chpettit19

I just don't get why he didn't do what everyone always does and say some bland PR nonsense about building the best team they can with the resources given to them by the great team owners. It's what he's done every other year even as they increased payroll. Weird to finally get honest now. But perhaps it was his way of putting public pressure on the Pohlads to increase the payroll? Maybe he's being sly. Maybe he knows the Pohlads are on the fence about the payroll and if they see the fanbase threatening to burn down Target Field they'll hand him another 10 mil? I'm going to hope that's the case.

I don't want mid level free agents because this team is already mid level. The goal isn't to trade those 3 and replace them with equal talent. The goal is to improve upon the team. Polanco and Kepler aren't good enough to be top of the order guys, but they're still better than the rest of the guys they have. Taking away from the top is not how you improve the team. You need to replace the Gallo and Solano guys with guys that slot in above Polanco and Kepler. I don't see Kepler as redundant. I don't see anyone in house who's likely to produce as much as him in RF. Assuming Wallner already has a corner spot, I don't see Larnach, Castro, Gordon, Martin, or Hellman being a likely bet to beat out Kepler's production in 2024. I don't love Kepler, and want him hitting 6-9 in the order, but replacing him with someone who should be hitting 8-bench in the order isn't an answer to me. And that's ignoring that they are also going to get worse in CF simply because of MAT's defense. I don't believe in the prospects as much as others do, clearly. I think there's a bunch of major leaguers in there, but I think people are putting way too much faith in them. And I don't think replacing your 2 and 4 hole hitters and your #2 pitcher from your playoff roster while reducing payroll is likely to improve upon the team. They could maintain it, but I'm not interested in maintaining (I mean I'll take maintaining over getting worse). The goal shouldn't be to maintain, it should be to improve. I don't see how trading out Gray, Polanco, and Kepler's 2023 production for a bunch of unproven guys who aren't star type prospects in the first place and guys who's best bet is to duplicate those 3's production gets the Twins closer to the World Series.

That is very likely what is going to happen, yes. The point is that relying on Lewis and Kirilloff to stay healthy for an entire year while also maintaining heart-of-the-order type production is quite a gamble. Expecting Julien (I believe in him) and Wallner to maintain their production over a full season after the league makes adjustments to them is quite a gamble. Expecting Martin, Lee, Severino, Rodriguez, and maybe Rosario to be average, let alone above average, or star, MLB players is quite a gamble. Yes, we have young guys coming that look like they could be very nice players, but a team coming off an ALDS appearance shouldn't be jettisoning veterans while also not bringing in any above average veterans because they hope they'll get another historic (for the Twins) rookie class again in the next handful of years. The truth is that most prospects fail. Even the top 100 guys. Forcing this "significant transition" is not the best bet for improving on an ALDS team, and no FO would make that decision if it wasn't forced upon them with a payroll cut. I have great hopes for the young guys, too. But you talk (type) like these kids are sure things. They aren't. Yes, if they all hit their ceiling the Twins will be absolutely loaded and many of us will look like cry baby fools. But the far more likely outcome is that most of those young guys don't even touch their potential. Very few turn into stars, and only some turn into everyday players. Relying almost completely on prospects to not only maintain an ALDS run, but build on it, is a massive bet that almost never pays off. It's not all doom and gloom, but frustration is certainly warranted.

Kind of a side note to this that a couple people have kind of touched on is the timing of this news. I have to think the people in the season ticket offices are not at all happy with Falvey for giving Dan Hayes those quotes. You're coming off your most successful season in 2 decades and the sales teams finally have some real ammunition for trying to bring in new season ticket holders, upsell existing ticket holders, etc. and you come out and tell the fan base on November 7th/8th that you're cutting payroll? I don't get that move at all. Why not let us fools on TD bicker with each other while we try to guess the payroll all offseason and let your sales team do their thing to raise revenue for 2024 instead of dumping a bucket of water on the fire before the offseason really even gets going?

I'd go 86.5. Basically the same talent level as 2023 just with a few different names, so the question is if they can get to 87 wins again or not.

I don't see Polanco/Kepler/Farmer as guys at the top of a playoff lineup. Never saw Farmer there, you had just included him in the other post. But Polanco and Kepler hit 2/4 in their playoff lineup this year. They're not good enough to do that, but they're still guys at the top of this team. It wasn't egregious at all to have them hitting there based on their performance this year (where Polanco OPS'd .789 which is pretty darn close to .800). My problem is that it's far more likely Polanco has an .800 OPS in 2024 than Brooks Lee or Martin or Severino or whatever other AAA guy people want in there. You replaced Kepler and Polanco with Hoskins and Teoscar in another post. Teoscar is a year older than Polanco and OPS'd 50 points lower in 2023. Rhys Hoskins OPS'd .794 in his last MLB season. I think .825-.850 is a more likely spot for him, though. I think Kepler and Teoscar are probably pretty similar in terms of OPS moving forward. Teoscar will K way more, and be way worse defensively. Hoskins is probably 25-50 points of OPS better than Polanco, but plays a lower defensive position. So you've gained probably 25-50 points of OPS over those 2 roster spots while worsening your defense and K numbers. That's no better than a push in my book. So you're still relying on young guys taking jumps, or maintaining partial season production, to take this team to the next level. I don't want that. I want building, not rearranging. It hardly mattering because people assume they wouldn't sign those guys anyways isn't an explanation that I find acceptable. First off I don't buy that they wouldn't spend on Bellinger (or Lee) or pitching. They've tried spending on pitching before. They have signed Bellinger sized contracts before. That excuse just feels like trying to justify this so fans feel better about it. And secondly, them completely refusing to use an avenue of team building isn't any better than slashing payroll. "Well we wouldn't spend it on proven pitching anyways so may as well cut payroll" doesn't make me feel any better about things.

Lee is an interesting option and I'm intrigued to see what his contract ends up being. I'd be really happy with the Twins going after him. The Athletic has him pegged at 4 years, 56 million. Likely too expensive without other payroll cuts being made, and at that point you're just maintaining the talent level instead of improving it. I love Brantley, but again, guessing he's priced out of their range now. If they aren't getting to 140 mil in payroll I don't think any worthwhile FA is an option this year.

You hope it's a step forward. Lee or Severino being able to do what Jorge Polanco can do is a massive bet. Julien, Wallner, and Lewis being able to maintain their production over a full season is a massive bet. Young guys are the lifeblood of every MLB team, but taking an ALDS team and stripping it of it's #2 starter, 2 hole hitter, and/or 3/4 hole hitter from your playoff roster and just assuming they can be replaced by young guys is not taking a step forward. I don't believe for 1 second that if Falvey was given $150 mil payroll for 2024 he'd say "eh, let's trade Polanco and Kepler while losing Gray anyways." There's a difference between needing young guys to provide cheap, quality talent, and forcing your team to rely on an almost entirely cheap lineup for success. You need young guys to succeed to sustain success. But a team truly putting their best foot forward to try to win a World Series does not swap out Gray for a lesser pitcher, and Polanco and/or Kepler for young players when they don't have to.

Their free agents fail because they go after low end free agents. I don't want them to spend money just to spend it either, but there are free agents out there that are more likely to fill the gaps on this team successfully than the young guys. Moving on from two of Polanco/Kepler/Farmer opens more holes so filling it in with a free agent of the caliber we're more hopeful for doesn't improve the team overall. I agree with not spending on bench filler, but one impact player while removing 2 guys who hit in the top 3-4 of your playoff lineup isn't a net plus. If it's Farmer+ then, sure that could be a net plus, but Polanco and Kepler both going and being replaced by 1 guy is at best a push, I'd say. They should be in building mode. In adding mode. In "we weren't quite good enough with this group so we need to replace guys on the bottom with guys on the top" mode. Not "replace guys on the top with other guys on the top" mode.

I'd argue all this cheap talent makes this the absolute best time to go after a larger FA deal and not cut payroll. They NEVER signed top end hitting until the Donaldson and Correa deals. The reports were that they tried just as hard to sign Darvish and Wheeler, but just didn't get it done. I don't buy that they would never spend on FA pitching, they just won't go over their number on any player. If they find a pitcher they think is worth the money they'd absolutely spend just like they did on Donaldson and Correa, and (reportedly) tried to with Darvish and Wheeler. Some of these young guys are going to fail. I know people don't like to hear it, but it's the truth. Lewis, Julien, and Wallner aren't even sure things to maintain their production over full seasons. The youth wave is not an excuse I think fans should accept either as a reason for cutting payroll. Simply maintaining this more than reasonable payroll mark opens way more doors than banking on multiple prospects turning into above average major leaguers. And I'm a prospect lover. But going from the ALDS to "we sure hope all these young guys succeed!" is a massive drop off and a huge risk. I don't buy that it's anything other than the TV deal/revenue driven.

The Twins were just in the ALDS for the first time in some poster's lifetime and you want people to accept that '24 is a "transition year?" Transition from what? You don't transition after a trip to the ALDS and having won your first playoff game in 19 years. 2023 was the transition year, and the next few are supposed to be the building on top years.

This is an interesting sentiment to me. If we're looking at this strictly from a corporate decision-making point of view I'd argue this is actually the opposite of what a non-sports corporation would do. The Twins are the product, right? In most corporate situations they create a product, think it'll sell, and then adjust off that. If they have a product that isn't selling as well as they'd like, but is vital to their business, they'd likely invest in that product to improve it knowing that's the most likely way to sell more of it, correct? I doubt the typical corporate decision is to take the most vital product they have, the core of their business, see it not making as much as they'd like, and then actively make it worse in hopes of being able to improve sales for the future. I work in pricing in distribution. We have dozens of manufacturers we work with. During the last 3 years we've seen prices for the products we distribute fluctuate wildly. We were handed price increases from manufacturers regularly as they adjusted during the 2020-2022 time frame. Never once did they come to us and say "hey, we're going to go ahead and make this product worse while not lowering the cost of it at all and we expect to see the sales increase so we can then make the product better again in the future." And, to me, that's what the Twins are doing now.

I wouldn't be surprised by a trade of anyone you mentioned. I just don't think it's a good way to improve this team. Even taking into account the payroll reduction. Trading any of the young guys for an arm is, at best, a neutral move, in my opinion. Taking everything out of this other than "is the team better after the trade" when it comes to a trade of Julien, Lee, Wallner, any young guy, my opinion is that the team would not be any better after the trade. This offense isn't good enough, and trading someone you expect to be a vital part of an already not good enough offense simply doesn't make the team better, in my opinion.

Oh, it's certainly not a surprise, but I think it's also worth us voicing our frustrations and not allowing them to sell this as anything other than them trying to make as much as they can without regards to trying to build a contending team. My everyday life won't change in any way, shape, or form because of this, but I'll voice my opinions on things because I assume the Twins are run well enough to have people gauging public sentiment towards their team. I will let it be known that I find this unacceptable. I'm sure season ticket reps are hearing it already. I've already gotten calls the last few weeks trying to get me to sign up for my season ticket package again. There's a 0% chance of that happening. I will always cheer for the Twins, but I won't pretend this isn't a slap in the face to fans. The Pohlads won't care while they sit on their stacks of cash, and St Peter has already made his opinions known about what he thinks of Twins fans after the 2022 season, but while not getting too wound up about it, I'll still voice frustrations. None of this is to suggest you should act or feel as I do. We all fan our own ways. Just giving you my perspective and why I'll be whining all over TD all day.

I was responding to the post suggesting it'd be Polanco, Kepler, and Farmer that move. And, no, those 3 will not bring back a young arm from Seattle. Trading Julien, Lee, and/or Wallner types for an arm doesn't improve the team, it just weakens an offense that is already counting on an historic rookie class maintaining their production over full seasons while also adding more top end talent from the system. And an offense that has been the most constant problem when it comes to winning playoff games. They already scored 3 runs or fewer in 4 of their 6 playoff games and now people want to trade from the top of the offense? The expectation that Julien, Lewis, and Wallner all maintain their performance while Lee, Martin, Severino, etc. are also all productive MLB players is a massive bet. And then you add on that you need a few of those guys to turn into legitimate stars to actually have a real shot at the WS is an even bigger bet. The more likely result is that multiple of these young guys fail. That's just the reality of it. It's why you supplement them with established big leaguers, and not cut payroll while your window is wide open.

How big of an adjustment? People keep quoting the "54.8 million" the Twins are "losing" as if they're not going to get paid to broadcast baseball games next year. Only half of that 55 mil goes to MLB payroll anyways. So about 27-28 mil. And they're going to get money to broadcast games next year, I promise. Even if it's only half that's still 12-14 mil for payroll they're getting back. So ignoring everything else, and just looking at the TV contract they will be down 12-14 mil in payroll. The top number we've seen reported is 140 mil in payroll for 2024. Which is 15 mil below where they were at last year, and more than accounts for their TV revenue being half as much. But what about playoff revenue? I'm quite positive they weren't counting on that in their 2023 payroll (at least not advancing beyond the WC, or even hosting the WC round) so there's a few extra mil they made last year so now we're down to maybe 10-12 mil lower in payroll. If they don't take a self-induced step backwards (and that's what cutting payroll is despite everyone's excitement about the young guys and the team spinning this as a youth movement) in 2024 it is more than reasonable to expect another playoff trip and another few mil, or more, from that and we're now down to single digits when it comes to lost payroll expectations. If the Pohlads won't cover that fans should be pissed. An adjustment shouldn't be needed. Their sell job of losing all this money and being doomed is PR spin to get people to still buy season tickets. Yes, Tampa wins, but Oakland doesn't, Pittsburgh doesn't, KC doesn't, Miami doesn't, Baltimore doesn't, Cinci doesn't. Pointing to the 1 team out of the bottom 10 payrolls that actually wins consistently is misrepresenting the likelihood of being a sustained winner while cutting payroll. The rest of the bottom 3rd in payrolls have little spikes here and there where they can try to make a run. They don't sustain success by any means. Tampa is an outlier, not a norm.

And they aren't bringing back one of Seattle's cheap, controllable arms.

Absolutely brutal bucket of cold water thrown on the fire of fan enthusiasm they were finally building after some playoff success. It's not my money so it's easy for me to say this, but I will never understand the business decision of finally getting momentum and then not investing 15 mil into your product for a year to continue to build excitement moving forward when you're a multi-billionaire and 15 mil is a rounding error for you. They're going to spin it as a youth movement, and I know many of you are excited for that, but a team that's truly trying to win a World Series at a more than reasonable cost takes advantage of this youth movement by adding topline talent to their roster while they have so many cheap players. See current World Series champions Texas Rangers. I'm not even asking for the Twins to go that bonkers, but just maintaining their current payroll around 150 mil means they can bring in a big time player for the next 5 years and be ok on the payroll side of things. I certainly hope Dave St Pete won't be confused as to why it's hard to sell tickets next year after this self-induced momentum killer of a decision.

I think Farmer brings back some low level flier, same with Thielbar (although an even lower level one), and I'd take any decent prospect for Kepler to clear his salary and allow more long-term deals for Yamamoto and Lee. Although, wouldn't argue with keeping Kepler instead of signing Kiermaier for CF and having Lee play CF if you can't get something decent for Kepler. But I'd take KK for 1 year plus a prospect over just Kepler for a year. Varland is my #6 starter beginning the year in AAA much like Ober this year.

They get a far more consistent number of plate appearances than defensive chances. Defensive chances vary wildly from year to year for players, but it's entirely possible that a guy gets more defensive chances than PAs in any given year. In 2017 Carlos Correa had 481 PAs. He had 642 combined put outs, assists, and errors (chances) that year. Last year he had 580 PAs to 450 chances. In 2021 it was 640 PAs to 578 chances. In 2023, batting champ Luis Arraez had 617 PAs and 615 defensive chances.

He wouldn't be my first choice, but if he's still hanging around the FA pool in January or February I'd give him a call and see what his number is. I know this is considered blasphemy by some around here, but I'm not sold on Ryan. I don't know that Ryan can be more than a #4 or 5 pitcher (not worthy of playoff starts) over the long run. Can Ober put together another healthy year and maintain his production? It'd be nice, and I'd be ok if he was my #3 starter in the playoffs if he can stay stronger throughout the whole year moving forward. Paddack is a complete wild card to me at this point. Could be a 2. Could be a 5. I don't like going into 2024 counting on 2 of those 3 guys needing to be playoff caliber starters. I think the Twins need to aim higher and bring in more of a sure thing to slot alongside Lopez to front the rotation (Yamamoto would get a ton of money from me if I were running things). And I don't think Giolito is any more sure than the 3 incumbants. That being said, I wouldn't mind adding him to that group of 3 after they bring in the more sure thing. How you manage that rotation to start the year would be a bit of a challenge, but they can figure it out. I don't like Giolito as "the signing" for the rotation, but he'd be a really nice signing in general, assuming a cheapish 1 year deal.

Pitching: Yamamoto gives the Twins a 25 year old star in the making to pair with Lopez at the front of the rotation. The Athletic has him projected at 7/203 so I raised the AAV up to that mark, but if you can get him for cheaper I'd be all for it. 10/250 would be the offer I'd make him. To get under the 150 payroll I dropped Thielbar for Canterino. I think I could probably talk to Pohlads into 152 and keep him to start the year, but I'm not sold there's a ton left in that tank, and I think Canterino can take a pen spot really early in the year. Funderburk, Moran, and Headrick is a gamble from the left side early in the year. The pen could also include a FA minor league signing instead of some of our young guys. I'd prefer that, but I don't have any names off the top of my head so just left the young guys in there. Hitting: Kiermaier and Lee cut down the Ks in the lineup while not hurting the defense. Considered the idea of moving Polanco and signing Hoskins, and that's the move I'd make if Yamamoto is actually 20M a year like suggested in the TD breakdown provided. Not relying on either Buxton or Kirilloff to be everyday guys (Buxton is just in the DH spot to show I'm not counting on him as the CFer). If they can stay healthy and be the guys they've shown they can be while healthy this lineup is finally playoff ready. If not, they're still short a bat or 2, but I'd be happy to have my pitching all set for the next 4 years so moving forward I'd just be looking to improve that offense. C: Ryan Jeffers ($2.3M) 1B: Edouard Julien ($.77M) 2B: Jorge Polanco ($10.5M) 3B: Royce Lewis ($0.77M) SS: Carlos Correa ($33.33M) LF: Matt Wallner ($0.77M) CF: Kevin Kiermaier ($9M) RF: Jung Hoo Lee ($11M) DH: Byron Buxton ($15M) 4th OF: Willi Castro ($3.20M) Utility: Alex Kirilloff ($1.7M) Utility: Austin Martin/Larnach ($.77M) Backup C: Christian Vazquez ($10M) SP1: Pablo Lopez ($8.25M) SP2: Yoshinobu Yamamoto ($29M) SP3: Bailey Ober ($0.77M) SP4: Chris Paddack ($2.53M) SP5: Joe Ryan ($0.77M) RP: Jhoan Duran ($0.77M) RP: Brock Stewart ($0.77M) RP: Griffin Jax ($0.77M) RP: Jorge Alcala ($1.00M) RP: Matt Canterino ($.77M) RP: Cole Sands ($0.77M) RP: Jovani Moran ($0.77M) RP: Kody Funderburk ($0.77M) Payroll is 2.12% under budget

He'd make sense for them. But he's the only guy on this list I'd be interested in the Twins going after (again, outside of a short Gray deal). This list overall is just not inspiring. If this is the pool the Twins are swimming in I'd much rather they just go with the young guys and cross their fingers somebody takes a big step forward. Don't expect the Twins to go after Turner, but he'd be the only guy on this list I'd be calling if I were running the FO.

Justin Turner would be the only guy I'd take off this list, unless you can get Gray for 2 years plus an option. I don't see any of the other guys really being guys who could raise the ceiling on the team that's already in place.

I think he fits in the conversation in the sense that he's a nice enough option to have at AAA in case you need him, but I don't think he's someone the Twins will add to the 40-man until that spot opens up in the regular season. Wouldn't be the craziest Rule 5 pick ever, but I also wouldn't bet he'd be picked.