Don Walcott

Agreed. How about Tony Gwynn of the Padres? He waited 14 years between WS.

It's German for a certain part of the female whale anatomy.

When asked why now might be the time to make a play for one of the top free agents, Fowler said: "There's no perfect timing. ... But there's not talent out there that becomes available every year that's as good as what we think is there now. . . ." So they just went out and got the best player available on the FA market. Makes sense to me.

This might be the deal that convinces Berrios, Rosario and Gibson that we're serious about competing and that they should extend as well.

Setting the bar kind of low there. I hope he can play OF better than Grossman. We definitely need a right-handed bat to sub for Kepler or Rosario occasionally against tough left-handers more than we need another lefty bat.

Breaking News!!

Breaking News!!

I'm really happy for Jorge Polanco. He's worked hard to get this deal, and he deserves it. This must be a huge life-changing moment for him. From a selfish standpoint, I love watching him play. I think he'll improve his defense, and he has a lot of potential to improve his already impressive offensive skill set. I'm really excited to see him settle in and produce for a full season. I also hope this nudges some of the other young guys to make similar deals. It does seem like a fair deal to both sides, and if the FO are proceeding similarly with the others, we may have 4, 5 or 6 guys we can count on for the immediate future of this franchise.

Excellent analysis. Hope this strategy works. It makes a lot of sense the way you broke it down.

Who didn't vote for him for the Hall of Fame?

I don't agree with the FO waiting to see how Buxton and Sano play before improving this team. The only positions they occupy are CF and 3B. We can hope they do better this year and still improve the rest of the team. We should be improving our pitching, regardless of how good Sano and Buxton are. It seems like our FO is afraid to take any risks. Last year, they signed a bunch of guys who mostly did not work out. However, they were able to trade some of them, and the rest weren't long-term deals that would have made them look really bad. Now, we're in a similar position with no potential "albatross" contracts. However, that also means that we won't be signing the level of talent that we need to compete with Cleveland. And pinning the lack of improvement for our pitching staff on Sano and Buxton seems like a way to unfairly shift the blame for the FO not doing its job onto two young players. If our pitching doesn't improve this season, I will be blaming the FO, not Buxton and Sano.

He struck out 153 major league batters last year. It's not like he can't strike anyone out. His FIP and ERA are consistent, and both well below 4 for his career. So he's somehow figured out how to get a lot of guys out without giving up many runs, despite not lighting up the radar the way you'd like. Why he hasn't been signed yet? I don't know. Maybe teams like the Twins are playing games with free agents, and a bunch of teams aren't trying to win. Why aren't Harper, Machado and Kimbrel signed yet? Does the rest of the league think they aren't very good? If every batter approaches Keuchel by trying to hit the ball on the ground between third and short, I predict he'll have a great season, regardless of who is playing in the infield.

Generally, the guys who give up the most hits also pitch the most innings. Keuchel got the third most outs in the league last year. I'm not as worried about the specific personnel on the infield because of how much we shift. And with Buxton back, the outfield defense is going to take away a lot of hits. Kuechel has a 3.66 career ERA playing half of his games in a much better hitter's park than Target Field. Not sure what "top end" means. But if he pitches 200 innings sub-4 ERA, that makes things a whole lot easier on the rest of the staff and bullpen.

I'd rather pay $20 million/year for 200 innings than 60. I'd also rather sign up Keuchel to 4 years than 1 or 2. I expect he'll be a top-end starter for another 4-6 years. And he'd really help out our young guys in learning how to pitch.

I feel for Falvey. It’s hard to reason with kids about how to spend their money wisely.

My brother is 3 years older than I am, so I also started collecting way too young to remember my first card. My favorite thing was to collect a card of the same player for every year. I think I have about 12 years of Rod Carew. I also have a few of the Kirby rookie cards. I think my favorites are the 1975 cards (1974 season stats on the back). They had some mini cards that year as well, and I have a Nolan Ryan mini. I thought of him as some mythical figure when I was 6.

Contrary to the complaint about fans in BW’s article, it seems like the only people consistently citing payroll figures relative to the rest of the league are people who defend ownership. Pretty convenient when a bunch of teams are “rebuilding” in a way that causes them to severely slash payroll. This seems to distract from the question of whether the Twins can and should spend more on this team.

I agree that it's a good article. However, I don't agree with the following characterization, that seems in line with the original post in this thread: "And beyond that, arguments tend to go one of two ways: People call the Twins cheap, you tell them the team literally just set a team record for payroll, and they tell you ‘So what, it still isn’t enough’ or ‘Yeah, well, every other team keeps going up too.’ People want to cite that revenues just keep going up, and that the Twins aren’t growing in line with the rest of teams." I think this is a pretty condescending and inaccurate characterization of the arguments fans are making about the Twins spending money to compete. There are plenty of people who are fine with the $128 million the Twins were going to spend on payroll at the beginning of 2018. (They actually ended up with an adjusted payroll of $115 milliion, according to Spotrac.) However, some fans are disappointed in this off-season because the Twins haven't acquired better players, for the cost of paying those players their market value, especially now that payroll is approximately $100 million and there were a bunch of good pitchers available this off-season. I don't think I've seen either of the two quoted Twins fans complaints. Though if that were the level of argument from Twins fans, it would be easy to discredit them. And maybe that's the purpose of the quotes. Although the fact that revenues do continue to go up should allow for the payroll number to go up as well, that's a pretty simplistic way of viewing the argument most people here make about the ability the Twins have to pay more to players. Most of the comments I've seen do not say anything about spending the same amount or more than other teams. Rather, the argument is that because there is more money for the team to spend, rather than just pocket the additional revenue, we should invest some of that money in improving a team that could really use a few upgrades. That really does come down to whether the owners want to try to win with this team. I don't even believe it comes down to whether the owners care more about profit than winning. They know as well as anyone that winning will make them more money. However, there's a risk to spending enough money to compete -- less short-term profit. Maybe they are risk averse. I don't know. Whatever the motivations are, I simply want our ownership to try to win. I don't think they are doing enough of that. I hope they prove me wrong.

Gray has tremendous potential, and a move away from Coors Field would likely help his career. However, the Rockies have historically had a really hard time attracting starting pitching. They have a great group of young pitchers right now, and I find it hard to believe that they would trade any of them. I also think trading Buxton would come back to haunt the Twins.

That's nothing compared to Kiriloff, who had a .970 on-base percentage. He's a really tough out.

I'll be sad if he loses any speed.

Who would you expect to be better in 2019? Ottavino or Reed? Do you think Reed will be better than any of the top 10 free agent relievers from this off season? I sure hope he bounces back, but it doesn’t look too promising at this point. And that doesn’t speak well of our FO talent assessment. But again, I hope I’m wrong.

Addison Reed had better have a really good season for the sake of our FO and their reputation. Not sure how they could spend $8 million per season for two years of Reed and not go after Ottavino for $9 million per year for three years. And the Yankees had nowhere near the need the Twins have to upgrade their bullpen.

Here's what was written in the article at issue: "The team’s guideline is to spend 52 percent of revenue on player salaries, though the Santana trade will push the 2008 payroll well below that mark—likely somewhere around $55 million after a 2007 opening-day figure of more than $71 million. Twins president Dave St. Peter said the original budget called for an increase, not a reduction. Jim Pohlad said a 2009 payroll that surpasses the 52-percent standard would be acceptable, but not simply to appease fans for their role in funding for the new stadium." "Player salaries" is not particularly ambiguous. The business, legal and lay meaning of "salary" is the amount paid by an employer to an employee. In this case, the term is limited to the amounts paid to players. This does not include payroll tax or benefits in any scenario. I have no idea what your background is nor who the executives you refer to are who you work with. My background is as a lawyer who has advised businesses and litigated business disputes for more than 23 years, and I've been a part owner of my own businesses for more than 18 years. I have worked with accountants, profit and loss statements and general ledgers extensively. I'll give you some free legal advice: don't use the term "payroll" to mean "payroll plus payroll taxes and benefits." Payroll taxes and benefits are not "payroll". In fact, you can't even have payroll taxes without knowing what your payroll is. Payroll taxes are based on payroll. If you added payroll taxes into payroll, you'd get taxed on more than your payroll -- and nobody wants to pay more taxes than required, right? Payroll is a specific defined term for compensation paid to employees. The only time benefits can be counted as part of payroll is when they are deducted from pay due to employees. Similarly, the only taxes included in payroll are taxes withheld from pay due to employees. Using the term "payroll" as you suggest is false and misleading, and I would suggest that the shareholders of companies would not be pleased if their executives were going around making promises about "payroll" when they actually mean "payroll plus payroll taxes and benefits." You can look up the definition of "payroll" on Quickbooks or from an accountant's perspective. You can look up the definition of "payroll" from the IRS perspective. Or you can simply look up the general definition of "payroll." "Payroll" does not include payroll taxes and benefits. From a business accounting perspective, payroll taxes and benefits are considered "labor load" or often they are simply lumped in as "overhead." Similar to worker's compensation, human resources, sometimes legal expenses related to human resources, 401K contributions, and even things like parking and holiday party expenses. These expenses are not considered part of "payroll" nor are they part of employee "salaries." You can insist that you and your executives commonly use the term "payroll" to mean something other than the actual technical definition of "payroll." (Frankly, I've never heard of anyone doing this before now.} But the problem that you'll face is that nobody will know what you are talking about because you are attempting to shift the definition of the word. Then, you can't have conversations like this that get anywhere because you're not speaking the same language. Now, to give the Twins ownership an out, they did say that paying 52% of revenues for player salaries was a "guideline." And if you've seen Pirates of the Caribbean, you know that a "guideline" is not the same as a "code."

Are you saying that when an executive says “payroll,” that they actually mean “payroll, plus benefits, plus payroll taxes”? After reading the exact quote, I guess the better question is whether that is what is meant by “players salaries?”