FargoFanMan

Yes, and if you’re a mid market team that contract can cripple a team for years. Hell, sometimes it cripples a big market team. Imagine what the Yankees could have done with the $220M they’ve paid Stanton over the last 7 years only to get 9WAR out of him. That contract has not quite crippled them but damn that hurts! Most contracts turn out that way and I for one would rather the Twins not enter those kinds of sweepstakes. I would rather they make a few well timed trades to add talent but no way do I want them spending on the old high priced FA’s.

Everyone that’s complained about the Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers and probably now the Mets for the last 30 years thinking those teams buy championships. Everyone in here wishing for a new owner thinking that’s a guarantee to spend more money and that that will 100% guarantee a championship. Everyone clamoring for a salary cap and floor to “Even” the playing field. So everyone that’s not a Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers and Mets fan pretty much.

Exactly, despite how many teams being utter failures while running top 5 payrolls most people still think you build a team with strictly free agents. No, every championship team is built internally as opposed to externally. Spending more money on FA’s just wins you the stupid prize of overpaying for a 30+ yo player as he significantly declines. No thanks.

Sign him to a Buxton type deal right now. At this point you can lock him up as a 90 game player and put incentives in if he reaches more. Time to call it what it is. If we’re excited when Buxton plays 100 games why can’t we be excited when Lewis does the same. Some guys are what they are. Maximize the value you know and hope for more. He’s never gonna be an MVP type player as he’s going now cause he’s never gonna play 140 games but he can be very solid for 90 games for many more years. Jump on that.

If that is to happen they need an ownership group and a front office to stop pulling back on the reins at the deadline and the off-season. 2023 was the deadline to add to bolster the team and they did nothing. 2024 was the deadline to add to help the team get into the playoffs and allow everyone to come back in October. They did nothing. Same thing Terry Ryan always did. Same thing Falvey has done. That’s when you know without a doubt it’s the Pohlads that have been holding this franchise back for decades. They put enough shekels in the pot to put butts in the seats but never enough to be the last ones standing.

Well, he’ll either find it or he won’t. At $1M non guaranteed hopefully the twins won’t be obliged to keep him when he’s batting .200 overall in May. It’ll either work or it won’t. If Miranda is competent at 1st he’s everyday by June.

Totally agree. If the Twins can get through the whole season and not have Lopez, Ryan and Ober miss more than 2 starts it’s gonna be a good year. This staff will keep them in games even if the offense goes on its up and down trajectory like last year. There’s also enough rotation depth to weather a few storms but overall it’s not the rotation I worry about. Regardless of whether the horses can make it through 6 innings. This season will be how good is the bullpen actually? And will this offense simply be consistent?

Lol! Let’s squeeze the last couple drops out of him and let him be the number 4 starter

What are you even talking about? I’ve given subtle yet attentive examples to every one of your dull examples. You state things that have no depth to them. You tell me teams that have done this and done that while providing no resources or even an explanation as to how you came to that stance. You’ve named a dozen different teams just claiming facts that you’ve heard talking heads say. I have provided counters to your arguments while you interject opinions you may have heard. I don’t follow talking heads. I research everything I have said and everything you have said. What you state is half truth with no depth whatsoever. Then you either start or end every rebuttal with a childish snide remark to help you aim your point. I’ve made detailed points as to how to actually fix the structure without blowing up the current system and risking a strike/lockout. I’ve made these points several times throughout conversations not only with you but with others. You’ve provided nothing but the same old dead salary cap/ salary floor as if this one thing will be the fix all. So please, if you’re planning to make an intelligent, well detailed example and prove me wrong as opposed to ramblings then make it already. If you’re going to continue to just disagree then say it. Put the sports page down and defecate or get off the pot already.

I would hardly call it bandaiding a gaping wound. How did those teams you mentioned get to where they are? The same way every other sports team ever has made their way towards relevance. Through drafting and international signing competently. Good development systems and innovative team strategies. As far as markets Kansas City only shares their market with one other major team despite being on the bottom end of sports markets. Oakland is part of the Bay Area market which is one of the largest in the country. The A’s with their stadium situation simply couldn’t compete with the Giants in that market. Same goes for the Rays and their stadium situation. There’s so many other factors besides market size. Ownership goal(profit or winning), sports market saturation, facility inequalities, market capitalization, team strategy, fan involvement. There’s so many angles as to why, simply blowing the whole thing up and implementing salary caps and floors doesn’t get you there. Allow so called smaller markets a bigger piece of the prospect pie through draft pick trading, implementing an international draft, more picks at the top and implementing incentives for bigger developmental budgets with the revenue sharing money.

Houston was actually a great example at how fast a team could be turned around. They are the model. The Twins should have done more of the same and we’re seeing the consequences of that inability right now. I remind you that the Twins were in the same group with Houston and the Cubs who were rebuilding at the time. The twins didn’t blow it up. They kept trying to half compete. Meanwhile, the cubs built it back and won a World Series and the Astros went on to become a dynasty who is now looking to be at the end. Also, anybody coming out to A’s games to watch Severino pitch is negligible at best. Signing an aging Brent Rooker to a long term contract simply hamstrings a future A’s team.

I’m simply attempting to provide an actual solution to improving the game that can be accomplished without blowing the current system up. Implementing a salary cap and floor simply presents a different side of the same coin. It equates to a lockout/strike. It equates to team inequalities at an under the radar area. It equates to massive concessions to large market teams in terms of a TV/Streaming contract. The NFL and MLB have 2 very different structures. One size does not and will not fit all. Forcing investment on one side and limiting investment on the other presents you with a different side of the same coin. We’ll agree to disagree as you’re simply not seeing the larger picture of all of this. The data shows a negligible difference at very best if it involves all facets of this argument. Not worth losing a whole season in a 1994 type event when the system could be made better by simply reallocating money and resources from the back end to the front end.

Dude, go look at the NBA and NFL and tell me it’s fair. all the same teams are consistently playing each other in the title games. it looks the exact same as MLB but worse. the cap/floor will just lead to different inequalities because it rewards the same structure thats already in place. go do a deep dive in the MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL. especially the historic financials. the evidence isnt there that a cap/floor creates parity. it gives the illusion there is but the results say different.

And the league will devolve into a real life version of BASEketball that everyone loves. It’ll have robo umps and AI controlling the parameters of the games. Nobody will go to games as they can just watch it on their VR headset. Draft kings will be the official sponsor of MLB and bud light will be delivered to your door with a subscription to MLBTV. The players will be required to take steroids, to justify their salaries, and they’ll all have cameras following their every move all the time to give fans an inside look at their lives. Uber eats will partner to deliver your favorite snacks for each game. And we’ll all live happily after. The owners will become filthy rich in the background and the players will get paid more in indorsement deals and cameos on reality VR shows than they do playing the game itself.

Then if we are in consensus that the players are still gonna get paid massive contracts and the teams and owners are gonna screw everybody and we’re gonna have the whoah is me mentality then what the hell are we even talking about? Everything just sucks and there’s nothing we can do about it and we’ll all just agree on that. Jeez

Totally agree! Having the draft based solely on record seems archaic. There’s so many other ways to measure success and how to allocate draft and international capital. Giving smaller market teams a bigger piece of the prospect pie. Giving incentives to sign those guys to contracts once they’ve established themselves to stay with those teams and creating an international draft where the smaller market teams get a bigger priece of that talent. Instead of it taking 6 years to rebuild cut that time in half ensuring the big market teams have plenty of young competition. Everything is so money centric but there are avenues to improve teams fast on the front end.

Ding ding ding! Agreed! Why does the draft have to be solely based on record? Why does it have to be in a certain order? Why can’t there be an international draft. If MLB is truly in the business of making baseball better and not just in it for the money then then the changes need to come in the drafting, intl signing and development side. Not the FA side with a cap and floor. A cap and floor simply changes the terms of what is currently used to a degree. Mike Sixel. Do you have links to these articles? I may have missed them. I’d love to read your plans on this as I believe this is the avenue you use. Change things at the front end instead it always being about the back end.

Well, I look at it differently than the players getting more money than the owners. I don’t want a cap because that’s an excuse for the owners just to pocket money the same way some do now. A salary floor just gets older players paid just for the sake of spending. You kind of see it now with these pre ML debut contracts but essentially finding a way where there’s more of an incentive for smaller market teams to acquire more prospect capital and then those teams being able to sign those younger players to contracts and essentially avoid the arbitration structure. You want smaller market teams to have a bigger slice of the prospect pie and those teams to have the ability to sign those players to contracts. The braves are a great example of this. They are not at the top of spending because they are throwing money at big tier FA’s but because they lock their young players up early to ensure they have them together in their peak years. That’s what you want as a fan.

I whole heartedly agree. The 2015 royals are one of the best models of development, and good trades. Also, one that nobody will ever mention around here are the 2017 Astros. Everyone always says the Royals but the 2017 Astros were only $12M higher in payroll the year they won their first WS in their current run. Pulling up the bottom using baseballs developmental system is way better than just throwing money around. Speeding up the developmental process and giving the bottom teams a larger part of the prospect pool. Speed up these rebuilds. What you really want is more prospects in the hands of the smaller market teams and you want those teams to sign those guys to contracts that lead up to their age 30 season. Not after. The baseball developmental structure is so different than the NFL and NBA I think you need to use that system to speed up these rebuilds. Salary caps and floors like the NFL and NBA just is a different language that keeps giving money to the same people receiving money right now. I’d be more for a contract cap and a contract floor. I just think this has to be looked at from different angles than other sports cause the structure is so different.

I am going to agree with you more than I have most because you haven’t mentioned a salary cap or floor. I believe there has to be another way. You don’t blow up the current system. You allow draft pick trading and along with the luxury tax teams that go over surrender their 1st round pick. Make it mandatory that whatever luxury tax money that teams receive must go into their draft and developmental budget. Obviously the mlbpa will throw a fit but that’s how you need to go about this. Invest in the young guys. That can make these rebuilds faster since MLB has such a different and longer developmental pattern. And investing heavily in younger talent raises that bar without putting money in the owners hands(salary cap) and without putting money in players hands who probably don’t deserve it( salary floor).

Maybe it’ll work out a with Miranda, Julien and Castro over there. I also know that maybe they weren’t expecting AK crash and burn and retire. Yet how in the world do we find ourselves here time after time? For all the playing guys at SS in the minors when they’re not SS clearly why do they continually fail to develop an at least solid 1B? For all their defensive woes in the OF how have Larnach and Wallner never been considered while coming up? I’m 50/50 on Miranda being able to hold that position but you’re putting a guy in a precarious spot trying to acclimate in the Majors. I wish him the best and hopefully he makes 1B his.

They’re not trying to win it all because they’re either a poorly run organization or they’re building to their window of contention. Championship teams are built the same way they always have been. With good inexpensive young talent supplemented with FA’s. Not the other way around.

How many WS appearances did the Yankees make from 2009 to 2024?

Teams are in the top half because their window is open to spend. Track their payrolls adjusted for inflation over a ten year period. Most of these teams don’t spend like that over a ten year period. The nationals aren’t in the top 10 now. Why were they then? Cause their window was open to chase a WS.

I would agree with you somewhat on most of this but number 3. A salary cap puts money in the owners pockets and a salary floor puts money in the players pockets. A salary cap gives owners money that they don’t need or can’t spend and a salary floor gives players money that they probably don’t deserve. If the NFL has parity then how is a team going for a 3 peat this weekend against a team that was just there 2 years ago against a team that’s been either in the championship or won it. It’s just another way to slice a melon. The mlb does it with a knife and the NFL does it with a machete. Focusing strictly on the money is not going to accomplish the thing you want it to. Go look at the Astros spending adjusted for inflation from WS appearance to the last WS win. 2005 to 2022. They spend roughly the same through that period adjusted for inflation. It’s not as cut and dry as looking at a payroll sheet. Those teams are at the top because their window is open. So you supplant your young core with FA’s to fill in holes. A team like the dodgers extended their window by signing aging FA’s. Really their run was done when Kershaw started showing his age. Just like the Yankees after their late 90’s to 2009 run. Those players got old. Retired. Big drops in performance and didn’t reach the WS again until this year. Baseball is cyclical because you still build a championship team the same way as you did 50 years ago. Not by buying FA’s. Young cheap talent is always, always, always more valuable than older aging expensive talent. The dodgers will fall just like every other team has. It just takes them longer cause they can extend their runs through FA.