gunnarthor

There are at 105m payroll already. I think that probably takes Arrieta, Lynn and Cobb out. They might be able to push to 115 or even 120 (but they'll sell off really quick if they aren't in it to save the Pohlads some money). I think realistically we're going to get someone like Jaime Garcia or maybe a trade for Odorizzi. This really shouldn't be surprising. Pohlads took Falvey from Cleveland and they built their teams through FA and drafts. We aren't going to be a big payroll team. Levine and Falvey are going to be following the Ryan model and we just hope that they do it even better.

Depends on what you mean by top FA. Both Nolasco and Santana were top 10 FA in their respective years. If you mean shelling out for Darvish or someone even more expensive, no. The Pohlads still own this team.

Jaffe doesnm't really fit in SI. SI is more reporting and fangraphs is more analyzing (or trying to). Jaffe seems a better fit it fangraphs. I'm not sure it says anything about either publication.

The Twins have been very aggressive since Steil took over in 2012.

This does look like a pretty good offseason for ownership to use some of that saved money since cutting paryoll in 2012 and push this team over the top. They won't, of course. But it would be nice.

One of my favorite guys. I expect he'll be on national rankings a year from now. Hopefully he continues with the strong eye at the plate and gathers a lot of walks. (Also realized that his fellow second rounder, Jose Miranda, probably won't be in the top 20. That's a shame. I like him a lot, too)

I guess I don't get your anger. Sports is a billion dollar industry. It's not a game. It's very hard work. I'd rather that the players get paid more and owners get paid less. That's basically the only two options. Ticket prices aren't going down. Fans aren't going to get a discount. The game is incredibly popular now and that's because the players, not the owners, have made it so. Why on earth anyone would root for the owners to make more money is beyond me.

I'm not sure TF's RF is the easiest. I'm pretty sure Comerica is the hardest RF in baseball by a considerable margin. But any RF with Buxton in CF is going to look easier. That said, I'd still rather have Kepler out there than Martinez. And I'd rather have Martinez DHing pretty much anyone else but I don't think we have the money for these kind of things.

I think the owners 'tank to win' narrative is overstated. To the extent that they needed to, the Cubs, especially, but even the Astros spent a lot of money. I think owners have seen how the Astros and Marlins have tanked and still brought in record profits when they were losing 100 games and had zero ratings. The tank to win thing just gives them cover. If half the teams in the league are trying to lose to get the #1 pick and more international pool money, it's not going to be a workable solution.

For whatever it's worth, I wanted Wright but am happy about how the draft itself worked out.

You're getting too much into the weeds. Yes, a picture can be racist and the racist caricature of Chief Wahoo is quite clearly racist. I'm not sure why you'd want to get into a definition argument over this but there have been many court cases (and many more settlements) where courts and fact finders have found drawings, imagery, flyers and graffiti to be racist.

True but I think Martinez if DH only at this point. He's not a good defender and he's getting older. I like having a rangy OF and with Mauer gone in a year, we can slide Sano there. Sano/Martinez back to back is pretty scary.

There probably is some collusion. It's hard to prove but I'm sure the league and some important owners have decided that salaries are going to remain low or grow slower than revenues would suggest. Steve Adams reported a bit on this fight at mlbtraderumors. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/02/scott-boras-dan-halem-mlb-free-agency.html "“I find it interesting that free agents have nine-figure offers since the CBA mandates that teams not share that sort of information,” said Boras. “I am also curious how a public statement communicated to all teams about offers on the table and players demanding too much money from a central league office … is any different from the infamous ’information bank’ in the 1980s.” .... To Boras’ credit, it does seem curious that the league’s statement would openly acknowledge the size of offers that some players have received. In addition to running counter to the CBA, the comments hardly paint players in a favorable light at a time in which commissioner Rob Manfred is spearheading efforts to broadly expand the game’s appeal to a younger audience. If anything, today’s statement only furthers the popular “greedy player” narrative — one which often ignores that the alternative is for the even wealthier owners to simply pocket money not spent on player contracts. While those numbers weren’t exactly a secret after being leaked to the media by various sources, likely from both the agent and team side of the equation in various cases, it was nonetheless surprising to see the league stating those numbers in a factual manner (even if it was merely in reference to media reports; it’s not clear which was the case in this instance)."

The solution is to not have racist logos. It's really not that hard and kudos for Cleveland for finally figuring that out.

Players have been screwed over by owners much more than the other way around. The owners that were part of collusion in the 80s should have been kicked out of the game. I'm pretty sure there's collusion now but it'll be hard for the players to prove it. I think it sucks that Pohlad will make more money while the players make less.

I like the idea of Martinez to spite Boston. The Twins outbid Boston!!! Woo-hoo!! But we really need pitching. I expect that we will sign Garcia and that's it.

This group looks nice. Garver and Wade seem to be back-ups but that's not a horrible thing. Wade might be underrated a bit around here because of the things he can't do while we are ignoring the thing he can do very well - not make outs. Diaz and Thorpe are the two guys with upside. Thorpe might be close, actually. I think he'll start the year in AA. Diaz is apparently better than his stats so far but it would be nice if his stats improved this year. Littel seems like he'll make his ML debut this year. He could be another solid innings eating back-end starter that we used to collect. That's not a bad thing.

That's interesting. I wonder if they are looking at "late inning RP" more as (if we're talking prospects) guys like Burdi or maybe Jay (when healthy) rather than just an arm. Even if Jorge was moved the pen, I suspect he'd be seen as a longman/swingman type and not a closer or elite arm. I think the idea that any starting pitcher can become a relief pitcher is probably overstated a bit even though a bunch of failed starters have become good relievers, not every failed starter can become a reliever.

Nah, the bullpen was horrible last year. We used two starting pitchers in our wildcard game. It needs to be upgraded. And I'm much more confident in our offensive nucleus than anything else. We'll have a good offense again. I agree that we need to upgrade our rotation but these improvements to the pen are pretty solid, too.

Nice start to the list. I think Jay is probably closer to 10 than 20 but there's probably not a lot of difference between 12 and 19 on this years list. It's a deep system. Rortvedt is a sleeper. I like him a lot. He's not the next Joe Mauer but I think he can be a solid ML starting catcher, which is hard to find. I forgot about Sevirino but he could be fun to watch develop. The scouting reports on him were mixed but if the Twins can fix the concern some have in his swing maybe he can become a poor man's Willie Calhoun? I'm blah on Jorge. He'll probably get some time in the majors this year but I think he's a AAAA type. Hope I'm wrong. This is a big year for Blankenhorn. He'll be 22. Time to see him put up better numbers.

Today sucked. I don't think we've "lost" that much in one day since 08. Wells Fargo had a very bad day. Not sure I'd jump into the market too soon. I think some of this is value correction and it might make sense to wait to see since this bull market has been going pretty long. Fortunately, I don't have a lot of cash on hand anyway.

Morris will be hard to top. My first thought was Reggie Jackson but you already checked that. My second thought was Joe Carter and you already checked him. I found this but this is cumulative, not one game. https://www.sporcle.com/games/big8dog88/mlb-world-series-win-probability-added

Uff-da. Maybe I should have wished for Yvonne Strahovski ...

I don't think the Dems have that much to worry about, frankly. Clinton was a horrible candidate but she still beat Trump by 3m votes or so. Gerrymandering has made some things more difficult but not impossible. They won Alabama. They've won a number of special elections. They are campaigning against Trump. In the last decade we've seen the Dems pass pretty progressive legislation nationally. They need to start worrying more about the state levels - and they are - and their national bench is a bit thin but they have some rising potential stars. The last few election cycles were rough for Dems and 2018 isn't ideal but they'll probably pick up the House and maybe the Senate and that should continue through to 2020 if the GOP is still Trump-level crazy.

I think you can summarize his position on some players. I'd be interested in knowing how he feels about some of our low A and lower talent.