Matthew Trueblood

The Twins and Mariners got together on a miniature blockbuster Monday night--one that sends the longest-tenured Twin to a new home, while adding depth to the starting rotation and to the farm system. Image courtesy of © Erik Williams-USA TODAY Sports The deal is pretty significant, and it's one of those times when both sides dispensed with subtlety in favor of letting quantity show you the quality. Jorge Polanco will go to Seattle, in exchange for outfield prospect Gabriel Gonzalez, starting pitcher Anthony DeSclafani, reliever Justin Topa, and low-level arm Darren Bowen. Jeff Passan broke the news on Twitter. Obviously, this is a monumental move for the Twins, not only in terms of their 2024 roster, but from a fan's perspective. Polanco has been the steadiest force on the team for the last decade, a clutch hitter and up-the-middle defender who has alternated between average and star-caliber but always been versatile and valuable. It's a bitter pill to bid him adieu, but one we've been preparing to swallow for months, even after the team exercised its $10.5-million option on him for 2024 back in November. In exchange, they land multiple pieces, reflecting the substantial value remaining on a player they could still control through 2025--or rather, whom the Mariners can now control for that long. DeSclafani can be tentatively penciled in as the new fifth starter for the Twins, and Gonzalez will slot somewhere inside the top 10 on our top prospect countdown in the days and weeks ahead. DeSclafani came to the Mariners in a trade with the Giants earlier this month, and is actually owed more than Polanco for 2024. That's probably why, as is now being reported, there will be cash going to the Twins in the deal, as well. Still, he's a nice addition, and one our Cody Schoenmann recognized as a potential target nearly three weeks ago. The Twins didn't slide Chris Paddack or even Bailey Ober down the depth chart with this move, but they've stabilized the back end of the rotation. For his part, Gonzalez is a slugging right-handed outfielder with too little speed for center field, but whom the Twins will hope to refine in terms of approach and turn into another in their recent litany of power hitters. Even if he pans out, he's probably a year and a half from helping in the big leagues, but he's right on the fringe of top-100 lists, so he's a nice get for Polanco. There's a lot of risk here. The approach is not pretty, and there are limitations on even projecting his frame, physically, given his stature. If there's one demographic in which the team needed a bit more minor-league depth, though, it's right-hitting outfielders, so count it as a serendipitous fit. Topa has always carried some intrigue. He made a splash as a rookie with the Brewers (albeit in a minute sample) during the 2020 COVID season. Health has held him back, but he brings real funk and pretty good stuff, as evidenced by a 2.61 ERA in 69 innings for Seattle in 2023. He gets ground balls by the bushel, which could make him a neat mid-game weapon for Rocco Baldelli. Darren Bowen, 23, is in A-ball, and his age and level can tell you he's no top prospect. His fastball touches 95 but gets flat (in the bad way) and hit hard at times, but he's brought along a solid pairing of slider and changeup. It's possible the Twins will try to get him throwing either a cutter or a sinker in lieu of his four-seamer and start limiting hard contact, but he's a true throw-in for now. There are many more details and ramifications to sort through here, but they'll belong to separate pieces. Suffice it to say, for now, that Polanco will be sorely missed, but that the team got considerable value in this trade. They might not be better, or have more absolute talent, in the immediate future, but they gained both better roster balance and some long-term upside. Much analysis of this move depends on what (if anything) comes next. In particular, we need to see how much (if at all) this deal reduces their payroll, and to what extent (if any) they'll now invest by going out and either signing or trading for more high-end talent, using any extra financial flexibility they gained here and their increased volume of young talent on hand. What do you think of the deal? What do you hope to see next from Derek Falvey and company? Let's keep the conversation going in the comments. View full article

Julien is a good call. Obviously you don't have as much value with a guy who's already established himself in the big leagues, but he, too, only got $493,000 as a signing bonus, so you might have better leverage with him than with, say, Lee. Lewis, to me, is just out of reach. Got too much when drafted, has racked up too much service time already. But you certainly go to him to check in, at least.

The indelible Mauer moment, for me, will always be his hustle double in Game 163 in 2009. That's the best baseball game I've ever seen, and Mauer set the perfect tone. Hard-hit ball, heads-up, playing hard, crowd loving it. Just a *gorgeous* swing. https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx_BqEdq3_AaohIAsDye1Vstkk7hZq6M2_?si=_AHWMWyoeMKuH4pc

The greatest catcher in Twins history--and one of the best of the 21st century--is right on the doorstep of the Hall of Fame. He got there because he played the most important defensive position (other than pitcher) in baseball, and he played that position because he wanted to. Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-USA TODAY Sports I think people forget that Carlos Delgado came up through the minor leagues as a catcher. They forget that Joey Votto signed as a catcher, and they even forget that Bryce Harper was a catcher in high school, as well as at the junior college where he played before being drafted first overall in 2010. It's easy to forget those things, because none of those guys were really catchers. Harper (and agent Scott Boras) got that right away. When Harper signed with the Nationals almost 15 years ago, he did it as an outfielder. He converted before even trying on a professional set of catcher's gear, because when you can hit like that, you don't hold yourself back by squatting nonstop and taking foul balls and surviving (this used to be a thing, kids, we swear) collisions at the plate. Votto, Delgado, and Harper are just three of several examples of players who moved out from behind the plate pretty early in their professional careers. Plenty of others made the same move, and while some of those were because the player in question lacked the mental or physical chops to play that difficult position, it was more often for a simpler reason: they wanted to be big-leaguers. In fact, they wanted to be stars. There's nothing wrong with that, and there's everything right about their decisions. If you want to be the best big-league hitter you can be--the most explosive, the most successful, the most famous, the richest, or just the longest-lasting--you don't play catcher. To play catcher, in addition to being smart and charismatic and having a strong arm, you have to want to catch. You have to want that worse than stardom. You have to want it worse than the Hall of Fame. Because of that, there aren't enough catchers in the Hall. Sometimes, a couple of the ones who are in there get ridiculed, because the Veterans Committee went through a phase during which they let in some of the wrong people, choosing them for reasons of favoritism rather than on merit, but there are too few catchers in the Hall, not too many. Great players who choose to stay at catcher accept some risk that they won't reach the Hall, or (since few players actively think about the Hall of Fame during the phase of their career during which they make these choices) that they just won't become All-Stars or sluggers. Catching is, itself, a sacrifice. That's one reason why most catchers aren't guys with Delgado's or Votto's or Harper's talent, but those without speed, or without bat speed, or without some other ingredient of stardom. It's a position played by many guys who don't have a choice, because they couldn't make it as shortstops or center fielders, or even first basemen or right fielders. Joe Mauer had a choice. He was built like Votto, Delgado, and Harper, with their huge frame and their surprising blend of fluidity and strength. He could have moved out from behind the plate the moment he signed with the Twins. He didn't want to. Catching would eventually be taken away from him, but only by force--by medical coercion. It's not just that guys built like Mauer usually don't choose to catch. They're also badly made for it. Because of his height, Mauer was at a massive disadvantage as a pitch framer. In fact, he might not have been given much of a chance to catch, had he come along a decade later. The low pitch is hard to catch and hard to keep in the zone for a guy who stands 6-foot-4. That's one reason why so few catchers have ever been that tall. We can't quantify Mauer's pitch framing for the first few years of his MLB career. PITCHf/x didn't become ubiquitous until 2008, so we can't pinpoint Mauer's strengths and weaknesses as a framer (except by sharing our memories) before that time. Here's where he was in 2008, though. This chart shows Strikes Looking Above Average (SLAA) by pitch location. The picture tells the story better than I can. He was great at shaping the top of the zone, but lousy along the bottom edge of it. Here's his 2009 chart. He still wasn't able to expand the zone at its bottom, but Mauer got better at shaping the zone at all four corners, including widening it slightly. In one year, he went from 3.1 runs worse than average as a framer to 5.7 runs better than average. Armed with technology (even if no one around him in the Twins front office understood how to make use of the data they had), Mauer improved significantly almost overnight. Here he is in 2010. That blue band is getting a little thinner, and Mauer started really widening the plate on the third-base edge, where he could use his body to literally frame things for the umpire. For the final three seasons of his catching career, he did all that better and better. The strike zone started drifting downward around this time, league-wide, which was a detriment to Mauer. Yet, he was able to move with it, even though the injuries were really piling up by thiat point. He never stopped working to improve behind the plate. He wanted every inch for his pitchers, and he learned how to do that as well and as fast as he could, despite his size and the way it made him seem miscast in that role. Mauer wasn't a great hitter for a catcher. He was simply a great hitter, and a catcher. If he'd only done the first his whole career, as so many other players who looked and swung like him did, we'd have an easier time understanding what an extraordinary hitter he was. If he'd done that, he'd have had more than one season with the kind of power output we saw in 2009. If he'd done that, his career hit total might have been closer to 3,000 than to 2,000. Personally, I notice the absence of those things on his record, but I don't miss or regret them. I'm grateful to Mauer for choosing to catch. He wanted every bit of baseball he could get his arms around; that meant putting himself in the heart of the thing. He chose baseball over football, but he also chose catching over some portion of baseball. Tuesday evening, he's going to reap the reward for that. It'll be well-earned. Research assistance provided by TruMedia. View full article

There are no weekends left before Twins Fest. There are only three before pitchers and catchers report to Fort Myers. It's time to wake up now, baseball executives. You're going to be late for school. Image courtesy of © Lon Horwedel-USA TODAY Sports Maybe that's unjustifiably unkind. The league isn't totally inert. Last Friday, the Astros signed Josh Hader to a five-year deal worth $95 million, and the Angels locked up Robert Stephenson on a three-year deal worth upward of $30 million shortly thereafter. It's just hard to figure out what anyone--including the Astros and Angels--is doing. How Many Closers Do You Need? For the Astros, the baffling thing is that Hader is a nigh-historic addition to a bullpen that simply didn't need him very much. Shortly before signing him, they did announce that they'd lost setup man Kendall Graveman to shoulder surgery, and that Graveman will miss the whole of 2024. In truth, though, Graveman himself was a luxury item. As the Twins remember only too well, the Astros' recent playoff success has been fueled in no small part by Bryan Abreu and Ryan Pressly. Since the start of 2022, Pressly has 139 strikeouts against 29 walks in 113 2/3 regular-season innings, plus 23 strikeouts and five walks in 17 scoreless frames in the postseason. Abreu, if possible, has been even better, with a sub-2.00 ERA in each of the last two seasons. He's punched out 188 batters in 132 1/3 frames in the regular season over that span, and has 33 strikeouts in 19 2/3 playoff innings, too. The Astros are already committed to middle reliever Rafael Montero, too, and their development system churns out hurlers capable of joining the corps of those arms. Hader makes them better, but it all has a whiff of gilding the lily. To be sure, they're an even tougher out in the playoffs, now, but they might not be materially closer to getting there than they were four days ago. It's an irrational marketplace. How Many Closers Do You Need? The question of why the Angels signed the second-best reliever on the market is very different, even though you can say it in pretty much exactly the same words. The Angels are going to be terrible this year. Their best player now plays for their obnoxious big brother. Their second-best player is hurt all the time and turns 33 this summer. Their third-best player isn't even their third-best player anymore, and he's hurt all the time, and he turns 34 this summer, and he also hates baseball. Signing a reliever to an eight-figure deal is more like gilding a dandelion, in this case. Again, though, we're seeing the irrationality of the market, and thus, why the Twins aren't yet being hurt much by the limitations resulting from the uncertainty about the future of their broadcast rights. They weren't going to be in on guys like Shohei Ohtani or Yoshinobu Yamamoto at the prices the Dodgers paid, even if the Pohlads had sold off some other arm of their empire and shoved all the cash into Derek Falvey's hands. It's not in line with the way the Falvey-led front office likes to do things. For the same reason, they were never going to be in on Hader or Stephenson. Only now, with some of those big deals (and, realistically, overpays) off the board, is the phase of the offseason in which Falvey was ever going to be interested in participating beginning. The time it has taken for that to happen is to the Twins' advantage, not only because a bit more clarity about their TV money now seems to be on the horizon, but because they can start to use the calendar as a cudgel. Joe All Day, Joe Every Day, Joe Today, Joe Tomorrow, Joe Forever If you're sick of Joe Mauer Hall of Fame talk... tough. The Hall will announce its 2024 class tomorrow evening, and Joe Mauer is overwhelmingly likely to be part of it. We're going to have heavy coverage of the event, and further, we're going to spend considerable time over the next few days remembering and reexamining Mauer's career from a variety of angles. This is a special moment. If you do feel that urge to be too cool for it, or to linger in resentment about what he wasn't able to accomplish for the team, I want to plead with you: interrogate that urge, digest it, and then banish it. If you hold this particular moment at arm's length, you'll regret it later. When life offers you an opportunity to share in massive, uncomplicated celebration with people, never pass it up. We should do more of that, rather than less. We should be a little less cool, sometimes, in order to be a little more happy. Which free agents and trade targets are you still feeling hopeful about? What will you remember most clearly about Mauer's career? Give yourself a break this morning and wade into some baseball talk. View full article

This has been the winter of many Twins fans' discontent, as they impatiently await the addition of a frontline starting pitcher. While that sentiment is understandable, it fundamentally underrates one of the existing pieces the team has. Image courtesy of © Matt Blewett-USA TODAY Sports Since the start of the 2022 season, Bailey Ober has made 37 starts in the big leagues, totaling 200 innings. He has a 3.37 ERA. In addition to those, he made five starts in Triple A in 2023, with St. Paul, and ran a 2.38 ERA. Those are frontline starter numbers. That 3.37 mark is the same ERA as coveted trade candidate Dylan Cease and much-admired young Mariners co-ace George Kirby have over the same span. Of course, both Cease and Kirby have thrown upward of 100 more innings than has Ober during those two seasons, at least in MLB. A groin strain cost Ober a good chunk of 2022, and the Twins' unexpectedly stout, healthy rotation led them to stash the optionable Ober in St. Paul for a couple stretches of the season. Health is a big part of the story with Ober, but it's been somewhat overstated recently. The groin strain was unfortunate, and isn't to be entirely dismissed, because he's a big guy with an athletic delivery, and injuries like that are part of the package there. It's been several years since Ober's elbow trouble in the minor leagues, though, and he's an almost entirely different pitcher now than he was then. While he's not going to rack up a workload to match that of Jordan Montgomery (3.34 ERA since 2022, but 367 regular-season innings) or Logan Gilbert (376 innings of 3.47-ERA ball), Ober now has a platform of roughly 165 innings on which to build. Despite being a collegiate draftee who then got waylaid by injuries and the pandemic, Ober is still only 28 years old. You can make a pretty strong argument, in other words, that the Twins have a strong mid-rotation starter here--and maybe more. If he pitches 175 innings in 2024 with a similar ERA to his past two seasons, he'll be the replacement for the departed Sonny Gray, and Twins fans needn't obsess further over that challenge. "That's a pretty big if!" you exclaim. "Can he really do that?" Yes. View full article

I'm especially in on that last sentiment. It's way too early for them to be moving out of there, especially because the place is just finding itself. I think it's one of the league's more unfairly maligned parks. I rather like going there and don't want to see them move (yet, at least) either.

I kind of miss spending winters uncritically soaking up whatever rumors ran in Baseball Weekly and daydreaming about a right fielder making a running catch angling back toward the wall in the gap, then throwing behind a runner to try to double them up. We have no details, yet, on whether or to what extent public funding will help build this park, or even whether it will actually be built. This is a big step for the Sox, though. The location they're talking about would put them squarely in what we'd call downtown, virtually in the shadow of the Sears Tower. It feels like Reinsdorf won his staring contest with the partners he needed, and did it pretty quickly. What do you expect to come of the uncertain TV situation? What do you make of Rodriguez? Is there a Blue Jays-Twins trade fit coming into focus? Let's talk ball, and pray for the warmer temperatures my weather app says are coming early next week. (Mild winters: another thing that once seemed simple...) Happy Thursday. View full article

That umpires might unevenly affect the efficacy of framing is a good and underdiscussed point. I will say that more than one of the stat frameworks that evaluate the skill make an attempt to correct for that effect, but it's tough to do perfectly. So, I guess, is adjusting for parks and league run environments, among other things. Me, personally: I hope the strike zone is never automated. It's part of the art of the game. Sport should be art, more than science. We lose something huge and essential when we let it go from one thing to the other.

I've seen this question in multiple places, and I think the implication (intentional or otherwise) is that Arráez might be damaged goods or not as valuable as he seems. I want to knock that notion down. He's available because he had such a good season that he's now going to cost a ton via arbitration, and because the Marlins made a change in baseball leadership, such that the guy now running the team isn't the person who traded for him a year ago, and because the new FO has a longer-term vision, as opposed to trying to get right back to the playoffs next year at all costs. The questions about fit aren't misplaced. I just want to be clear that Arráez is available purely because the Marlins have an uncertain financial future into which he's an uneasy fit, and because of that change in the front office's top decision-makers--not because people aren't expecting him to continue to rake, or because his health is a question, or because of the perceived defensive limitations.

Well, for what it's worth, Burnes has less than zero interest in an extension. I mean that unless you offered him basically the Gerrit Cole deal, he's going to free agency. But yes, they can afford him.

What kind of amateur operation is MLB running, anyway? I kid. (Kind of.) An offseason deadline was quietly pushed up one day last month, so it's suddenly upon us. Image courtesy of © Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports News continues to come more in trickle than torrent, but by today at noon, teams have to either agree with arbitration-eligible players on deals to avoid that noxious process or submit their figures for a potential hearing. At 7 PM tonight, those figures will be officially exchanged. That's what much of today will be about, and then moves should pick up starting this weekend. Everyone Just Wants a Longer Long Weekend With much of the country set to observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day Monday and enjoy a three-day weekend, the league and the players association agreed last month to move up the deadline for the exchange of arbitration figures from Friday to today. Presumably, at least for teams who have a decent chunk of their offseason moving and shaking done, this means a four-day weekend for some folks who have worked hard for it. Call it anything you want, but you can't call it unrelatable. Big Twins Decisions Coming Into Focus Why does this seemingly banal procedural deadline matter? Say you're the Twins. You're facing pretty strict financial constraints this winter, pending the resolution of the TV rights questions hanging over everything, and you have seven players eligible for arbitration. Add their projected salaries (per MLB Trade Rumors) together, and they account for $18.8 million of your payroll for the coming season. That's no chump change, given how much you have committed to Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton and the holes you still need to fill. It's also not a real number, though--not yet. As good as MLBTR's projections typically are, it could easily be as little at $17 million or (more likely, in this particular case) as much as $20.5 million that you end up paying those seven players. A few million dollars don't go as far as they used to, in MLB, but that range of possible outcomes is not totally negligible. They can shape and alter your set of options for the balance of the offseason. For that reason, look for the team to get deals done with just about all of these guys, and if they don't get one done (with Kyle Farmer, for instance), it might signal a greater likelihood that they'll trade that player, rather than a real willingness to go to a hearing with them. It also matters because of how the same process shapes other teams' options. The Twins are still in contact with the Brewers about a potential Corbin Burnes trade, but both sides will want to know what Burnes is actually going to make in 2024 before talking more concretely about the secondary pieces in such a trade. Today will be busy, and the stakes are higher than you'd think. You'll Hear Nothing and Like It While we're all going to get clarity on some arbitration stuff 24 hours earlier than expected, no one is getting clarity any time soon on the bankruptcy of Bally Sports parent company, Diamond Sports Group. An important hearing was pushed back this week, delaying any move that might give the Twins (or Rangers, or Guardians, or any of several other teams only slightly less urgently interested in how this will all shake out) more certainty about the ways they might broadcast their games (and get paid for the rights) in 2024. As has been the case going back two decades (to the days of the first fights between cable companies and the channels trying to mill their rights to live sports into sky-high carriage fees), all of the extremely wealthy people and entities involved will ultimately win in this staredown. They're fighting over the rightmost six or seven numbers in ledgers with nine or 10 digits before the decimal point. The losers, again, are the fans. I'm not sure there's anything we can do to change that, but we shouldn't lose sight of it. A Few Thoughts on Specific Arbitration Cases Farmer will garner the most eyeballs today, because if his projected salary of $6.6 million pans out, he's a bit of a luxury for a team on a budget. He's not the only name worth checking on closely, though. MLBTR only pegs Jeffers for $2.3 million, but given his surface-level numbers in 2023, I would take the over. His playing time will cap his earning power, but he has a chance to get expensive over the next couple years. Catcher is one place where the Twins farm system is shallow, and finding a legitimate medium-term prospect who could take over for Jeffers should be on their to-do list for the year. Are you ready for Arbageddon? (Get it?) Do you think the Twins will pull the trigger on any form of a Burnes trade? Let's chop it up, as the stove heats up just in time for the cold of January to really seize us all. View full article

The Twins have a new pitcher on their big-league roster. It's unlikely to be an impact addition, but the bullpen mix just got incrementally deeper. Jensen is a minor addition, to be sure. He had excruciating control problems in 2023, after moving to the bullpen in search of more intensity in his stuff. The Cubs added him to the 40-man roster to protect him from the 2022 Rule 5 Draft, but they ended up waiving him at midseason, and he finished the campaign in the Mariners system. At his best, he can reach the upper 90s with his fastball. The shape of that pitch isn't great, though, and he's yet to find a secondary offering that makes it work. He was a swingman early in his college career at Fresno State, but an established and successful starter in his draft year. By the time the Cubs took him 27th overall, they did so in the hope that he would blossom into a mid-rotation starter. That, obviously, never happened, and he's struggled to throw strikes with an expanding mix at the upper levels of the minors. This one feels like a pure bet on the arm and the athleticism that made Jensen attractive half a decade ago. That doesn't mean it's bad. Indeed, the Twins probably intend to try a major streamlining of his repertoire: junking his lousy sinker, emphasizing his cutter and a fastball with relative cut, and maybe adding a sweeper or true slider. At worst, they spent one of a few open roster spots on a temporary basis. At best, they might have someone very much in the vein of Cole Sands, but with more talent than Sands has. What do you make of Jensen? Are you feeling confident about the Twins' middle-relief depth? View full article

While we wait (and wait, and wait) for a trade that will shore up the front end of the Twins’ starting rotation for 2024 and beyond, there’s another question we need to ask. How many starters, exactly, does the team intend to use? Image courtesy of Brock Beauchamp / Getty Images By now, it shouldn't surprise anyone to hear that the six-man rotation is creeping in as a new normal throughout MLB. The league began trending that way half a decade ago, and the pandemic accelerated the process. In 2021, successful teams like the Astros and Brewers unapologetically turned to six-man staffs to managed workloads as their starters built back up after a truncated season. That was just one way that the trend began to take deeper root. Shohei Ohtani requires the teams for which he pitches to work on six-man rotations, to accommodate the extra recovery needed to be both an All-MLB slugger and an ace starter. The Dodgers were tending heavily toward a six-man staff even before they signed him last month, though. As imports from Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball proliferate in MLB, some rotations are also stretching out to accommodate them, because in NPB, starters work on a weekly schedule. The same is true, of course, in collegiate baseball, and in the restructured post-pandemic minor-league schedule, many teams put their prospects on a weekly one, too. Over 60 percent of starts throughout the league were made on five or more days of rest in 2023, and that's not going to change in 2024. The majority of the teams who have moved in this direction so far--the Angels, the Dodgers, the Astros, the Red Sox, the Mets, and the Padres have done it most often over the last three years--are big-spending, big-market operations. It's hard to afford six starting pitchers (and the rest of what you need to be a winning team) on a budget much smaller than $200 million, these days. The Twins certainly won't spend at that level in 2024, but they still might need to increase their commitment to the six-man rotation. They already ranked sixth in MLB in starts on long rest in 2023, and their approach will dictate that they continue to move that way. View full article

Bove is KC's assistant pitching coach. He's part of a new structure there and his work with Staumont is notable, but they probably didn't meaningfully consult him on the choice to non-tender him at all. And yeah, the Twins wouldn't reach out to Bove to check in on him, except perhaps for any makeup stuff he felt like sharing. It's ok to talk about personality fit across organizations with people you know and trust, but by and large, teams neither trust what they hear from employees of other teams about on-field performance nor feel comfortable putting them in that kind of position.

Stages of Change model, baby. I say feel free to read the free content and wade into the discussion. Those who do will find others commenting with more information at hand, thanks to having read the whole piece, and maybe that moves someone along the line--from precontemplation to contemplation, or from contemplation to preparation. The conversation gets better as more folks see the whole story, but perspectives from those not yet seeing it all also help ground it in the broader perception.

This is good feedback. In my editorial capacity, I do try to schedule our Caretakers stuff in higher-volume windows of the week, when we'll have other stuff featured soon after they go up. At the same time, the goal with our Caretakers content is to encourage folks to invest a bit and get more in-depth coverage, on a sustainable model for that level of work. By posting these briefly in visible spots and giving the free preview sections for each piece, we hope to show folks who are still weighing that decision what they can expect and what they stand to gain if they take the leap with us. I totally understand the frustration of paywalled content being up top when you come for the free stuff, though, and again, that's never off my radar. Thanks for speaking up.