FargoFanMan

A solid SS for a handful of years though which is all you can truly ask for. Gotta love a SS with a little fire and grittiness.

He’ll be arriving and getting his feet wet just about the time Correa can start contemplating a move to 3B. Start a succession pattern at SS. About that time Royce after having a few monster seasons will be ready to cash in and Correa can slide over and let this guy man SS for 4 or 5 years. I love that the outlook is that he can stick at SS. I don’t think that was ever really the course for Royce Lewis despite all we were told while he was coming up. Great pick. Great guy. Good article.

How a championship team is built is the question at hand. To simply look at the final number is why you come to the same conclusion. You build a core of young players. That core gets you so far and you supply that core with reinforcements. Those players get older and they cost more money. That increases your payroll along with the FA’s you brought in to help push the core. In turn you jump to the front of the pack in total payroll. No championship team is getting younger and less expensive as they are chasing a championship. The reason you keep coming to the same conclusion is because you’re not following the team through those stages. You’re looking at the final result. Larger market teams can keep the window open longer. But they all got their the same way. There are exceptions to the rule. Right now we’re watching one end. The Astros. And one begin. The orioles. Both built the same exact way. Through drafting high, signing international FA’s well and developing them at a high clip. Making some good trades can accelerate that as well. You don’t build a multi year WS contender by buying FA’s. The dodgers have done that the most and are a recent example. They were at the end of their run and they went out and spent a bunch of money to keep that window open. Who are their good young rising stars though? They have none yet. But just like every other championship/contending team the players get older and less productive. The core gets more expensive and you either have to sign them to long term deals or watch them walk. Then the run eventually ends and another team takes their place. The reason that almost all championship teams are at the top of the payroll list is because that’s how baseball works. If the NFL(always the example of why mlb needs a salary cap) has such good parity and it’s such an even playing field then why are teams like the browns, the lions(until recently), the jets always at the bottom of the league for decades upon decades? For the same reason the pirates, A’s, and Marlins are always at the bottom of the league. They’re poorly run franchises. I think baseball has had the best “parity” in the last 15 years. Not the worst. It’s a talking point. It’s front of mind. It’s inflamed by everyone talking about it. And when these big players sign big contracts with big teams it’s always a throw your arms up moment.

So you’re talking specifically the Dodgers? Who won in 2024 and 2020. The Astros maybe who won in 2022 and 2017. Who else are you talking about? How were those teams built? What were their payrolls in those years and where were they ranked. Did they buy FA’s or were they largely built from within? These questions matter if we are to have an honest conversation about what parity actually means. What constitutes having a chance by making the playoffs from having a chance to realistically advance in the playoffs? I believe it’s just a hot button issue because a few large market teams happened to spend a bunch of money for 2 or 3 generational players and the parity soundbite got put on repeat. The same thing happened in the early 2000’s with the Yankees.

Shouldn’t the whole goal of an organization, or any business really, be to spend less and succeed (win) more? I think most of this “parity” conversation is driven simply by the fact that your team (the Twins, or any small to mid market team) can’t spend like the dodgers. But you don’t want to spend like the dodgers. You don’t want to be the team strapped by guaranteed contracts for 8,9,10 years of a player going into their late 30’s. You’re just jealous that your team can’t do that or chooses not to do that. You shouldn’t want your team to do that. But the exciting thing is to sign an overpriced free agent. The exciting thing isn’t to draft a player and develop him for 4 years and watch him develop for another 2-3 years in the majors until he becomes a star. No, you want instant gratification of signing the high priced 29 year old to a 9 year contract. That looks great until that player ages and his contract becomes dead weight and hamstrings your team for years. Then you can complain that such and such GM was so stupid and the cycle continues. Buying players is not what teams ascending the hill do it’s what teams at the top of the hill do before they start falling down the hill. It’s todays talking point. It’s instant gratification. It’s the I want it now mentality. It’s the I’m mad that my friend has better toys than I do. You don’t want his toys. They’re overpriced and not as well made. This problem has been hyped by talking heads and rules are being made to address the wrong points. Nobody is tanking. There isn’t a rash of collusion. The boogeyman isn’t out to get your team. These talking points are just being amplified because of todays culture. All FA’s can ensure is the possibility for sustained success. And that’s not a sure thing. Do I like that the Pohlads have screwed this team for 30 years? No. Do I want them to spend like the dodgers? No. Do I think the Ohtani and Soto contracts are ridiculous? Yes. Do I want MLB and the players union to flip the chess board to be more like the NFL and NBA. Absolutely not! The rules need to implement more carrots instead of sticks to retain the integrity of the game. Otherwise it will become the same bloated circus that other leagues have turned into.

Seems to me there’s pretty decent parity if you go through total payroll for most years and see who made the playoffs. 2024 was actually well represented by the bottom 10 which would be hard to believe by reading anything about baseball anywhere. Especially on this sight. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/_/year/2024/sort/cap_total2

Please stop this. Who’s next in the “can they be a SP” query? Duran? Buxton? Correa? Come on now.

True but everyone is missing the key point. How were all these teams built? Drafting, signing and developing? Or simply buying FA’s? Who were the core players of those teams? Guys that were developed by that organization or guys that were bought by that organization? Were these teams big spenders before or after they had their in house core? In almost every case the team drafts, signs and develops above average. They get the “core”. That core shows promise. When they are ready they are supplemented. Once they are supplemented and the window is wide open they spend to get the WS. Sometimes this works and sometimes it fails. Some teams have more resources to keep the window open but the window always closes. Sometimes softly and sometimes harshly. When there hasn’t been a repeat champ since the 2000 Yankees it shows you there’s parity. MLB is not the NFL or NBA and that’s a good thing!

I don’t believe that any team is truly “tanking” as the rule implies. Maybe and that’s a big maybe they were at the end of the season. When you look at the White Sox at some point you need to blow it up. Teams are allowed to blow the whole thing up and start over. It’s a healthy part of the process. Look at their roster. Failed prospect after failed prospect compounded by injuries to guys that were supposed to be cornerstones. What were they supposed to do? Buy their way out of the mess? That’s what I’m talking about here. Everybody looks at the financials of it when baseball has one feature that no other league has. The long development process where you can pool a group of promising young players together through the draft and trades to come up together and compete with these teams that simply buy their way in every year. Also I’m not sure you can call the White Sox debacle “tanking”. With all the work that goes into everything in front of a spotlight imagine how demoralizing it has to be showing up everyday for 162 games and continually failing day in day out. At some point unless you’re psychologically tough you give up at some point and you’re just going through the motions and at the highest level you will be beat 9 out of 10 times. I don’t believe that there was a massive collusion where from the top on down it was decided that they were going to start intentionally losing games in hopes that they are going to secure a top pick. How illogical does that sound. I do believe the pirates abuse their luxury tax payments by not using it all on players but to implement a lottery and rules around it to relieve “tanking” is a ploy. Why would you want to hamstring teams from becoming better faster? That makes no sense for baseball at all as a whole. As bad as the orioles looked 5 years ago I’m glad they got all those top picks to rebuild their team. That’s how all the best teams have ever been built. The best teams have never been built through FA. Everyone talks the Yankees and dodgers. How were they originally built? Drafting and developing. Jeter, Posada, Bernie Williams, Rivera, Pettite. The dodgers are a bit different but every year they are the strongest at developing guys. Year in year out they’ve got guys all over the top 100 lists. To constantly screech and moan about money and salary caps and salary floors and billionaires and contracts is so fool hardy. These are talking points that get people excited. Until some idiots massively change the rules and ultimately ruin the game forever the meat and potatoes of baseball has and will always be drafting, signing and developing good young talent. The 90’s- 2000’s Yankees ultimately fell apart. The same is happening to the Astros now. The same thing will eventually bite the dodgers as well. It’s the way of baseball. Good cheap young talent will always be more valuable than expensive aging talent. This is true in every “sport”.

Money is always the talking point. Maybe instead of a luxury tax and everything revolving around money let’s tweak the approach taken in the last CBA. To a degree. Rewarding smaller market teams with more draft picks and penalizing the luxury tax teams by relinquishing draft picks. Make the draft budgets higher and lower based on the payrolls. Get away from punishing teams for tanking. Teams aren’t doing that in the sense of the word. If they are don’t slap them on the wrist for one year. Investigate it heavily and if they are penalize them. Harshly! Put the luxury tax money into developmental budgets possibly and not just a check to the team for whatever they want to use it for. That money should go into developing players to achieve better players for the game itself, not just for a team. Tie more of the money to improving the game by developing more higher quality players. Every action has a reaction but to simply argue money based on free agency completely ignores so many other facets of the game. Salary caps and floors are silly. Centralized money created by salary caps and floors leads to a mockery as seen by the NFL and NBA. As an outsider to other sports I stopped watching years ago simply because I believe baseball and to some ends hockey are the only true “sports” left in this country of the major sports leagues. The NBA and NFL have been subjected to mere “entertainment” leagues because of the centralized controls of the money. Keeping teams independent and more privatized to do what they want keeps baseball in the “sports” category. It keeps MLB as a corporation honest to the fans as much as it can be. Deferred contracts are are a black eye but we’ll see how that plays out when these guys get into they’re late 30’s or get injured. Time will tell how those contracts age. The dodgers can buy all the talent they want. As long as small market teams can develop and produce teams of younger hungry players small markets will always compete. Good young players will always be a hotter commodity than good aging players. As long as the rules don’t change and the bigger market teams pay big dollars for what a player has already done rather than paying younger players big money for what they could do the system will balance itself out. I’d take $20M in good young talent rather than $250M in aging talent any day. And that’s the equalizer.

Because he’s a big bat first baseman that is inexpensive and young with upside that has shown glimpses of true in game MLB power. He also seems to be available. That’s why people around here are intrigued. I am as well but not for any of the top 3 SP’s or festa. If they add Roman Anthony into the trade they can have whoever they want. All kidding aside Boston and Minnesota match up well as trade partners. I don’t think they are hard set on Casas for starters. They have some other holes as well that the Twins could help them fill while filling in 1B

I think it takes 3 guys as well. Just depends on who they want to play LF as to what caliber of starter they want. If Castro is the centerpiece then you can give up SWR or Matthew’s. If Larnach is your centerpiece then it’s probably Festa or better. I think Raya is quite a ways behind Festa. I’m not convinced he’s even gonna be a ML caliber starter yet with the low amount of innings he’s pitched.

What if Keaschall never puts up more than a 3 WAR season in his career and Cease makes us contenders? Luke Keaschall is not the future. Neither is Emma. They are good prospects but in no way are they future stars. Cease is a top of the rotation pitcher right now. He helps you win this year. The future star is Jenkins. He’s not going anywhere. Keaschall is more than likely the next Eddie Rosario and Emma is more than likely the next Max Kepler. Solid players but not all stars. They don’t really help this year either. The window is open now. Play for today. Not for 2 years from now.

Maybe #3. But I highly doubt it. The rest don’t make any sense if you go look at the Padres holes they are trying to fill. They want ML players unless they can get a ML ready top 100 prospect. Their holes are at LF, C and SP. Remember that they are trying to compete with the Dodgers, Giants and Diamondbacks. Not the Royals, Guardians and Tigers. Let’s try again. Ready…..Go!

They’re not trading Pablo. The whole let’s trade Pablo or Correa or Buxton to clear up money boat sank when 3/4 of the top 50 FA’s signed. It’s trade season now until opening day.

I don’t believe the Twins should be playing in that end of the pool when they have young controllable pitching coming up. You simply take his top of the rotation stuff for a year combined with the 3-5 WAR he provides for one year and you let him go get paid and have someone else pay him $30M a year into his 30’s. Give him the QO and collect your draft pick. Overall he’s a tick behind Burnes. Probably gets as of right now 6-7 years and 28-32 per year. The Twins don’t need to go fishing in that pond.

Castro is far and away a better player. I agree that Arraez needs to be batting probably 4-5-6-7 in a deep lineup. You want him driving in runs. Not getting on base and clogging the base paths with his station to station only ability. I think at this stage he’s strictly a DH which severely diminishes his WAR value and makes that $14M look less desirable.

Agreed! Castro and Vazquez. Then they want someone who they can plug right into the rotation today. My thinking is they probably want Ober, Ryan or Festa. The Twins probably only wanna give up Raya, Morris, Culpepper or Lewis. I think they settle in the middle with SWR or Matthew’s. Preferably they deal SWR. Or they go the Larnach route in place of Castro and then I think Keaschall is involved along with Raya, Morris, Mathews, SWR and Festa. I would think you could involve Paddack in there but it seems they are unsure about him.

They probably want one of those guys. Either Larnach or Castro as it fills a hole for them. They also want a SP. probably one of Festa or SWR. Along with a prospect.

If they’re getting Cease then they’re sending one of Ober, Ryan, SWR or Festa to the Padres for Cease. The Padres don’t want a prospect package. They want to fill holes and shed payroll. They’re not rebuilding. This article is very disingenuous by thinking the Twins would be sending a prospect package with no MLB caliber pitcher. The Twins are not stock piling pitchers here. The Padres want pitchers. Just not a $13.75M pitcher. Come on now. Bring a better talking point as an article.

I would tend to agree. The tidbits they do give out are just a tad bit more than you’ll find here. And the speculation isn’t as wild and “video game” like as here. But to your point it’s just more talking in all directions so to say.

They didn’t talk specifics. Basically what has been said here trending towards the more rational side. Just comes down to can they get it done by including one of the major league pitchers or a one of the top end hitting prospects. Like you said. “If” it gets done it will include Vazquez for sure. After that any number of guys really. If they want pitching or want a ML ready bat is the question. Or a combination of both. Idk if SWR and Larnach get a deal done. They probably want either Ryan, Ober or one of the 3 prospect hitters. Possibly Castro. I guess it’s more up in the air after reading a few articles and listening to a few things. Not to mention the Braves and Orioles are probably in on Cease as well.

They do and I think they think that it’s a long shot to happen.

He needs to fill some positions while dropping payroll. He’s driving a hard bargain but like you said the bag is in Prellers hands. What he gets for Cease ultimately determines the Padres season. The Twins have the pitching and prospect capital to make it happen. With the pitching coming up they should be willing to part with a few guys to bring in a top of the rotation arm for a year and get a draft pick for him via the QO next year.

Can Culpepper be traded? Would they target him? If they want pitchers that are ready now or close to ready would a deal of Vazquez/Larnach/Woods-Richardson/Raya for Cease/Brandon Valenzuela. Valenzuela is their #13 prospect as of 2024 list. He’s an intriguing prospect as a glove first catcher who has shown the ability to get on base and is a switch hitter at AAA. Could compete for a backup catcher role with Camargo/Cartaya. Another intriguing prospect is Francis Peña. A true bullpen arm with an elite fastball and a cutter that could use a bit of tweaking to become elite and be a shutdown bullpen piece.