Trov

I disagree with the argument that we should have cut Bundy and Archer and run out Varland and SWR or others sooner. We already went through several SP going on IL. Paddock, Ober, Winder, all had long stints on IL, Gray had a few, Ryan had one. Archer ended on it. Had we dumped Bundy and Archer early on, and SWR, who was on IL in minors for a month, or Varland landed on IL, then we maybe would have had to add even younger guys to 40 man. Then when we need to cut down after the 60 day IL guys we could look to lose some of the younger guys to waivers. That is something to keep in mind as well.

Will this AFL for Martin jump him back up prospect lists? Will we try to trade him to a team that thinks he will be a breakout star, or do we keep him in hopes he will be with team next year? Personally, I am a fan of him, despite his lower power, as long as he is not a negative defense guy I think he will be a good lead off guy for years.

I think they will ask around about him, but will not sell him off for the cheap. He adds some value to the team to stay with them and maybe trade in the season for a team that has an injury or someone struggles.

I agree they should not go after a different SS, and if they plan to spend big on anyone it should be CC. However, I would not want any contract longer than 5 years, and I doubt that gets it done for him. I think minimum he will be seeking 8 years, and most likely will get that, but I think he is seeking 10 years. I am worried after 4 or 5 years he will drop off a bit, I could be wrong, but history shows most SS stop playing there in early 30's. His offense is above average for SS, but not for 3b, and if he drops off on that side of ball too, then he will be just a huge overpaid guy.

I think the article hit it perfectly, it depends on the player and the situation. For example, if say Brooks Lee makes team next season, or some other young player around age 21 to 23, that you have high expectations on, then signing a deal into their age 30 to 32 seasons makes sense. However, if they do not break into league until 24 to 26, there is little need to buy out FA years, and little incentive for player to want to do that too. Some times these contracts can backfire for the player or team. Both have risk. There have been a few guys signed to these types of deals when they are rookies that do not pan out for teams. Jon Singleton may be the most famous of these. He signed a 10 million deal with Houston before he ever played a major league game. He played less than a full MLB season, provided negative value and was cut. The deal had it panned out would have been a 5 year 35 mil deal, but he did get 10. Now this is not the type of contract we are really talking about, paying more in non arb years to have cost controlled arb years and maybe a year of FA. Being his 5 year deal would not have even got him through arb years. Basically, Houston threw away 10 mil in hopes of not having to pay more than 35mil over 5 year if the player was a superstar. Pretty big gamble for Houston, great call by player to sign that deal, considering he would not have earned much until year 3 anyways, and unless he was a mega star would not have even earned the 10 in year 4. Teams and players are looking to do these earlier deals to control costs and there is nothing wrong with it. But I do not think every player should be treated this way but with select players.

Last year I said no way would we sign a top SS, then we shocked everyone, but it took a crazy offseason, with a lockout to help that happen. Now, will a team give the top SS what they are seeking, or will they need to agree to less seasons. I think Twins would be willing to offer higher per year but would max out at 4 to 5 years, which I support that fully. Any of the top 3 should still be good for 3 to 5 years, but beyond that they will become a huge risk of being vastly overpaid. A high payroll team can afford that, but mid-market or small cannot afford to have 30 mil of bad money on the books. Personally, I think Lewis can fill in, provided he can stay healthy, but if we can bring CC back on a 5 year deal I am all in for that. He is seeking 8 to 10 though and I am not sold on him for 8 years or more.

There is so much with injuries we do not even know. We do not know how much of a roll he played in some of the things going on, or was it other medical guys, or what. However, if the FO feels he needed to go to better the team I got no issue with it. People to are calling it a scape goat thing just shows some level of ignorance. They would seem to argue he played no roll in the injuries and the time to return. Of course some of the injury onsets of tears and breaks would never be the trainer or anyone's real fault, but the soft muscle things I believe would be more on the trainer, but again, I do not truly know how the process works, only people on the team really do. Maybe, for all we know he asked to be let go for his personal reasons, to my knowledge nothing has really been reported about it, just that he is gone.

I think most people are upset at his performances against the better line ups, Dodgers, Padres, Boston(can argue not all that great) and Yankees he was not good. However, I fully agree, he still pitched well enough to be happy with how he closed out the season. People need to remember he missed a few weeks with COVID and if he was out all that time it will affect you.

History has shown small changes to relief pitchers can make huge pay offs for at least a season. Pagan has stuff, and if the team can get a small adjustment to get that to pay off, go for it. The guy we traded for, Lopez, had no success as a starter for most part. He went into pen and had a great year last year, until we traded for him. I am not saying slot Pagan back into closer role at all, but do not just DFA him. Let him come to camp, work on anything new, and see from there.

We should dump Garlick. He is a one trick pony that cannot seem to stay healthy enough to be all that reliable for that. I mean when you are on the team to hit just left handed pitching, you need to do that at such a high level to warrant taking up a roster spot on both 40 man and 26 man to justify it. I mean, how much of a difference does his very few at-bats against LF pitching does he make over the full season versus just about anyone else? I doubt it is that big of a difference to say he needs to stay. There is a reason he was available for us to begin with.

I doubt they will, unless no team offers him what he is seeking like Correa, and wants a "pillow" deal too. Personally, I think he was dumb for turning down the deal he did, even with the year he put up. He is one year older now, and maybe added a little bit of money to his deal, but I doubt he gets the payday he thinks he is worth. I am not saying he is not one of the best offensive guys in the game, and coming off of one of the best seasons ever. However, he is on the wrong side of 30, and many players show great regression. This is also, by far, the best year of career, with 2017, coming in second. If fans are expecting him to put up these numbers for the next 5 plus years, they will be disappointed. Will he still put up decent numbers for next 3 seasons, and still put up some 20 plus HR seasons into his later 30's, most likely. Will he be an MVP guy for next 3 to 8 years, doubtful. I would not want Twins to go after Judge if it meant more than a 4 year deal, and I am sure it will.

If they do make it, if they are asking Rogers to close out games they should just give up. He has blown a large percentage of his save chances with them, not that he has had a ton, but he has blown 3 and converted 3, not a good percentage 50%.

Twins have a lot of 40 man roster moving to deal with this off-season. They had so many on 60 man that when you look at the FA and most likely denied options, we still have 42 on current 40 man roster, I believe. Meaning we have to DFA 2 right off the bat. Then we need to decide who else gets cut to make room for the new guys coming in that need to be added. Right now we have 51 players on our 40 man, since SWR just got added. We have 8 either FA or likely opt outs, that being Archer, Bundy, Fulmer, Leon, Sanchez, Correa, Sano, and B Hamilton. That leaves 43 on a 40 man, mean 3 get DFA before we talk about others being added. I think fur sure DFA: Cave, Contreras, Smeltzer. That gets us to the 40. Then they have to decide who gets DFA and who gets added. SWR just did so he is a lock now. I agree with Julien and I think Canenterio will too, because a team could take him in rule 5, put him on 60 day for the season, or most of it and stash him in pen for the last few weeks if he ever is ready then they can send him down the next year. Unless we think he is never going to help us at MLB level I think they want to add him. To make room for those 2, I could see Garlick and Enlow get the DFA. Then if there is any other younger guys they want to make sure I think Sands or Stashak are next out. Of course some may not get claimed and may stay. The fact is all these 60 man IL moves really has crunched our roster decisions. Of course I agree SWR would have made the cut anyways and many of the add ons would have if needed as well, so not crazy, just made the moves early.

The biggest issue with him is the 40 man crunch coming up. As it sits even after you remove the FA and assuming we opt out of Sano, we have 42 guys on our 40 man roster right now, plus the few guys that will need to be added to save from rule 5 draft. That will need to be a factor. He is an average player, maybe slightly above, but in a perfect line up is he in the top of it? I would say no. His defense is inflated by the eye test. He looks like he makes great plays, which at times he did, but he missed a lot of plays too that were not errors but others could have made. Not only do we have Miranda, but depending on what we decide to do with FA and SS we have possibly Lewis to slide over, Arraez, not sure Gordon has the arm to play third but sure he could fill in if needed. I am not saying dump him, but I am far from the bring him back for sure stance. It will be a hard decision. Depending on how team feels about Lee it is possible he could come up, they have been very aggressive with him so far.

Did anyone really expect he would opt in? Baring an injury that was going to carry into next year, no way was he going to opt in. The question will be, what will others offer. We were able to sign him because he was not getting offers he expected, for whatever reason. Maybe, he was getting good offers but he was seeking better. Will he continue to hold out hoping for record deal, that may not be there? My biggest concern for him long term is I do not know how well he will age. Right now, and for the next 3 to 5 seasons he will be one of the best SS, maybe not the best, but up there. However, as he ages and most likely needs to move off SS, will his bat transition to 3b, the normal transition, or will he be a below value player then? Could the Twins spend to sign him to a deal he wants, sure. However, they need to assess the risk of those end of contract years, and are you willing to risk having an overpaid player that will need to play because of his pay, but may not be helping us win. If you think you can win a ship over that time of peak years, or you think he will age well, then do it. If not, then move on to plan B.

In terms of the FO, I will agree they did not go out and try to nab a starter like Rondon, or Thor, although we do not know if they sent out feelers and were rejected, we just assume based on reports we never showed interest, but we really do not know how contract talks with those players happened. That being said, Thor was nothing amazing. Many of the other free agent staters in our expected price range did not do anything too amazing. Yes, there was better guys out there, in hindsight, than Bundy and Archer, but we do not know if they would have been as good on the Twins as the team they were on. Rondon was the biggest miss if we could have signed, assuming he would have came here. Outside of that we did not have any huge swings and misses in my opinion. Keep in mind Archer and Bundy were only meant for 1 year deals, and many others got 2 to 3 year deals. In terms of planning for pen, if you look at the top 8 signed pen guys, all but 1 of which was to multi year deals, most did on par with some of our guys. Pen pitchers are hard to predict, just like how everyone was upset with Rogers being traded, he had a terrible year. Yes, who we got was not helpful this year, but Rogers after his first month and half has just been terrible overall. Had we kept him, would you say we should have expected that? In terms of the trades we made to fix the issues, well part was we had injuries to expected guys like Acala, Colome, and Stashak who were all hoping to contribute over the year, but all missed the full year. So yea, we needed to trade away some prospects, but as the 40 man roster crunch was going to lead to some trimming of possible prosects too this is a natural way. The top guy we traded was Steer, at least as of right now, some young pitchers that may pan out down the road, but Steer was the closest to help us. He had an below average debut this year, and was like 4th on our depth chart of infield prospects behind, Lewis, Lee, Martin, and possible Julien. With Gordon emerging as another viable MLB guy, Steer was very dispensable, and would have been traded this offseason most likely anyways.

I will agree with the Miranda take, he showed he could be a bat, but still has much room to grow. If you take out his first few weeks it looks even better, but he is not a superstar yet. In terms of the Gray take, I would say he can be a 1 or 2 on a winning team, but it requires a good pen as well, something we were not great with this year. Gordon I have to fully disagree with the requirement of your number 5 picks having to be stars. First, just looking at his draft, the number 1 and number 2 drafted guys never even made the majors, and the number 6 has done basically nothing. The number 1 pick was by Houston who had back to back number 1 picks that did nothing for them and they still doing just fine. I will agree it does not help when your high first round picks are not all-stars, but they are not required to be for team success. In terms of Gordon himself, he finally was given a real shot at this level, and he produced above replacement level. He really only was given a full chance later in the year. He has only played 70 full games out of the 130 he has played. He started about 100. So he was still not given a full run all season, but still put up a 1.6 WAR, if he was given a full season of playing full games, provided he had similar numbers, he would be around a 3 WAR I would guess, that is not too bad, is it elite no, but it is better than many. Sure, he may not do that over a full year and maybe he did well based on his use, but I expect if he is given a real shot over the next 4 to 5 years he will be good to great. Will he carry the team, doubtful, but I would be more than willing to see him hitting in the bottom half the lineup regularly. Ryan, I think it will come down to how much more he develops at the MLB level. I am hopeful a full spring training where he can work with coaches to really develop a second pitch should help him. If he can develop a second pitch he will be just fine. I agree with Wallner, lets wait and see on him. Sure he has done fine in minors and had a nice little story so far, but I am not counting on him to help much next year, as he will strike out a ton, and once more tape is on him, he will need to adjust quickly.

I agree with the assertion that the core is what led to the downfall. Buck going down as usual, Polonco going down was big, but it did let Gordon show his stuff on everyday basis. Arraez has been ehh, but I wonder if that is more so based on just wearing down, he has played career high in games this year and wonder if his body is just not used to it. Kepler is who he is. His season numbers are on par with his career numbers, except for a little less power, which may be of concern. That being said, I am not ready to move on from Arraez at all. Polonco if we can find a taker I would be willing to move on from him, as we have plenty of possible fill ins. Kepler, I would not dump him but similar I would be willing to move on from him, and if we do not, drop him to bottom third of line up.

One thing people need to remember, is he was a high prospect for a reason. That does not mean he will have success, but many gave up on Nick Gordon in the organization. Many fans wanted him cut or traded coming into the year. They were calling him a bust. He is now 26 and his numbers are very similar a Jose Miranda, who people are all over saying he is amazing, he is 24. Aside from a few more HR for Miranda the numbers are nearly the same. That being said, Martin had a down year, Gordon would have several down years. We talked for years Gordon needed to add to power, and kept repeating levels. Now, Gordon had reasons he never built up the muscle to add to the power, until now, but point is, still a little early for some to give up on Martin. Will he be a superstar, maybe maybe not, but he is 24, and next season will be a big season for him to see where he falls in the pecking order, but since he came back from his wrist injury he is back to what he was doing last year. Hopefully he can an minimum develop some power, but look at Arraez, he was an OBP guy, with little power, but he develop some this year as well. Hopefully AFL, and normal spring training will help Martin develop and can push his way into the lineup. He will have his work cut out, being Lewis should be back, Gordon has shown value, Miranda has shown value, and Lee may have leapfrogged him. However, if he can play CF on defense and can get on base at high clip he will have value when Buck gets hurt next year.

The question is how do you determine MVP. Most will look to say, if we took player x off the team where would they be. The Angels would be terrible either way, as they were terrible this year after their hot start. Yankees most likely would have still competed for title even without Judge. Personally, I would take Ohtani on the team over Judge, but Judge will win the MVP based on what he has done and where his team is. Also, in the second half, if Judge was not playing the Yankees may have played themselves out of the playoffs, despite having a huge lead at one point. In the second half Judge was the only hitter doing much for Yankees on regular basis. Ohtani is crazy good, and his next contract will be crazy to value. I mean he can be a top of rotation arm, which is worth nearly 30 mil a year generally, but then you add in fact he will also hit at near elite level. If he was just the DH he would still look to pull in close to 20 mil a year I bet. His bat would earn him more if he played defense, which I bet he could but team keeps him at DH to protect arm and less possible injuries. Does that mean he will earn close to 50 mil a year? It will be fun to hear the numbers for him. I sure wish the Twins could be in on that, but no way they will.

Lee, Martin, Julien, and Lewis will all be fighting for at-bats at MLB level in next year or two. Similar to when we thought we had a vast amount of corner OF, DH, 1b guys a couple years ago. One reason we were able to trade Steer, who would have been right in that same mix with the 4 mentioned above. Similar to our glut of corner OF guys it will shake out, but hopefully not because of injuries. You can throw Gordon into the mix too after this season he had. I have high hopes for Lee and Lewis as stars, with Martin as a good on-base guy that can steal. Julien may be able to hit, but his limited defense may be his shortfall if he does not overhit.

For the commentors that point to championships as the reason baseball may have more parity than other sports, who seem to have more repeats over short periods of time, that is not what I was getting at. I agree, baseball has a lot of parity in champions, mainly because baseball in a short series is so hard to predict. The 162 game season is a slog, then it all comes down to best of 3, 5, 7, and 7 games, is very hard to say the best team will always win. However, what I was mainly pointing out is the fact we have similarly the same few teams make the playoffs each year. Yes, you have a pop up team here or there but their runs are normally short to 1 or 2 years in a short period. Maybe it is just poor run teams, as Tampa continues to compete for playoff spots over and over despite never having major FA signings, or retaining their big names into their 30's. The Twins have been one of the teams that have made the playoffs a lot over the last 20 years. Overall, there is parity in the A.L. Central I would say over the last 20 years. However, there are a few teams in last 20 years that always seem to be in the playoffs, and several that never even compete. Outside of the Royals 2 years they generally are in the bottom. Baltimore has been near the bottom for most of the last 20 years. There are many other teams that do not make the playoffs, save for a year or two hear and there. Yes, you can point to a year where a team did well out of the normal few, but Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, Braves, and St. Louis, have made playoffs just about every for last 20 years. There are other teams that have had some decent runs for like 5 years, Oakland for instance did have 2 good runs over the last 20 years, or Tampa Bay has done well, but they are normally taking over other teams, not the ones I listed. The parity is between everyone but those top few teams. Now, it is not just money spent as Braves and St. Louis are not always near the top in spending, but clearly they spend well and develop well. Oakland in their stints did it not through spending big bucks of course. I have long stated having the top spending team does not mean winning ships or even for sure making playoffs, look at Angels, Phillies, Padres, right now in having huge contracts but not winning. However, it sure helps when your team misses on a draft pick, or something like that.

First, in terms of the other leagues there is not perfect parity, and in part each has its reason. However, in NFL they are much closer to it, and that is in part to the short careers, high injuries, and the like. Of course when one team has a dominate QB they will be more likely to win, but teams will move from to top to bottom and bottom to top much faster, provided the management is not terrible, than any other sport. In terms of NBA the top players will tend to win out normally, and in a full series the better team will normally win. However, due to shorter contracts, limits on max contracts per team, unless guys are willing to take a pay cut to play with certain guys or in a certain city, players get moved around more. Normally it is the poor managed teams that always fail, ala the Timberwolves for years who drafted badly, but you do get some cities that draw the stars to work together. I do not follow the NHL or how they go about their business. Just because 1 team has had a good run lately does not mean they will always be near the top though. Is TB always a favored championship team and do all the top FA generally go there as well as many of the top international players? I do not know so honestly asking.

Sorry fixed my error.

First, what is parity, and what would it look like? Parity is the general competitive overturn of teams throughout the sport without long term dynasties and long term droughts. Baseball has normally been a sport without much parity for various reasons. I will not get into those reasons, but there has long term been a few teams near the top, and a several teams near the bottom, and normally takes several seasons to make the swap, unless it is a big market team. For me it would look like similar to NFL where little prediction carries all the way through the season. Now, it will be hard to get that, just based on the sport, the season length and all that. However, we still keep seeing the same few teams near the top and outside a few blips here and there, the same teams near the bottom. For whatever reason, when we think some teams will make pushes, mainly Angels, they fail to do so, and when we think a team may be dropping off due to aging players, injuries or other things they still seem to stay near top, again save for like the Red Sox who seem to every other year bounce from contender to near last in division every few years. Do we want parity? I personally like it. I like to see the bottom feeding teams to surprise people and to have teams like the Dodgers and Yankees to actually fall back to the pack. I think it is more entertaining and creates better stories to follow. I mean when teams are out of contention in August fans stop watching. I guess if you do not want to watch a full season it is nice to know that your team is out and move onto a different sport, but I personally like meaningful baseball in September. I like to see the story lines of teams fighting for spots in playoffs. How do we get parity? Well, the MLB plan was to increase the playoff spots, hoping that would create the late season drama, or least they claimed that, but really I think it was to get more money for playoff games. However, the first year with the increased wild card team has only 1 race in all of baseball with still a week and half left to play. That 1 race is the NL wild card between Phillies, Padres, and Brewers. Yes, technically there are still mathematical rases and Braves and Mets are still fighting for division race, but that is basically it. It would take complete collapse for some teams to miss playoffs and others to make it, maybe that will be a story. The MLBPA think you can get parity by having a draft lottery to help eliminate tanking, assuming that now teams will not gut their teams to play to the bottom. However, two teams gutted their teams this year, A's and Reds. Also, the MLBPA think if you lift the tax more teams will sign FA, but look at the Rangers and Tigers, or the Angels for last 2 decades, have made big FA signings only to be near the bottom this year. Yes, some teams that made big signings are fighting for playoffs, like Seattle who is expected to make wild card. However, they were on the verge last year too, so not like they flew from near bottom to near top, they actually won more games last year than they are on pace this year. Rangers tried to jump from bottom to top, but so far only jumped ahead of the tanking A's. Will the anti-tanking draft lead to changes down road, maybe, but I have argued it will not due to the nature of the draft. Is there another way to get parity? Maybe. I could through out some extreme ways, like a redraft of players each year like a fantasy draft, but that would never happen. So something that could happen, but still think players will never go for it, despite their argument they want parity as well. Put in a salary cap, floor, and max contract lengths, and restrictions on moving players similar to NBA rules. I believe this will lead to parity, because it would prevent the big market teams from being able to sign all the top FA, which is not the best way to build a team but helps make up for mistakes in other areas, even prior FA signings. It would prevent teams like the Yankees for trading for guys like Stanton for almost nothing just to get the salary dump. It will allow smaller market teams to compete in FA because they can take on more short term money over 2 to 3 years, but need to be risk adverse from the 7 to 10 year deals. If the max length was say 4 years with a super max like NBA at 5 years, you would see much more smaller market teams making bids for 4 year deals I would think. Also, if the max value was based off a percent of the cap, then there is little a big market team could do. Now, I doubt this will ever happen, and it would not work just like the NBA, but something similar I think would help. I believe until that happens we will just see the same way of small markets building through draft, international signings, and trying to win trades, selling guys off before their value peaks like the Rays do, or similar to what Royals did several years ago, build the team and hold off with an all in push knowing you will get a chance but will have years of rebuild ahead. With the big markets continue to filling missed draft or international signing holes with trades pricy vets and big FA signings, never facing much backlash for a bad signing, unlike a mid or small market team. Do we want a change, I do, but does the league? I think the league does somewhat, because they want ratings still high in September. Do the players? I think they want all the teams spending more money on players, but not for sure parity, just more spending. Do you as a fan want more parity or are you happy with how the game is now? If you want parity, do you think it is possible and how?