gil4

I guess the Yankees didn't have a bucket of baseballs handy to complete the trade.

Were any of those in-season additions? I know Robles was signed during the off-season, and I think the others were as well. To be fair to MLB.com, once the Twins tanked in April and May, they were sellers and dumpster-divers, not buyers. (They acknowledged that with the O's, but could have said it for the Twins and seral other teams as well.)

MLB.com published a "Every team's best in-season addition" piece yesterday. For the Twins, it was Kyle Barraclough, which struck me as both funny and fitting for the season. Maybe was can ask them to update it to Ian Gibaut instead, since he's actually on the 25-man roster. (We might have to hurry.) https://www.mlb.com/news/every-team-s-best-in-season-addition

Welcome back from Tahiti (or maybe you were just ignoring the Twins, which is understandable.) They traded Berrios to the Blue Jays a month ago.

It would be worth it. Trust me.,

You need to start laying some money down so the Twins can start winning.

Hopefully it was 2019-2020 Tyler Duffey we were comparing him to.

I'd take that. Stewart had a career OBP of .360, so add a few walks... I would also hope that he could become a better defender than Stewart, which isn't a particularly high bar to get over.

The umpire made a bit of movement after that pitch, but it was all with his left hand. I don't think he got the call on that one, and I don't think he ever would (except maybe with a robo-ump - occasionally pitches with a sharp downward break look low to everyone except the computer.)

Heretic.

I'd prefer to keep Kepler, and trading Donaldson's contract was never going to be easy.

I'd rather see free than have someone's definition of fair imposed. I do understand that some degree of competitive balance is in everyone's best interest (and most other sports do it better because of the way they divide the TV money), but the money also has to be divided between the risk-takers/investors and the earners. I agree to an extent about the minor-leaguers. The biggest offense I see there is they don't get to collectively bargain. The MLBPA negotiates "on their behalf", but they can't actually be members of the union until they are in the majors.

We have seen that system, so we don't have to speculate. They wouldn't.

The problem is you are comparing their income to the average income. They aren't average. Of the millions of people who play baseball, they are the top 800 or so. In 1970, movie stars got paid big bucks. Top musicians got paid big bucks. Why? Because if the actors didn't like their pay, they could go to a different studio. The musicians could sign with another label. But baseball players couldn't do that - they could either re-sign for what they were offered or hold out, which except for a few stars would have resulted in them being blacklisted by the sport. Now, they can eventually earn a certain level of freedom, after 4-5 years of team control as minor leaguers and then another 5-6 years in the majors (3 years of arbitration?) What is stopping you? Are you not in the top .0001% in your field? (Or does the market not widely differentiate between the to .0001 percent and the top 1% in your field as it does in theirs.) Are you free to go to another employer? Maybe the market just won't pay that kind of money for the goods and/or services that you help deliver, or the part you play isn't as difficult to replace as the part they play in their business.

I think your figure shows how much the salaries of the players were artificially suppressed 50 years ago, rather than an indicator that we should go back to the previous system.