nicksaviking

If you’re pushing to put the band back together with Kepler, Polanco and Farmer, you have roster space for about one free agent. So 15-20M per year is a pretty sizable contract. Add 7-10M to that for any of those you’re willing to set free.

Sorry, but this all sounds like you think the Kepler we saw the last three months is the Kepler that's here to stay. I don't buy his late career turnaround for a minute. By all rights he should have been DFA'd. As it turns out, the Twins were wise not to, and the luck paid off but they'd be foolish to double down on it instead of cashing out way up. But whatever, it doesn't matter how one feels about Kepler. Keep him, Polanco and Farmer. If you do that, you'd only have room for a couple of free agents at most outside of the bullpen. In that scenario, what do you care about the reduced payroll? You can still go get something significant unless you're aiming for Ohtani or Bellinger.

I don't think anyone here has actually looked at the payroll situation. Even if it's going to be lower, none of these guys would be an issue. Signing four 10M free agents isn't happening, but they can still afford multiple sizable contracts. That said, Turner is the only one here I'd have interest in.

I was just using those free agents and trades to show the payroll isn't going to be an issue.

I don't want Teoscar as I mentioned. I just was using that as a blueprint to show that getting rid of the Kepler/Polanco/Farmer group will still allow them to fit significant free agent additions onto the roster, even if the payroll is lower than last year. Blueprint whomever you like with that money. Get a pitcher if you want. You already said you don't want the mid level free agents like Gallo and Vazquez, but that's EXACTLY what Kepler and Polanco are, both in price and in ability. They shockingly still have value after a late season surge and a sparse infield free agent class, so flip them now for cheaper and controllable players and consolidate the savings and sign someone better with it. They're largely redundant and less use to this team than they are to others. They should be doing this if the payroll was 200M or 20M.

I don't know that the media is, at least yet. But I agree, they'll use it to get hits and views or likes or whatever it is that turns a profit. For the most part, this is an offseason I like the birds in the hand better than the bushes. And my trade targets would be cheaper than what they'd be replacing. Lots of us are used to demanding of the club, "Give me what I want, I don't care the price!" Well this year, it just so happens that what I want is actually on sale, comparatively.

I don't know how anyone sees Polanco/Kepler/Farmer as guys at the top any longer. Polanco can't be counted on to stay healthy and even when he is, he's no longer the .800 OPS top of the order bat he used to be. Kepler was about a week away from being DFA'd mid season and Farmer is just a guy. He was never more than a bench bat. Keeping these guys is basically the same as signing Joey Gallo or Christian Vazquez. They're unreliable and inconsistent and cost about the same. But it hardly matters, if you want to keep them, then you don't have the roster space to sign multiple top end free agents, even if there were multiple top end free agents to sign. This team was never signing Cody Bellinger and they're not giving five year deals to starting pitchers.

I just used the payroll tool. I traded Polanco ******Mike S, cover your eyes******* Matt Wallner and David Festa to the Marlins for Braxton Garrett. I traded Max Kepler and Jose Miranda to the Yankees for Clarke Schmidt to be another Varland-esque reliever/emergency-future starter. Add more or less to these deals, it doesn't bother me. I non-tendered Kyle Farmer. With those savings I signed both Rhys Hoskins and Teoscar Hernandez to MLBTR's 18M per and 20M per prediction. My new roster is: SP - Lopez SP - Garrett SP - Ryan SP - Ober SP - Paddock Pen - Duran, Stewart, Thielbar, Jax, Funderburk, Alcala, Varland, Schmidt C - Jeffers 1B - Hoskins 2B - Julien SS - Correa 3B - Lewis RF - Hernandez CF - Castro LF - Kirilloff DH - Buxton (fingers crossed for CF) Bench - Vazquez, Martin, Larnach, Anthony Prato (go ahead, switch him out, he's just a personal favorite of mine) Budget: 130M and that would pretty much have been my ideal offseason regardless of payroll (except for Hernandez, he strikes out too much, just added him to show the contract is doable). $5M left over for a reliever or gross and old veteran utility player.

I have traded Jorge Polanco, Matt Wallner and David Festa to the Marlins for Braxton Garrett. I've traded Max Kepler and Jose Miranda to the Yankees for Clarke Schmidt. Other pieces can be added to even those moves out. I non-tendered Kyle Farmer. I've signed Teoscar Hernandez and Rhys Hoskins to the MLBTR contract guesses of 18M and 20M per year respectively. C: Ryan Jeffers ($1.7M) 1B: Rhys Hoskins ($18.0M) 2B: Edouard Julien ($.77M) 3B: Royce Lewis ($0.77M) SS: Carlos Correa ($33.33M) LF: Alex Kirilloff ($1.7M) CF: Willie Castro ($3.2M) RF: Teoscar Hernandez ($20M) DH: Byron Buxton ($15M) 4th OF: Austin Martin ($.77M) Utility: Trevor Larnach ($0.77M) Utility: Anthony Prato ($.77M) Backup C: Christian Vazquez ($10M) SP1: Pablo Lopez ($8.25M) SP2: Braxton Garrett ($0.77M) SP3: Bailey Ober ($0.77M) SP4: Chris Paddack ($2.53M) SP5: Joe Ryan ($0.77M) RP: Jhoan Duran ($0.77M) RP: Brock Stewart ($0.77M) RP: Griffin Jax ($0.77M) RP: Clarke Schmidt ($.77M) RP: Caleb Thielbar ($3.00M) RP: Cole Sands ($0.77M) RP: Louie Varland ($0.77M) RP: Kody Funderburk ($0.77M) Payroll is 4.99% under budget

Some of the young guys will fail, but they all seem to fail much less frequently than the free agents they sign. I don't want them to spend money just to spend money, that's the exact reason Joey Gallo was on this club last year. If they move on from two of Polanco/Kepler/Farmer, which was probably the plan all along, they can still get a free agent of a caliber we're more hopeful for. One impact player, don't need to spend a bunch of money on bench filler this year.

I kind of think this is much ado about nothing. Hayes didn't say anything concrete about the reasoning for the lower payroll, but since everyone has been talking about the TV deal, that's an obvious conclusion to draw, but even if they had MORE revenue, a step back in payroll seems like it was the logical thing anyway. Not to save money, but just how the roster is shaping up. They NEVER sign top end pitching, and it's always because of the years it takes to get a deal done more so than the money. So signing a free agent to be the #2 was likely never going to happen unless a reunion with Gray was in the cards. Another trade is way more likely, and whomever they get is likely to be younger and more controllable, therefore cheaper than Gray's 12M salary last year. Also, it's clearly time to move on from Polanco. Moving him would have next to nothing to do with salary anyway, there's just other players who've taken his job. Kepler is more likely to stay, but it might be time to move on from him as well, especially if there's a team that believes in his last three months of 2023 and forgets about the prior 3.5 years. But most importantly, the young players have shown there's no need to sign the Joey Gallo/Christian Vazquez type free agents this year. There's no need to trade for a Kyle Farmer who'll eat up some of that budget. They don't need to bring in 3 or 4 or a half dozen new faces this year, and instead if they want one Rhys Hoskins or Teoscar Hernandez or Mitch Garver, there would still be room to do so. Bottom line, with the lack of free agent bats available, this team's reluctance to give the extended years to top free agent pitchers, and the numerous young players who are ready for MLB action, I think payroll was going to be down regardless of any TV deal. Though the TV deal may provide a bit of shade for the optics as it turns out.

These are never good signings though unless there's absolutely nobody in AAA who can help. We see it just about every time, whether it's the Happ/Schomacher class or the Bundy/Archer class, the the Ryan/Ober/Varland/Smeltzer/Winder options end up being just as effective if not more so than the vets. Unless there is zero depth, spend the money elsewhere. The best case scenario with these guys is them just being empty filler with no production and zero upside. Worst case scenario is repeatedly flushing wins down the drain until the sunk cost revelation sinks in, which usually takes way too long.

Yeah, pretty easy lesson to read here. If you pay for bottom tier pitching, you'll more often than not get what you deserve. Also, I count six free agent hitters in that list. Two were signed pretty exclusively for their bats, Cruz and Solano. Vazquez, Gallo and Simmons were brought over pretty exclusively for their gloves. And Correa was probably healthy doses of both. The guys you only sign for their glove are bound to only frustrate everyone too.

Probably hard to sell an all out rebuild, particularly if they feel stung that their manager just went down the road to the rival club chasing them in the standings. Outside of catcher and left field, their MLB offense is a bit of a train wreck though. Seems like we've seen similar scenarios where the team is willing to part with one of their top end starters to get back MLB ready offensive help. It would surely be painful from a Twins perspective, but I'm game.

He's half a year younger than Martin and Julien and two year's younger than Wallner. He reached AAA a month after Martin, and as far as his promotion path goes, he is ahead of Julien and Wallner considering neither got bumped up to AAA in 2022. If those guys aren't considered prospects, then I really could care less about prospects and only care about which minor leaguers can come up and contribute. Same goes for Camargo. And should any of Prato, Williams and Kiersey remain after the draft, I'm not closing the book on them either.

Yeah, that's always been my argument. As far as glovework goes, the Twins shouldn't sweat that position as much as other clubs do. Knowing how to play that wall might be more important that a players range.

My favorite demonstration of this impact is Torii Hunter's miraculous defensive rebound in UZR at his age 39 season: The guy probably could have played another decade!

That wasn't what I was getting at. If I had to pick between the two, I'd pick Kiermaier over Taylor in a heartbeat.

Yeah, it’s such utter nonsense. Players get way more plate appearances than defensive chances, and as you mention, most of those defensive chances are routine. Also, unless players start getting 10+ chances every game, it’s not logically possible for one player to be 3.6x better than another player defensively. Evaluate offense. Then evaluate defense. Then evaluate which area is more important to your current roster/position/player/lineup needs.

I don’t see why Kiermaier is a safer bat than Castro. They both woke up last year, but Kiermaier hadn’t done much offensively since 2017 and seven years older.

We can have as big of a free agent budget as we want, but it still won't change the fact that by nature, every one of these free agent pitchers, outside of Yamamoto, is on the back side of their careers.

Yeah, me too. Kiermaier/Michael Taylor types are hardly reliable offensively. It's not like they're guaranteed to be a better option than the in-house guys, and even if they were, the difference is likely negligible. And it's not like there are really any reasonable better options to acquire than those two, so might as well just go with what you have, hope for the upside but realize that even if you don't get it, all you're out is a below average veteran bat that would have eaten up 10M in payroll that could have been used elsewhere. It's still a win. And if we really want to drill down on the subject, even if Martin doesn't hit well, we can be pretty confident that strikeouts won't be an issue and he'll get on base at a reasonable clip. Those are two things this lineup needs, so if you're not getting a well-rounded hitter, at least roster against redundancies, because Taylor's power spike just does not outweigh the damage his strikeouts and terrible OBP does to this offense already struggling in those areas.

Trading for pitching would allow them to use their free agent budget on hitting, and offensive players tend to be less volatile than pitchers. But probably more importantly, if you trade for pitchers, you can get them in their prime. Free agent pitchers are almost always past their prime.

The Twins aren't afraid to spend money, they're afraid to spend years. The reason the Twins haven't signed any top end free agent pitchers is because most of those pitchers are getting five year deals which the Twins won't do, or they are legacy types, Verlander, Scherzer, Kershaw, who are chasing top dollar but where they feel they can win a championship. I think he moves on, but Gray may be the one guy who actually fits into the bucket of what needs to happen for the Twins to sign a top free agent pitcher. Personally, I'd like to trade for another long-term front line starter. I'd start by going back to Miami and see about more of their youthful arms. They still desperately need offensive help. I'm very willing to trade away assets best left unnamed in fear of getting myself tarred and feathered in these parts.

Yeah, this is the biggest thing, and to put this into percentages, Taylor struck out 33.5% of his PA, Kiermaier only struck out 21% of the time. The Twins desperately need to lower their strikeout rate. Should be the top priority after replacing/re-signing Sonny Gray.