chpettit19

I have literally no interest in Elvis Andrus. The absolute best case scenario is that he has another "good year" for him which equals a league average hitter. When average is the absolute best case scenario for a player I don't want them. If I'm running the team I don't even have him on my list of options and if his agents calls me I tell him "thanks, but no thanks." The Twins have to be trying to win in 2023. A team trying to win doesn't bring in Andrus to be their SS for any amount of time. It's that simple to me. I'd rather jump Lee straight to the majors than sign Andrus. A team banking on Andrus for 2 months and then Lewis taking his job as soon as he's healthy isn't trying to win. I'm all for Lewis getting a shot as soon as he's healthy, and I think he'll still be a stud, but I'm not keeping SS open for him in a year I'm trying to compete. He can take over 3B, or LF, or CF, or wherever they need him when he's healthy. Get a real short stop and quit f'in around with these way, way, way over the hill vets and hoping for healthy seasons with huge production from rookies. You have the money. Sign a star.

This is not an overly exciting list of shortstops. I very much like the top of this list as baseball players, but not SSs. Lee seems to have "gold glove 3B" written all over him. They seem determined to force Martin to be an IFer even if all reports are that he's destined for the OF (which is weird since the Twins have a gigantic need for a RH hitting OFer right now) cuz he just can't field well enough on the dirt. And while I'm a huge Lewis supporter, and he certainly looked like he could handle the position defensively in his brief stint, it's hard to really bank on him without question after a 2nd straight major knee surgery. If he turns out to be SS worthy it's always nice to have more SSs than you need. This list makes me want Correa, Turner, or Swanson even more than I already did.

2021 version of Lopez would be quite intriguing to bring to MN. Mondesi is a less talented Buxton, we have no need at all for another guy at a premium position who can't stay on the field. Hardest of passes on him. But I agree that Lopez would be interesting to make a call on.

More trades this offseason would put the FO, and team, in a pretty tight "need to win with this group" spot. I wouldn't advocate for any trades unless you're replacing those prospects by trading some of your major leaguers but that's a risky game of how much you're truly improving the major league team. Major leaguers are always better to have than prospects, but a team with the budgetary constraints (even if they're self inflicted) of the Twins need constant prospect graduations to stay competitive. Trading away anymore prospects puts this team in a "must hit" spot with all of their top guys for the next few years. So I wouldn't be trading for anyone. Especially not any of these 3. Just sign Jose Iglesias, or one of the other middling FA SS, if you're going this kind of route.

If you don't believe that 9 or 10 of Gray, Ryan, Mahle, Ober, Maeda, Duran, Jax, Lopez, Alcala, Moran, Thielbar, Varland, Winder, and SWR can get outs in the playoffs you should be suggesting the Twins blow it up and start over. If you don't think 9 or 10 of Jeffers, Arraez, Lewis, Miranda, Polanco, Urshela, Buxton, Celestino, Gordon, Kepler, Kirillloff, Larnach, Wallner, Martin, and Lee are good enough for regular playoff playing time you should be suggesting the Twins blow it up. That's 29 players. How many do you think are good enough to make a postseason roster? I believe Gray, Ryan, Mahle, Maeda, Duran, Jax, Lopez, Alcala, and Moran would be worthy of postseason roster spots with Gray, Ryan, Mahle, Maeda, Duran, Jax, and Lopez being amongst the 10 guys I'd want on my postseason staff getting almost all of the innings. To me that means they need 3 more big time arms for a postseason run. 1 being a starter in front of Gray, Ryan, and Mahle (I've already said multiple times Rodon would be my choice, even though he has some injury concern). The other 2 would be pen arms that slot in above Jax, Lopez, and Maeda (he'd be a pen arm for me in October), but below Duran. At least 1 of them would have to be a lefty. I haven't looked at the FA reliever lists so don't know who I'd look at there. Do you feel like the Twins have more or less than 7 postseason level pitchers on the current roster? I believe Jeffers, Arraez, Lewis, Miranda, Polanco, Urshela, Buxton, Gordon, Kepler, Kirilloff, and Larnach are postseason roster worthy. I think Jeffers, Arraez, Lewis, Miranda, Polanco, Buxton, and Kirilloff are good enough to start in playoff games. That's 7 position players. To me there's an OF spot (maybe Larnach could claim it, but I'm not 100% sold on him yet) and SS open (I'd put Lewis at 3B where I think he'd be a gold glover). Do you feel the Twins have more or less than 7 postseason level position players on the current roster? That's really the point here. How many holes do you see the Twins as having to fill? Because I feel they have so few, and that there's a handful of internal options who may actually step up and claim them, I think they can afford to finally bring in a superstar on a big deal. I think their current major and minor league rosters moving forward can account for almost all of the needs. If you disagree then it's time to blow it up cuz they can't build an entire roster through free agency and trades. If you agree with my general assessment of the current Twins organization then why wouldn't you want them to bring in both Correa and Rodon, plus a couple relievers? They can afford it. It's not a budget issue. What reason do they have to not bring in both if they don't have a ton of holes to fill?

The position players are drafted at shouldn't be looked at all that hard. Beyond IF/OF/P there really isn't much to that. There are dozens of "SS" drafted every year that every team knows has no shot at staying at SS. And Miller hit .212 in low A this year. He's not stopping them from signing a long-term deal with a SS. The Donaldson deal is an interesting one. Everyone knows the last few years of these "mega deals" are more than likely going to be bad. The hope is that you get so much out of the first handful of years to make it worth it. The problem with Donaldson's deal is that he was paid pretty much what he was likely going to be worth the first couple years before the last couple years had him making well more than he'd be worth. There was no period in that contract that had him earning well above his pay to make the deal worth it. Signing Correa to a 7-10 year deal would be with the expectation that he's worth well more than he's paid over the first 6 or 7 years and you are able to produce a cheap, young player to replace him when he has to move to 3B and isn't worth the contract after that. Long-term deals aren't about getting your money's worth every year, it's about getting your money's worth over the life of the deal. And Urshela was the best player in that Donaldson deal so I don't know that I'd say the Twins had to give up players for the Yankees to take him. Rortvedt isn't a prospect, despite fans around here really wanting him to be. He's a left handed Drew Butera. IKF is a good fielding, no hit (84 OPS+ this year, 82 for his career) player that had a rookie replace him in the playoffs so he didn't even start game 5 today. The Twins didn't give up anything of value and got the best player in that deal.

The Angels are worse at building a pitching staff than the Twins. That's all anyone needs to know about why they can't win. Yes, Pena was good. Not claiming he wasn't. But their willingness to take a chance on the rookie being good was because they had a great team around him. Much of his WAR came from his defense, though. In my experience, you don't even find a majority of people who work in analytics who believe the defensive stats should be taken as gospel. Pena was almost exactly a league average hitter. His OPS+ was 101. Correa's was 140. Slight difference there, no? "Salary push for the end of the season" is a nonsense, not even remotely based in reality argument. You think he waited until September and then was like "dang, I guess it's time to start trying now so I can get my $350 mil?" That's complete and utter nonsense. No player does that. I've never, not even once, suggested the Twins can't afford to lose him. But the facts of the situation is that you need stars to win. The Twins are not developing their own. But they have developed a bunch of guys who look to be solid major league regulars. Since they've built nearly an entire 26 man roster of major league regulars who are on well below market deals they can afford to sign Correa. And a pitcher. Why would any fan of the team not want them to spend money to improve the team? What do they gain by not signing Correa? He wasn't "average" for the majority of the season. In fact his OPS+ was above 130 for almost all of it. That's well above average. He did struggle in the clutch moments like the rest of the roster, I will grant that. But this isn't about "have to," it's about how else do you improve this team so they can actually win a playoff game? Signing a star who you can more than afford seems like a pretty reasonable way to improve the team. The point of having a steady stream of major league regulars developed by your own system on cheap deals is so that you can afford to sign the stars. They have a star. They have a bunch of regulars on cheap deals. If this isn't the time you want to sign a star there literally never will be a time. There aren't enough holes on the roster to need to go out and sign a bunch of mid-level guys. Sign a stud starting pitcher and a stud SS and let's play ball. They can afford it and have the players on the rest of the roster to be able to win some games. If you disagree you should be suggesting they trade everyone on the roster and start a full on rebuild. Trade Buxton, Mahle, Gray, Ryan, Miranda, Duran, all of them.

Paddack faced 3 bad offenses and dominated them exactly like you'd want him to do. Just pointing to his 4.03 ERA is disingenuous. He made 4 healthy starts. 1 bad, 3 great. Small sample size makes that 1 stand out a lot. I'm not saying he would've won the Cy Young, but acting like he did nothing successful during his very brief healthy 2022 stint is ignoring the reality of his performances.

His 3 starts before his injury were 5 innings 2 earned, 5.2 innings 1 earned, and 5.1 innings 1 earned. That's a 2.25 ERA. "Wasn't even remotely great" seems to be ignoring 3 or his 4 healthy starts being pretty darn great. The injury was brutal, but I think his on field performance shows the Twins were likely right about his talent. And a look at his full season results would suggest the Twins really didn't give up much in trading Rogers for him. Clearing Rooker's 40 man spot was actually quite useful in that deal as well.

Pena isn't the reason they don't miss Correa. Bregman, Altuve, Tucker, and Alvarez are the reason they don't miss him. Oh wait, that's just the reason they don't miss him on the position player side. Their entire pitching staff can be added to that list. Pointing to a team with far more talent and saying "see, you don't need Correa to be good" isn't a good comparison to the current Twins situation. The Astros have developed their own hitting and pitching stars so they didn't need to sign Correa to the deal he wants. The Twins have failed to develop any stars outside of Buxton for half a season at a time, and maybe Duran as a bullpen star. With the young talent the Twins have arriving now they should sign Correa AND a really good pitcher. Correa and Rodon as the only 2 offseason signings for about 60 million a year total would be just fine with me. But we need to stop pointing to teams like the Astros who succeed after letting a star go because they have other stars to cover for them and saying that shows you don't need to sign stars. The Nats let Harper go, do they miss him? The Red Sox thought they wouldn't miss Mookie, how's that turned out? The Twins seem to have a nice core of solid MLB players arriving now. Very few, if any, of them look like stars. So, unfortunately, actually having to spend market rates for a star is the only option they have right now. And if Lewis does become a star, great, now they'd be at 2.5 with Correa and Buxton as well as Lewis so they're still not at the level of star power Houston is running out there currently.

Flags fly forever! And I think the Dodgers have made it pretty clear that winning in October is far more about your team catching fire in October than it is building the best roster in baseball. I was calling for Lewis to be on the opening day roster before this season started so I'm certainly not against the idea. I'm probably the biggest Lewis supporter on these boards. But I'm also all for bringing in as many stars as possible so I'd prefer Correa at SS and Lewis at 3B to start and then 2B when Lee is ready (They're both going to be stars, let me have my dreams!). I think they need to be planning on opening a new window with their new core. I agree with your previous post that they should've spent in '18-'20 as well (to be fair they signed Donaldson before '20), but Kirilloff, Lewis, Lee, Ryan, Duran, Miranda, Arraez, Jeffers, Winder, Ober, etc. are all getting into their mid to late-mid 20s and most of them are under control into their age 30+ seasons. You need them to be the true core that's supported by the base of Correa and Buxton. I think the timeline matches up perfectly to pay Correa for the rest of his peak at the same time you have the entire new core under team control for pre-arb or arb deals. Then cross your fingers some of the new core become stars.

If he helps break the 18 game streak and maybe even helps get the Twins to an ALCS before his contract becomes an "albatross" I think the FO would be over the moon happy, and would be able to ignore any fan outrage for the last couple years of the deal. That's the balance. Certain segments of every fan base demand that every contract be a win every season or the FO has failed. That's not new to the FO. Those contracts being a success vs failure shouldn't be looked at as a year by year proposition, in my opinion. It's whether or not the life of the contract proved to be a success or failure. I wouldn't be thrilled going over 7 years for Correa because those last 3 years he's likely a league average 3B. If you can get him for higher AAV at 7 years that'd be the move I'd prefer, but at some point if you want to attract a premiere talent on the open market you're going to have to pay for decline years. The other option is to cross your fingers that you can develop that kind of talent. To me this FO looks really solid at developing really solid players, but there's not many stars I see coming out of the system. Maybe Lewis is one and then you have 2.5 stars in Correa, Lewis, and Buxton (Buxton obviously the .5). Otherwise you have .5 for sure and have to hope Lewis becomes one and a team with solid players and basically no star power catches lightning in a bottle all at once for the same October run.

Well said. There's posts on TD almost daily about how we have too many corner OF/IF/DH types with no defensive value. Which I agree with. The answer to that problem is having more guys who are borderline SS (I don't count Martin there, he's a terrible SS by all accounts) quality defenders who move to corners and become elite. The Twins need more athleticism, not less. Having a platinum glove SS while having to push other SS quality players to lesser defensive positions would be a dream. Especially cuz those top SS prospects we're talking about are more known for their bats. And infield of Lee-Correa-Lewis-Miranda for the next 6-10 years sounds like a dream!

I think the main problem with your premise is that the Twins should be building around Correa by bringing in more outside options. The core of Twins, and every team's, talent needs to be developed through the system and paid on pre-arb and arb deals that are well below market. If the Twins don't develop cheap talent it doesn't matter who they try to bring in from the outside because no team can win by simply buying free agents. It's not how the Dodgers or Yankees win either. It's just not possible. So since they're currently in the middle of graduating a lot of prospects now is the time to splurge on an individual huge contract like Correa's since the rest of the team will be on well below market deals.

I am definitely on the "Martin in the OF" bandwagon. I don't mind seeing if he can play infield, but I'm yet to see any reports of him being any good at it. I'd also be signing Correa, but I'm not holding my breath there...

I like it. I wouldn't "waste" money on Andrus, though, if Martin is going to be on the opening day roster. I just let Martin play SS (even though I hate that they're still trying to force that to be a thing) and use that 6M to get another bullpen arm. Not going to be a shutdown closer, but I'd trust a 6M arm over Henriquez to start the year.

I wouldn't be openly working to trade him. But, as always, if the price is right you move him. I think the Twins are setup well to have him for part, or all, of 2023 before handing 3B over to Lee or Lewis (depending on how the SS situation is handled this offseason) for the foreseeable future. I like Miranda at 1B way more than at 3B. Kirilloff needs to show that surgery worked this time before I'm clearing any space for him (I hate typing that). Arraez would be my DH more often than not. That all leaves plenty of ABs at 3B for a solid major leaguer like Urshela. They just have too many question marks around health and young guys truly establishing themselves to move on from him simply to clear a spot. I expect Lewis, Lee, or Kirilloff (maybe even Martin is part of this group as they seem dead set on making him an IFer) to establish themselves this year. That should push Urshela off his starting spot 1 way or the other (Miranda to 3B if Kirilloff takes over 1B). But it'd take 2 of those guys establishing themselves to push him off the roster. So I say keep him unless some team is randomly looking for 31 year old, league average 3B as a key part of a package for a front line starter or back end of the bullpen shutdown arm.

Love seeing the Martin stats, and really love seeing the swing change. This wasn't a pretty year for him, but it appears he's been working and making adjustments and that's huge. Hopefully he can use this as a spring board into 2023 and join the young core developing in Minneapolis.

Yes, the team needs to get more hits. But as I pointed out, the lineup was built for a more "complete approach to the game." Outside of steals and sac bunts, which are strategies used sparingly across the league as a whole, as they aren't good strategies for scoring runs. But the Twins offense was built with the idea of being able to get hits alongside their HRs. How many of the expected 12 regulars entering the season were HR or bust guys? That's my point. They were bad at getting hits, that's not the same thing as being built for power only. Sano was expected to be a HR or bust guy. Who else? Buxton, unfortunately, turned into one, but didn't come into the year expecting to be that way. Kepler is a power only guy at this point. But Polanco, Correa, Urshela, Arraez, Gordon, Kirilloff, and Celestino aren't. Jeffers and Sanchez came into the year expected to be pretty bad hitters in general, but I don't think I'd count either as power only guys. So 2 out of 12 guys were power only, and Buxton joined them while losing Sano so it was still 2 guys most of the year. That's not a team built to only mash. With Larnach and Lewis as the first 2 guys on the list for injury callups to the OF or IF that's 2 of the top 14 guys being power only. There's a difference between the team being bad at hitting and only playing for HRs. This team was bad at hitting. Not being able to execute a "complete approach to the game" is different than not trying to. The stats show they weren't built for, nor did they attempt to execute, a "HR or bust" approach. They simply weren't good at driving in runs. My point is that there's a misperception that the Twins want HRs and HRs only. Also a misperception that their HR only approach leads to crazy amounts of strikeouts. Neither of those things are true. They just didn't hit well enough with runners in scoring position. Despite being more than willing to go the other way and take singles and all those non-steal and sac bunt strategies people want, they just weren't good at getting clutch hits. So saying the Twins need to learn a lesson from yesterday's playoff games is wrong. Unless all you mean is that they need to get better at doing what they were already trying to do.

Yeah, it looks like Cody had the table filtered on "All Years" and not "2022." The data in this article isn't for the 2022 season its for the last 3 seasons combined. Correa was 4th in average velo and max velo for short stops with at least 300 throws in 2022. To be fair to Arraez, though, his velo from 3B was 84.4 last year (didn't have data this year). The flaw in this data, as others have pointed out, is that guys don't need to unleash cannons on every throw. Arraez had no need to let it rip playing 2B and 1B this year. 84.4 would put Arraez right in the middle amongst 3Bs.

Those scrappy Guardians got to the series against the Yankees by scoring 100% of their runs in the wild card round via the homerun. Then scored their only run in game 1 of the ALDS via the homerun. So 3 of their 5 games so far they scored 0 runs without hitting a homerun. Philly bashed Atlanta out of the NLDS with homerun after homerun. The only run scored in the Astros Mariners game last night by the SS you falsely claim costs more than 40 million less a year (how do you even come up with that stat? He makes 700k, Correa made 35.1 M) came via HR. I get it, the Twins were brutally bad with RISP this season. The entire team should be embarrassed. And the game is more fun when there's action on the base paths and guys are coming up with big clutch singles and doubles with guys on base. But let's be real about what's happening in the playoffs. In almost every playoff game I've watched they've mentioned how high a percent of runs are being scored via the homerun. It was almost HR or bust for the entire wild card round. The lesson is you need to be good at hitting to score. The Twins weren't good at hitting. They've very much changed their "HR or Bust" strategy from the last couple years. Buxton has become pretty HR or bust, but the majority of the team (Correa, Polanco, Arraez, Miranda, Gordon, Urshela, Celestino, Kirilloff, and Larnach) were not HR or Bust guys. The Twins hit the ball to the opposite field 25.4% of the time this season. League average was 25.1%. Those scrappy Guardians were at a whopping 26.4%. Oh, and those mighty Guardians with all their clutch hitting and not just playing for a HR scored an unbelievable 2 more runs than those brutally bad, need to change their whole strategy Twins this season. Imagine how much happier you would've been with those extra 2 runs if the Twins would just have had more sacrifice bunts! Miami had 84 more steals than the Twins this year. And scored 100 fewer runs. The lesson is that the Twins were a really bad team with runners in scoring position. They were 10th in the league in BB% and 12th in K%. They were 12th in BA. 10th in OBP and 11th in SLG. They were 9th in wRC+ overall. They were just brutally, brutally bad with RISP (22nd in BA w/RISP). Stealing more bases with a terribly slow team wouldn't make them hit better with RISP. Oh, and they were even above average at not chasing pitches 28.5% to league average of 29.1%. The lesson isn't always "if they'd just done it 'old school' and ignored the analytics they'd have been better!" As shown by basically any stat (new or old) you can come up with. Sometimes the lesson is the Twins just didn't hit well with RISP. One last stat: the NYY were 21st in BA with RISP this season. .001 higher than the Twins. They scored the 2nd most runs in baseball. 1 of only 2 teams over 800 runs scored. Which offensive stat do you think they lead baseball in? Hint: It's homeruns. It's almost like hitting homeruns is a really good strategy. Ok, I lied, 1 last stat: top 10 run scoring offenses this year: Dodgers, NYY, Braves, Jays, Cards, Mets, Phils, Astros, Red Sox, Brewers. Ranked 5, 1, 2, 7, 9, 15, 6, 4, 20, 3 in homeruns. So of the top 10 offenses in baseball 8 of them were top 10 in homeruns. Ugh, Falvine is so dumb for wanting to hit homeruns! Hitting homeruns is a wonderful strategy. It can't be the only strategy, but it's so unbelievably better when it comes to scoring runs than sac bunts and steals it's not even funny. Having a great all-around offense (and team in general) is the best strategy. That's why the Dodgers put up the crazy stats they do during the regular season. But if you can only have HRs or steals/sac bunts/whatever "old school fundamentals" you want to call for there's no debate, HRs are what you want. Of the top 10 teams in steals 4 of them were in the top 10 run scoring offenses. LAD, NYY, PHI, and MIL. What do those 4 teams have in common? They were all top 6 in homeruns hit. You want one of those 4 offenses or Texas, Miami, Cleveland, Cubs, Diamondbacks, and Royals? Those are the other top 10 steals teams. They rank 12th, 28th, 15th, 22nd, 14th, and 24th in runs scored this year.

The Twins don't currently have many players in the talent level of these prospects the Braves are tying up. It's why there's a lot of comments here about "I'd wait another year and make sure they're the real deal." That's kind of the opposite of the point of what the Braves are doing with a number of these guys. The Braves are signing the Acuna, Albies, Harris, Striders of the world to extensions before they're established so they can save some money while trusting in their own development and internal scouting abilities to know they're extending guys who will produce. Waiting until Arraez is into his arb years to be willing to extend him takes away the savings in the FA years you'd buy out because you're not able to say you're paying him millions extra in his pre-arb years. On a side note, I'm not sure why Olsen is listed in this article. He's not at all the same type of situation as the others. That was just a straight up extension of a soon to be free agent they'd just traded for. They didn't buy out any team control. The Riley situation is more of what people in the comments are asking for. They didn't get him extended until he had a breakout, borderline MVP candidate season last year. And that's why he got 212 mil and not 100 mil like Acuna Jr. That's the big difference here. They're locking up young, likely superstars to significantly below market deals because they're willing to pay them 10 million in their pre-arb years in exchange for their free agency years being 10 mil a year cheaper than expected before they've established themselves as superstars. Suggesting the Twins wait until guys are more sure things defeats that purpose and just means you're signing the Riley type deal which isn't nearly as team friendly as the Acuna deal. But, back to my first sentence, the Twins don't have a bunch of Riley and Acuna's coming up right now. Lewis is the type of guy that would fit that mold, and, to @TwinsDr2021's point, is young enough to make him a candidate for this kind of move. I was a Lewis believer going into this last year and suggested I'd give him the opening day SS job so I understand that my view on him is more extreme than most, but I'd lock him up for 10 years and 100 mil right now. The rest of the guys are either already in their mid-20s so you'd be buying out their decline years anyways, or they're more everyday regulars than all-stars. Maybe Miranda is someone they want to extend? Kirilloff would be if his career weren't in question with the wrist. If Lee debuts next year I'd sign him to 10 years 100 mil as well. Lock him and Lewis up and call the left side of my infield set for a decade. But beyond those couple guys there's not many that would really be a huge benefit to locking in. Maybe Rodriguez becomes a guy like this in a couple years? The guys that this strategy is really for are the young studs that come up and you want to lock in their entire 20s. Twins need to start graduating guys before they're 25 if they want to start buying out FA years early on.

Love the Nimmo and Rodon idea. Conforto on a pillow deal is another former Met I've wondered about them looking at.

First off, I just want to say this is a fantastic tool. Thanks TD! This is a mix of what I think is somewhat realistic on what the FO may try to do, and what I would do. I can't say I'd be thrilled with this team going into 2023, but wouldn't be burning down Target Field either. I have Lewis and Wallner officially listed in my sheet, but they're mostly just place holders for Julien, Palacios, etc. as a sign that I'm not bringing in outside guys to fill those spots. Only outside offensive player I'm bringing in is Omar Narvaez to pair with Jeffers behind the plate. I have the Twins bringing back Correa for 35 mil a year for 7 years. Don't think it's overly likely that happens, but it's the deal I'd have on the table now. I've traded Kepler simply for salary relief and would be looking at getting prospects back for him. For pitching I'm bringing Fulmer back and Rogers. They could be swapped out for other 7th/8th inning guys. But I think those are the most likely types of guys they bring in. I put Winder in the pen as I just don't know that his arm can hold up to starting. If he can do what Jax did as a reliever he's still a useful piece. That's the move I'd make to continue to build that pen. Twins are in a weird spot with simultaneously very few holes and a ton of holes open on the roster. There's reason to believe the young guys are ready to take roster spots. But the injuries to them have made it so hard to know who can actually take spots. If I'm the Pohlads I'm making the FO have really good reasons to turn away from prospects at this point. It's a do or die year for the FO for me, but the doing has to include turning prospects into legit core players. Either they've done that or they haven't. So I wouldn't just let them go out and sign a bunch of FAs. Use the available money for stars only (Correa for example). If they aren't producing cheap talent I need a new FO anyways. Time to find out if they've developed well enough and are good enough at supplementing around that development. C: Ryan Jeffers ($0.70M) 1B: Luis Arraez ($4.50M) 2B: Jorge Polanco ($7.50M) 3B: Gio Urshela ($9.00M) SS: Carlos Correa ($35M) LF: Alex Kirilloff ($0.70M) CF: Byron Buxton ($15.00M) RF: Trevor Larnach ($.7M) DH: Jose Miranda ($0.70M) 4th OF: Matt Wallner ($0.70M) Utility: Nick Gordon ($0.70M) Utility: Royce Lewis ($0.70M) Backup C: Omar Narvaez ($5.5M) SP1: Sonny Gray ($12.00M) SP2: Tyler Mahle ($8.00M) SP3: Kenta Maeda ($9.00M) SP4: Joe Ryan ($0.70M) SP5: Bailey Ober ($0.70M) RP: Jhoan Duran ($0.70M) RP: Jorge Lopez ($3.00M) RP: Griffin Jax ($0.70M) RP: Jorge Alcala ($1.00M) RP: Taylor Rogers ($6M) RP: Josh Winder ($.7M) RP: Cole Sands ($.7M) RP: Michael Fulmer ($6M) Payroll is 6.71% under budget

What @jorgenswest said. Correa fired his agent during the lockout.