Twins Front Office Talk Payroll, Twitter Sounds Off

[Kwak]

Run differential over 162 games isn't the be all/end all statistic--just compare wins and losses, since that is what really matters.  If the FO really cares about selling more tickets--give the fans the entertainment they (we) are paying for--wins and excitement.  Clear out as much deadwood as possible and play the top prospects as well as the currently proven talent.  Add a marquee name veteran (trade, free-agent, whatever).  Go big or retire.

[Rosterman]

If you don't put a qualiiy product on the field that is competitive, everything goes down - television, concession and ticket sales. Then you cut corners the next year, and things tank even further, especially if you work it do you do make your 5-10% overall profit. But if you spend (wisely) and spend what you can for x-amount of people plus, you might actually win more games and increase revenues so you have yet more and more to spend. If you spend, the profit happens. If you don't spend, or cut spending, you just keep inching more and more backwards, yet the worth of your franchise, somehow, keeps going up in value (go figure). Don't blame the fans for paying major league prices for Triple-A ball. Move the team to Rochester Minnesota and call them The Red Wings, then!

[tobi0040]

Would you call that a fair analysis?

 

Fair would probably be throwing out Hughes and Nolasco (high and low-ish and biggest $$$).  I think you end with 8M for 1 WAR.  Add in Kubel, Bartlett, and Guerrier and you probably have 0-1 WAR and 10M.

 

Something about the initial analysis didn't seem right, 75% of the WAR was tied up in one of the six players. Meanwhile we owe Nolasco $33M the next three years and somehow Mike Pelfrey will ge a check for $6M next year.

[stringer bell]

I read the Miller article, and I have a couple of problems with it:

 

1) The headline implied that the Twins have already spent nearly their whole budget for 2015. In somewhat smaller print is the caveat: if they bring everyone back.

 

2) It is implied that parting with arb and option eligible members of the bullpen and bench in order to create more payroll space will constitute "tough choices."

 

They should not (and will not) bring everybody back, and several of the choices aren't tough at all. Burton's option is an easy decline, and Duesning and Swarzak should be non-tenders - there are multiple players from Rochester's excellent pen who could exceed their 2014 production for $500K. Is Nunez going to give them a lot more for $1.2M than Beresford could for the league minimum? Cut him.

 

They'll have $10-12M available once they clean out the 40-man. That's enough to grab the 2015 version of Hughes and Suzuki. Of course, they can't afford to make any mistakes in their evaluations...

 

Friends, because I care about your mental health, I urge you all to measure the Twins' success next season by one simple metric: get the run differential into the black. With the players they have under control and another $10M wisely spent, that's a goal they can reach for around $85M.

I'm not on board for bringing everyone back, but it's really not a payroll issue--goodness Duensing, Swarzak and Nuñez combined salaries aren't enough to sign anybody that amounts to anything--obviously the club is retrenching and their public relations skills still leave something to be desired.

[USAFChief]

The only thing that matters to me is whether or not the Twins are willing to spend what it takes to fill a key void when the rest of the pieces are in place to contend. 

I often read this theory.  As I see it, there are so many problems with it, I'm not sure where to begin:

 

1.  There is no obvious or proven reason this theory is inherently better than just the opposite strategy:  "go get as much talent as you can on the big league team and hope the minor leagues can provide one key piece."

 

In actuality, I'd say your odds are much better of being able to identify proven major league talent and hope to add a bit from the minors than the other way around.

 

2. If we accept your theory as better, how do you propose to know when you only have "one key void" in advance of a season?  If you wait until after the season to add that "one key piece," it's too late, no?  If you're waiting till you are a .500 team to add FAs, then you should have added them prior to that .500 season, pushing you into contention.  After all...that's your theory, right?  Simply add the finishing touch(es) to an already good team.  

 

3.  If somehow you can know in advance when you have that "one key void," how do you know there will be a FA just sitting there waiting for you to call?  Or if there is, he will sign here?

 

I think the theory of "wait till you're good to get good" is something that sounds on the surface like a smart idea, until you actually try to put it into practice.  "Continually look to add talent, in every way possible" sounds like a much better idea to me.  Including adding high priced talent when possible.

 

 

I look at the Wild, and I'm glad their ownership went out and got top talent in place, in advance of or in conjunction with the arrival of a bunch of minor league talent, so that they didn't have to depend on the rookies and youngsters to elevate the franchise all by themselves, and they put themselves in a position where they didn't need to be right on all of the FA choices or right on all of the youngsters.

 

All it took was money, and the courage of their convictions.  They haven't won anything yet, but they're certainly in a good position.

 

And I can't shake the feeling that, if magic happens, and the Twins clearly are "just one player away," there will be an excuse for why that didn't happen, too.  At least if history is any teacher.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

I see the Twins "budget" philosophy very similar to the federal government. Use it or lose it, rather than pay for performance.

Ticket buyers, while they have a choice vs tax payers do not, still each pay the allotted amount regardless of quality of return on services rendered.

 

Thank God scalping is now legal or I would never see my favorite team in person.

[nicksaviking]

Would you call that a fair analysis?

The fair thing to do would be to take out the high and low outliers. Sadly there isn't a low outlier because there were multiple terrible free agents.

[TheLeviathan]

And I can't shake the feeling that, if magic happens, and the Twins clearly are "just one player away," there will be an excuse for why that didn't happen, too.  At least if history is any teacher.

 

 

Great post Chief and this is spot on.  This team has not earned the benefit of the doubt that they will do this.  They had a half dozen chances over the last decade and the most notable additions are names like Rondell White, a blindly lucky snag of Shannon Stewart, and Rick Reed.

 

Hell, I'm not sure this team can even utilize the "pick up the right guy at the right time" strategy if they wanted to.  They have a documented history of doing the exact opposite and wilting in these situations.

[brvama]

Normally I' m optimistic and sometimes apologetic toward the Twins FO, but this story was a gut punch. Many have shared my same thoughts on this thread. It's not the amount of payroll that bothers me - it's the subtle reference that they will not be willing to add payroll, if necessary. That creates that angst that many of us have.

 

After 4 terrible years they throw this out to the fans -that's inexcusable. Their policy of playing things close to the vest has them in a bind with the fans. As has been mentioned, an honest presentation as to their plan would, or should, maintain a base of support from fans and ticket holders. The details are not important, direction is.

 

I am very frustrated and deflated with those story. Oh crap, my drink is empty!

[Richie the Rally Goat]

And I can't shake the feeling that, if magic happens, and the Twins clearly are "just one player away," there will be an excuse for why that didn't happen, too.  At least if history is any teacher.

every time I hear Ryan and St. Peter say that they peg payrole at 50 some percent of revenue, it's two things:

1 punishes the fans

2 negative influence on the quality of the product.

 

This summer we heard "why not us, why not now?" It was refreshing to hear, even though Morales didn't work. Now we hear, less explicitly, it was a bad revenue year and we expect next year to be worse, so we are maintaining slashed payrole, or reducing it, rather than hearing, "we sucked for the 4th year in a row, we're going to do what it takes to right the ship. We are confident that revenue and the fans will follow a good team"

[ashbury]

Is Nunez going to give them a lot more for $1.2M than Beresford could for the league minimum? Cut him.

What, and have nothing to show for trading away Drew Butera?

 

What I'd like to hear from the FO is that in years they are below threshold on their major league payroll, the excess will be used in other ways to build the team, such as even greater investment in young players one way or another.  I know that restrictions have been placed on signing young players, but surely there are ways the money can be invested to good purpose.

[tobi0040]

2. If we accept your theory as better, how do you propose to know when you only have "one key void" in advance of a season?  If you wait until after the season to add that "one key piece," it's too late, no?  If you're waiting till you are a .500 team to add FAs, then you should have added them prior to that .500 season, pushing you into contention.  After all...that's your theory, right?  Simply add the finishing touch(es) to an already good team.  

 

 

Great post overall, but I really enjoyed this part. The fact is you don't know before the year.  Many people had Boston winning the east, nobody had the O's.  Cincy is another team that was supposed to be up there and ended well below .500.  The 2011 team was coming off 95 or 96 wins and returned the same team basically and won 65 games.

 

I think this annual statement "if we are one player away and in a race" is really a micro-cosm of this ownership group.  They care, but not enough to pull out their wallet in the face of uncertainty or with any risk associated with it at all. If they know we have a 50% shot at the playoffs, which means we will have attendance until game 162 they will pay the money.  They are also saying, we will add good players, but only pay them in August and September. 

 

The worst part is they are working the phones and askng their fans to pony up $1,000 for the next full season and selling the hope....while they take the wait and see approach themselves. 

[KGB]

The comparison to the Wild is interesting, but Minnesota in hockey would be like California in baseball.  Players have connection here and want to play with the Wild.  They accept below market contract to come here.

 

That's not the case with the Twins, so believing they can become a contender by going out and signing free agent is not realistic.  When the Twins have won, it was with players developed in their system and adding talent afterwards.  They will never be able to compete with NY or LA on overall payroll, so the best they can do is adding mid level free agent talent.  Do you really believe a top level player would sign with Minnesota for a couple million more?  Hughes didn't even pitch 1/3 inning for $500k.  At a point, money isn't the final factor. 

 

The Twins are not a playoff team and not a top market to attract free agent.  Until they can offer something to top talent, they are not going to be able to sign top talent.

[TheLeviathan]

That's not the case with the Twins, so believing they can become a contender by going out and signing free agent is not realistic.  

 

Whew....good thing no one is saying that then!

[tobi0040]

The comparison to the Wild is interesting, but Minnesota in hockey would be like California in baseball.  Players have connection here and want to play with the Wild.  They accept below market contract to come here.

 

That's not the case with the Twins, so believing they can become a contender by going out and signing free agent is not realistic.  When the Twins have won, it was with players developed in their system and adding talent afterwards.  They will never be able to compete with NY or LA on overall payroll, so the best they can do is adding mid level free agent talent.  Do you really believe a top level player would sign with Minnesota for a couple million more?  Hughes didn't even pitch 1/3 inning for $500k.  At a point, money isn't the final factor. 

 

The Twins are not a playoff team and not a top market to attract free agent.  Until they can offer something to top talent, they are not going to be able to sign top talent.

It was the Parise and Suter signings that put us on the map and righted the ship. Parise has ties here but neither of those guys took a discount, both received 10 year deals (they were the top two rated guys on the free agent market that year).  Minnesota has always had ties to tons of hockey players but nobody of any signficance come here until they made those investments

 

That is an "if we build it they will come" philosophy that we don't see from the twins.

[jay]

$7.5 million per WAR - so according to Fangraph the Twins overall WAR is 17.9 which makes our 90 loss club a $134 million roster. From what I saw, something is very wrong in this calculation.

The $7.5M number comes from external free agents based on the retrospective value they generated (as explained in detail in the article). It's hindsight 20/20.

 

No roster is constructed fully of external free agents as your comment would allude to, but it highlights why that'd be quite the expensive endeavor.

[USAFChief]

What, and have nothing to show for trading away Drew Butera?

 

What I'd like to hear from the FO is that in years they are below threshold on their major league payroll, the excess will be used in other ways to build the team, such as even greater investment in young players one way or another.  I know that restrictions have been placed on signing young players, but surely there are ways the money can be invested to good purpose.

I agree and in fact was thinking along the same lines this afternoon.

 

I'd stop whining so much about payroll if DSP would come out and tell us, "yeah, we could easily have spent a lot more on payroll since we moved into TF. But we felt like we had too much ground to make up, didnt really like the opportunities that were out there, and decided to bank some money instead. It's all there, sitting in an account, and will eventually go towards payroll when we think it makes sense."

 

Heck, I'd settle for just thinking that, even if he didnt actually say it.

 

But I don't.

[jay]

Chief... I couldn't possibly disagree more with your model. Not in the sense that it can't work, but in that it isn't going to work for the Twins in the reality of this structure.

 

The Twins (and every other MLB team) are "continually looking to add talent". That's unquestionable in their existence as an organization. The only differentiation in your approach is the "high priced talent", which can be translated to free agents.

 

If MLB had a salary cap and/or a different talent development model, I could buy into your methodology in full. The obvious and proven reason it doesn't work is the real fact that the Twins (and most orgs) have a finite level of resources.

[USAFChief]

Chief... I couldn't possibly disagree more with your model. Not in the sense that it can't work, but in that it isn't going to work for the Twins in the reality of this structure.

The Twins (and every other MLB team) are "continually looking to add talent". That's unquestionable in their existence as an organization. The only differentiation in your approach is the "high priced talent", which can be translated to free agents.

If MLB had a salary cap and/or a different talent development model, I could buy into your methodology in full. The obvious and proven reason it doesn't work is the real fact that the Twins (and most orgs) have a finite level of resources.

Fair enough...although in my mind the absence of a salary cap in baseball makes it easier, not harder. There are no real consequences, other than financial, to signing a bad free agent in baseball. An owner can chose to write off the money, and go sign another. In sports with salary caps, they can't do that.

[jay]

That part is true. Unfortunately, I don't think we'd find it realistic to expect that to happen.

 

Across all sports, even salary capped, the successful teams build around young players before they reach that high priced stage. It's not an accident that essentially every professional sports organization uses that model (except maybe the Yankees). To suggest something else would work better ignores a lot of real world reality.

[stringer bell]

I have to confess that I grow tired of the argument. We see it over and over and all of the complaining solves nothing. The Twins won't increase payroll substantially after a bad year. The small subset (Twins Daily posters) of the small number of year-round Twins fans that are actually following the Twins right now, isn't going to make enough noise to change their plan.

 

I mostly agree with the rationale to spend more in order to break out of a four season funk. The Twins will go about it in their way. If you all feel better venting about a misguided policy which cheats us long-suffering fans of quality entertainment next year, knock yourself out.

[D. Hocking]

I understand it is a business and they need to show fiscal responsibility and I also know just spending money is not the answer.  However, even if it was only for PR purposes, it would be nice to read some of these interviews if you felt that in addition to this being a business, they had some passion of owning and running a baseball team and how their primary goal was to win for winning sake, not because winning will generate revenue and future ticket sales.  This interview conjures images of spreadsheets and pie charts that someone would present to their shareholders to show the five year plan to increase revenues, not how they are excited about the possibility of someday bring a trophy to Target Field.

 

I am not saying they don't want to win and that they should just go wildly spend some money, but try to show that running a baseball team is is something that causes a rush of excitement and the dream of winning in the play-offs gets the pulse going just as much as record ticket sales.

 

It might not be fiscally responsible, but I would like to see them base the team salary based on the needs to the team and who is out there and not dependent on revenue.  I am fine with smart spending or not spending just to spend, but I would hope they would go outside their spreadsheet box and 50% limit, if they really felt it would be beneficial to the team (within practical limits of course - I don't expect them to go into the red).

[old nurse]

Whew....good thing no one is saying that then!

What is the purpose then of adding talent by spending if not to contend.  I have yet to see a positive comment about the spending on Nolasco, Morales, Kubel, Guerrier or Bartlett. I would be amazed to have people not complain about the team if payroll was  at 100 million and still lousy.

[jay]

I have to confess that I grow tired of the argument. We see it over and over and all of the complaining solves nothing.

But clicks.

 

Short of the B/R approach and putting every comment on its' own page, creating payroll commiseration threads is the next best option. TD has bills to pay!

[DuluthFan]

I find the arguments for a higher payroll ironic. In order to have a higher payroll, some of the young cheap players would not be playing on the major league roster. Santana would not have been called up had the Twins signed a center fielder last offseason. Deduno and the rotation of AAA replacements would not have taken the 5th rotation spot. Colabello's hot April would not have happened. Parmalee would still be at AAA. A free agent shortstop would have thankfully saved us from Florimon's poor season and Escobar's emergence as a starter.

 

If you have been arguing for the Twins to play the young players you have little ground to support your argument for a higher payroll. You can't expect the team to do both. Would a random free agent center fielder have provided the same production as Santana? Santana cost the major league minimum, the free agent several million? Would the Twins have won more games with a $7 million center fielder?

 

If you want the Twins to spend money on free agents that means the roster spots for those young players that you are itching to see 'take their lumps' at the major league level will have to stay at AAA.

[Kwak]

I think they were [mostly] truthful--there is a salary cap, the team is run as business not for amusement, a tacit admission that 2015 will be "punted", and a not very subtle dig at Mauer.  The newspaper article highlighted the salaries of the highest paid players, and the percent of (planned) payroll that each player represents.  A bit more reading between the lines causes me (and I hope most others) to conclude that the FO believes they are: sorely constrained by Mauer's contract,  that it is the fans' fault he was signed to this elephantine contract, and they can't wait to be rid of said contract.  See, it's our fault, that the Twins are in this mess.

[jay]

That was incredibly Minnesotan.

 

Thanks for the laugh.

[old nurse]

There have been a few posts here and there about signing under 30 free agents. Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, Erik O'Flarety, Salty the catcher, Tanaka, and Ryan Webb were the only free agents on ESPN's tracker. The Twins signed one, tried to sign another. Chamberlain, who probably saved his worse outings for the Twins, or Webb would have been ok additions to the bullpen over Guerrier

[Seth Stohs]

Last 5 years in the Dome, we averaged 21st in payroll. 

 

2005 - 20th

2006 - 19th

2007 - 18th

2008 - 25th

2009 - 24th

 

Target Field

2010 - 11th

2011 - 9th

2012 - 13th

2013 - 22nd

2014 - 24th

 

Let's assume a flat payroll for 2015 and another 24th place finish.....our six year average in Target field would be 21st. We were actually 18th in both 2003 and 2004 as well, so using those years would have lowered the Dome ranking.

 

I don't want to speak for everyone else, but I would have expected the Twins to move up in team payroll. 

 

http://www.stevetheump.com/Payrolls.htm

 

But pretty much every team got new stadiums over the past 10-15 years, right? So, instead, look at the dollars spent each of those years and see how that compares to their last five years in the Dome. If the Twins were still in the Dome, they wouldn't have been able to keep up with the inflation and would likely be #30 on the list. 

[Seth Stohs]

The biggest problem with these 4 years of losing, is we have not begun to build a young base of players.  Bring up young players, will mean a lower payroll but it's the right thing to do.  It's not what anyone wants after building a new stadium, but they have screwed up and it's time to admit it and start rebuilding.  If they keep signing marginal players to fill up the roster, we are looking at a 10 year rebuilding plan.

I would agree with the premise that they need to play the younger guys now. I would just disagree with "we have not begun to build a young base of players." We have seen that the last two years in Arcia, Vargas, Santana, Gibson, May, Pino and others. And in 2015, we should see Meyer, Buxton, Sano, Rosario, maybe Burdi. Soon after, Berrios, Jones, Rogers, Reed. Etc. Those guys will be at league minimum for their first three years. So, of course, payroll will be lower overall. You can't just throw these guys under the bus by calling them up too soon. That would be worst for the long term.