John Bonnes

It's very hard to estimate the return necessary in a trade, so by definition you're taking a leap of faith by estimating that. I appreciate that. It's not easy to do as a writer. That said, I agree - that seems like a lot for Boston and not enough for Colorado. A couple of random observations: 1) Balazovic seems like the "prospect everyone is willing to trade" this offseason. I wonder why that is. Perhaps he's just in that sweet spot of "highly rated" and "not around long enough for me to be kind of attached to him yet." 2) I'd give up Sano in a trade for someone - but I don't know exactly who right now. I'm just so excited to see what he can be next year. Probably irrationally so. 3) Do we now if Jon Gray is on the market? I have to imagine not, given the surgery thing, but maybe that makes him that much more attainable.

That's just an amazing roster. I can argue with specifics, and will likely add my own blueprint at some point (and I'd encourage everyone else to publish their own in the Twins Talk forum) but it illustrates a fundamental truth: this team is positioned to get a whole lot better without breaking the bank this offseason. The whole "the Pohlads need to spend more" argument is essentially a red herring this offseason. Whether you believe it or not (and I do), it shouldn't matter much. Falvey and Levine have positioned this team to be able to make a lot of big moves with or without financial restrictions. That Nick can make all these additions and still stay at about $140M illustrates that.

That's an interesting thought. I'm pretty sure it's been done for key coaches in other organizations, like a hitting coach or a pitching coach. But usually that coach is already where wants to be. He doesn't want to continue climbing up the ladder to eventually become a manager. If the desire of a coach is to continue growing in their career towards becoming a major league manager (or a general manager), then what kind of contract would they accept that limits that? These kind of opportunities don't come every year. Is a guy really going to accept sitting in a job he feels he's already mastered for three more years while better jobs go to someone else? Maybe, if the compensation is really good, but it's akin to trying to tell a guy at AA that he needs to stay there for several years, rather than go to AAA with another organization. Even if you pay him really well, the point of the journey is to continue the upward climb, not get paid well.

I'm open to something like this, but my question is: do we think Polanco's arm can handle third base? It's his biggest weakness (IMHO) at shortstop. I also just looked up his minor league career. He's only had two starts there above rookie league in his minor league career. He also played nine games there in the majors in 2016. If he can handle it, I Iike this plan quite a bit, and might be worth keeping in mind for 2021, if not 2020. Sano isn't getting any younger. I'd love to see Polanco get some time at 3B in spring training, or maybe if he plays in a winter league.

Aaron and John talk about Jake Odorizzi's big decision, trying to bring back Sergio Romo and Jason Castro, losing Kohl Stewart and Stephen Gonsalves, front office promotions, emailing with the mayor's wife, and big ideas for the infield corners. You can listen by downloading us from iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio or find it at GleemanAndTheGeek.com. Or just click this link. http://traffic.libsy...3?dest-id=74590 Click here to view the article

I really like opt-out contract idea. That's very interesting.

The Twins announced a flurry of moves yesterday, including giving a qualifying offer to Jake Odorizzi. Odorizzi now needs to make a decision next week, and the move greatly increases his chances of remaining with the Twins next year, essentially leaving them two spots and $52 million dollars to rebuild their starting rotation.A qualifying offer is a way teams can get some compensation for a free agent who leaves their team. It’s similar to a “franchise tag” in the NFL. A team can give a qualifying offer, which has two parts, one pretty good for the player and one very bad for the impending free agent: It gives the player an offer for a one-year contract at the median salary of the top 100 players in MLB, which this year is $17.8M. The player can accept or reject this offer. That’s the pretty good part.The very bad part is that if the player rejects the offer, any team that signs him will need to give up a second- or third- round draft pick, which hurts the player’s free agent value.Odorizzi, who is only 29 years old and posted a 3.51 ERA last year, would probably be offered a three- or four- year guaranteed contract in free agency if no draft pick was attached. But by giving him a qualifying offer, he becomes less appealing than at least a few other similar free agents who have no such draft pick attached, like Cole Hamels and Dallas Keuchel. He goes from probably the sixth most appealing free agent pitcher on the market to the eighth best. That’s not a huge drop, but free agency has changed a lot the last two years. There are only so many teams that are willing to drop $15M per year or more on a starting pitcher. If Odorizzi can’t guarantee at least a three-year deal for upwards of $40M, he is probably better off taking the $17.8M deal and trying again next year. A player can only get a qualifying offer once in his career, so Odorizzi would be free and clear next year. He’ll still only be 30 years old, and - provided he has a similar year – a stronger resume, setting him up for a long-term deal. (Let’s not forget that Odorizzi’s combined ERA in 2017 and 2018 was 4.33.) Maybe most importantly, it’s a weaker free agent class; he could be the third best or maybe even second best starting pitcher on the market next year. If Odorizzi decides against accepting the offer, he might want to have a guaranteed multi-year contract in hand before he has to make a decision by 11/14. That is a tight timeline in what has been a slow-moving free agent market over the last couple of years. Weighing those options, it’s hard to see how Odorizzi would not accept the qualifying offer and return to the Twins next year on the $17.8M, one-year deal in 2020. Click here to view the article

Aaron and John talk about the many paths the Twins can take to rebuild their rotation, saying goodbye to Sam Dyson, claiming Matt Wisler, how to approach the qualifying offer with Jake Odorizzi and Michael Pineda, and Derek Shelton remaining in limbo. You can listen by downloading us from iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio or find it at GleemanAndTheGeek.com. Or just click this link. http://traffic.libsy...3?dest-id=74590 Click here to view the article

Spit out my tea at "startling variety of woodland creatures".

Aaron and John talk about the Twins losing hitting coach James Rowson, Royce Lewis winning MVP of the Arizona Fall League, the team's most valuable long-term building blocks, what happened 28 years ago, and the making of playoff legacies. You can listen by downloading us from iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio or find it at GleemanAndTheGeek.com. Or just click this link. Click here to view the article

Throughout the season, the Twins bullpen was a concern. Should it be a concern this offseason? Who better to ask than former Twins closer, three-time All-Star , Fox Sports North analyst and closet nerd Glen Perkins? In this year’s Twins Daily Offseason Handbook, Perkins dives into the improvement of the Twins relief corps (and core). As a former reliever, he’s able to share changes the pitchers made that increased their effectiveness beyond their projections back in April. Like this:Throughout the 2019 season Littell found himself on the Rochester-to-Minnesota shuttle. Most times it was not due to performance, but by being one of the few guys who had options. When he returned to Minnesota on July 3rd he was a new pitcher. He was sent down in June with instructions to alter his arm swing and delivery to try and help add velocity. Littell was acquired from the Yankees in 2017 as somewhat of a soft-tossing strike-thrower and, along with the move to full-time bullpen arm, came back from Triple-A throwing harder than ever before. After averaging just over 92 MPH in 2018, Littell saw his FB velocity jump to nearly 95 mph while his swinging strike rate went from 7.7% to 12.8% in 2019. The focus on this offseason is starting pitching, which seems odd considering as recently as the trade deadline the focus was 100% on the bullpen. Perkins's review of the more important arms is a feel-good story, but it also gets to the main question that must be answered: should it still be a priority? You’ll review the evidence and decide for yourself if you preorder the Offseason Handbook. By preordering it, you get it days before those who wait, and the $10 investment provides a whole hot stove’s worth of information over the offseason. Grab it now. Click here to view the article

Each month, we try to check in on the site and the community and share what we find. Yesterday, that meant reviewing stories and traffic the site garnered in September. Today we’ll dive into community building and the forums.Community Building Usually when we talk about community building, we’re talking about the forums, but this time we had an actual face-to-face event: the ALDS Game 1 Watch Party at Brothers Bar & Grill. It actually happened in October, but I don’t want to wait until next month to talk about what a great time that was had. First, we had 315 people show up, which filled up the enormous downstairs area of Brothers and spilled into the upstairs as well. Second, these are 315 Twins Daily fanatics, so the crowd was far more intense than an actual Twins game. Every pitch was scrutinized and agonized and dissected. The celebrations were raucous and the groans were shared. The next night I went to the Twins own watch party at Target Field, and they did a great job, and it’s in a great space, but there was no question in my mind which was the better experience. It was a powerful night. It might have been the highlight of my season. I would love this to be a more regular occurrence in 2020. I don’t mean just postseason games, though god knows I would like that to be a more regular occurrence too. Stay tuned, because bringing together fans seems like a very natural and impactful endeavor that Twins Daily should attempt. If you have any ideas for that, I’d love to hear them below. Forums Another thing that didn’t happen in September, but I want to share was a recent topic by Brock praising and thanking the moderators. We have had several new moderators join the ranks lately to help with all the increased traffic we’ve had, and I can tell you, it’s a lot of work, as I detailed in a response to the post. So I’d appreciate it if you stop by to let them know how much you value their contributions to the site. The high level numbers for September were great: Registrations – 98 (up 754% from 2018) !!!!!!!!Topics –289 (up 65% from 2018)Posts – 15,563 (up 140% from 2018)If you’re not part of those numbers yet, I assure you, we want to hear from you. There should be a lot to talk about this offseason. Just register and tell us your thoughts. Here are some standouts:The most liked post of the month came from SwainZag, in a thread that challenged the idea of resting players when so many in the lineup were hurt in September.The Twins Daily contributor who got the most likes was Blake, and it looks like most of them were in our popular game threads, including this one versus Cleveland.The (non-game-thread) topic with the most comments was the news that Michael Pineda had been suspended for a banned substance.The Twins daily member with the most posts was FlauerPauer, who should also get credit for a helluva user name. mrtwinsfan and LVTTwinsfan finished second and third.One piece of not so good news. While we’ve had lots of interaction on stories, we haven’t had many topic started in the forums. If you have a question, a thought, an opinion, some research or find a story you want to share, I’d encourage you to head to the forums to starts a conversation. Our community rarely bites too much, and in fact the opposite is true: they really appreciate the effort. The top topic started by a member last month was this research on the 2020 payroll, started a week before the season ended by amgjt.Thank you to everyone for sharing your thoughts and keeping the Twins Daily forums a civil, entertaining and informative place. October has already been incredibly active in the forums and stories. I hope you enjoy the offseason as much as the regular season. Blogs Finally, I’ll encourage you, when you find your voice a bit more, to check out Twins Daily’s blogs. September we had seven active blogs, but an interesting thing has happened in October: they really fired up. I count 12 blogs in October and we’re only a little halfway through the month. If you’re looking for more baseball – and I think a lot of us are looking for more baseball in October - stop by and check them out, urge them to keep writing, and respond to their thoughts. The blogs are right here and they’re always a link at the top of the Twins Daily menu. Thank you for checking in with us. If you have any ideas for Twins Daily, or feedback that you want to share, please don’t hesitate to give it, good or bad, in the comments below. I promise to read your thoughts and respond when appropriate. Click here to view the article

Pitching will be an especially important subject for the Twins this offseason. So we’re especially excited that Matthew Trueblood, known for his analysis surrounding pitching at Baseball Prospectus, will be joining our guest writer ranks this year. His meaty essay in the 2020 Offseason Handbook takes a look at a defensive aspect that was mostly overlooked as the season progressed: the Twins' decreasing use of the shift.Here's a taste: Shifting is not a universal good; it must be implemented thoughtfully and effectively. Still, the high-level evidence suggests the Twins were better when they deployed shifts more often. Download attachment: Trueblood offseason 2019-10-22.JPG In August, only the Pirates allowed a higher BABIP than did the Twins. In September, only the Tigers and Cubs did. In analysis of individual pitchers, BABIP is often treated as an indicator of luck, but at the team level, it speaks to the quality of the defense. Minnesota’s was, down the stretch, one of the worst in baseball. Not only does Trueblood breakdown the impacts of decreasing the frequency of the shift, he breaks down the impact and the variation behind each individual starting pitcher. And since this is an offseason-focused publication, he looks at the free agent starting pitchers they Twins might acquire and their history (and in some cases, criticism) of using the shift. It’s all done so you can come up with your own offseason blueprint and see how it compares to that of the Twins brain trust. Secure your digital copy now, and you'll get it before it's officially available to the public (ETA is around the conclusion of the World Series). You can name your price but the minimum for preorders is $10. You can only get it early if you preorder, so grab yours now! Click here to view the article

On a monthly basis we like to check in on the health of the site and bring news and notes to the community. September was a remarkable month in stories, authors, traffic, and community building. Let’s cover it.Stories and Authors You are hearing from more and more writers at Twins Daily, as we pointed out in last month’s report, and we find that thrilling. But since September was the last month of the third quarter, I got another thrill: I got to pay them, some for the first time. We sent out over $4500 to the contributing writers that are responsible for the stories you read on the front page. “Thrill” might sound strange, but that was literally the whole point of Twins Daily, and really the goal when we first created the Offseason Handbook (which proceeded Twins Daily) eleven years ago. Seth, Nick, Parker and I had all blogged about the Twins for years without making a cent. We wanted to find a better way for bloggers to get something for their work, because we wanted to continue to read independent voices. So Twins Daily pays all our contributing writers the income the site makes directly from their stories from ads. If someone views a story that has been promoted to the front page, we count those page views and send revenue the site to the writer. In September, that was good news in two ways. First, we had record traffic, which I’ll get to soon. And second, our ad provider provided a better return on those ad spaces, averaging close to $6 per 1000 page views. This doesn’t slay the blogging dragon by any means: on a per story basis, I’m still legitimately embarrassed that we can’t pay our writers more for their insights. We recognize we are paying less than their work is worth, but we pass along what we make. We believe they should have it. Here are a couple of other story highlights from the month: 21 different writers had at least 2000 views of their stories in September.The most read writer was Cody Christie.The most read story was whether or not the Twins could hold off the Yankees for the home run record. (Spoiler alert: they did.)Other very popular stories included Nick Nelson’s review of Kyle Gibson’s Twins’ career and Cody’s preview of Luis Arraez’ Twins’ career.TrafficIt might surprise you to find out that September has traditionally been a pretty slow month at Twins Daily, or at least it might surprise you if you don’t realize we launched in 2012, right when the Twins took a downturn. Since then, the Twins have only had three Septembers that weren’t playing out the string: 2015 when they made a too-little-too-late charge at the Wild Card, 2017 when they won the second AL Wild Card and this year when they were Central division champions. The most page views we’ve ever had in September was that 2017 season, when we had 734K page views with 62,000 users visiting. This September blew those away: Readers – 156,976 (up 225% from 2018)Sessions – 397,237 (up 138% from 2018)Page Views – 1,032,480,367 (up 114% from 2018)Turns out a pennant race is good for traffic. Who knew? This offseason should be interesting for Twins Daily. We’ll continue to provide daily coverage of the Twins throughout the offseason, and a lot of community-building and discussion takes place over the next four months. I would love to see those 156K visitors from September drop in occasionally. Traffic for October suggests they are. So if you find a story or discussion that you like, please share it with your friends or followers via email, Facebook or Twitter. The Twins get an offseason, but Twins Daily doesn’t. We just keep analyzing and discussing, which brings us to or forums. We’ll discuss that tomorrow. If you have any questions, concerns or thoughts, I'd love to discuss them in the comments section. Have at it gang. Click here to view the article

If you're into offseason talk, this includes quite a bit of discussion in the last half hour both about what other AL teams might be thinking this offseason, and about the Twins ability (or inability, we'll see?) to take risks this offseason.

Aaron and John talk about their preseason over/under bets, why the Twins need to finally take some risks, the less-juiced playoff baseball, Rocco Baldelli being nice at Brasa, and the Yankees losing to someone other than the Twins again. You can listen by downloading us from iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio or find it at GleemanAndTheGeek.com. Or just click this link. http://directory.lib...dex/id/11711168 Click here to view the article