If someone else said it better...

So, I recently went to Twinsfest, where I took lots of pictures of my feet on the field turf and of Walleye with the soon-to-be-painted-over pictures of Torii Hunter on the walls, got my 1991 World Series newspaper signed by Kent Hrbek himself (who joked with Bert Blyleven while I hyperventilated), looked at models of the new stadium and celebrated Morneau's and Cuddyer's new contracts. And then I returned to Chicago and spent several weeks in denial over the loss of Santana to the Mets (don't even ask about Hunter--that's still a cruel joke as far as I'm concerned). I had been trying to figure out what to say about it, and then I saw this article in the Hardball Times, which pretty much says it all. I don't hate Santana for this; I hope he does well (though I personally wish it had been for the Brewers or some other more deserving NL team). I'm just about tired out with the bullshit that Twins fans have to put up with from ownership, and despite all my previous arguments about the small market the team is in, I can not BELIEVE that Hunter and Santana were not worth opening the purse strings for. I'm starting to really question whether this team can return to World Series caliber if the ownership is never going to see another Kirby Puckett that they will invest in.

In case anyone forgot how amazing the Brewers are...

Not that it's the only item that proves my brilliance, but even I must say my picks for the all-star game were pretty amazing. Let's look past my Holliday vision and right now focus on how third baseman Ryan Braun became the first Brewers Rookie of the Year since 1992 (Pat Listach). And for the added drama he edged out Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki in the closest finish in history.

My dear, dear Ryan Braun- for whatever reason the eyebrows are working so keep it up! For those who don't know Mr. Braun got called up in the last weeks of May and then preceded to bat .324, led NL rookies with 34 home runs and a .634 slugging percentage. He drove in 97 RBIs and also managed to steal 15 bases.

I remain anxious for the pre-season....

Why I Believe in Veronica Mars

In an odd way I find justice that the Yankees are falling apart at the seams. I too have loved things and seen them fall apart despite my well wishing. I have seen great programs (VM and the '05 White Sox) endure pain they have not deserved, and I have mourned that loss. But recently, Yank Manager and Yank A-lister have been rumored to be leaving the "heaven of all heavens" aka the Yankee uniform. Leaving at the same time and in a sort of two for one deal headed towards the same place, LA... of all the gin joints in all the world. Please keep in mind the stats of the oh so many far fleeted Yank play off attempts, the lack of trophies, dollars, and their horrible cost-effective ratio... but the celebrity stock of free time in-fielders on E TV had gone up...so it's a wash, i guess by NY standards. Although, the Yank drama wouldn't get signed by the WB and yet you can still purchase it on DVD. (No justice....)
Back to point. The Brewers and Twins are not rebuilding this off-season; they are not "looking" for new life and new motivation with millions of dollars at their whim. They are training, they are practicing and they are embracing being grounded, skilled and very talented. Right now they embrace being a part of something that works, despite the Yank attempts at dislodging that.
Best of luck to the Yanks this off season with their millions of dollars being put towards their "re-structuring" efforts, and their unpublished trade agreements. Maybe this time they can steal a Red Sox who may actually help, and if not they always have their dollars and the 90's.

Sometimes I just love the numbers.

Prince Fielder just hit homerun number 50. At his age, he is now the youngest to be hitting number 50, his pace is super natural, surpassing even mr. wonderful. Lots of more stats to supplement his greatness are readily available. Ryan Braun is at 33 homeruns, since mid-year. Nicely done sirs. Brewers are 2 games out, with more then 2 days left to play. Right now, I feel the math and the gods are in the Brewers favor. Drink up everyone, the end of the world may have to wait a season...

it's not all about midwest love, the cubs are just as evil.

I remember when the Cubs were the Central League champions and were playing for the National League title against the Marlins. It was my first year of graduate school and we had just moved to Chicago from Milwaukee a year prior, and carried with us the typical Milwaukee angst for all things Chicago. However, I found myself that post season rooting for Chicago, rooting for the Cubs. For those 2 weeks I was cheering for the Cubs, and lots of those in my same bi-partisan frame of mind were doing the same. No harm done, right?
It has been brought to my attention that my hatred for the Yankees is based on “blind Midwest love” and a blanket appreciation for Midwest values that those fans from the east coast lack. This however, is not true. I know now that the Cubs are just as evil. There is a dying breed in baseball, and the Cubs and Yankees represent the unfortunate present and future of this sport where the purchased players win over the invested ones. I blame networks such as WGN and YES for spawning easy loyalty across the states, and bringing in half hearted, convenient fan revenue. The evil is rooted in celebrating high priced players, regardless of performance or means of purchase, in convenient fans who are easily swayed with excessive coverage, hyped up media, three-month mini-series, pink sport team shirts, high priced gimmicks and overpriced seating. This I feel the Cubs and Yankees have perfected. Do you have to win something before you can be hated? Is that why so many across the nation hate the Yankees, because of their past dynasty and their high priced “supposed” dominating players? No, its not all that. Fans hate the Yankees even if they haven’t stolen their players, even if they are in different divisions and leagues. Do you have to epically not win anything with a decent sized payroll to have a huge loyal fan base, is that why everyone loves the Cubs and Red Sox? No, because the Brewers and post 2005 White Sox have equally sob ridden histories and they have nowhere near the Cubs Red Sox following. I mean, one of the biggest goals of the White Sox is to become Chicago’s team, and regardless of winning the WST or being last in their division Chicago will never celebrate them and those truly loyal are still in small numbers. Does it all come back to the money? (In the comments I have posted a break down I found of the 2007/2006 payrolls and the payroll change.) I need to research player by player, salary relevant to individual and overall performance, somewhere there must be a logical explanation to why I find myself hating that the Cubs are the division rival to the Brewers more then I would the Cardinals. But yet, I am not comforted that despite the Brewers post all-star performance they are still in their position with 30m less to work with. Like I said, teams like the Brewers and the Twins represent the old way of managing and fielding baseball teams. It was proposed in an earlier post that its up to the Twins to do what needs to be done to keep Santana, that they need to play by these new business rules to stay competitive and give over the salaries that teams like the Yankees, and Cubs have defined, regardless of loyalty and investment. They have the means to do it; the ends are justified go-ahead drink the Yankee kool-aid, all ends up all right….
But, it’s not all right, it never will be. And if you cannot see why then I must assume you follow the likes of the Yankees and you can’t see all the harm that was caused by me just sitting and watching the Cubs for those brief weeks four years ago.

Baseball is about the stories

And it's time for my epic journey to unfold for you. I'm going to start in the middle, go back to the beginning and then jump to the end, because that is what works for me.

So, this weekend Houseboy and I (yes, I'm importing nicknames from my other blog, deal yo), decided to be whimsical and pack up the Blueberry and trek out to Minnesota for the 20th Anniversary of the 1987 World Series. There was a weekend of bobble heads, homer hankies and autographs in store for us. We enjoyed pizza and beer at the Leaning Tower, 3 blocks from our first apartment, wandered downtown in the drizzle and ate an Irish Breakfast at a pub on Nicollet Mall. Sunday morning we trekked over to the Metrodome around 10:15 am and stood in line in the rain for our Twins Hall of Famer Gary Gaetti Bobble Head Doll. Doors opened at 11 am and we were easily in the first 10,000 fans, through the door by 11:07 am. Once inside, I stopped to buy a Michael Cuddyer t-shirt. This process took slightly longer than it might have needed to since I had to agonize over whether I should be allowed to buy a Torii Hunter shirt given my track record with favorite players (as I stood there in my Eddie Guardado jersey). But, even so, I was in line for my Frank Viola autograph, heart aflutter, by about 11:13 a.m. We inched and we inched and we compared Wheaties boxes and commemorative plaques and made fun of the guy with the merry-go-round horse (how did he get that thing in there anyway), and generally there was a good atmosphere of fun and memories. Around noon a guy with a shit-eating grin informed us we were "on the bubble." About 12:15 pm he said that from the family in front of us back, we were "Probably not getting in." People started dropping out of line. But we also starting moving more quickly. I was nervous, but I had hope. At 12:29, I could see the table... there were only 30 people ahead of us and maybe 20 people behind us. Sure, he couldn't get to them all in one minute, but surely they could extend the deadline just a few minutes. But no. They shut it down. Just like that, at the stroke of 12:30 p.m., no ifs, ands or buts, it was over. And here's where it gets weird. I get this chokey feeling in my throat. My eyes are burning. And all of a sudden I have to crouch down by the wall and pretend to be figuring out how to fit all my memorabilia back in my backpack so no one will see me tearing up over not getting a 6' 4" man with a mustache to scribble on a piece of cardboard for me.

So, to go back to the beginning and possibly begin to explain this phenomena. I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1979, but I only lived there for about 9 months. The first home I knew was in what was then a small town in southern Minnesota and is now a sort of far-flung suburb. In 1985 we moved to Alexandria, Virginia for my mother to go to seminary. So, I went from half-day Kindergarten and a more-or-less stay at home mom, a small safe community with occasional loose farm animals and clean air and lakes, to a full day at school where they wouldn't let me bring my doll, my mom away all day, and I wasn't allowed outside of our apartment complex. The kids said "Coke" instead of "Pop" and "Cuss" instead of "Swear." There was almost no snow in the winter and, worst of all, seminary housing didn't allow dogs, so my Inky had to go live with my grandparents. Yes, my parents were hauled in for questioning at Child Protective Services on more than one occasion. Anyway, one bright spot in this was that on the walk to school there was a crossing guard who handed out baseball cards. At the ages of 6, 7 and 8, collecting the Twins players on these cards was like a lifeline to my parents' promise that this was temporary. We WERE going home. And, in the summer of 1987, we did. We moved to a smaller town, further south, in June or July of 1987. And as if they KNEW how much I had missed it and how much they had meant to me, the Twins went ahead and won a World Series that October, my first October in my second new school in 3 years. And if you know a thing or two about that series, you know that Frank Viola was one of its superstars. He continued to play for the Twins in 1988 and then got traded mid-season in 1989 and I swear I can remember the day I saw the headline, sitting on the stoop of a business on main street as I walked by... though that might be a completely manufactured memory, the feeling is the same. It nearly broke my heart.

So, cut back to my supreme embarrassment at being a 28-year-old verging on weeping in a sports complex. I gathered myself, went and bought a lemonade and found my seat, gazing down furtively at the card I had lovingly mutilated to make it say "Twins Win! Twins Win!" by folding down the "T" and "S". I was disappointed. I was almost determined to call the weekend a failure. But then, Johann Santana took the mound. It might be surprising to hear, but this was my first time seeing Santana live outside of Spring Training. And at the first pitch I knew everything was going to be all right. Ground out. Strike out. Strike out. Strike out. Strike out. Strike Out. MICHAEL CUDDYER HITS A F-ING HOME RUN. My heart just about exploded. There I sat, with the incriminating t-shirt in my bag. My admission that I was less worried about losing him than I was about losing Hunter. But he forgave me. He even went so far as to hit a home run to prove to me that I am NOT a curse. He is a lovely, lovely man. And the rest of the game recap goes something like this: strikeoutstrikeoutstrikeoutstrikeoutstrikeoutstrikeoutstrikeoutstrikeoutstrikeoutstrikeoutstrikeoutstrikeout

That's 17 strikeouts. That's a team record. The man is a freaking miracle. We barely sat down the whole game. The feeling of the crowd was so odd... there was audible disappointment at the few ground outs. Downright uproar at Sosa's single. Someone behind me started the chant "Check his bat! Check his bat!" People forgot themselves and accidentally booed when Joe Nathan came in to close in the 9th. Then they remembered who he was and cheered psychotically. Then there was an error, and fans went tumbling down the stairs head over heels. It was pandemonium. I've never witnessed anything like it.

Moral of this entire story is, so help me Mike, if you say a WORD about Santana, his contract expectations, the likelihood of him going to the Yankees or anything like that in the next, oh, millennium, I will END you.

Postscript-- Here he is, in all his glory:

I don't think Stark's article was very interesting at all

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.