Twins Trade Phil Hughes, Draft Pick to San Diego

It is possible they really liked Littel. It is possible ownership changed their mind. It is possible they are doing something amazing next year.

We won't know until next year, I'd guess.

My guess is that they plan to go hard at extending some combination of Berrios, Buxton, Sano, Rosario, Kepler, et al.

Agreed, but really hard to see how they spend more than this year's budget.

I'd love to see a team work a bunch of extensions that are front-heavy in comparison to what we see most of the time. I'd love it even more if my favorite team was the first club to do it.

There's no reason to pay Buxton $2m in 2019 and $30m in 2023 or whatever. Start him off in the $6-10m range and keep the later years flat around $15m or something around that number. It gives tons more flexibility in later years to maintain competitiveness for a longer period of time.

Mauer’s contract wasn’t exactly front loaded, but it maintained a set dollar amount every year.

I think the MLBPA would balk at a contract that got smaller as years went on. Just on principle. Also, they use comparable players’ salaries to set arbitration awards. A contract that got smaller (noting that is not what you are suggesting) would affect that.

Front loading with a “signing bonus” might be the way around it.

Lot of season left, obviously, but I don’t know how hard I would be looking to extend Buxton. Certainly not if the season ended today. I’m a little wary of Sano as well. Mostly his ability (or lack thereof) to stay on the field.

Darvish's contract is mildly front-loaded.

Even with an extension, those guys won't be expensive next year. They could play around with signing bonuses and what not to some extent, but I don't think that will be a huge part of next year's payroll.

My point is that I'd like to see them more expensive next year. If you offer those guys $6-8m for the first season instead of $2-3m, you can try to negotiate lower rates at the end of the extension, which allows you to keep one more player.

It makes all the sense in the world to operate this way because the Twins are flush with cash now but won't be in 2022. And Darvish has shown that players can be open to this kind of deal.

It makes sense based on the time value of money.  This was the very first thing I learned in my finance classes in college.  It's good to know major league baseball has finally caught up to this concept. . . 

Yep, it makes sense from both sides of the deal, which is why it's frustrating that no one signed this kind of deal for so long.

The team gets the potential for an additional 1-2 years of competition by signing several of these deals (and the only downside is the loss of 3-ish percent to inflation each season). A couple of years of contention can be worth tens of millions of dollars to the team, which makes a few percentage points on 2-3 players irrelevant.

On the other hand, the players get money valued higher (pre-inflation), get "rich quicker" through bigger early payments, and can grow that money over 3-4 seasons, which could be an enormous amount of money to the player if done correctly.

I think the bigger issue is that these contracts are used for arb and there's a CBA involved. I agree that to some extent, this can be done, but I don't think it's as simply as a 5/40 at exactly 8M per year like what Mauer signed at exactly 23 per year. These guys aren't true FAs.

But yes, if this is allowed, we should do it. It would allow us to keep the core together a bit longer.

Oh no, I don't think they could get away with a flat rate. But if you can offer $7m instead of $2m and then $11m instead of $6m, you can get the final couple of years for maybe $15m per instead of $20m per.

Do that three times and it's an extra player you can extend.

Normally, that would be hard for a team to pull off but the Twins have about $20-25m committed for next season and zero dollars committed for the following season.

I agree we should do that, but does anyone know how that fits into the CBA? Those contracts are used for arbitration awards, are they not? Or are arb rewards only based off of existing arb rewards?

If they buy out arb seasons with an extension, I don't think it matters. Don't know that for sure, though... but it makes sense because players who sign extensions usually get more money than they would through arbitration, though it's a modest amount more ($1-2m per season).