Tom Froemming

Byron Buxton highlights from the 2021 season, including home runs, diving/leaping catches and his speed on the basepaths. View full video

César Tovar is still not in the Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame. One of the best table-setters in all of baseball from the late 60s through the early 70s, Tovar highlights an era of Twins baseball that's being overlooked by voters. In this video, I talk about why I think Tovar hasn't made it into the team's Hall of Fame yet and do my best to present an argument as to why he should be enshrined. View full video

The MLB owners have locked out the players and there's really been no news of progress. The future of the game is in the hands of Rob Manfred and Tony Clark. Here are my thoughts on the situation. View full video

Minnesota Twins Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat were elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Golden Days Era Committee. Here are some highlights, reactions from Oliva and Kaat and my analysis on their careers and Hall of Fame cases. View full video

The Minnesota Twins signed starting pitcher Dylan Bundy to a one-year deal for $4 million with an $11 million option for 2023 that comes with a $1 million buyout. Here's my reaction to the signing, words from Derek Falvey and some highlights and more info on Bundy. View full video

Byron Buxton has signed an extension to stay with the Minnesota Twins for seven more seasons. We've been anxiously awaiting this. It's a $100 million plus incentive and comes with a full no-trade clause. View full video

Starting pitchers are coming off the board and there is very little Minnesota Twins chatter on the rumor mill so far this offseason. Time to panic? Not yet, but I'm definitely getting uncomfortable. View full video

The Minnesota Twins added six players to their 40-man roster Friday to protect them from the Rule 5 Draft: Jose Miranda, Royce Lewis, Josh Winder, Cole Sands, Blayne Enlow and Chris Vallimont. They also removed Devin Smeltzer, Kyle Garlick, Willians Astudillo and Charlie Barnes from the 40-man roster. Still sticking around (at least for now) is Jake Cave. View full video

Here are the 10 players featured in MLB Trade Rumors' 2022 offseason free agent predictions I think would make the most sense for the Minnesota Twins at the contracts they're projecting. View full video

Byron Buxton’s future with the Minnesota Twins was among the topics discussed on Tuesday’s episode of The Athletic Baseball Show. Ken Rosenthal did not paint an optimistic picture for Twins fans hoping for a Buxton extension this winter. Here’s a link to that episode of the podcast, the Buxton discussion starts around the 14-minute mark. Rosenthal said he believes a Buxton trade is “likely” this offseason and that he “expects it to happen.” The reasoning he provided was that Buxton rejected the seven-year, $80 million contract extension the Twins offered him in July and the team “felt this was kind of a gamble to take even offering him $80 million.” Rosenthal pointed to the current state of the Twins and argued it’s not a playoff-caliber team due to its subpar pitching staff. He also shared his opinion that it would be better for the Twins to take a step back, trade Buxton, and re-tool for 2023 and beyond. Also on Tuesday, Rosenthal and Dan Hayes published an article at The Athletic on Buxton’s future with the Twins. That piece indicates “many in the industry” are also expecting the Twins to end up trading Buxton. There are several interesting details in that piece, but one that stands out is The Athletic’s sources indicated the Twins weren’t willing to push even the potential value of a Buxton extension — including performance-based incentives — over $100 million. Taking a look through a list of the MLB active player contracts at Spotrac, here are some outfielders who’ve signed contracts in the $70-$110 million range in recent years: Player Signed Age Years Value AAV Charlie Blackmon 31 6 $108M $18M Justin Upton 30 5 $106M $21.2M Dexter Fowler 30 5 $82.5M $16.5M Lorenzo Cain 31 5 $80M $16M Aaron Hicks 29 7 $70M $10M Twins Reported Offer to Buxton Byron Buxton 28 7 $80M $11.4M And here’s a look at the value each of those players provided the season prior to signing those deals. These are FanGraphs WAR, Baseball-Reference WAR and Baseball Prospectus’ WARP. Player (year prior to signing) fWAR bWAR WARP Charlie Blackmon ('17) 6.6 5.5 6.7 Justin Upton ('17) 5.2 5.7 4.9 Aaron Hicks ('18) 5.0 4.4 2.9 Dexter Fowler ('16) 4.6 4.0 1.6 Lorenzo Cain ('17) 4.2 5.5 6.0 Byron Buxton ('21) 4.2 4.5 2.8 The thing to keep in mind with Buxton, of course, is this only accounts for the partial season he played. As you can see, even if that’s how the Twins would prefer to evaluate him — based on his actual past production as opposed to his potential upside if he were to turn in a healthy season — their current offer still doesn’t even stack up all that well. If Dexter Fowler was able to secure a $16.5 million AAV four years ago, when he was two years older than Buxton is now, I’d imagine the Twins offer of an $11.4 million AAV was an easy one for Byron and his agency to reject. As someone who is really hoping to see Byron Buxton in a Minnesota Twins uniform for a long time, this is all very concerning. The Rosenthal/Hayes article did mention both sides continue to communicate, but reading between the lines and looking at some of these numbers I cannot imagine they are all that close to coming to terms. Under different circumstances, I’d think it might make sense to enter the year with the player on an expiring contract and play things out to see if you can complete. If so, great, you keep him and extend him a qualifying offer at the end of the season, avoiding losing the player for absolutely nothing. If you don’t compete, just trade the guy at the deadline. With these particular circumstances, there are some problems. With the Collective Bargaining Agreement expiring on Dec. 1, it’s not even certain that the qualifying offer system will be in place in the future. That leaves the door open to potentially losing Buxton for absolutely nothing. The other issue is this is Buxton we’re talking about. As much as I love him and hope they can keep him around, you wouldn’t want to bank on him being healthy come the trade deadline. This is a difficult situation and there are a lot of ways this could go poorly for the Twins. The most forgivable one, in my opinion, would be if they extend Byron and he simply never lives up to his salary. As Twins fans, I think for the most part we’re willing to be forgiving if we feel there’s a real effort made (though, like with anything, there are segments of the fanbase who will never be satisfied). One way or another, this decision has the potential to weigh heavily on the future of this front office, and this organization as a whole. How would you feel if the Twins traded Buxton away this offseason? View full article

José Berríos signed an extension with the Toronto Blue Jays today. It's a seven-year, $131 million deal. Here's my reaction to that signing from the perspective as a Minnesota Twins fan and some discussion around how this organization is operating. View full video

Byron Buxton's future with the Minnesota Twins is uncertain. It's something I've avoided talking about for the most part, but it's unavoidable. It's perhaps the focal point of the entire Twins offseason. Byron is only under team control for one more year. Will there be an extension? ... a trade? View full video

Good stuff, fun to think about this. Some team is going to do it eventually. Once one finds a way to get it right, I think it won't be long before this is just normal. In addition to shifting guys who've traditionally started into multi-inning relief roles, it shouldn't be difficult to also stretch traditional relievers into multi-inning guys. Down in the minors, it seems more common than not that a guy records more than three outs. Take Jovani Moran as an example. He made 40 relief appearances last year and only recorded three or fewer outs in four of them. He recorded six outs or more in 22 outings and eight+ outs in eight of his appearances. There's been a lot of exploration in the big leagues the past decade but it's still pretty paint-by-numbers when it comes to bullpen/reliever usage.