Twins sign Cruz

Starting pitchers!! First, I think for us to have a chance, Gibson/Berrios/Pineda need to all be solid pitchers this year. Hopefully Berrios takes a step forward, Gibson doesn’t take too big of a step back, and Pineda comes back and is a serviceable number 3. I don’t think there is a slam dunk pitcher in this FA class, there are a bunch of ‘breakout’ players that we could take a risk on, Patrick Corbin was a beast last year. Let’s just go crazy!

Twins sign Dallas Keuchel to 4 year / $90M contract ($22.5 / year).
AND
Twins sign Patrick Corbin to 6 year / $140M contract ($23.33 / year).

We could try to leave room in the payroll to go after Sale/Bumgarner in 2020, we’ll keep that on the table. I think we also should consider adding an innings eater type guy.

Total hit to Payroll for 2019: $50.8M
Remaining Payroll: $28.7M

That doesn’t leave us a ton of room on the bullpen side, but let’s see what we can do. As of now, our rotation looks solid from top to bottom.

SP1: Patrick Corbin
SP2: Dallas Keuchel
SP3: Jose Berrios
SP4: Kyle Gibson
SP5: Michael Pineda
Spot starters/long relief: Jake Odorizzi, Fernando Romero

Go get ’em!!

RP, this gets tough with our remaining budget, maybe we should have only signed one of Keuchel/Corbin? If we could get 2-3 solid bullpen arms I think we’d be in decent shape.

Twins sign David Robertson to 2 year / $22M deal ($11M / year)
Twins sign Zach Britton to 1 year / $8.5M deal
Twins sign Cody Allen to 3 year / $30M deal ($10M / year)

Total hit to payroll for 2019: $29.5M
Remaining Payroll: -$.8M.

How’s our Bullpen look?

RP1: Cody Allen
RP2: David Roberston
RP3: Zach Britton
RP4: Addison Reed
rest of bullpen? a bunch of young team controlled guys like May, Hildenberger, etc.

How does that leave us?

Well, I think our lineup is very dangerous:

Buxton / Brantley / Cruz / Donaldson / Sano / Escobar / Schoop / Polanco / Castro

has fantastic upside and a pretty decent floor with Brantley/Cruz/Donaldson/Escobar all getting on base at a high clip with 3-4 guy that have 30HR potential.

Our starting rotation might still lack an absolute ace a la Chris Sale, although Corbin was one last year. But day in and day out,

Corbin / Keuchel / Berrios / Gibson / Pineda

Should keep you in most games.

The bullpen would rely on some guys bouncing back a bit(Britton /Allen), but the combination of Allen / Roberston / Britton could be very good, and would take a lot of pressure off of the Addison Reed’s of the world.

Now it’s unlikely we’d be able to get all those guys, and those salary numbers might be up to $10-$15M low overall. But I think even if we only signed one of those two SPs we’d compete for the division and absolutely could be dangerous in a short series.

Now, some of these 1 year deals I put could be lengthened to 2-3 if possible, but the way this is setup we’d basically have a 1-2 year window and would need to constantly re-tool in the offseason as guys are rolling through their 1 and 2 year deals. Of course, we’d only be on the hook long term for that $50M for Corbin/Keuchel, everyone else would be off the books after a few years. This also could mean a total re-build if things don’t go our way. Cruz/Donaldson/Allen/Robertson/Britton could all be offloaded at the deadline if need be.

There you go, what do I win besides an laugh of sheer disbelief that the Twins would ever sign that many FAs?

Nice job.

Corbin,Donaldson, Escobar, Brantley have all signed. But the premise was likely based on the start of the off season and not right this minute.

Sano can’t play first or third when fat. That said there was a photo of him standing next to Baldelli and he has thinned down. However still plenty of time for him to stuff some cheeseburgers. Castro is a waste of money so you can trade him.

We will never know what that line up would do but it was fun looking at it.
Thanks for doing it.

It still all boils down to if Sano isn’t fat and if Buxton learns to hit.

So today in the infield we have

Cron 1b
Schoop 2b
Polonco ss
sano 3b

outfield is

Rosarrio lf
Buxton cf
Kepler rf

Castro c
Cruz dh

Can you live with that everyday line-up?

Dan wrote:

Phil, if you would, please include in your plan to make the switch back from Schwiegert hot dogs to the old Hormel dome dogs. I think that needs to be in the future plans.

Best post on the thread. I like the Cruz signing but I hate the hot dogs.

Give me Dome Dogs or give me death!

I forgot to include the all you can eat seats in my plan!

Dan wrote:

Phil, if you would, please include in your plan to make the switch back from Schwiegert hot dogs to the old Hormel dome dogs. I think that needs to be in the future plans.

Dutchboy wrote:

So today in the infield we have

Cron 1b
Schoop 2b
Polonco ss
sano 3b

outfield is

Rosarrio lf
Buxton cf
Kepler rf

Castro c
Cruz dh

Can you live with that everyday line-up?

I really wish we could get rid of Castro. He calls a better game than Mauer did but the guy can’t hit and the whole “pitch framed” stat is a complete joke. Also, I think Buxton will have a good year because he’s pissed at the front office and has a chip on his shoulder. Sano, I just have no faith in anymore. The bullpen is still a disaster with Trevor May being about the only bright spot.

lets not forget, with mauer done, that opens up 25.2 million a year. we can still sign some good to great players available. I just hope they don’t do what they always do, wait till all the good players are gone, and pick up the scraps. with the mauer deal over, I don’t think they will do that, and cruz signing was the first step.

knoppers wrote:

lets not forget, with mauer done, that opens up 25.2 million a year. we can still sign some good to great players available. I just hope they don’t do what they always do, wait till all the good players are gone, and pick up the scraps. with the mauer deal over, I don’t think they will do that, and cruz signing was the first step.

They’ve basically already done that with pitching. I’m not saying there’s nothing out there but they’ve let a lot of pieces that could’ve fit well go along and get scooped up by other teams.

Dutchboy wrote:

So today in the infield we have
Cron 1b
Schoop 2b
Polonco ss
sano 3b

outfield is

Rosarrio lf
Buxton cf
Kepler rf

Castro c
Cruz dh
Can you live with that everyday line-up?

I can live with that lineup, but I think there is still work that needs to be done. That’s an extremely light hitting outfield, but the infield at least has a decent ceiling(albeit a low floor too).

For a lazy analysis.

1B – Cron is a career .772 OPS hitter, with a career high last year of .816. That puts him probably in the top 15 for 1Bs in the majors, so…top half. Solid floor as he’s been really consistent his entire career, but a ceiling of probably a top 10 1B. That sounds weird to say, but there hasn’t been a lot of young stud 1B come up to the majors in the last couple years. I guess my main concern with Cron is that he doesn’t walk…like at all.

2B – Schoop. High ceiling here, but a big ?. In 2017 he was a top 6 2B, last year, he was a bottom 6 2B. A lot of potential, but could get ugly as well.

SS – Polanco, actually a pretty solid SS as I’m looking closer at his numbers. Still young, realistically in the top half of SS from an offensive perspective, lacks the HR numbers, but lots of doubles.

3B – Sano. Don’t need to say anything here, high ceiling and low floor.

C – Castro, sucks at the plate, like one of the worst.

Overall, I’d say there is enough potential in the infield should the stars align, but man it could get ugly fast with Castro/Sano/Cron/Schoop all capable of 150+ strikeouts.

The outfield is pretty weak unfortunately, Kepler/Buxton need to really step it up offensively for our OF to not be an offensive weakness on this team.

A lot of ‘if such and such happens’ for this team right now, but better than just knowing you don’t really have a competitive ceiling? That’s given we still make a fair amount of moves the rest of this offseason.

Dang, Phillies just signed David Robertson for 2 years / $21M. I was $1M over in my projection!!

I wish we would have got this guy

Yeah it would’ve been nice. I was doing a little reading on MLB.com this week and there are still some intriguing starting and relieving options out there.