gunnarthor

So if you think the Twins haven't spent as much as they could over the last four years (which covers two different front offices) isn't the problem ownership? And we have a pretty long history of ownership being the problem. So why should we expect this to change now? They've stayed cheap and got to the playoffs.

You know, that's a fair point and one I didn't really look into much. In 2021 Sano, Rosario, Kepler, Buxton, Rogers, Duffey will all be in their third arbitration year and Polanco and Berrios will be in Arb 2. Imagine those 8 could easily make 80m combined in 2021 but admittedly, I haven't run any numbers. Payroll will probably remain around 115m (until Pohlads show that they'll increase payroll, I think it's fair to say it'll stay in the current range). 2021 season will be midway through a six year Darvish deal so (in this example), he'd be making 25m in 2021, 2022 and 2023. (A four year Arrieta deal might be more helpful in that example). I think determining how much dead weight we could carry in 2021 and beyond has a lot to do with two things we don't really know right now - future payroll (I tend to be pessimistic on it) and arbitration or extension salaries to that young core. Next years free agency group is probably going to push salaries up throughout the game and if the Pohlads don't follow suit, they'd be left behind.

No one has suggested they don't spend. This very thread has suggested that they make another Santana like signing. What some of us are saying - and supplying some data - is that long term free agent pitchers are extremely dangerous and several deals greater than this bin have been disasters. Had the Twins signed Anibal Sanchez as you wanted, they probably don't make the playoffs this year. This years crop of FA pitchers is pretty blah. Only three pitchers - now that Tanaka is staying put - are likely to get contracts above Ervin Santana's contract - Darvish, Arriata and Lynn. (And Lynn will be pretty close). None of them are worth it.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/11/rays-will-extend-qualifying-offer-to-alex-cobb.html So this means Cobb could take a one year, 17.4m deal. If he rejects it, the team compensation depends on how much he signs for. Here's the primer: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/08/offseason-primer-the-new-qualifying-offer-rules.html If I read that correctly, if the Twins sign Cobb for less than 50m, they'd lose their third highest pick in the upcoming draft.

Looks a lot better when we can say we have the better pitcher and spending 50m less over the remaining value of the two contracts. And you bring up a good point - just because Lester gets paid more doesn't mean he'll be the better pitcher. I think it's quite possible that Alex Cobb will be a better bet over the next four years than Arrieta over four years, for example. (And you are right that player's salaries in general are underpaid, especially guys under team control before they get to free agency. If there's a side, I'd take the players over ownership every time. But this isn't really relevant. Lester has a pretty good agent who got him his deal as the player wanted. But that's the system we have and the system we have to discuss when we try and think about what the Twins FO should do going forward. A system that would let players opt out of contracts if they overperformed is pretty interesting but not really what this thread is about).

Actually, a Sanchez deal would have probably kept the Twins from signing Santana and miss the playoffs this year because the money we would have spent on Santana would have gone to Sanchez (and then some) who was, of course, awful this year. The Twins have limited payroll. It's probably going to stay around 110-115m for the foreseeable future. Is giving 22% of our payroll to Arrieta for the next four years a great idea?

The first. The second is just a strawman and not really relevant to anything except turning this thread into a Ryan discussion instead of why we shouldn't spend outside of the second tier of FA pitchers.

That's really not true. If you sign Arrieta (for example) at 4/100 you are going to limit future options, regardless of how he pitches in the future. Would you trust that Arrieta would be worth twice what Cobb is going to be worth over the next four years? I think you're really ignoring how bad a Sanchez like deal would affect the Twins in 2019 and beyond. On paper, it would be great to be able to spend whatever we wanted but since we have some of the worst owners in sports you have to take those limitations into consideration. Misspent money is going to affect this team a lot more than it'll affect other teams.

Nor should a player walk away from that money so the billionaire owners can save it.

Ryan's plan got us a couple elite pitchers and kept a small market team in contention for basically a decade. So it does seem likley that a guy who came from Cleveland would follow the ideas of Ryan and try and do them better. So far that's more or less what we've seen. Whether Falvey and Levine will be more willing to trade minor league assests is to be determined but small free agent deals, rule v pickups, waiver claims, cheap bullpen arms - the current FO's first year looked a lot like a Ryan year.

Santana and Nolasco both got roughly the 4/48m deal from the Twins in free agency. Here's a list of all the pitchers who got bigger deals from 13-16. In 2013 the big three deals were for Grienke, Edwin Jackson and Anibal Sanchez. Grienke's been great although his contract had an opt out that he used to sign with the Dbacks. Sanchez and Jackson were horrible. Both contracts are now over and they combined for 9 years, about 1000 innings, nearly $125m and 3 WAR. The Cubs and Tigers, of course, could afford that. In 2014- Tanaka, Garza and Ubaldo Jimenz. Tanaka was a bit special as a FA from Japan and younger than most. The Yankees gave him a 7/155 deal which hasn't been bad so far although this was a bit of down year. Garza, Jiminez and Nolasco all got about the same deal and Nolasco was probably the best of them. In 2015 Scherzer, Lester and Shields got signed for more than Santana. Lester had two good years but was not good this year and is trending down. He'll be 34 next year and owed 85m over the next three seasons (counting the buy out). Scherzer got a 7/210 deal and has been awesome so far. Shields, 25/year, has been a disaster. And before the 2016 season the big deals were David Price, Grienke, Johnny Cueto, Jordan Zimmerman, Jeff Samardzija, Wei-Yin Chen, Mike Leake, Ian Kennedy and Scott Kazmir. All nine of those guys got bigger deals than Ervin. Price had a great first year but was injured and feuding with the media and is still owed nearly 160m. Greinke is good. Cueto put up a 93 ERA+ and is injured. Zimmerman was worse than Kyle Gibson this year. He'll be 32 next year and still owed 75m. Shark's been serviceable but he's never been as good as his rep. Chen's been a disaster (Miami would trade him to us for nothing). Leake was already traded for nothing and two teams are dividing his salary. Kazmir missed the entire season and Kennedy sucks. That's 18 deals and a heck of a lot of misses. Unsurprisingly, older pitchers are worse bets. And the best deals were the absolute most expensive ones as guys like Grienke and Scherzer can command a lot more than Darvish money, and there is no Grienke in this FA class. Pitchers with past injury history or limited innings tended to be bad gambles (and pitchers with good track records of innings and performance were good, until they went bad). And Tanaka, a young arm from Japan, was a different kind of gamble. If the Twins get someone like Alex Cobb at 4/48 and he busts, we can probably work around it. If the Twins get Darvish at 6/150 and he busts, we probably can't. If the Twins can get someone like Alex Cobb or, even better, trade for a younger pitcher than those eligible for free agency, it would probably be a safer way to improve the rotation.

Actually, I would doubt that. With our young offensive talent, I would imagine most pitchers would say "yeah, I'm what they need." But ownership is going to limit what bin we can look in. If we can get a Cobb like signing, that's probably the best we could realistically hope for.

Sure, there are ways to improve other than pitching although that's the obvious upgrade. But they don't need us making Anibal Sanchez contracts. Would you agree that a rotation (ignoring the bullpen for a moment) of Berrios, Alex Cobb and Ervin Santana could be a good enough top 3 for a playoff team?

I tend to think that Ryan took a lot of bullets for the Pohlad family. We'll see what happens now. One thing that has always bothered me about the ownership is that they had years where they 'saved' money by playing the young guys but they've never saved that money for seasons where going over was needed.

And I also pointed out that the Giants won it with a pitching staff WAR of 9 and the Cards did it with an 8. Or the Astros relatively low 13 this year. It's not just the Royals. There are a lot of exceptions to whatever arbitrary line you are making. And the Dodgers and Nationals (and Tigers) have failed in the postseason with some of the greatest pitching staffs ever. You can win the World Series if your #1 starter is just a 4 WAR type pitcher. It's happened a lot over the last few years. There are a lot of ways for the Twins to move from an 85 win team to 90+. Improving the bullpen and rotation seem like the easiest. That doesn't mean that the Twins need to waste 160m on Darvish (and we have 20 years of history that says we won't do that). Adding Cobb to our nucleus could be enough. Berrios looks like a stud in the making. If those are your first two arms and Santana is #3, that's not a bad rotation on paper. We have two top 100 prospects in AAA this year (Romero and Gonsalves) and a few other arms not far behind that are worth being excited about (Thorpe being a really intriguing sleeper) as well.

Sure, WAR is just one stat, I've also pointed out the low ERA+ as well. The point is we need better starters. But better starters could mean Cobb and not Darvish, for instance.

Can we get this thread to hit 10 pages?

I think you're taking a few things out of context (again) and moving goalposts. You originally suggested that teams need one or two "impact" pitchers. Now you want to look at staffs. Either way, it really just depends on what you think of as impact. For example, the Cards 4 starters were pitching in the NL. Carpenter was legit good but Jackson and Garcia had WARs under 1.0, Westbrook was in negative territory. Lohse was 2.3. They had some good relief pitchers but overall, it wasn't that impressive. Team wise, they had 9 WAR. Frankly, they really weren't too far off from where the Twins were this year. The 2012 Giants had 5 starters w/184ip. That is true. What you didn't mention was that Lincecum was really, really bad and, as a staff, they managed only 8 WAR. I did mention that Cain and Bumgarner were their two best pitchers but neither was anything special. You didn't say anything really different than what I said about the 2014 Giants squad. Casilla, Machi, Affeldt were all good relief arms for them that year. They had a solid pen but I don't think anyone on that staff would be called impactful. And if they are, then yes, the Twins could find some similar arms. The Mets certainly had better arms than these Giant and Cards teams but again, they didn't really have anything too impactful. They had a couple guys with 4+ WAR seasons but not above it. Could a Berrios, Cobb, Santana front three (as I suggested) come close to what the Mets group kicked out? Maybe.

Cobb makes sense. I still want them to make a trade for a starter (Gausman, Cole, Odorizzi? (is he fixable or does he just suck now?), Archer, DeGrom etc).

Might depend on what you mean by impact. The Royals won the WS when their best pitcher was Edison Volquez and Chris Young. Obviously, they had a great bullpen and amazing team defense. The 2015 Mets pitching staff wasn't that great either but was certainly better than the Twins this year. The 2014 Giants had a team ERA+ of 99 but rode Bumgarner (4.0 WAR pitcher) and Jake Peavy down the stretch. They beat a Royals team with 3 solid starters but none had a WAR above 4. The 2012 Giants pitching staff was actually worse than 2014. Bumgarner and Cain were both good but again both were sub 4.0 WAR pitchers. 2011 Cards had Chris Carpenter and nothing - Kyle Lohse was their second best starter. So a World Series team doesn't need a bunch of 4+ WAR pitchers. That helps, of course. But could Berrios and, say, Alex Cobb and Ervin Santana be a strong enough front of the rotation for the Twins? Maybe?

I think, with the exception of the extensions, this is fairly realistic. Tillman and Reynolds are the type of free agents they might be able to afford and that still might let them get a decent bullpen arm as well. I'm not sure they could afford both Shaw and McGee but the idea is about right. I didn't follow Baltimore much last year but their entire pitching staff seemed to have a lost season. I wonder if the FO thinks we could 'fix' whatever went wrong for Tillman because he was absolutely horrible last year. I'd also like to look at potential trades for Gausman.

Myth 1 isn't a myth. Ownership is not going to add much. I'd be stunned if we were over 115m and I agree that number is optimistic. We have 20+ years of proof of the Pohlad's spending habits. Ryan wasn't the problem. The Pohlads didn't want to spend money in Latin America - Ryan begged them for 1.5 to get Cabrera! - they didn't spend on the draft - which is why we drafted guys like Revere and Span - they don't lock up our own guys at market rates (except for Mauer whose contract coincided with the taxpayers giving them a new stadium) so we lost guys like Hunter and Santana. That's why the 2000s were so amazing, the players and FO were competitive despite ownership, not because of it. If the Pohlads were going to change they wouldn't have hired Falvey, a young kid who would work cheap and came from an org that didn't spend much on free agency. We've already had Levine talk about payroll remaining low. Ownership won't sign a big free agent now because doing so would harm our chances of locking up the young core in the future. Of course, they won't do that either but they'll wait a few years to drop that bomb on us.

Well hopefully he has a fast recovery but I think it means the Twins can't really plan on him being third this year.

Sure, we could find a guy like Adrianza and bat him ninth. With the expected improvement from Buxton and Kepler, our offense shouldn't take too much of a dive down. That said, I don't think Polanco is a fit for Pitt if they were to trade Cole. But I like the idea of getting him.