The current payroll for the 2019 Twins is
- ridiculously low. Pohlads be lining their pockets. (50%, 12 Votes)
- whatever. This whole argument is way overblown. (46%, 11 Votes)
- about where it should be. (4%, 1 Votes)
- too damn high. Players be lining their pockets. (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 24
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The Twins haven't done as much as I'd hoped, but they still may have a good season. Their prospects for this year hinge on guys like Buxton, Sano, Berrios, and Kepler taking a big step forward. That could happen, and if it does, we could have some fun watching the Twins this year. If not, well, then we'll wait for next year.
I'm gonna make one little tweak here: Berrios was worth 3.9 wins last year, and placed on several leaderboards. If Berrios maintains, he's doing just fine.
Now, if he took a big step forward, that would obviously make him one of the best few pitchers in baseball, and that'd be awesome. But given what he's done, I tend to chafe when he gets included with guys who had disappointing seasons last year.
You're right, and I didn't mean it that way. Berrios had a fine season last year. But if the Twins are going to have a good season this year (and by good I mean contending for the division), they're going to need him to become one of the best pitchers in baseball. And he might.
I will always, no matter the team, believe payroll is ridiculously low and the owners are lining their pockets. Give that money to the players, yo!
Or the fans! Reduce ticket prices!
This.
Always. The players are overpaid
I'm always on the "whatever" line. Do I want the Twins to be more competitive? Of course. Do I think the owners should be able to collude to suppress salaries? Of course not. Are (many) players "overpaid"? I don't even know what that means, because there isn't really a competitive market for talent -- we have a cartel of employers. In some sense, they are overpaid, I guess. But that's more of a "labor theory of value" perspective, and I don't really subscribe to that view. I mean, I think teachers should be more valued by society than they appear to be, but does that mean they should be paid like pro athletes?
They've got their own little pocket economy which allows both millionaires and billionaires to complain about how dreadful their lot in all of this is. It's hard to even quantify it as actual money being paid to actual people for something resembling a "job".
give the money to minor leaguers!
There we go. I’m sympathetic to the players to a point, but that sympathy dries up when I consider that MLBPA has turned its collective back on minor leaguers. I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d be sympathetic to owners.
I voted "about where it should be". Do I wish that they were out there making a bigger splash? Sure, but unless they're actually going to be in on the Machado sweepstakes (and if his price has fallen as much as has been speculated, they probably should be), what are we upgrading? The free agent pitching market doesn't have anyone I want locked up long term at this point (Kuechel strikes me as the Alex Cobb of this year).
I think the idea that the Front Office wants to see what, exactly, Buxton, Sano, Polanco, and Kepler really are has merit. I mean, as frustrating as it's been to not be attached to any big names, it would be even more frustrating to buy high, then have Buxton hit .170 and Kepler have another wheel-spinning season and have it all just add up to a 81-81 season.
Give Rocco a year with this core and see how we need to proceed from there.
Frustratingly agreed. There's no point locking in complementary players until you have a core.
Y’all have good arguments. Thanks for that!
At the very least I think they could have picked up an improvement or two in relief pitching at pretty low cost and commitment. But that doesn’t amount to the biggest of splashes, either. So shrug.
At the very least I think they could have picked up an improvement or two in relief pitching at pretty low cost and commitment.
I agree with this in theory but is there a reliever out there that fits the "pretty low cost and commitment" (either signed or unsigned) criteria?
There probably are, and I'm not so sure that they're not going to pick at least one of them up.
Maybe “low” was the wrong word. They could have spent on a pretty obvious upgrade reliever for 2 years at the going rate (which isn’t low cost), which still wouldn’t have put them close to going over last year’s payroll. Probably could have spent on 2 and had a ways to go.
And as we’ve seen if the team isn’t doing well mid-season it’s easy to get those relievers off the books.
Anyone else headed to the Winter Meltdown this weekend?
I'll be there.
Cool. I'll look for ya.
Twitchy is a Hall of Famer.
I can go along with that. I mean, I don't really have an opinion on Jerry Bell, but I'm fine with Nathan as a Twins Hall-of-Famer.
After Nathan went full time to being a reliever in San Francisco until the end of his career, his FIP is 2.76, the same as Mariano Rivera's career FIP. Rivera did it with about 370 more games finished (Rivera as the MLB record) but still very impressive.
Here's a few of the many scary things about Rivera: his FIP from Age-35 to the end of his career was 2.56 (compared to his career figure of 2.76). During that stretch, his K:BB ratio was 5.90 and his K:9 rate was 8.5, compared to career 4.10 and 8.2. His ERA+ was 229, compared to (all-time career best) 209 overall. Dude got better after he turned 35 and he was at HOF level of performance before age 35.
what's scary is all five of my younger siblings are older than him
are you saying it's probably too late for us to make it as major leaguers?
Twitchy's 7-year run from 2003 to 2009 was spectacular. And yet...it basically mirrors Rivera's age-35+ period.
Phil Mackey made an interesting point yesterday that if Nathan hadn’t got hurt in 2010, the Twins had a great shot at winning World Series. Not only do they not do the Ramos-Capps trade, the Rauch-Nathan 8 and 9th innings would have been tough. Then the Twins could’ve traded Hicks for Cliff Lee and had a nice playoff rotation . Interesting contra-universe to consider.
They still would have been down Morneau though. No one key getting hurt and trading for Lee, which seems unlikely, would have definitely helped. But, they still would have hosted the Yankees. Liriano and Pavano did well until their final inning. The Twins would have needed another relief pitcher to handle the bridge to Rauch and Nathan. It's a pity that Perkins couldn't have figured it out a year earlier. He was bad in 2010 but very good in 2011.
Part of his thinking was that with Cliff Lee and Nathan, they would’ve had a couple more wins and faced Texas in first round (like that helped TB). But yeah, a lot of ifs...
I can't wait for the day Billy Smith is inducted into the Twins Hall of Fame
Hopefully I can fly home tomorrow now.
St. Louis police officer (ON DUTY!!!) shoots another police officer in a "game" of "Russian roulette" (but aiming at each other instead of themselves).
What the actual eff? The shooter's partner says he was "uncomfortable" with the two "playing with guns" and left the room before the shooting instead of stepping in and stopping this shit??? And what kind of mental problems were at play with these two in the first place?
I have so many thoughts. But the first one is that mental health problems are disturbingly widespread and under-acknowledged and under-addressed amongst public safety officers.