Cap'n Piranha

If what Byron truly wanted was say, 6/$90M, with $5M for 500 PA's, $5M more for 600 PA's, and a couple of kickers for all-star picks/MVP's, I would say do that deal today.

That is indeed what you're positing here. For Buxton to be worth $20M or more a year, he can't produce at a 130 wRC+ level, since you can't really count on him to play more than 100-120 games a year. To validate that pay, Buxton either needs to start playing 150 a year, or play like Mike Trout for the 100-120 he's actually on the field, and that's the point I'm making--each of those 4 players has been a better offensive performer than Buxton ever had, until April 2021. Buxton can offset that with defense sure, but that is based on speed, which is already in decline. He's still elite, but he's already lost almost a foot/second since debuting. As that decline accelerates, as it surely will, the onus for Buxton to perform offensively in order to remain an elite player only grows, and there is scant evidence outside of this April to suggest he can do that.

No basis for the numbers other than educated guesses. For the astronomical ceiling Buxton possesses, the incentives have to be robust. They just have to be, otherwise Buxton's camp would have made them public, whether by leaking them, or just flat out telling a reporter. Donaldson's second-least healthy season still featured more PA's than all but two of Buxton's. The point is if we're going to continue to harp on how injury-prone Donaldson was when we signed him, what does it say that his average PA's over the 3 preceding years, including his two injured years, is still about 80% more than Buxton's last 3 years? I'll help out--it says Buxton has not a bad injury history, but a catastrophic one. Overall health of the team absolutely matters when dishing out big deals. It makes no sense to pay $20M+ for a player so they can have you be an 85 loss team, instead of a 90 loss one. If the Twins think they have an executable plan to get back to contention in each of the next 3 years, then sure, sign Buxton to help that happen. If not, they're better off getting prospects, and avoiding the prospect of Buxton's contract being an albatross.

Again, without knowing the incentives, how can you possibly claim the Twins offer was lowball? What if the Twins said that Buxton gets $5M for reaching 500 PA's, another $5M for 600 PA's, $2M for being in the top 10 of MVP voting, $5M for Top 5, and $10M for winning it? That would mean a minimum of $15M more for every MVP winning season, and probably more like $20M more. The 500 PA's would equate to about 125 games--the only time Buxton has hit 500 PA's in the majors, he put up 3.6 WAR--a minimum of $16M for that production is not unreasonable, given the going rate of WAR at $4M

Maybe. He's taking an awfully big bet on being able to show any improvement on the health front, while simultaneously playing like one of the 20-30 best players in baseball (at least). Baseball teams are generally smart, and tend to be risk averse. Your undoubted belief that not just one, but multiple teams will ignore the Chinese Parade amount of red flags attached to Buxton, especially if his production declines (it would be hard not to) or his speed starts to dissipate (more than likely). $70M-$80M over 7 years is absolutely a market value deal IF the incentives are appropriate. Clearly, Buxton disagreed, as is his right. But to pretend like there is no chance that the offer the Twins just made is better than any offer he gets in 15 months is not tethered in reality, particularly if the QO sticks around, or maybe even gets strengthened. Is it a foregone conclusion that a team woudl offer $100M guaranteed, PLUS $60M-$80M in incentives, PLUS lose 1 or more draft picks, all for a guy that had less than 500 PA's in the last two seasons combined, shook out to an OPS in the .800's, and was losing his best skill (speed)?

But you're also assuming that Buxton continues to hit like he did in April of this year, which he literally has never done before. Maybe everything did finally click for him, and it won't matter how the league tries to adjust, he will just literally continue, when healthy, to be the best hitter in baseball--his wRC+ this year is 10% better than Mike Trout, in the year in which Mike Trout was putting up the best wRC+ of his career. But I would be really leery of assuming Byron Buxton is now a superior player to peak Mike Trout, so I think he probably does fall off a cliff quite soon, all the way down to say the 130 wRC+ level. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, combined with his defense, that still makes Buxton a very valuable player. But some of the other players around 130 wRC+ this year are Ji-Man Choi, Franmil Reyes, Patrick Wisdom, and Adam Frazier. Should any of those players be paid $20M to $25M a year?

Since 2013, here are Donaldson's PA numbers, through 2019--668, 695, 711, 700, 496, 219, 659. In that span, he had one season over 8 WAR, 2 more over 7, and 2 more over 5 (a third was at 4.9). Since he debuted in 2015, here are Buxton's combined MLB/MiLB PA numbers--465, 540, 524, 246, 298, 365 (2020 pro-rated), 175 (2021 pro-rated). In 7 years, Buxton has averaged 373 PA's/year, while Donaldson (before signing the contract with the Twins) had averaged 593. Buxton wishes he could trade his injury profile for Donaldson's nagging calf injuries. Donaldson was also perceived as the final piece to push the Twins into WS contention--a lot easier to talk yourself into a huge contract when you expect that to help you potentially get a flag, as opposed to when you're coming off 90 losses.

Buxton's displeasure with the back end protection signals he either A--fully believes he'll get a better deal (which is not the same as these incentives/escalators not being great), or B--it's a negotiating position to try and get the Twins to sweeten their offer yet again. Since they've already done it once in this most recent round, perhaps he's hoping to get back on the field by mid-August, and put up 6 more good weeks, making April seem more indicative of future results. If so, maybe he hopes to get an offer from the Twins in the offseason for 7/$90M with enhanced incentives. The max value of the Twins contract has to be in at least the $120M range (if $80 is guaranteed, do you really think there's any less than $40M in incentives), and is probably more in the $140M range. DO you really think someone will give Buxton a contract that could be worth at least $120M in only 4 years? I don't think anyone is going to guarantee Buxton more than $15M a year over the next 3-4 years, which means he'd need another $15M a year in incentives to hit that amount--seems plausible but unlikely, particularly if he has yet another injury-marred season in 2022. If he also returns to an OPS in the .800's, while showing the first signs of declining speed? I would imagine he would rue the day he declined the Twins offer.

Why would 2020 not count? They made all their moves well before COVID shut everything down, and the team then played at 96 win pace, with Maeda, Pineda, and Donaldson all playing important roles, both in 2020 and 2021. Also, 2018 was hardly a dumpster fire--it was not a good year, but they finished 6 games under .500. IN the 5 years before Falvey/Levine showed up, the Twins won 42.5% of their games (69 win pace--not for nothing, but the "Chernobyl-like nuclear meltdown" Twins of 2021 are on pace for...68 wins). In the 4 seasons they've been in charge (3 full, plus 2020/2021 which is 160 games), the Twins have won 52.9% of their games (86 win pace). So a front office took a team that for 5 years was in total meltdown, and immediately turned them into an above .500 team, and you think they've done such a poor job that you believe their transaction record is a damning indictment of their performance? Pray tell, how did the organization get turned around, if not for Falvine making good and effective decisions?

Luis Gil has a 1.27 WHIP this year at AAA, in his age 23 season (i.e., he's not particularly young for the level), and is averaging barely 4 IP/start--he's never averaged 5 IP per start at any point in his career. He seems like a prime candidate to run into a reliever, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but let's not pretend we gave away Gerrit Cole. Anderson has indeed looked good, but he was also a 28 year old at AAA when the Twins let him go--not exactly a prospect. Ynoa was bad in 2019, not great in 2020, and has looked good this year--but it's in only 40 innings. As recently as this spring, fangraphs had him pegged as equally likely to be a reliever as a starter. Would having all three of those guys help? Probably (except for Anderson, who has yet to pitch this year). Would we be on our way to our third straight AL Central title? No shot. Pressly also doesn't apply here, as he was an established big leaguer at the time of the trade. The 2019 Twins scored 7 runs in 3 playoff games--pitching was not the problem. Would Pineda have made it closer? Sure, but we would not have advanced just with Pineda's presence, so to blame him for 2019 is silly. Missing Buxton, having Kepler hurt, and Garver/Sano combining for about a .400 OPS was the problem. You'll notice that I referred to this year as an unmitigated disaster--I'm not sure why you brought up the unholy trio again, although it should be noted that there was literally nothing to suggest all three would completely fail. The Angels let Shoemaker walk because they wanted to focus on pitchers without injury risks, and for a team that thought it would have nice depth in Dobnak, Thorpe, and Smeltzer, a $2M flier on Shoemaker made a lot of sense. If those 3 aren't injured essentially the whole year, the Shoemaker and Happ deals are not as bad (still pretty bad). I don't really care if the FA targets of the Twins are old, I care if they're effective. They had massive success with Cruz, and have had nice success with Donaldson. What does it matter if they're old or if those were their first choices? They got the deal done, and it has worked out. I'm also not saying this FO gets the benefit of the doubt anymore--I specifically said they'll have to earn that back. But pretending like they haven't done anything right in the last 5 years, a span that includes two division titles from a 103 win and a 96 win (pace) team, is more than pessimistic, it's nihilistic.

1. I disagree that Buxton would get significantly more on the open market--there are teams out there willing to guarantee well into the 9 figures for a guy who has only played more than 100 games once, only has one month out of his entire career where he played at a superstar level, and is turning 28 this offseason? I'm sure there are teams who would go higher than 7/$80M, but the idea that Buxton will get multiple 7/$140M+ offers I find far-fetched. Not impossible, mind you, but unlikely. As for the Hicks comp, in the three years before he signed the contract, Hicks had 1,300 PA's and put up 8.2 WAR. In 2018-2021 (which is the same number of maximum games), Buxton has 634 PA's, and put up 6.3 WAR. Clearly, Buxton has a higher ceiling than Hicks, but has been far less available, which offsets that. Hicks as a starting point is actually quite logical. 2. Your proposed offer is probably much more than what his WAR is likely to warrant. Everyone wants to use the $8M-$10M/WAR figure, but that's only for free agency. In reality, 1 WAR actually costs about $4M (in 2019, MLB salaries were around $4B, and all MLB combined for 1,000 WAR). As such, for $25M a year, Buxton needs to put up at least 6 WAR every year to actually be worth it. Is he capable of doing that in 110-120 games? At April 2021 rates of production, absolutely. Any other point of his career? Not even close. Combine the elevated potential for decline (combination of accumulating injuries plus the fact he is now past his physical peak), and your proposed contract is a giant risk. The Twins are offering (as best we can tell, unless we get insight into the incentives) a very appropriate deal, given the vast chasm between the worst case and best case scenarios for the next 7 years of Buxton's career.

I disagree with this strongly. This year has been mostly an unmitigated disaster (although it bears noting that one of the free agents the Twins signed prior to this year was Nelson Cruz). Other than that? The initial signing of Cruz was genius. The trade for Maeda was a strong move, and signing Donaldson was also (at least to this point) a very good move. Pineda has been a great get for the front office as well. The Odorizzi trade is one of the few times a team has clearly beat the Rays, and getting MLB value for a guy pitching on a team called the Unicorns (Dobnak), is excellent as well. As for routinely undervaluing their prospects, I assume you're talking about Akil Baddoo and Lamonte Wade? Baddoo certainly looks like someone we'd like to have back, although he still has less than 300 MLB PA's, so let's not pretend it's impossible that he regresses and ends up as 4th/5th outfielder. Wade has put up only 1.2 WAR this year, is only providing defensive value in LF, and will be 28 before the 2022 season starts. If those are the worst prospect mistakes a team makes, then that team is pretty good with prospects. Let me know if I'm missing someone, but I can't think of any true prospects who have gone on to be first division regulars, other than potentially Baddoo. They've hardly flubbed contract negotiations with Buxton or Berrios either. Berrios has been very open about wanting to test free agency. You would need to pay him a premium to get him to forgo that, in essence overpaying on the overpay that is free agency. With Buxton, without knowing what he realistically wanted, it's almost impossible to know if the offer that's been reported was a good one or not. As I previously mentioned, if the incentives were small and difficult to achieve, then yes, the FO screwed up. I very much doubt that is the case, as they would be at a real risk of having Buxton's camp "accidentally" leak that. My guess is the incentives were in the $50M-$70M range, and were moderately hard to achieve, while Buxton wanted more guaranteed, and $80M-$100M in incentives which would be moderately easy to achieve. The Twins would be foolish to guarantee $100M to a player who's about to turn 28, and has had only one month of actual superstar level production. I do think that this year has been a step backward, and most of the rep the FO built in 2019/2020 is now gone. They will have to demonstrate some real acumen to move back towards being viewed positively. That said, pretending like this FO has spent almost 5 years in charge, and has only done one thing right is just asinine.

I'm sure Buxton was very upset about getting optioned towards the end of 2018. That being said, he had an OPS of .383 in 2018. NOT OBP. OPS. He also hadn't played in a game since May. It's not like he was putting up an OPS above .700 while playing every day in August. That being said, do we have any kind of proof at all that almost 3 years later, Buxton is still so upset that he won't even sign with the Twins, even if they gave him the best offer? I'm not saying he doesn't feel that way, just that we should stop assuming that he does, and ascribing that belief to his every action. Buxton seems like an intelligent enough fellow--I would imagine that he can at least see the Twin's side of things (given his horrendous 2018 production, perhaps in retrospect he understand that the Twins wanted him to regain some confidence at AAA, instead of get another month of failure at MLB).

Here's the problem though--since the beginning of 2019, the Twins have played 328 games. If you assume a player plays in 90% of a team's game (which allows for one 10 day trip to the IL, and 6-8 other random off days), and gets 4 PA's a game, that player would have accumulated 1,180 PA's since the beginning of 2019. Buxton has had 540. That's not even half. So given the ridiculously high risk of missed time due to injury, we can't look at this is 7/$80M. In reality, this is more like 3/$80M or 4/$80M at the guarantee level--those are still team-friendly IF 2021 April Buxton is a real thing, and not a SSS guy putting it all together in his age 27 season for 4 weeks. If the true Buxton is a guy who produces offensive numbers similar to 2019, while playing somewhere between 40% and 60% of the team's games, then those 3/$80M or 4/$80M deals are quite fair for both sides. Now--if the incentives required Buxton to get 600 PA's a year, or finish top 2 in the MVP balloting; if they only added another $30M to $40M in maximum value, then yes, this was not a realistic deal. I very much doubt that the front office would have wasted time submitting multiple contract offers they had to know would be rejected. My guess is that Buxton wanted 7/$100M guaranteed, with another $100M in potential incentives, with probably half of that being pretty easily achievable (say at 400 PA's, or making the all-star roster, or winning a gold glove). As such, I think Buxton is overvaluing himself, and might be in for a rude awakening come November 2022, particularly if he doesn't play 130 games or come close to matching his April 2021 production. Buxton is essentially betting on himself, and I can't fault him for that--hell, I admire it. That said, this is quite different than Berrios, who has a rock solid track record, and it is not impossible that in 15 months, Buxton will regret not guaranteeing himself north of $40M in post-tax income in the next 7 years.

Because a handful of starts in AAA would convince the Twins or anyone else that his 11 (mostly disastrous) starts were what, a fluke? The only possible value Shoemaker has to the Twins right now is if he somehow figures out how to be a usable reliever, and even that is a long shot. If the Twins promised him starts because they were worried about rotation depth at AAA, then that's fine (as I said, I'm not super up to date on St Paul's rotation). If they promised him starts for any other reason, then they are wasting everyone's time on a guy who will end his professional relationship with the organization in about 60 days.

He should have known to begin with. I was half watching at the time, saw Polanco's hit, and the fielder get to it, and turned away feeling good about a leadoff single with our 2-3-4 hitters due up. Imagine my surprise and confusion when I looked back at the screen 15 seconds later, only to see the bases empty with only one out. I would have no problem if Polanco had made an aggressive turn in order to take advantage of a potential bobble or stumble. But the instant the ball was fielded cleanly, Polanco should have beat a hasty retreat to first, and lived to let our best hitters drive him in.

I'm not super read up on the Saint's rotation, but are they really hurting so badly for starters that Shoemaker had to get the call?

Nelson Cruz's contract is up after this year, therefore holding onto him does nothing to build the team for next year. The Twins are allowed to sign him to a new contract this offseason as well. Making a trade for two pitchers having success in AAA actually is building for next year. You know what's not building for next year? Hanging on to a 41 year old on an expiring contract so he can hit 15 more home runs for a team that's going to lose 90 games.

Aaron Gleeman has said it multiple times on the Gleeman and the Geek podcast. From 2019-2021, Darvish is 13th in WAR, so it's not really "arguable" he's as good as anyone not named de Grom. He was going to turn 32 in the first year of his contract, and had only made 30 starts in a season twice (one season he made 29). There was massive injury and aging risk, and acting like the Twins should have just ignored that isn't a position based in reality.

That's exactly why I said the teams would be stupid to ignore that leverage--it will lead to them making bad deals. Take Berrios--he has clearly decided he wants to test the FA market; nor is that a decision he has come to recently. Thus, if the Twins wanted to sign Berrios 1-2 years ago, they would have had to outbid not the actual market, but Berrios' conception of the market. Specifically after Wheeler signed his deal; Berrios I'm sure looked at it as a guy who was older, more injury-prone, and not necessarily better (Berrios 2017-2019 WAR--10.1. Wheeler 2017-2019 WAR--9.1). Therefore, is there any reason to think Berrios would be satisfied with the same deal a lesser player got 3 years before? If you wanted to sign Berrios at any point after that Wheeler deal, I'm assuming a minimum contract is 5/$140M, and if he's expecting that to replace at least 2 if not all 3 arb years, it would be a horrible deal for the Twins (getting only 2-3 more years of control, while spending vastly more at the beginning of the contract--maybe $18M-$20M under arb salaries, against $75M-$80M under the extension). If you want more extra control, you'd need to go probably 7/$175, which is a huge bet to place on a guy who could quite easily blow out his arm, and never be the same.

This is a little bit different when the vast majority of prospects lost an entire year of development time, and then had a delay to the start of this season as well. I would guess that if COVID didn't happen one of Duran or Balazovic (perhaps both) might already be in the majors.

Because in order to sign players that didn't play for you last year, you have to (generally speaking), pay them more than 29 other teams are willing to. For players you have control over, you simply have to abide by the pay structures set up. It would be stupid for the team to give up the leverage of arbitration years, just like it would be stupid for the player to give up the leverage of free agency years. I'm glad you do know better, and don't legitimately think the Twins are trying to hold the salary line for the organizations they're competing against.

Yeah, the pitching pipeline is a little dry over the past 3-4 years. Maybe that's why a pitching-focused front office was brought in after 2016.

This is not even close to true. It has been reliably reported that Wheeler's agent wouldn't even listen to offers from the Twins--the Twins were expressly told not to waste their time. As for Yu Darvish, he has posted 8.2 WAR (all in the NL as well) since 2018, which ranks him 32nd in all of baseball. Do you think the Twins can realistically compete while paying 2nd/3rd starters $20M+ a year?

Buxton debuted in his age 21 season, and had 500 PA's in the majors in his age 23 season (i.e. he was a starter). Sano debuted in his age 22 season, and had 495 PA's in the majors in his age 23 season Arraez debuted in his age 22 season, and has been a starter ever since Other examples Polanco debuted in his age 20 season, and had 500 PA's in the majors in his age 23 season Kepler debuted in his age 22 season, and had 447 PA's in the majors in his age 23 season Kiriloff debuted this year, in his age 23 season, and would have gotten 500 PA's if not for injury (might have debuted last year, if not for COVID Rosario debuted in his age 23 season, and got 474 PA's in the majors that year Larnach debuted this year, in his age 24 season, and will probably get 500 PA's (also might have debuted last year if not for COVID) Berrios debuted in his age 22 season, and was a full time starter in his age 23 season (25 starts in the majors) Jeffers debuted in his age 23 season, and has been a full time starter this year in his age 24 season The old stereotype that the Twins don't promote young players is just that--old. It's not fact-based at all any more.