The Twins spent about $101MM on payroll in their first season at Target Field. Now that Joe Mauer's $184MM extension is about to kick in, the team will likely be even more expensive in 2011. Here are the details on Minnesota's offseason plans:
- Team president David St. Peter says "the payroll is going to go up," according to Joe Christensen of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
- Christensen reported earlier in the week that the Twins made a bid on Hisashi Iwakuma, who ultimately went to the A's.
- The bid shows that the Twins have interest in adding a starter to a group of rotation candidates that includes Scott Baker, Francisco Liriano, Brian Duensing, Nick Blackburn and Kevin Slowey. It also suggests the team is preparing for the possibility that Carl Pavano will sign elsewhere.
I would have loved to see Iwakuma go to the Twins. Hopefully they can resign Pavano though. He was a rock in that Minnesota rotation along with Liriano. I’m hoping that Slowey can have a real breakout year next year. I’ve been waiting for a while, but if he does then their rotation will be great.
I was relieved that the Twins didn’t get Iwakuma. After seeing what Dice K did to the Red Sox….
Pay to talk to a guy to pay the guy and then the guy sucks. I know not every player will end up like that, but it’s still freaking scary.
They definitely need some starting rotation help. They have a #1, a #3, and a bunch of #5 starters.
Resigning Pavano would help, but I would try and get a solid #2 starter first. Pavano, to me, is a #3 starter.
Everyone wants a #2 starter but where do you find one? Besides Pavano and Ted Lilly the only real options are guys coming off sub-par years (Vazquez, Harden) or were hurt (too many to list) in the free agent market. The asking price in a trade for a guy like that is going to be astronomical and Ramos alone would not come close to getting it done.
Ted Lilly is not an option. He resigned with the Dodgers for 3/33 about a month ago.
The payroll pretty much as to go up, it’s going to start at 100-105 this year. I’m just wondering by how much, it’s going to be hard enough to keep the 2010 team together. Who knows if they’ll be able to add anything useful, I doubt it…hopefully I’m wrong.
Will they offer arbitration to Pavano? I think he’d decline and try to get a multi year deal after having a pretty good season last year. After Lee, and maybe Kuroda, there aren’t any better free agent starting pitchers on the market this winter than Pavano.
The best scenario for the Twins is that the Tigers sign Pavano, giving them the maximum compensation with the 19th overall pick. Unless, of course, the Tigers sign Crawford, Dunn, V Mart, or Werth, in which case they only get a second rounder instead.
I would think that they’d offer arbitration to Pavano and Guerrier, but not Fuentes. He’ll be looking for a multi year deal and might decline, but he would get a nice pay check in arbitration as well based on his pay history and recent work as a closer.
$ 78 million committed, with half a dozen free agents leaving and ten arbitration cases pending leaves them with some serious work to do, just to maintain. I can’t see a lot being invested in free agents.
Agree: Pavano and Guerrier get offers because the team would be happy to take either back on a one year deal, and draft picks are nice if things don’t work out. To me Crain is the one where it’s hard to predict what Smith will do. They like him, and he’s going to get some offers so offering arb makes sense. But he wants to close and there are more of those guys than jobs this winter so he could be disappointed in his offers and take what might be a high arb point from MN, so it’s sort of risky. I could see the team going either way.
Perhaps the Hardy delay is just them seeing what kind of multi-year deals they can sketch out with Crain and Hardy which would firm up the biggest parts of the remaining payroll questions. Remember that they’re also kicking around the idea of a Liriano multi-year this winter, so as busy as things look it could be even busier behind the scenes.
Crain could very well get his wish and have a chance to close in MN, assuming Nathan isn’t sharp off injury and Capps shows his true mediocrity…
Chris- their big payroll piece is the starting pitcher, either Pavano or his replacement. If he accepts arby, he should be in for a substantial raise, and if he repeats his 2010 numbers, he’d be worth it. If nothing else, offering arby would deter several of the big money clubs. But if he declines or they don’t offer, the rotation is likely to take a hit. It’s not a banner year for starting pitchers on the market.
Minnesota is the only place where I could see Crain closing, if the dominoes fall just right for them. Nathan is questionable, Fuentes will get more than he’s worth because of his closing history, Guerrier is a Type A and could go either way, Rauch probably finds a better deal. Lots of talented arms, but what’s left after it all shakes out and how much they have to pay the guys that stay is a big question. If they have to add a SS and a 2B on top of all that, they’ve got their work cut out for them. The Tigers had similar issues, but decided to stand pat in the infield and now they have holes in the 2, 3, and 5 slots with not much (okay- nothing) on the roster to fill the gaps. I guess the difference is that Detroit has a bundle of money coming off the books and the Twins have to juggle the payroll to get a full roster on board. Pavano would be a big loss, IMO.
Chris- their big payroll piece is the starting pitcher, either Pavano or his replacement. If he accepts arby, he should be in for a substantial raise, and if he repeats his 2010 numbers, he’d be worth it. If nothing else, offering arby would deter several of the big money clubs. But if he declines or they don’t offer, the rotation is likely to take a hit. It’s not a banner year for starting pitchers on the market.
Minnesota is the only place where I could see Crain closing, if the dominoes fall just right for them. Nathan is questionable, Fuentes will get more than he’s worth because of his closing history, Guerrier is a Type A and could go either way, Rauch probably finds a better deal. Lots of talented arms, but what’s left after it all shakes out and how much they have to pay the guys that stay is a big question. If they have to add a SS and a 2B on top of all that, they’ve got their work cut out for them. The Tigers had similar issues, but decided to stand pat in the infield and now they have holes in the 2, 3, and 5 slots with not much (okay- nothing) on the roster to fill the gaps. I guess the difference is that Detroit has a bundle of money coming off the books and the Twins have to juggle the payroll to get a full roster on board. Pavano would be a big loss, IMO.
Don’t forget that the Twins claim that Eric Hacker will have a chance to join the rotation in 2011.
hopefully the Hacker signing was the Twins way of gearing up for a package deal for Greinke
if the royals wanted hackner, they probably would’ve signed him themselves. hackner is not going to be trade bait, the royals won’t want him.
More likely is that Hacker is going to Rochester to provide some stability while the Twins run just about everyone else on that staff through the #5 spot and the back of the bullpen in MN. I bet they let most of the expensive guys (Rausch, Fuentes, Flores, Guerrier, Crain) walk and go to Florida with Nathan, Capps, and Mijares set, then mix and match kids with whichever free agents return.
Flores wasn’t expensive, but he shouldn’t even be pitching in the Majors. He might be one of the least-useful players in baseball. Awful, awful, awful.
I could see Crain coming back, and I’d prefer they non-tender Capps for salary reasons, but that won’t happen because of what we gave up to get him. Maybe we can trade him to some team for 50 cents on the dollar…
Nathan, Crain, Mijares, Slama, Waldrop, a free agent lefty, and Manship? That’s a pretty inexperienced bullpen though… doubtful the Twins go with it. They’ll bring in some bargain bin reliever like Bob Howry or Jamey Wright and release him in May.
Even a Twinsish lowball posting offer for Iwakuma would have to be in the $12-15M range, wouldn’t it? And then paying the guy. I think just that one bit of news explodes all the payroll estimates people have been making. This could be a more interesting offseason than expected.
Say what you want about Carl Pavano and his potential suitors and potential dollar amounts, but I still think his mustache is going to sign for a contract very similar to Cliff Lee’s. I mean, let’s face it, it’s worth that much.
As a Twins fan I’m glad to say that we didn’t get Iwakuma. Japanese pitchers are overrated and end up being a huge waste of money (Dice-K, Chien-Ming Wang, Kei Igawa…etc). If GM Bill Smith wants to sign a pitcher than sign back Pavano for 3 yrs/$30 mill.
That would be a terrible deal.
Yes, I know that. I’m not willing to give Pavano a deal for more than 2 years but Pavano is looking for a 3 year deal. I think we just stay put with Liriano, Baker, Duensing, Blackburn, Slowey/Gibson.
That looks good to start, i wonder if they’ll work Gibson outta the bp for a while first. we also have Wimmers too.
Obviously the payroll is going to go up.. Were at 105 million without retaining any of our free agents. I don’t see anything major happening in free agency. I think they bring back Thome, Crain, and Guerrier (No one will give up 2 picks to sign him).. Hardy and Capps will be back as well.
It would be nice to add some speed to the outfield but that would require moving Cuddyer who’s about as immovable as you can get unless you take back a bad contract like Lowe.
I think the 2011 Twins will look pretty similar to the 2010 version.
There will be significant differences though: Casilla instead of OHud, lots of kids from Rochester replacing lots of old famous guys that blew through at the end of the year. There’s even an apparent hesitancy to get Hardy inked, which is goofy since there are no credible SS on the market right now.
Right. I’d rather pay the $6M for JJ and at least get ACTUAL Gold Glove defense (as opposed to Derek Jeter’s “gold glove defense”) with offensive upside than hand it over to Trevor Plouffe or bring in a Miguel Tejada or Edgar Renteria. Ewww…
The money is there, and if Hardy can avoid the nagging minor injuries this year, he’ll have a better offensive season. He might not be a 25 HR shortstop again (especially not at MLB’s equivalent of the Grand Canyon — Target Field), but he can justify his salary.
Right, I wasn’t trying to imply there wouldn’t be changes, just not from free agency most likely. The bullpen could potentially be 50% new faces.
I hope they keep hardy too his defense was solid and he still has power potential if he can just stay healthy.