After hearing Rick Sutcliffe pronounce Justin Morneau's name as Morn-yo well into the 2007 season, I'm permanently resolved not to care what ESPN has to say about the Twins. A half-decade of ignoring good teams and great young players has earned them the gas face when they finally decide Minnesota is a worthy topic of conversation. But since
Stark's bizarre survey of GMs has appeared I've now had several people try to hip me to it and I figure it's worth addressing specifically.
So we posed that question to GMs or high-ranking officials of five different teams: What would you do if you were running the Twins? Trade this man? Sign him? Keep him and trade him later? Keep him and sign him later?
I realize that Stark probably owes a great deal to his sources and needs to keep them anonymous, plus a GM publicly commenting on another team's player would be tampering. But can't we get a little bit more context than "GMs or high-ranking officials of five different teams"? Because I'd be much more interested in hearing the opinions of GMs from good teams that regularly deal with decisions like Minnesota's upcoming ones. We could have immediately disregarded the batch as Littlefield-infected if one of our "anonymous" sources had said, "They never should have let Santana reach his arbitration years without dealing him to the Cubs for Jose Hernandez, Matt Bruback, and Bobby Hill" but sadly there isn't any easy giveaway that Stark's sources are deficient and we're forced to look further.
"Sign him. Sign him. Sign him. Sign him," said one middle-market GM. "The longer they wait, the more the price tag just goes up. They really should have done this a year earlier. Then other things don't come into play. The [Barry] Zito contract. The [Mark] Buehrle contract. If you let it keep going, the market keeps changing."
I'm not an economist, but if there's some market changing going on between Zito and Buehrle, isn't it so far a good thing for the Twins? Buehrle's been better than Zito since the latter won his Cy Young in 2002, and I'm fairly confident the Twins would jump at the opportunity if Peter Greenberg called them and said his client wanted a deal just like Mark Buehrle's. The one thing I do know about economics is that something is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it, which means it only takes one stupid team to set the market, as was the case with the Zito.
Buehrle was still controlled by Chicago when he extended with them, so there was only one team that could properly express what they were willing to pay for him, but using him as evidence for the Twins' neglect in not extended Santana already kind of fails. Buehrle only had three months until the end of his final contracted season and four months until the offers could pour in from other teams and his deal doesn't resemble Zito's that closely. Four years for a pitcher isn't exactly low budget-style prudence, but it's an entire universe away from Zito's risky seven year deal, and for less money annually. Santana has a year more than Buehrle did from getting desperate offers from teams willing to pay anything for relevance. Curiously, I think the GM cited here is right that Minnesota should have acted earlier, but I don't see how the Buehrle contract could do anything but encourage Minnesota if they want Santana back.
"You have to sign him as early as you can, because you'll get a better deal sooner, rather than later," said an official of one large-market team. "You don't want to wait too long and cause a [Carlos] Zambrano situation. The closer a guy gets to free agency, the more he thinks, 'Why should I sign now?' He could change agents. Anything can happen."
Remind me again what the Carlos Zambrano situation was. Because I was under the impression that the Cubs and Zambrano were
nearly done on a 5y/80mm deal until the team went up for sale and talks on a contract that large needed to be tabled. That's another deal that would be a very team-friendly analogue for any Twins/Santana talks, except that the particulars of the Zambrano "situation" appear so bizarre that mimicking them seem somewhat impossible unless the Twins go up for sale in the next 15 months. And I think we can confidently rule that out as long as they're still playing in the Metrodome.
"As I look at their club," said the same executive, "their entire strength is pitching. They have some very good offensive players, but they don't have a good offensive club. So preserving the strength of their pitching has to be their first priority."
I'm comfortable admitting that I think this is completely backwards. The Twins' offense, which is most charitably termed "inconsistent" (They scored 19 runs in their three game series with the Mariners this weekend and I still came away wholly unimpressed with the lineup. That's not easy.) appears to need the sort of help that only suitcases full of unmarked bills to players like Bobby Abreu and Pat Burrell can buy. The current strength of the team's pitching seems like an argument for letting Santana walk and applying his cash to somebody actually capable of hitting a ball over an outfielder's heads. Somebody who isn't Jason Tyner. Somebody who could eat Jason Tyner.
I don't think that's what they should do, though. I'm just saying.
"He's the face of that franchise," said a large-market official. "He's their stability. They're going into a new stadium. They've got to sell tickets around something, and to me, it's got to be him. ... If they can't sign him, I think they'll have a real credibility hit. If they don't sign Santana, they could have a hard time selling season tickets in the new park."
Without making a judgment as to who
should be the "face of the franchise", the correct answer is Joe Mauer. He's boring in all the ways people love in Minnesota. Plus, he's really, really good. I'd also dispute the idea that a single player can impact longterm season-ticket sales, unless his argument is that the team can't possibly win without Santana. That would make a lot more sense, and if he meant that he should have said it. I'd disagree with that too, though. The team went to the playoffs in 2002 and 2003 despite bizarrely limited use of Santana. The Twins will survive.
OK, let's count up all the $20-million-a-year players in Twins history. There would be ... well, um, eh ... nobody. Obviously. Because they're the Twins.
When we're done counting the $20 million players in Twins' history, can we count the $20 million players in MLB history? Because I only see five of them. Somebody can correct me on that point if I'm missing the other two dozen or so around the league. And three of those players are on the same team (though Rodriguez' contract was obviously signed with Texas). Are the Mets and Cubs cheap and destined to let their best players walk because they've never signed any twenty million dollar checks? Clearly, the Twins are thrifty. But this was a stupid, poorly-researched point. Sometimes I think I'm too hard on journalism when I call it the lowest form of writing. But I'm not.
Stark goes on to mention Radke, Hrbek and Puckett as possible counterpoints, then dismissing them as n"different players" than Santana. The revelation that Brad Radke is an entirely different person than Johan Santana is likely little surprise to his wife, and it's of equally little use to us if we're seriously trying to understand what the Twins might do with Santana. Besides, it still seems likely that Stark is over-particularizing the matter. The Twins paid Frank Viola the biggest contract in the league in 1989. The ended up trading him that very season, but there was a time when they said to Frank Viola "Yes, we'll pay you more than any other AL player". Kirby Puckett spent most of his career in the 90's as one of the top-10 salaries in baseball, and his 1992 contract with the Twins was a huge deal money-wise. They've spent big dollars before. We don't have any idea what sort of predictive value that has, but it's a lot more solid than "Because they're the Twins".
It's true they have a new ballpark coming in 2010. But how much money can one new park manufacture? However much it is, the Twins would need just about every one of those new-park dollars to keep all their stars working in the 612 area code.
This one doesn't pass the smell test. Can anybody get a handle on how much additional revenue a new stadium might generate over the Metrodome? Because just enough money to break even keeping these players seems on the low side. Even if they decided to let Santana and Hunter and Nathan walk and just pocketed it, that still seems like not enough to justify paying all of the lawyers and lobbyists and the construction/infrastructure costs the team agreed to pitch in on. I realize TV deals like YES are where the real money is, but with increased ticket and concession prices, the money from the naming rights, and those juicy, juicy luxury suites? I've got to think that's worth a lot more than Hunter/Santana/Nathan/Mauer/Morneau in 2010. And Mauer and Morneau are both under team control in 2010 anyhow. We already know Mauer's cost for that year. It's 12.5 million.
"They shouldn't trade him [this winter] because he's too good," the GM said. "The goal is to win, so they should go for it. If it doesn't work and they decide to trade him next year at the [trading] deadline, the return won't be much less next July than it would be this winter."
This is the most interesting thing anybody said in this article. I don't have any idea if it's true, but it is worth thinking about. Dave Cameron had a cool article for
USS Mariner about deadline trades for upcoming type-A free agents and how often they're worth more than the compensation draft picks. I recommend it highly. He listed and analyzed most of the recent ones and the cream of the crop is Brandon Philips, Grady Sizemore, and Cliff Lee for Bartolo Colon. That would be a pretty good return, but there are a few curiosities that make that trade hard to use as an analogy for anything. The uncertain future of the Expos left Minaya in more of a "win now" mode than perhaps any GM has ever been, since "the future" everybody keeps planning for wasn't very likely. Plus, Sizemore ended up being the real reason people see that trade and whistle in admiration and he hadn't played above high-A ball when the move was made. Whatever Cleveland's intentions were, he seems a lot like "the other guy" when that trade was made.
If that's the high-end of possible returns if the Twins try to give themselves through next July to extend Santana, it's not a bad consolation prize. If the circumstances of that trade are too unique for it to have any comparative value, then the runner-up is probably John Buck, Mark Teahen, and Mike Wood for Carlos Beltran. And that's a long, long fall. It's worth thinking about, in any event.
"So I don't envy Terry Ryan at all. He knows what he's got. What I don't know is what he's going to do."
What a delightfully useful conversation ender. I appreciate at least one person who either doesn't possess foreknowledge of the Twins' moves. Or maybe he just has the good manners not to give away the ending. If we're guessing, I think one of Santana or Hunter will be on the roster when the new park opens. Not zero and not two. My present guess is Santana, but if Hunter re-signs this off-season then I'm not going to change my guess. And I don't think Santana will pull 20 million dollars annually even if he does go to free agency. Zito is scheduled to make that much in 2013, and I'm guessing he'll be the first pitcher to do it when that happens.
I think the depth of cheap pitching talent at or above AAA for the Twins is enough to survive without Santana, assuming the money is spent elsewhere (I'd like to repeat my plea for somebody who can hit the ball over an outfielder's head) and payroll isn't cut. That sounds like a big assumption, but the only payroll cut I know of is about 2mm from 2003 to 2004, when they actually got better. They raised it 15 million between 2002 and 2003. It was nearly a 40% increase. The team isn't afraid of spending money. They're just afraid of spending it badly.
Pohlad can afford it, but if he's concerned about Santana tanking or getting injured and then paying him to sit on the DL then why should he? I'm losing interest in "the credibility of the franchise" being preserved, particularly when it's coming from Stark or ESPN. The Twins never had credibility to those people, and they've managed to inconvenience them by winning pretty frequently anyhow. And I similarly reject the need to preserve credibility for the casual Twins fan. These are the same talkradio-listening chuckleheads who thought trading Castillo was a huge disaster and that Joe Mauer's
.305/.396/.435 line from the catcher position has been a real problem for the team. They should take whatever team Terry Ryan gives them and be happy it didn't come with a kick in the teeth. Or call in to Chad Hartman and whine about Mauer's RBI totals. Whichever, as long as they don't expect anybody to listen or care what they think.
Basically, I don't think credibility and winning are linked in any meaningful way when it comes to the Twins. The Twins will be met with the same shrug of indifference if they win or lose, which is unpleasant on certain occasions but is delightfully punk rock at most times. Stark and his semi-literate ilk can pretend to care about the Twins, but what they really care about is Santana because he's a story our corporate masters have approved for consumption. He's too good to ignore, but too geographically inconvenient for a simple baseball story. So we get this predictably self-interested piece from the East Coast guardians of baseball culture: Santana is leaving because the Twins wont pay him.
