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One-year deals are an admission of fault. Either the market lacked quality, all trade routes fell through, or the internal options were so hideous that the team felt it necessary to promise a player pay for just a single year of their time. 
For the athlete, a one-year-deal represents one of two things: an opportunity to bounce back from a dreadful season, perhaps re-inflating one’s value before hitting the free market with a prettier sheen, or an acceptance of age, an understanding that father time’s inevitable march will render your talents useless. No team wants to lose out in a nebulous contract musical chairs, so the player Nelson Cruz’s it and agrees to one-year pacts before slithering away into retirement. Or he’ll sign with Pittsburgh.
Teams love diving into these waters. If the contract busts, they don’t have to be the poor souls legally stuck to an albatross, and their job security only takes the slightest hit. It was a good bet, after all. If the deal works, they look like genius, clairvoyant decision-makers who can reap the benefits of a productive player while raking in compliments. In a land where Xander Bogaerts signs for 11 years, that’s a reasonable pool to visit. 
There’s an emptiness to these deals, though. While professional sports is a business, we like to create connections with players, perhaps fooling ourselves into ignoring the massive amounts of money that exchange hands to allow their athletic ability to shine. When Max Kepler mans right field for the millionth time in a Twins uniform, our shared experience builds a connection, one that draws people closer to their romantic idea of a hometown sports team. What relationship will we have with Joey Gallo? How can we fully love a player destined to leave?
The player’s intentions become evident in this scenario. While Carlos Correa may become hands-on—which may not reflect well on him given the 2022 Twins’ record—other athletes may embody their hitman spirit, poisoning the clubhouse spirit with a selfish demeanor. 
The Twins, oddly, acknowledged this issue. Following the disappointing 2018 season, Derek Falvey admitted that their clubhouse grew a funky stink stemming from grouchy veterans on short-term deals. Logan Morrison and Lance Lynn were whiny and bad—that was what he wanted to say. 
In response to their problem, the Twins turned around and acted like they didn’t hear their own words. Nelson Cruz, Jonathan Schoop, and Martín Pérez signed up for a ride on the 2019 Twins bus—a booming home run tour of the United States—but that season appears fluky. A hyper-juiced ball? Two full seasons of below .500 play afterward? The only thing right about that year was the Yankees immediately spanking them the second October entered the equation.
Once COVID neutered the 2020 season, the Twins hopped back onto the ball, signing a litany of average talent to one-year deals, setting themselves up for a disastrous season the team is still reeling from. J.A. Happ almost threw 100 innings for the team. He made Dylan Bundy sound like a good idea.
The ultimate question is this: what’s the end goal? One-year contracts are supposed to plug holes, not dominate the team's structure; imagine a dam constructed out of duct tape. The guess is that the team is saving for some future move, but few long-term deals of that nature have come to fruition, and the only significant splash players—Josh Donaldson and Carlos Correa—are no longer Twins. Ehire Adrianza entered the batter’s box donning a Minnesota jersey more times than either of those players. 
They were able to nail down a Byron Buxton contract, although they seemed disappointed that they couldn’t trade him to Philadelphia for scraps beforehand. The Twins deserve credit for that signing, but his deal pays him $15 million a season—far less than the market rate for superstar talent. If anything, the agreement should fuel a spending spree: they have their star locked down for relatively little, add as many great players as you can.
Even with little tied down in their books, the Twins remained hesitant to drop enough money to coax Correa back home. There’s no purpose to their choices. They’re saving money for a future in which they save more money. Maybe they’re looking even further forward, but there’s no guarantee that free agents down the road—enjoy all that money, Rafael Devers—actually become available. 
Until that big, non-opt-outable deal occurs, they’ll remain in this loop, always saving for a someday that never comes.
 

Steve Cohen is a man outside of MLB. He views his team as a fan, not a businessman. Other franchises may penny-pinch, cry poor, or slice on the margins in a twisted strategic game dressed as analytical wisdom yet ultimately rooted in the almighty bottom line. Cohen is a different beast. He will stop at nothing to acquire the best talent the Lord placed on this Earth. “If it’s a few percent more, what’s the difference?” said the man who had just pledged to pay a guy over $300 million. He probably puffed a cigar while saying it.
The natural reaction is one of disgust; the man just broke the sport, after all. Once the George Steinbrenner spending of the 90s and 00s gave way to the few remaining albatrosses left in MLB—enjoy retirement, Albert Pujols—teams finally saw through the free-agent haze, seeing it as fools gold. Contracts became wiser. It took four months for people to realize signing Manny Machado was a good move. An occasional Stephen Strasburg or Anthony Rendon wave will rock the boat, but its aim is true; smart teams are too savvy to crash.
A man bombarding in, guns blazing, to sign a historic amount of elite free agents in reaction to losing to the Padres in the NLDS sets off alarms. This isn’t how teams are supposed to act.
As we all know so well, franchises are supposed to Know Their Role, sign Their Guys—an appropriate amount of them—then play each other under a gentlemanly façade that this is The Best They Can Do. The Yankees stopped making the A’s their development team because it became uncouth in the public eye. That hurts business. People must somehow believe in a fair baseball league. 
The state approving one’s ability to drive coincides with the precise moment a rational being realizes that baseball is dementedly unfair, but the game’s beauty has tranced us all; we’re content with rationalizing the immense inequality as long as the product supplies its thrills.
Cohen’s ultimate sin is that he would rather play a different game: if spending rules exist solely as tax, then why would you do anything other than spend as much money as you have? Who cares about spending $30 million a year when it takes 33 such contracts to hit $1 billion—a scratch against any owner’s vast wealth? 
Are his actions good for baseball? In the immediate future, no. Cohen’s Mets will win a thousand games in 2023 and—with permission from the baseball gods—bulldoze other powerhouses with such ease that it’ll be a joke to tell across generations. The Dodgers are speed bumps when Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander are your 1-2 punch, and your lineup has Mark Canha hitting 8th. Not even one of those good speed bumps either; they’re that worn-down crumble someone installed in a school parking lot 40 years ago that hasn’t received a fix since all funding goes to a new scoreboard for a perpetual 3-9 football team. 
But Cohen could be in for a long-term play; while he sees his actions as buying great players to add to his human trading card deck, he’s also applying pressure to other owners. This is the age of social media. Teams are more visible than ever. Any average dolt can hurl insults directly at a franchise’s social media account, bringing them closer to the people’s will than in the medieval times when talking with the king was impossible. Fans don’t have enough time to affect this off-season, but who knows what kind of weird pressure points they’ll press when a team lowballs a free agent in the age of a team possessing a nearly half-billion-dollar payroll. 
Or teams may ignore the noise until their bottom-line falls. Franchises are funny like that. 
This isn’t Cohen’s fault. Any of us poors would love to own our favorite team, churning through cartoon piles of money while our net worth remains iron-clad. The only thing Cohen broke was tradition; Baseball created spending rules based on inequality, added new ones for eye wash, then relied on their closed community of ownership to keep others in line so that the veneer remained intact. An outsider stomped on those rules; it’s up to baseball to react.
 
 

It’s not always wise to judge fan morale from social media. If we did, though, it’d be easy to see that Twins Territory is unhappy with the current product. Why wouldn’t they be? The Twins haven’t won a playoff game since I was four years old. They haven’t won a playoff series since I was two. 
After a long and grueling rebuild post-2010, it looked as though the Twins were emerging from the pits. The 2019 team won 101 games behind – yes, Nelson Cruz – but also the core Twins fans had heard about for so long. Miguel Sanó was a monster in the second half, Max Kepler was Twins Daily’s team MVP, and Jorge Polanco was an All-Star. Byron Buxton and José Berrios also shined, furthering excitement for the future. 
 
To call the next page a letdown would be an understatement. The Twins won the Central again in the shortened 2020 season but once again bowed out early in a playoff sweep to the Astros. They haven’t recovered. In back-to-back seasons, the Twins have missed the playoffs and won less than 80 games. 
The picture of a treacherous 2021 is the faces of Alexander Colomé, J.A. Happ, Matt Shoemaker and Andrelton Simmons, all half measure additions who flopped beyond belief. It was similar in 2022, with Emilio Pagán, Joe Smith, Chris Archer and Dylan Bundy failing to make a positive impact. The short-term, marginal moves have exploded violently. 
It’s true that the Twins lost quite a few players to long-term injuries in both of those seasons. It’s also undeniable that the team’s rotation is the deepest it has been on paper under the Derek Falvey regime. The club does have some exciting young talent, including Jhoan Durán, José Miranda, Joe Ryan, Royce Lewis and a 25-year-old Luis Arraez. Brooks Lee is on his way and Louie Varland and Simeon Woods Richardson showed they are ready to help the cause. 
 
For all of those reasons, it’s imperative the Twins add impact talent this offseason. It’s time to find an identity and preferably one built around the star-studded pair of Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton. The Twins need winning ballplayers to lead the hopeful Buxton-Lewis-Lee-Miranda era. No more half measures. 
It’s difficult to feel much optimism about the oft-injured 2023 roster. It’s not hard to see it going well, though, if the team has a productive offseason and better health. The 2022 Twins, with Bundy and Archer stapled in the rotation, were tied for first place in the Central on September 4th. They led the division for much of the summer. This division is quite the opposite of intimidating, even with Cleveland’s special season and the addition of Josh Bell. 
The longer the Twins fail to win in the playoffs, the more fans doubt they ever will. It has to happen now. With Sonny Gray, Tyler Mahle and Kenta Maeda all entering free agency after the season, the Twins’ urgency to add long-term, impact solutions should be busting at the seams. 
 
The type of winter the Twins need requires them to get out of their comfort zone, both in ownership and in the front office. This is not a “desperate times call for desperate measures” situation but more of an opportunity to grow in the face of extreme uncertainty and doubt. 
The Twins need to fully commit to winning in 2023. No more half measures.

Leading up to the August 2nd trade deadline, it became apparent that Thad Levine and Derek Falvey needed to add pitching. They had problems in the rotation and they had problems in the bullpen. Sure, Ryan Jeffers was on the injured list and a backup catcher became necessary. You could also make the case that an additional outfielder would have made sense after losing Trevor Larnach, Alex Kirilloff, and Kyle Garlick. The reality though, is that this front office did everything and more to position Rocco Baldelli’s club towards the Postseason.
We’ve seen in recent seasons where deals at the deadline have a way of spreading discouragement throughout the clubhouse. When Minnesota was both buyers and sellers a few years ago, it seemed that an initial displeasure was then followed by a desire to prove resiliency. In 2022 however, there’s no room for discouragement. Everything the front office did was met with elation by those on the field. The Twins social media channels have shown the embrace of new talent, and the excitement brought on by a belief that the team was good enough to invest in.
None of that seems to have mattered on the field however.
Although the pitching has turned around, thanks in large part to the additions made at the deadline, a collective of each player in the lineup continues to fail. Through three games against a very beatable Texas Rangers team, Minnesota has gone 1-for-19 with runners in scoring position. They’ve left a whopping 20 runners on base, and they’ve largely looked uninterested at the plate.
There’s plenty to be said about a manager with more of an engaging style such as Baldelli. He’s a far cry from the Hall of Famer that was Paul Molitor, and recently celebrated Ron Gardenhire may represent something in between. I don’t know that Minnesota needs a drill sergeant in the dugout, but for all we’ve heard about chemistry and makeup, it’s time for the leaders to lead.
Carlos Correa was signed to the largest deal for a Major League infielder by average annual value this offseason. Byron Buxton was inked to the extension firmly entrenching his status as the driver of this team. Sonny Gray has previously played for winning organizations while working through his veteran career. Necessary to see the production on field from that group, one of them has to provide the voice that turns this thing around.
It’s not Minnesota’s fault for playing in baseball’s second worst division. It is their fault for failing to capitalize on that opportunity. There’s no excuse for the lifeless performances that we’ve grown accustomed to at this point in the season. A lineup that should be expected to do damage routinely looks inept, and the buy in to get the job done has to be a feeling shared across the board.
To date the Twins have been held scoreless in 10% of their 117 games. With 45 to go, it’s put up or shut up time, and the only place this team will be searching for answers if left out in October is the bathroom mirror.
 

Cleveland’s surprise surge to the top of the AL Central has left both fans and media types grasping for an explanation. A weak division with the projected winner struggling. A farm system that’s been exceptional at identifying and developing talent. MVP work from Jose Ramirez. And finding another remarkable talent in the couch cushions.
“Terry (Francona, Cleveland Manager) was looking for the TV remote in the clubhouse couch during Spring Training,” said a team source. “He was rummaging and rummaging and then just like that, here’s (Cleveland closer) Emmanuel Clase. We ran him out there and now he’s helping us steal a game from the Twins.”
As competitors like Minnesota have struggled for decades to develop pitchers, Cleveland’s success stands in stark contrast.
“We found Zach Plesac wandering around Cedar Point, playing carnival games,” said a team spokesperson. “One of our scouts was reaching in his pocket for his keys and pulled out Shane Bieber. A clubhouse attendant bought a hope chest at an estate sale and Corey Kluber was inside.”
When told this string of obscene fortune was beyond comprehension, the spokesperson disagreed.
“I think a lot of major league teams have strapping young farmhands stop by the stadium to see if they can help with the harvest, like we did with Jim Thome,” said the spokesperson.” This happens all the time for everyone, I bet.”
Sources close to the Minnesota Twins confirmed that this has never happened to the franchise, except for when New Prague hobby farmer Junior Ortiz got lost on his way to Frattalone’s Hardware and played catcher for the 1990 and 1991 Twins. Ortiz won a World Series title before realizing the Metrodome did not have potting soil and Ron Gardenhire was not a lawn gnome.
 

Major League Baseball isn’t like other sports. The degree of difficulty in the draft is extreme and one player, no matter how good, can only make so big of an impact.
Joe Mauer is the fourth-best No. 1 overall pick of all-time, according to Baseball-Reference WAR, behind only Alex Rodriguez, Chipper Jones and Ken Griffey Jr. Those top four combined to help bring one World Series championship to the teams that drafted them (Jones with Atlanta in 1995). Even when you get this pick right, there’s so much else you have to do correctly to build a successful team.
Know who the 10th-best top overall pick is? B.J. Surhoff. He had a nice long career, but when we’re talking about one of the best top picks that’s not a very encouraging guy landing in the top 10.
Since the turn of the millennium, we’ve seen busts such as Bryan Bullington (2002), Delmon Young (2003), Matt Bush (2004), Luke Hochevar (2006), Tim Beckham (2008), Mark Appel (2013) and Brady Aiken (2014). There’s been more misses than hits. This is the first overall pick we’re talking about!
Twins fans should have the best grip of anyone on how long it can take for draftees to materialize. The 2016 season is long in the rear-view mirror yet we’ve only seen 51 plate appearances (Brent Rooker) and four innings pitched (Bailey Ober) from that draft class. Royce Lewis would have likely been on the verge of contributing, but the tricky thing with these draft picks is they're human beings subject to injuries. 
And that’s just the draft, MLB’s international signings might be the ultimate crapshoot in all of sports. It seems for every $4 million Wander Javier there’s a $100,000 Ronald Acuña Jr.
It seems like the idea of tanking really took off after the Cubs and Astros won back-to-back World Series championships in 2016 and ‘17. Both franchises had long down periods before reaching the top. Chicago was led by 2013 No. 2 overall pick Kris Bryant and Houston by 2012 No. 1 overall pick Carlos Correa. It was easy to believe there was a simple formula to follow but what’s overlooked is how good (or fortunate) both those organizations were with many of their other transactions that had nothing to do with tanking/draft picks.
The Cubs made excellent trades for Anthony Rizzo, Kyle Hendricks and Jake Arrieta. The Astros originally signed José Altuve for $15,000, got Dallas Keuchel with the 221st pick of the 2009 Draft and paid just $25.97 for an invaluable trash can from Home Depot (sorry, I couldn’t resist). That’s definitely oversimplifying things — those teams did benefit from tanking — but you have to do so many other things right than just get high draft picks and big international signing bonus pools.
Just look at teams like the Orioles, Reds, Tigers, Marlins, Mariners, Rangers and Pirates. They are in varying states of extended rebuilds and have little to show for it. Meanwhile, the Cardinals have 13-straight winning seasons, Dodgers are at 10 years of winning and Cleveland, despite all their (mostly self-imposed) limitations, has eight consecutive seasons with a winning record. Those teams haven’t had to lose, let alone bottom out, to stay competitive.
People like to marvel over the fact that Mike Trout was the 25th-overall pick. But Mookie Betts was the 172nd, Shane Bieber was the 122nd, Jacob deGrom was the 272nd … we could go on and on. Any team in baseball could have had all four of those guys at the same time. Think about that for a second!
There is no limitation that counts as an excuse for not being successful. There is also no monetary or talent-acquisition advantage such as draft position that is a silver bullet for success.
So how do the Twins ensure a successful future? Same as always: Be elite in player acquisition and player development.
Hey, I said it wasn’t that easy.

When a baseball team deems itself a seller at the trade deadline, the names that most often pop up are the players who are on expiring contracts. For the Twins, those names are Nelson Cruz, Andrelton Simmons, J.A. Happ and Hansel Robles, among others. Those players will undoubtedly be in trade rumors all trade season, as they are bound for free agency at the end of the year anyways. While it makes a ton of sense to trade expiring players, the lack of team control that comes with those players suppresses the return that can be expected in those trades. Greater assets can be had when players are traded who bring with them multiple years of team control such as Minnesota Twins’ team ace, José Berríos. Berríos has this year and next of arbitration before becoming a free agent after the 2022 season.
Already there is national speculation that Berríos could be dealt, as Jon Morosi from MLB Network tweeted yesterday that he could be a name for which the Twins field offers.
Over each of the past few offseasons, the Minnesota Twins have worked with Berríos to get an extension done to keep him in Minnesota past 2022, but Berríos and his camp have turned down those team-friendly deals in favor of working Berríos toward free agency. With his free agency now just 18 months away, the odds of getting an extension done with the right hander are next to nothing. Berríos is now already making serious money in arbitration, and his free agency is so close that the Twins no longer hold any type of leverage over José. This will leave the Minnesota Twins in a situation where they will be bidding against 29 other teams for the right to sign Berríos, where realistically they will likely get outbid and lose out on their 2-time all-star.
Operating under the above assumption, that means that the Minnesota Twins have a year and a half left of Berríos’s services. The 2021 season for the Twins is already a lost cause, leaving only the 2022 season for Berríos to bring value to this club. The only reason that the Twins would hang onto Berríos at this point is if they truly believe that 2021 is an outlier and that they expect to compete for a division title and World Series in 2022. How realistic is that, though? After all, the Twins have the worst record in Major League Baseball with the 5th worst run differential. The Twins have the second worst pitching staff in the American League, and after the season the Twins will lose 3/5 of their rotation, their home run leader, their starting shortstop and their second best bullpen arm to free agency. There are reasons to think that with better luck and injury fortune things could get better, but acting as if everything will turn around in 2022 when the numbers suggest that this isn’t a good team, could be detrimental. That is what happened with the 2011 team, and it led into a 8-year rebuild featuring some of the worst Minnesota Twins teams in team history (Aaron Gleeman wrote an excellent piece about this a couple of weeks ago).
On the flipside, the Minnesota Twins could take advantage of this opportunity where they have a true asset with massive trade value that they could flip to bring back a big return, fueling the Minnesota Twins’ next run in 2023, 2024 and beyond. This 2021 season has shown that the Twins have legit young talent joining the fold in Alex Kirilloff and Trevor Larnach, with pitching prospects soon to come. Gaining more future assets to pair along with the young core the Twins have could lead into their next competitive window, not far off.
The Morosi tweet above mentions the Toronto Blue Jays, who boast a top-10 farm system in all of baseball with massive prospect names such as Nate Pearson, Austin Martin and Nate Groshans. Whether it’s the Blue Jays or another team, Berríos possesses the talent and the years of control that should bring back a top-100 prospect (and then some) in return. That return could be what gives the Twins their next ace, cleanup hitter, or gives them the trade ammunition to make a veteran deal down the line. Next deadline, Berríos could be struggling or injured, and his team control of just 3 months at that point will hugely suppress the return that he will bring should the Twins decide to play things out. The difference in trade return between now and then could set the Twins back years. Berríos’ trade value is as high as it is ever going to be until he becomes a free agent and the Twins are as low as they have been in a while, with no guarantee they will claw themselves back anytime soon.
The Time to Trade José Berríos is Now.

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