jmlease1

I would go the 7/$150M if that's what it took to get it done. I think Swanson can be a good defender at SS well into his 30s and still hit enough to be value added and get to around that average of 3 bWAR, and that's worth the money. league average hitter at SS is better than people realize. If Lewis & Lee play well enough to force their way on the roster, there are all kinds of ways to find room, as you've noted. It doesn't ruin the payroll, either at that AAV. If Atlanta is trying to hold the line at $18M per year, and only 5 years...offer 6 at $125M and make him say no.

LA is trying to get under the luxury tax, though. Atlanta sounds like they have limits on their payroll lower than we might expect (remember, they let Donaldson go when he wanted to stay too, and it seemed $$ related). Atlanta may be regretting the $9M they owe Eddie Rosario right now... I think Lee is going to be a stud too, but he's barely played above A-ball. Royce is coming off a huge injury. Look, if we actually sign rodon...great. Patch it together at SS and hope the lineup stays healthy. but I wouldn't be ashamed at all at landing Swanson and figuring out where to play lee & lewis later.

sure, why not have 5 SS? New baseball strategy: stockpile all the best SS so that no other team has anyone good playing there. Lose to the Dodgers. Who is actually going to play SS for them out of Kim, Bogaerts, Tatis, and Machado anyways?

If the MLBTR analysis is right, I hope the twins are pushing hard, especially if Atlanta is only sitting around 6/$100M. They have plenty of space to drop 6/$120 with room to go up if Atlanta goes higher, and the deal should still be a good one towards the end. Swanson is a clear step below Correa & Turner (and Bogaerts). he's unlikely to consistently put up the kind of year he just had. But he is likely to be a 3+ bWAR player on average. I'd be quite happy to bring him in and not worry about SS for years.

Better bats than farmer on the twins roster right now: Buxton, Polanco, Arraez, Miranda, Larnach, Gordon, and Wallner. That's 7 even without considering Kepler (who even in a relatively poor year out-hit Farmer), Kirilloff (who is healthy, and it's fair to be skeptical, is a significantly better hitter), and Garlick (who should only have a part-time role). Let's not be hysterical here. I'm sure Gray & Maeda are drawing interest; I expect Mahle is as well. I wouldn't expect the twins to move any of them. But I would listen to offers, especially if the team is looking at the trade market for pitching because they might be able to get some of the prospect capital they need by moving Maeda, for example, to get someone better. Gray is not going anywhere unless the team stinks out the gate and is out of it by midseason, same with Mahle. but of course teams are asking. I'm also fairly certainly we're getting low-ball offers, especially from big market teams who think we should be grateful to send players to them for a used ball rack and the changes in their couch cushions.

yeah, we ain't getting both. odds aren't great on landing one of them. We're probably talking at least 6/$180M to get Rodon? (Yankess reportedly refused to do 7/$210M and "weren't close") I honestly have no idea what the deal looks like for Swanson any longer. I'd believe anything from 8/$180M to 10/$270M at this point. Would people be happy if we landed one of them at the top end of the salary range? They're both impact players. Or would the same people who are absolutely crushing the Twins front office right now for failing in the Correa hunt immediately turn and scream at them for throwing money away on overrated players and dooming the franchise? Personally, I would go 6/$180M on Rodon and roll the dice. But even that might not be enough.

A non-starter. He's not going anywhere; I'm 100% certain he would veto any trade, even if the Giants approached him with one. I can't see why the Twins would really want him; he's likely to be worse than Farmer and for a lot more money. You'd basically be acquiring a guy for leadership and hoping that his bat isn't trash. The Twins need offense more than anything else right now, and betting on Crawford is a terrible bet, even if you could somehow pry him out of SF, which again sounds nigh-impossible.

There seems to be this strange idea that the twins are this very dogmatic team that insists that every player do things only one way, and there's very little evidence that this front office and on-field staff operate that way. They'll ask player to make significant changes when a player is doing poorly at something, and tinker with their approaches to try and generate improvement...but where exactly is it that they've changed a player's approach that's been very successful? Who exactly have they ruined by having someone try something new or different?

i suspect Ted wrote the piece before the Vazquez signing was announced and an edit was missed after it had been queued up for publication. Happens.

I see 2 markets, then. One for teams in big markets with the ability to spend $200-250M+ annually while still being profitable, and one for everyone else. That's also real.

last year they signed an elite SS. it's a little unfair to say they "passed" on the SS; it's not like they weren't in the game? Part of the problem for the Twins is that the market re-set this off-season...possibly. Deals like Correa, Judge, Turner, Bogaerts used to be maybe 2 guys in an off-season, and 10+ years was even more rare. there's only been 22 contracts over 10 years in MLB history, and we just had 4 of them signed to kick in next year. There's only been 8 contracts in MLB history longer than 10 years...and half of them have just happened. That says to me that some teams are changing the market, but it's unclear whether this changes it for the whole league. If the new "market rate" is 12-14 year contracts at top of the scale AAV...then yeah, Twins probably won't be paying market rates for great players. But I suspect only about 8 teams in baseball will. So what's the real market?

I really really wanted Correa back. I think he'll likely age better than most at SS. But the SFG is one of those mega-deals that's got a lot of risk and is very hard on teams that don't have the resources to just buy themselves out of a bad contract. Will this one be a bad deal? Maybe. As noted on The Athletic (with a hat-tip to FanGraphs), only 3 players in the past 5 years have been value-added with the bat at age 37 or older and 350+ plate appearances...and 2 of them were Nelson Cruz while with the Twins. (Weirdly the 3rd was Pujols in his return to St. Louis and somehow after 5 consecutive bad years suddenly got all his old power back.) It doesn't bode well for the end of the Bogaerts/Turner/Correa contracts, but you never know. One of them could close their career like Cal Ripken Jr. All you have to be is an inner-ring Hall of Famer, a top 5 all-time SS. Maybe we can all comfort ourselves by looking at the many worst-case scenarios for these deals, with Correa in particular. I don't wish ill on the man, but maybe his back flares up and he becomes a statue in the field and at the plate (when he actually plays). but really, the comfort will come if the twins are able to find a good use for the payroll space they currently have, and add some other talent, even if it's not Correa. Rodon + Wil Myers? Swanson + Wil Myers? (I like Myers, sue me)

1) how? because Correa & Boras took the offer that had the most money and most years? How is getting outbid getting played? As soon as Turner signed for 11 years and $300M and Bogaerts signed for 11 years and $280M, we knew the numbers were getting very very big and might very well be beyond the Twins means. Twins made a big offer, SF made a bigger one. If any of these big market teams wanted to go in on Correa, the numbers were going up. 2) I guess this depends on how you view ownership in MLB. If you think the fans get to dictate how much the payroll is, and that the ownership should be required to take annual losses to "compete"...then I guess you got played. I don't care about saving the Pohlads any money; they've got plenty of it and they will be fine. Billionaires are always fine. But I don't expect that owners are going to lose money on their businesses just because fans want them to. Could they spend more? Sure. And because of the offer they made, we have a better idea of just how much. But because of baseball's skewed economics (which, BTW, the star players and their agents LOVE) it's always going to be hard to match it if a big market club with way more resources wants to bigfoot the deal. the idea that we could have forced a deal with Swanson is pretty ludicrous, unless we wanted to give him the same kind of deal we offered Correa (i.e., massively overpaid for him). His play once Bogaerts and Turner came off the market has always been to wait to be the last guy standing and see how big he could go with those left at the altar. Do you want Swanson for $250M over 11? I get it: it sucks to be left out when we've been told we had a shot. It sucks to always get out-bid by bigger markets. Welcome to baseball?

Yes, but Myers isn't helpless against righties and can play in a broader context. He's a more reliable option.

well, it's disappointing but not all that surprising. SF clearly had the money after the bids they made on Judge and once they decided they wanted Correa it was going to be nigh-impossible to keep them from getting him. They simply have the ability to tack on $50M more without blinking in a way that's much more difficult for the Twins to do. The Giants can have a payroll over $200M annually and still be profitable, right now. The Twins can't. The Giants can pay in to the luxury tax and still net out ok...the Twins can't. Baseball economics are not great for anyone outside the biggest markets and the revenue sharing that makes the NFL work so well is basically still a joke in MLB. 13 years. Whoof. Correa might be one of the few players that can make that work, but the odds are against him. I do think he'll age fairly well as a player; his skills at SS (great positioning, strong arm, etc) age better than a speed-based player, and with that arm he can slide over to 3B just fine if the range drops too far. But they're making a bet that Correa's career will age like Cal Ripken Jr's: all-star until you hit 35, solid regular for another 3-4 years, and maybe 1-2 bad years at the very end, with good health throughout. That's a big ask, to match an inner-circle HoFer, a top 5 SS of all-time. There's huge risk here. I still wanted Correa. would have definitely done the 10 years and clearly the Twins were there on the AAV. But the Turner & Bogaerts contracts showed that some teams were looking to stretch contracts to manage their luxury tax payments and keep AAVs down and were willing to underwrite some huge risk. I think Correa wanted the 13 years, I think Boras wanted the $350M number, and I think that's probably more risk than the Twins could swallow.

Did you actually read the article? Nimmo is older, had only 2 healthy season in the last 6, is less talented/productive, and just got waaaaaay more money on a longer deal. On the open market, Buxton would have gone even higher.

The money is a little higher than I expected, but Vazquez is a really nice player and getting another legit MLB catcher on the roster was absolutely a huge need, so I'm pretty happy with this move. I haven't given up on Jeffers (unlikely many on this board who seem to prefer Sandy Leon and wanted Jeffers tied to a raft and set adrift at sea) but this is a bit of a signal of a loss in confidence in him/message that he has to step up his game. Maybe it's related to his poor results against righties, maybe it's a lack of faith in his health, but there's no question this is going to result in a demotion for him to the #2 guy, even if he'll still likely get 60-70 starts. We'll see how he responds. I'm not surprised at this move: if this front office has any pattern it's that they work hard to set a floor for the team that they think will make them competitive, that they look to lift the bottom parts of the roster every year (whether you agree with how they do it is another story) and this definitely raises that level. Assuming reasonable health, we should be able to send out a starting caliber catcher every game. I like that.

I have no idea if Swanson is the right fit or what kind of contract it would take to get him here, but the fact that he just married Mallory Pugh elevates him substantially in my eyes. :D

"FrRnd" = First Round minors is in parens because the link just takes you to their minor-league stats when you do a search like this in Baseball Reference

With a 7 year deal on Rodon a big market team is almost certainly assuming that they'll miss one of those seasons completely and call it the cost of doing business (and hope maybe they can insure him?). Any pitcher for 7 years is a big risk. A history like Rodon's and it's a massive risk. but this is the advantage of being able to have a $250M payroll: you can buy yourself out of trouble. The Bogaerts deal stunned me too: 11 years is pretty nuts for a guy who has already turned 30 and where PED testing is actually a thing. This isn't Bryce Harper, where the last year of his deal is his age-38 season, Bogaerts is going until he's 41. He's going to have to really be worth it in those first 5 years, because the last 3-4 could be very ugly.

I'm in on Wil Myers, but I don't think it's going to take $12M to get him. He's a quality RH bat who can still play a corner OF spot, but he's getting older, had a rough year, and substantially underperformed his contract the last few years. No one is offering him a 3 year deal, either. Even with money going up, I think he can be had for $8-9M, likely on a 1-2 year deal.

It's a mistake to track back too far to try and establish a pattern in drafting; with a new regime comes a different philosophy and it makes little sense to hold Falvey & Levine responsible for drafting Kohl Stewart or Tyler Jay. They're responsible for trying to develop the draft picks they inherited, but they didn't draft them. What should we presume with this front office when selecting at the top of the draft? Hard to know, i think. They've had 2 top 10 picks in their regime: a HS SS and a college SS. Most of their first round picks have been in the lower parts of the first round, and while that's been mostly college hitters, both of their picks in 2021 were HS players, one a pitcher. I think this front office looks for as much value as they think they can get in a draft more than anything else. They might prefer college players due to risk, but I don't think they're afraid to draft HS kids either. I don't think they'll be afraid to draft a pitcher at #5 if they think it's the best value prospect available.

So hard to know who the right guy is going to be, but there's no question the Twins will have some good options at #5. That high up in the draft, I'd prefer to avoid drafting a HS pitcher unless there's just so much more talent there than any other available option. So many things can go wrong there and I'd rather dodge a little risk with such a high pick when other options are likely to be on the table. But generally, I think with a top 5 pick you take the best player available and figure it out later. I don't know who that's going to be, but I'm excited that the Twins get to find out!

eh. he basically hasn't pitched since 2019 and he's about to turn 39. A minor-league deal isn't really going to hurt the club, so long as there aren't any guarantees of an MLB slot at any point, but this is a lottery ticket move. I think the Twins need to be making moves with better odds.

exciting and excellent news. MN fans are not conditioned to moving up in a lottery, only sliding the other way. Should be a couple of good options at #5 and you never know who might slide. It's an opportunity to add more high-end talent to the system and that's always a good thing. I doubt anyone would complain about getting another player like Brooks Lee!