borrow against them to make payroll. Just because the Pohalds are valued at billions, does not mean they have a money bin full of cash, but that is what Forbes says their assets are worth. If they even tried to fully divest their assets to get cash, they would not get that much cash either.

I agree, I hate when people point to "market size" and compare that as the only factor. Like on here before so many posts about KC and SD market size being same or smaller than TC, now throw in St. Louis. They neglect to then look at what other sports franchises are in the area. How do they draw from the disposable income, and time of the sports consumer. As pointed out, here in TC there is NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS(growing in popularity) WNBA(also growing), where in SD they have baseball, that is it. Yes, they had NHL but it got moved to LA. KC has NFL and MLS to fight with, other than that no NHL or NBA. St. Louis has NHL but no NBA or NFL. They do sell a lot of XFL or whatever league they are now there, but that shows people will go see sports if they have the time and money, but if you have a lot too pick from you may have to pick 1 over the other, or spread it around. That does lead to the argument that the Twins then need to spend more to fight to get the fans to come, but win will not equal attendance always, as Ray for years would fight for their division but have no fans come to games. Point is, do not just look at media market to decide who should be spending what or if they can afford it. You should also look at things like house hold incomes, versus the cost of living. This gets into the disposable income fans may have. It would be poor to assume each fan has a similar disposable income or time to spend for games in each market.

So going to games, buying the merch, and watching TV, while you complain about the product is like going to a restaurant, paying full price for a meal, then yelling about how expensive it is they should lower the price, but then saying you will be back tomorrow to do this all over again. Sure, the employees will get sick of you yelling, but the owner will just keep taking your money and not changing the price of the food. Only if you walk in, say this food is too much bye, and have a whole lot more follow, will the owner say maybe I need to adjust my business plan because now I am losing money. I agree we are the customers, and the only way you get a business to change their ways is either affect their bottom dollar, or threaten to affect and have them believe you. Sometimes there is not much they can do other than fold up shop because the customer is expecting too much, mainly because they do not know the business to know how viable their plan is. I love watching shows like bar rescue where dumb people buy a bar because they think it would be fun and want to run it the way they think a bar should run. Then they lose a ton of money, call an expert for help and the expert says you do everything wrong to make money. That is like the fans that complain about ownership. I bet if any of the fans on here were given a billion dollars and to buy the Twins and run them as they see fit, they would be out of cash real quickly, or they would change their tune real quickly.

According to Atlanta Braves reported earning, they have to report as they are part of a publicly traded company, their company Braves Holdings, in 2023 they had an operating loss of 46 million. The company is more than just the team itself, but most of it is the team, other than some outside revenue from things near the park is my understanding. So the one team that does open the books say they lost money when reporting to their stock holders. I am sure they are not alone in this loss as they have public investors to answer too, not just their own private funds. So you can add Atlanta to the document loss to your list, and they were not seen as a super over spender reaching for dreams.

I was listening to sports talk show the other day, national show, forget which one off top of head. They talked about that in sports, most owners actually lose money in the day to day operation of a team, but make it up on the sale of the team. I get annoyed with all these post and articles about how the Twins can, and need to spend more. It has been going on for years, since the 90's. Then even when we spend the fans still complain because team comes out and says sorry we are spending too much now and some of our long term revenue is shrinking. I would read article about how much money the Padres spent, but yet they did nothing and they had to take out a loan to pay their payroll and had to sell Soto for pennies on the dollar because they could not afford him. If fans are upset at payroll, then stop watching and stop supporting team. Supporting team and complaining about how it is ran will not affect anything.

I think his cost would be too high. He has many years of control and Oakland has no reason to trade him now. So if they do it will be if the prospects are right. I would not say no if we did not have to give up much for him, but only if the FO feels they can get more from him than what he has showed against us. We have a lot of back end rotation depth right now.

At this point of his career I would disagree that numbers are what matters. It is about development and approach and making sure the results will hopefully get there, even more so when you face better pitching. We see many guys do well numbers wise at a lower level, but then as they move up they do not produce because they crushed weak pitching on weak fastballs, but when they start facing good breaking pitches they chase and or miss in the zone. Over this short sample if he gets a week with 2 to 3 HR his numbers will start to fly up.

Looks like typical draft for this FO. Draft bats early and a ton of pitching late. I was looking at the top prospects list for Twins and only 3 out of the 11 drafted pitchers in the MLB top 30 list for Twins, were drafted before 4th round. 3 of them were after the 10th round. This FO has found possible MLB arms later in draft for years now. Ober was 12th round pick. Varland, who may not be a starter in future, was 15th. Festa was 13th round. So there is possible top prospects that can be MLB starters later in draft. The fans who are upset we do not spend a ton of top draft picks on pitchers, I would suggest looking at how often top guys in 1st round turn out to be busts. Sure, the percent of 1st round guys making MLB level is much higher than percent of each round after I would bet, but it really seems you can find diamonds in the rough in later rounds pitchers than you do with position players. We only have like 2 hitters in top 30 MLB list that were outside top 2 rounds, and they are way down the list.

He clearly has jumped to one of top prospects in our system, and unlike Raya they are letting him pitch deep into games and throw upwards of 90 pitches. Last year he was okay, but this year he has taken his game to another level. If he can pitch to this level from here on out he will be a huge boost for MLB team years to come. Personally, I would not want to give him a pen roll this year unless you feel like you need to protect his innings. If we need to call someone up, provided he dices up AAA like he has AA and high A I would look to him. Festa would be more a pen move or Varland again.

Luck is more than just hard hit and launch angle to outcomes. I agree that if that is all you look at it is poor way to evaluate if someone is getting lucky more than not. However, having a large number of your HR be just over the wall plays into that. If you hit a ball that would be a fly out in 29 stadiums but the one you are in and it is a HR there, that is some luck involved. If you your starting pitchers are always getting out of jams, eventually that will even out some most likely. I have not seen many Cleveland games, only those against the Twins, and I cannot say they got by with a lot of luck, but if you are hitting balls that have low expected hit percentage, unless that was planned to hit where they did, that is luck. Now, it is true you cannot get lucky if you do not make contact so just having the ability to make contact can help you out some. In part, once the Twins lowered their K rate in late April, they started putting up a ton more runs too.

It sounds like both top picks may struggle to hit for power with the wood bats, which surprise me knowing the Twins loving the power bats.

I think the Twins can catch Cleveland, and really all they have to do is play like they have been and can. Cleveland is winning on career years from guys that could carry through the year, but also could regress to their career norm. Twins generally are playing close to their career norms overall. Cleveland also has been known to fade the second half as well in recent years.

Not sure the overall number of that specific question, but the team has one of the best overall offenses in baseball. Yeah, this weekend they did very poorly with RISP and those will happen, but as a whole the team has done very well scoring runs.

They could use a LH pen arm, and for the right price an upgrade at top end of rotation. I am sure the team can make the money work for rental guys, but it is unlikely they would agree to take on much future payroll. They may still look for controllable guys on arb year, where you have a pretty good idea what that budgets to be. I think there is little out there for high end arms though that are clear upgrade over Ober. As an article pointed out, you need to be at his level or better to be an upgrade for playoffs. I do think the uncertainty for long term financial could play into taking on future money, but not rental guys. It is not just the Twins own TV deal, but as other teams TV deals are up in air it affects the revenue sharing from those as well. Teams split local TV deals about 50%, which makes sense as they are the other team playing, but as other teams contracts get cut or dropped that is less money to share as well. I do feel like the slow start and lack of TV for most people, I have Spectrum so get to see them, but my sisters do not. have affected interest in the team. I think also the long run of Wolves affected early season too as many local sports fans that like both were more engaged in Wolves, I was for sure, than what was going on with Twins at the time.

SS are generally the most athletic guys on a team. Most high school SS never pan out at majors, and the few of the college guys do as well, however, if they can play SS they can play just about anywhere else. If they can play only 1B they have limited options if they suck there. SS is a hard position to fill, so having plenty that can fill in is helpful too. Also, they have increased trade value if they can actually stick there. In terms of Camaniti, from what I read he is LSU commit and was expected to go much higher, meaning he most likely will be looking for above slot deal. Atlanta may be able to get it done, but sometimes guys slide in drafts for a reason. HS pitchers are so volatile as well. He may just decide to go to LSU and in 3 years hope to be much higher pick.

Read up on him that he did terrible with wood bats last summer, lets hope is new found power will translate to the wood bats. At least with good contact and low walks even if he is a gap to gap mainly double type guy with solid defense that has value.

Ehh, he strikes me as a typical 3 outcomes guy with limited defense. I hope he can contribute, but sounds like may have been looking at his improvement and buying in on that. I would not be surprised if he tops out at AA or AAA.

Prep pitchers are roll of the dice. Even the top guys burn out in a few years. I got no issue with taking one, but do not expect much from him for about 4 to 5 years.

The only reason the Twins make this trade is if they think they can tinker with Detmers to get him to where they want. I am for it, but if Detmers is out of options after this year you better plan to do it at MLB level or hope no one takes him off waivers next year.