Cap'n Piranha

Do you really think there was no other team that would have happily let Shoemaker pitch in AAA for them?

This is a good point. We've all been ignoring the fact that the teams the Twins faced had to use the juiced ball when pitching, while the Twins got to use the normal baseball while pitching.

He loves the organization that told him to make changes that might end his big league career, and to which he had no relationship until 5 months ago?

I probably am, mostly because I tend to focus on stats, rather than projection. I will completely admit that I am potentially undervaluing both of these guys based on that. I'll also call out that I was hoping the Dodgers move last night would force the Padres to a more desperate place, and let us get either Abrams or Hassell. Hassell is 3 years younger, and putting up better numbers at A than Martin is at AA. FG also rates him higher on speed, which makes him more likely to be able to play some center, I woudl think. Abrams is 20, at AA, and putting up fairly comparable numbers to Martnin (although since his wRC+ is lower, I assume that means Abrams plays in a more hitter-friendly league). Abrams grades out higher on every tool than Martin, particularly speed, so he would be an almost for sure SS/CF for years to come. Now, Abrams may have been a pipe dream, but I thought a desperate Preller would maybe feel obligated to do whatever it took to get Berrios, and we could pry him away.

I'm a little less excited about this than the rest of the board seems to be. SWR seems ok--he's 20, at AA, and his FIP and xFIP are pretty good, so I'm optimistic there, but I'm worried about Martin. He's 22 at AA, so he's not particularly young for a to prospect at AA, and while I love his .424 OBP, I'm worried about his sub-.400 SLG, and .281 BA. Sounds less like a hitter, and more like a guy with a really great eye and approach. Fangraphs puts him at 35 currently, with a 60 future grade on the hit tool, and 35 current 50 future on game power. If that develops then yes you have something here, but he turns 23 before the 2022 season starts--if he doesn't break out next year, I don't know what happens to his value. I'm hoping there's maybe one more guy included here, otherwise it feels to me like maybe the offers weren't as robust as it sounded yesterday.

I'd be ok with Stroman too--Gausman has really nice peripherals, and doesn't have Stroman's recent injury history. I also don't think Berrios signs for 5/$125M right now--he may sign for that in December 2022, but I think that would be a case of the market not materializing as Berrios' hopes. I have a suspicion Berrios wants to clearly outdo Wheeler's pre-2020 contract of 5/$118M, based on being younger and healthier in December 2022 than Wheeler was in December 2019 (plus it being 3 years later). So if Berrios believes his worst-case scenario in 16 months is 5/$125M, you're definitely not getting him for that now. So the advantage of signing Gausman or Stroman is that at you get a comparable or better pitcher for the same price (potentially a tinge lower), but also get 2-3 additional pieces that can help push the team forward, or be flipped for more veteran talent. Means has been thrown out, but I'm not super high on a guy with very little track record and about to turn 29, with pretty shaky peripherals. I'd target Marquez or Kelly from the D-Backs instead, especially if the return for Berrios has 2 pitchers at the AA or higher level. In that scenario, the Twins have 9 young starters at AA or higher (Duran, Balazovic, Winder, Ober, Ryan, Strotman, Sands, an the two new guys), so turning 2 or 3 into more young but established MLB pitching could help rebuild 2022/2023 pretty quick.

SP1--Gausman, on a 5/$125M (6/$150M with that sixth year being an option, $10M buyout if needed to seal the deal) SP2--Maeda SP3--Big Mike or the equivalent on a 2/$30M (limit, if they can go lower but still get the quality, good) SP4&5--any combo of Dobnak, Ober, Duran, Balazovic, Winder, Ryan, Strotman and whomever you get for Berrios. You can pick and choose eho's ready and performing. You'll be investing about $50M in the rotation, so if you want to add a shortstop or address the pen through FA, they'll need to figure out a way to get some money back from Donaldson/Sano, but with the good production from Donaldson, and the improving production from Sano, shedding $15M of the combined $30M they're owed is doable.

But they're not meaningless--I don't know how else to explain this to you. When you're negotiating with someone, and a third party asked what they offered, you're far more likely to reveal that than you are to reveal what you yourself offered, especially if that third party will then immediately inform other people you may want to do business with. People protect their information much more assiduously than they protect other people's information. This isn't ground-breaking stuff. Before signing with the Twins, Donaldson had put up 11.3 WAR in his previous 3 seasons. That is the same as in Buxton's entire CAREER. Donaldson had averaged 458 PA's, despite that sample size including his two most-injured seasons. Buxton's only hit that many PA's in the majors in a season once. If Donaldson's recent recurring injuries made his contract a risk, than Buxton's recent injury history makes him a potential disaster. The Twins bet on Donaldson staying generally healthy, like he did in 2019, and while they haven't gotten that, they haven't been super far off either--Donaldson already has basically as many PA's this year as Buxton has had every year of his career, save 2017. Sure Buxton is younger--but that's a bad thing. He's already more injury prone than Donaldson, despite being at the point in his career when he is less likely to get injured. To date, the Twins have paid Donaldson $21M, and gotten 2.5 WAR--market rates for FA. If the Twins end up paying Buxton $100M on the low end, and $150M on the high end over the next 7 years, they'd need to get 12 to 18 WAR from Buxton for it to equalize. That's 100% possible, especially if Buxton stays healthy and plays like he has this year. But the enormous risk you seem to dismiss outright is that Buxton could very quickly decline; he might not hit like this again--Joe Mauer never had another 2009 after he signed his contract. He might get moved out of center 2-3 years into the deal--like Joe Mauer. And he might miss 40-60 games a year with injuries. Should the Twins be so quick to sign a guy to a big deal when a very realistic possibility is that he becomes a corner outfielder with an above average bat, who also gets hurt a lot? I said struggle to reach 400 PA's a year--over 7 years that's 2800 PA's. From 2013 to 2019, only 136 players were able to hit that threshold, out of 423 players who had the minimum number of PA's to qualify for the batting title. I would happily take the under on a number of Buxton PA's in the next 7 years if the over/under is set at 2800. Teams get better by taking multiple steps. That's why I said the Twins need to be able to surround Buxton with talent if they're going to sign him. I'm not confident we can do that with what we have in the system right now, and the money we will be able to spend, at least not in the next 2-3 years. At that point, Buxton will be past 30, and likely in his decline phase, which for an individual of Buxton's profile (speedy, athletic, injury-prone), will probably happen in a hurry.

Are you saying you don't think Buxton is worth $20M a year? If not, why are you quibbling with the $20M number? Seems argumentative for argumentativeness' sake. I'm not using the cast of WAR on the FA market because Buxton isn't on the FA market for one, and WAR on the FA market is vastly overpriced. If a team full of replacement players is worth 48 wins, then to get to 95 wins (which should be the goal), a team needs 47 WAR. For a team like the Twins, whose payroll is going to be in the $130M to $140M range, that means the Twins need to keep their dollars/WAR at about $3M. If they pay Buxton $20M, and get 4 WAR, that means they need to get 3 WAR from a rookie-contract guy to offset that. Doesn't seem too difficult, other than over the past 5 seasons, it's only happened 3 times (2019 Garver, 2018 Rosario, 2017 Buxton--Arraez may have done it this year, if not for the injury). That leads to the other issue--what if the Twins pay Buxton $20M, and get 1.5 WAR? I'm also not ignoring his defense, and for the record, neither does WAR. Buxton gets 1.25 WAR tacked onto his total for every 162 games he plays in center field. If he has to move to a corner as he ages and his defensive prowess declines, as both Kirby and Torii had to, he immediately loses 2 WAR for every 162 games played (corners are valued at -0.75 WAR/162, compared to CF's at 1.25/162).

Some people get comfortable where they are, and prefer the certainty of a subpar situation to the uncertainty of a potentially great, but potentially disastrous situation.

UNLESS, it's an issue of incentives v escalators. If Buxton wants an escalator that anytime he hits 500 PA's in a season, every current and future year of the deal gets an extra $5M, that's potentially problematic. One potential outcome is Buxton gets 500 PA's in 2022 and 2023, but then returns to his extreme injury ways, and accumulates only 1500 PA's over the last 5 years of the deal, and the Twins have to pay him $107M for the equivalent of barely two seasons. Another issue is if he has 4 good-not-great years, and starts to decline rapidly in the 5th year (his age 32 season), the Twins could be paying him $25M-$30M a year for 2-3 WAR; after all, the instant Buxton goes from center to right or left, he immediately loses 2 WAR/162 games. On the other hand, incentives would apply, theoretically, only to the year in question, and would act more like bonuses. In that sense, if Buxton has a phenomenal 2022 (say he puts up 8 WAR, plays 150 games, starts in the all-star game, and finishes 2nd in MVP voting), he would get paid $25M-$30M for that year, but his salary would reset to $11Mish for 2023, and he has to perform all over again to bump his pay up. I completely understand why Buxton would prefer the escalators, and the Twins would be hesitant. I completely understand why the Twins would prefer the incentives, and Buxton would be hesitant. The trick will probably be finding a way to do both, so that Buxton is underpaid if he has great years, but overpaid if he has injured/decent years.

When you say Buxton is worth $20M a year, you have to take in to account how many games he plays. If he only plays 80 games, then that means over 160 games he's worth $40M--he has to be Mike Trout offensively to be worth that. If he plays 150 games for that $20M, then no, he doesn't need to be Mike Trout offensively to be worth that. But what evidence is there that suggests you can count on Buxton to play 130-150 games a year well into his 30's, when he hasn't been able to get anywhere near that in his 20's? As such, if you agree to guarantee Buxton $20M a year, you're either banking on a dramatic improvement in his health, or for him to play like one of the 5-10 best players in baseball when he's available. Either seems fairly fraught with risk. The foot/second data comes from baseball savant. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/byron-buxton-621439?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb

Why would they disclose their counter? It lets every team, should he go to free agency, know exactly what to offer and makes it much harder to start a bidding war, which is the Holy Grail for every free agent. If the Twins offer is laughably low, they would absolutely disclose it, if for no other reason than to get a sense of if it truly is as laughably low as they suspect it to be. You keep talking about Donaldson as being injury prone, while ignoring the reality that he has been, on average, even in his most injured seasons, LESS injured than Buxton has. If Buxton has a worse injury record at 27 than Donaldson had at 33, what do you think Buxton's injury situation will look like in years 5-7 of a deal, when he will be 32-34 (with an extension) or 33-35? Since signing with the Twins, Donaldson has missed 52 games, which is 32%. That's not great or anything, but in that same timeframe, Buxton has missed 95 games, which is 59%. Stop pretending that Donaldson is not a significantly lower injury risk at this point than Buxton, just because he is still a risk. That's why Donaldson could get (essentially) 4/$92 before 2020--he had already accumulated over 40 WAR in his career (top 40 ALL TIME amongst 3B). Currently, Buxton is 21st amongst CF in WAR just since 2015. Is Buxton's ceiling higher than Donaldson's? Yes, and it's not even close. The potential maximum Buxton is a 10-12 WAR player who wins MVP, and is the best player in the game. Is Buxton's floor lower than Donaldson's? Yes--it is not impossible that Buxton struggles to accumulate 400 PA's for the rest of his career, and puts up 2-3 WAR while doing so. I'm not interested in going from 90 losses to 85. I'm interested in going from 90 losses to 90 wins, and then beyond. Unless the Twins have a plan to surround Buxton with enough talent to get us above that 90 win threshold, paying him is a waste, and they should not forgo the opportunity to add multiple high-level prospects to the system that could potentially match his ceiling, but would likely exceed his floor.

I would imagine if the Twins 7/$80M offer was 70% incentives, Buxton would have jumped at it. That would mean there were $186 MILLION in incentives. Unless the vast majority of that is tied to almost impossible to hit milestones (like 700 PA's, or winning MVP's), do you really think Buxton would turn down a deal with a potential AAV of $38.1M? I agree that $25M with incentives is fair--that works out to 7/$175, or $95M in incentives, which gives us a breakout of 54% incentives, 46% guarantees--not all that far off from what you're suggesting. If giving Buxton 7/$105M with $70M in incentives gets the deal done, then we're really not that far off, although I tend to disagree that a player who is averaging about 400 PA's a year should get 60%-80% of a $25M a year contract guaranteed. Perhaps the market will prove me wrong, but obviously, I don't think it will.

Buxton and his agent can focus on guaranteed dollars all they want, but I would be surprised if he got much more than $100M in guarantees. To get that a team will have to look at a guy about to turn 29 with a disastrous injury history about to lose his best asset--his speed, and decide to allocate over $20M a year for at least 5 years. It's just not likely that will happen unless Buxton can have a relatively healthy 2022 season with high level production. Buxton would love to sign a mostly guaranteed contract just like I would love to buy stocks that never decline in value, and split every 3 years. It wasn't really a risk to wait this long when Buxton had never been a particularly accomplished player, other than on the defensive side of the ball. Even last year, in his best offensive season, Buxton still had a .267 OBP, struck out 26.7% of the time, and only made 35.4% hard contact, with 20.8% soft contact. As such, the extension offers from the Twins would have been quite low, so he gambled on being able to stay healthy/increase his production--turns out he went 1 for 2. He should still think about accepting, because if the incentives are right, and he performs, he'll be paid market value. What happens if in April 2022, Buxton tears his ACL? How will that affect his value? I'd love to keep Buxton as well, but the reality of his injury history means you just can't guarantee him $20M a year and cross your fingers--not if you're the Twins. If some other team wants to do that, they should go ahead, but the most likely scenario is that they regret that contract.

I agree with this--if the Padres are insistent that they won't include any of the four for any of our top 3, I tell the Padres to lose my number, and then hang up. Now--if the Padres wanted to give us all four of those guys, I would happily send them Jeffers + whichever 2 of our top 3 they wanted. I'd give them the third if they threw in Haynes and Medina too.

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.

Ho many playoff wins did we get while those 4 contracts were active?

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.