Hitting the Foul Pole

Last week, the Twins signed Francisco Liriano to a one year, $4.3M deal to avoid arbitration this year. It was a wise move — salary arbitration can be a rough process, with potential ramifications for the relationship between the team and the player, because in the course of making its case the team essentially has to do everything it can to insult the player. Additionally, the Twins have in the past signed a deal like this one to avoid arbitration while continuing to work on a long term extension; that’s exactly what they did with Morneau, ripping up and replacing his one year contract with a six year extension after just one week.

So, a week later, what happens? Well, we get a report from Joe Christensen that says that the Twins’ relationship with their ace left hander is apparently already sour, and they do not plan to give him an extension — in fact, he says that trading Liriano “isn’t just crazy talk.”

One thing is clear: The Twins don’t plan to sign him long term. Last weekend, they avoided arbitration with a one-year, $4.3 million deal. From what I’ve heard, their long-term talks went nowhere, with Liriano’s camp hinting it wanted a three-year, $39 million contract.

First, let’s take a look at Liriano’s demands for a 3/$39M deal. He has two years of arbitration left, so that deal would cover one year of free agency. The second year of arbitration typically is valued at 60% of free market, and the third and final year is typically 80% of free market value. So this three year deal would effectively pay for 2.4 years of Liriano’s free market services, which means Liriano’s agent is placing a year of Liriano’s services on the free agent market at $16.25; now, how good would Liriano have to be to be worth that price? I can’t tell how much a win is going for on the free agent market right now, but it seems like it’s somewhere between $4M/win and $5M/win. At $4M/win, that contract would value Liriano as a 4 WAR pitcher; at $4.5M/win, he’d have to be a 3.6 WAR pitcher; at $5M/win, he’d have to be a 3.25 WAR pitcher.

On the other hand, his $4.3M deal this year is supposed to be 60% of his free market value, which means his current contract values him at just $7.1M, probably taking into account his shaky track record and the fact that he remains a significant injury risk.

Let’s take a gander at said shaky track record — in 2006 he put up 4.1 WAR in a shortened season prior to his injury, and that injury and his slow recovery from it led to 0 WAR in a missed 2007, 1.5 WAR in 2008, and 1.1 WAR in 2009, before he broke out again and posted 6.0 WAR as one of the top pitchers in the league in 2010. And all his predictive statistics indicate that his performance was sustainable and will even improve with better-than-the-worst-luck-in-the-league. If you believe he’s healthy and can remain healthy, Liriano seems like a safe bet to be a 4 WAR pitcher and the contract is a no-brainer. If you think he’s a huge injury risk or that his success in 2006 and 2010 was a fluke and his true talent lies somewhere in the “can’t throw strikes or get anybody out” range that he showed in 2008 and 2009 while his velocity was down, then you probably wouldn’t want to guarantee him any more money or years than you absolutely have to.

The Star Tribune is — at the very least — strongly implying that this is the Twins’ thinking. That the Twins front office is actually down on Liriano and does not want to sign him to an extension. That they are, like some sportswriters and fans, selectively seeing only Liriano’s failures in 2010 and not his dominant outings. That they’re seriously entertaining the idea of trading Liriano for pennies on the dollar.

in his final 20 starts, including the postseason, he didn’t finish the eighth inning once.

That seems like an odd measure of talent. The ability to finish eight innings in a start? In the second half of your first full major league season in your career, after pitching all winter in winter ball and all summer at multiple levels the previous year while recovering from major elbow surgery? I hope that’s not a “stat” that people lend any real credence to.

In his much-hyped showdown with Colorado’s Ubaldo Jimenez, the Rockies batted around in the first inning. The Twins won all five of Liriano’s starts against the White Sox, but his performances were more white-knuckle than dominant.

He had a bad game, and then he won a bunch of games against a division rival during a pennant race, but those don’t count because they were close games.

Then, in Game 1 of the Division Series, Liriano had a 3-0 lead in the sixth inning when the Yankees came back to tie it. Afterward, Liriano was his usual polite self, but it was a huge letdown for the team.

Then he lost a game in the playoffs, and it counts because it was a close game.

Oh, and if you think that “logic” from the Star Tribune (or, worse, the Twins) is inane, here’s some more. This time from Howard Sinker, “analyzing” how the Twins could make a trade work.

The fact that manager Ron Gardenhire has talked about the need for more speed in the middle infield is all well and good. But when you have the chance to replace Alexi Casilla with Michael Young, this is a time when you sacrifice speed and some defense and go for the bat. Casilla would make a fine fifth infielder.

And as Jim Bowden, the former Reds and Nationals GM, said on his XM/Sirius show Wednesday afternoon, the Rangers are in a position where they won’t get 100 percent value for Young.

In a deal with the Twins, that would mean Texas picking up a big chunk of Young’s salary. For the Rangers, it means getting a lefty pitcher who doesn’t have Lee’s credentials, but brings a lot more to them than other options. (Somehow, I don’t think that signing ex-Brewer Dave Bush is viewed as a replacement for Lee.)

Rangers beat writer Evan Grant wrote the other day that “right now, about all you can get (for Young) is a bad contract.” The Rockies had been talking about a Young deal that included second baseman Eric Young Jr.

So Liriano totally blows away anything that’s been discussed — which is why the Rangers have so far dismissed what’s on the table.

So, let me get this straight. The Twins suddenly have an “opportunity” to replace their speed-oriented middle infield with a “bat” in the form of Michael Young. And the Rangers are in the position of having to either eat Young’s ridiculous salary or take a pittance in a trade, or both. That’s why the trade market for Young’s services are ice cold — other teams realize he’s an old man whose contract matches his production so poorly that he’s not worth acquiring even if the Rangers pick up most of his salary. And since the Rangers won’t get full value, and the best offer they’ve received so far is Eric Young Jr — who has never been better than replacement level in his career, with a -0.3 WAR and -0.4 WAR in the last two seasons — the obvious solution is that the Twins should offer Francisco Liriano, their best pitcher, one of their best players?

Sinker is right that Liriano totally blows away anything that’s been discussed in the Young talks thus far. And that’s because if the Twins are offering Liriano to the Rangers, the return should be more like Neftali Feliz + high end prospects, rather than drastically-overpaid-old-guy. Dave Cameron expects that Liriano’s trade value is somewhere between Marcum’s and Garza’s,* and thus should yield someone close to a top prospect but not an absolute-top-shelf prospect. Note in that article that Michael Young isn’t mentioned, because it’s ludicrous to even consider that.

* That’s the Garza 2 trade, when the Rays got all of the Cubs’ top prospects for him. Not the Garza 1 trade when the Twins got a busted prospect for him. Bill Smith just keeps looking better and better, eh?

Oh … and if it’s a good idea to scrap the speed-in-the-middle-infield plan in favor of an infielder who can actually hit, what about the one the Twins gave up, JJ Hardy? He offered elite defense at shortstop — something Young absolutely does not. He offered a bat with some pop in it — something Young absolutely does not. He had an affordable contract — something Young absolutely does not. He yielded a couple of mediocre relief pitchers in a trade — not anything close to the value of Liriano.

I can’t tell what the Star Tribune is doing here. Have they actually heard, from the Twins, that Liriano-for-Young talks have happened, or that the Twins are considering starting such talks? Are they accurately representing the Twins’ views on Liriano? Or are they making this up, speculating for the sake of stirring the hot stove pot, baiting clicks to their website where they automatically refresh the page every 30 seconds to goose their pageviews and falsely inflate their pageview statistics to get a better rate on their advertisements? Have they really become this desperate, now that Phil Mackey and ESPN have rendered them completely useless? Ouch.

Publicly, the Twins keep saying Liriano is a big part of their 2011 plans. They’d love to see him prove the skeptics wrong and blossom into a 20-game winner, even if this leaves fans screaming about their decision not to sign him long term.

When your best hope is that you get embarrassed — and you work to ensure that’ll happen no matter what — then you’re doing something wrong.

What do you think? Are the Twins seriously considering this, or is the Strib just stirring the pot? What do you think is the right thing to do with Liriano — go year to year through arbitration, sign him to a long term extension, or trade him? And what do you think is a reasonable return in trade, or size of contract?

Since arriving in 2004, even more than his on-the-field production, Nick Punto’s main contribution to the team and its fans has been that he has represented the Minnesota Twins to the world.

When I say represented, I mean it in a good way, I think. Nick Punto has embodied the Twins’ Platonic ideal of what a position player should be; high-effort, high-hustle, defensive-minded, versatile, singles hitter who values a high batting average at the expense of walks and extra base hits. Nick Punto has also been a metaphor for the team’s success over the past several years; outmatched on paper by superior teams with higher payrolls, with virtues that seem to exist but can’t (yet?) be quantified, but somehow competitive year in and year out.

I’ve given Punto more than his fair share of grief over the years. My thinking had been along the lines of what a utility player like Punto is worth to a team — for a good team with a high payroll and many good players and the expectation of contending, a good utility guy is worth a lot more than he would be to a team with a low payroll and a smaller collection of good players. If Punto is the fifth-most important player on your team, then you have a bad team; if Punto is the tenth-most important player, then you have a good team.

And I always thought that the Twins could have spent Punto’s salary better in other places, when they had smaller payrolls and dollars were scarce. Now that the team has more revenue and a higher payroll, I naturally assumed that bringing back Punto was essentially a no-brainer. Not only could the team clearly afford it, but he has fans among his teammates and the coaching staff and the media and the fanbase. Joe Christensen points out that that assumption appears to be faulty:

Punto is still a free agent, but from all indications, the Twins won’t be bringing him back.

What?

There are a few options, as I see it, to explain what the Twins may be thinking.

• Nick Punto is over the hill, and/or his performance will drop below what they have come to expect from him
• The performance gap between Punto and Tolbert will be smaller than the salary gap, and they’re making a value play
• They simply can’t afford it
• They disagree with my premise that a utility player is more valuable to a high-payroll team and don’t think they need him any more
• They are signalling that they are adjusting their vision of the ideal ballplayer — throwing out the mold, if you will

The Twins would have you believe that the issue is money, and they cannot afford Punto’s services:

With a projected Opening Day payroll of $113 million, they insist they have reached their limit. Insiders say Carl Pavano’s contract actually pushed them over budget, requiring special approval from CEO Jim Pohlad.

On the other hand, Christensen asserts that “even if it meant taking a sizeable pay cut, Punto would be thrilled to return,” though he doesn’t provide a source. Maybe Punto told him as much directly, and maybe he didn’t. The sizeable paycut angle, I think, bashes a crowbar against the kneecaps of both the performance/salary gap theory and the overall can’t-afford-it theory, regardless of what ownership claims about how broke they are.* If they wanted Punto and could get him at a significant paycut from $4M, they’d do it.

* Am I falling into the trap of thinking that now that Target Field is open, the Twins have virtually unlimited funds? I haven’t seen their revenue numbers, but they’ve stated that team payroll will remain pegged to 52% of revenue as it was when they played in the Metrodome. Maybe it really is true that $110M or so is the payroll limit, and they’ve gone above it. I don’t think I believe that, but it’s certainly possible.

That leaves the theories that involve the Twins no longer wanting Punto around.

So, which is it? Is Punto over the hill, and the Twins don’t think he’s good any more? Do they not think they need a solid utility man, and can get by with a lesser one? Or have they changed their idea of the quintessential Twin, and are moving in a different direction?

I don’t think it’s possible to know that. Bill Smith certainly isn’t going to come out and explain it for us.

Regardless of the reasons, though, if Nick Punto doesn’t return to the Twins it sure feels like the end of an era.

There have recently been several reports that Japanese infielder Tsuyoshi Nishioka will be posted by his current team, the Chiba Lotta Marines, and that the Twins are expected to bid on him.

Posting Process

The path Japanese players have to take to make it over the Pacific can be confusing. While a Japanese team controls a player’s rights, they have the option of “posting” him, once he’s amassed a certain amount of playing time. (That’s why Japanese stars don’t make it over to the MLB until they’re no longer young.) If the player’s contract runs out, he can simply enter MLB free agency and sign with whatever team he wants — the posting process allows the Japanese team to get money back for a departing player,* and allows the MLB team to negotiate exclusively with the player without having to worry about competition. And yes, that does seem like a very pro-franchise arrangement, which basically screws the Japanese players.

* It’s not like they can get draft pick compensation when they lose a star player, like MLB teams can.

The MLB team with the winning bid gets the right to negotiate exclusively with the player. No other MLB team can sign him, or even make an offer. If the player signs a contract, then the MLB team pays the amount of their winning bid to the Japanese team; if the player does not sign, then no money changes hands between teams and the player stays with his Japanese team.

So the question is: who is Tsuyoshi Nishioka, how much should the Twins bid for him, and what kind of contract should he expect to sign?

Tsuyoshi Nishioka

Listed at 5’11″ and 176 pounds, Nishioka is big for a Japanese middle infielder, but not compared to MLB infielders — JJ Hardy, for example, is 6’2″ and 200 pounds.

Nishioka is naturally right handed, and after hitting left handed as an amateur he became a switch hitter upon becoming a professional. He primarily plays shortstop, where his range, apparently, ranks among the Japanese elite; he also has quick reflexes, soft hands, and a strong throwing arm that combine to make him a tantalizing prospect.

In his career, Nishioka has batted .293/.364/.426 in 3111 AB through age 25, including a .346/.423/.482 line in 2010 that won him his first batting title. In addition to leading the league this year in batting average, he also led in games played (144), runs scored (121), hits (206), and total bases (287). Leading the league in games played is promising, since prior to 2010 he’d developed a reputation as injury-prone.

In his younger days he was a speedster, leading the league with 41 steals at age 20 and 33 at age 21, but since then his stolen base totals have dropped into the 20′s as his homers have jumped from 3-4 per season up to 11-14 per season.

I don’t know how to make the translation between the NPB and MLB, but I’ve read elsewhere that Japanese baseball is similar to AAA, maybe a little better. Perhaps Nishioka could be expected to hit between .280 and .310, with moderate pop, good speed, and an OBP around .340 to .360 with an SLG around .400, which would make him an excellent offensive shortstop, to go along with elite defense. At just 26 years old, Nishioka could be a pretty valuable commodity.

Contract

Nishioka seems like he has the potential to be an elite major league player — Yahoo Sports asks if he’s the next Ichiro — and would fill an important spot in the middle of the infield and the top of the lineup, as well as inject some much-needed speed into the Twins’ offense.

I don’t have a great nose for how teams value players these days, so take this estimate with a grain of salt. But Nishioka seems like he could easily be a 3+ WAR player. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the winning bid exceed $15M, even $20M, and the value of his contract could exceed the posting fee.

Don’t Get Your Hopes Up

Will the Twins end up getting Tsuyoshi Nishioka? Probably not. There are too many variables, and it would probably cost too much for a team that, despite jumping up into the large-payroll stratosphere, has serious payroll considerations this year.

Nishioka has stated he’d prefer to play on the West Coast — that doesn’t matter in the posting process, but could make it more difficult to agree to a contract if the Twins win the bidding. Plus, the Red Sox are expected to bid too, and in addition to their deeper pockets, they also have the necessary Japanese translation infrastructure that the Twins lack.

But it’s exciting to see the Twins in on a potentially impactful young star from around the globe. And it sure would be fun to be able to root for a guy who looks like he popped right out of an old Japanese video game.

And if you really want to like the guy, watch this commercial.

Danny Haren was tradedto the Angels last night for a pretty underwhelming package of Joe Saunders, Patrick Corbin, Rafael Rodriguez and Tyler Skaggs (Skaggs was announced this morning, he was originally a PTBNL).   This probably leaves many Twins fans angry that Smith didn’t make a better push (or a push at all) to acquire Haren.  While he hasn’t been very good since the first half of 09, he is still a frontline starter.  John Bonnes at TwinsCentric wrote why he thinks Haren’s contract isn’t as reasonable as everyone seems to think.  I tend to agree with him, but since Haren is under contract until 2013 we could have used him this year and traded him in the offseason for a pretty decent return (especially if he had a strong august and september).  One of the reasons I read for the DBacks trading him for so little, is they were afraid he wasn’t going to rebound to his 07-09 form.  Much like the Rays had to do with Scott Kazmir.  Turns out the rays were right about Kazmir, but I don’t think the DBacks will be write about Haren.  He is 29, and doesn’t have an injury history like Kazmir does. 

Hopefully this doesn’t mean the Twins will just go out and sign Jarrod Washburn, since he sucks and we already have one crappy pitcher whose name ends in -burn.  Why do we need another?  Ted Lilly is still available, and I expect the Twins to pursue him pretty aggressively, only to not get him.  Not that I want him.  I also hope that Smith doesn’t assume the rotation problem is fixed because of one non-terrible trip through it.  Yes, everyone has pitched well in their most recent start, but that doesn’t mean we can expect Baker and Slowey to be consistently good down the stretch. 

Who else is out there that you would like to see the Twins go after?  Are you as deathly afraid of Lilly as I am?

Face it, we all know this is the “big” move the twins are going to make in the next few weeks.  Very, very unfortunate.

After last night’s frustrating loss (aren’t they all) to those filthy Canadians, Buster Olney showed up on Baseball Tonight and said the Twins have offered Slowey and Ramos for Cliff Lee.  I for one think that is a good deal.  I like Aaron Hicks too much to trade him.  Slowey is a very fine pitcher, but bottom line he is very replaceable.  That Wimmers kid we drafted from tOSU looks like he can do exactly what Slowey has done over the years. 

Aside: I also want to take this time to say that Jack Zduriencik (notice how I used his full name. Why do GMs need nicknames?)  is highly overrated.  Yes, the Mariners improved greatly the minute he showed up, but they were still a .500 non-playoff team.  And it looks like they are going to finish well below that this year.  Good for him, he was able to draft good players, he has had high draft picks and pretty deep pockets. He better draft good players.  So can everyone stop sucking him off and treating him like some sort of deity? Thanks.

What do you guys think? Do you believe this rumor? Is it too much? Not enough?

According to Ken Rosenthal’s twitter feed, the Twins are going to use a “closer by committee” to start the season.  I think what this really means is they will use the start of the season as kind of an open audition.  If someone stands out they will close for the rest of the season, if not Bill Smith will have to make a trade. I think the best news to come out of this is that they won’t be using Liriano.  That issue was addressed the other day on this site, so I won’t get into it.

In other news, Jacque Jones and Matt Tolbert were told they will not start the season on the 25 man roster. I don’t think this comes as a surprise to anyone.  While he had a good spring, Jones was considered a long shot to make the team out of spring training.  The stars would have had to align perfectly for Tolbert to make the team.  Since Casilla is out of options, there was little doubt that the reserve infielder spot was going to Alexi.  I’m kind of worried that the Twins won’t have a real backup centerfielder, that defense could get pretty ugly if it consists of Young, Kubel, and Cuddyer.  And am I the only one who doesn’t like the idea of NIck Punto playing centerfield on some days?

What do you guys think of this “closer by committee”?  What do you think of Tolbert and Jones starting the season in Rochester?

According to the always excellent Craig Calcaterra (via Bob Nightengale), the Twins are scouting Padres closer Heath Bell.  I don’t think Joe Nathan can avoid TJ surgery, so kicking the tires on some proven closers won’t hurt.  As I recall the price for Bell was pretty steep last year, so I can’t imagine it going down after his strong 2009 campaign. 

However, if the price is reasonable, the Twins should pull the trigger.  Bell isn’t making much this year ($4 million according to the article) and would fit nicely in the back of the bullpen.  The two major red flags on Bell are he is coming from an extreme pitchers park in the NL, so who knows how that will translate to Target Field.  Like I said, it can’t hurt to kick the tires on some proven guys to replace Nathan, but I don’t see any fire behind this smoke.

The internet, my friends, is all atwitter with excitement after Mark Rosen of WCCO broke the news that the Twins are close to a 10 year deal with Mauer.

Meanwhile, Buster Olney is reporting that the report of a preliminary agreement is not accurate, and both Jon Heyman* and Joe Christensen agree.

* What, you think he has no place reporting on the negotiations of a non-Boras client? Well, you’re probably right.

“Dan Cook,” whoever that is, points out that Rosen is talking to Mauer’s people, while Olney and the rest are talking to Twins officials. We may not be quite as close as we all want to hope (though I’d take Cook’s report with a big, rock-shaped grain of salt given his lack of reporting history).

All that said, I think it’s about time to look at the Mauer situation in a little more depth, couched in what we know about free agency this offseason and the rumored frameworks of this deal.

With contracts of this length, it’s practically impossible to say whether it’s going to work out. It’s just so much time, and anything can happen. Mauer is 26 now, but he’ll be 37 when this contract ends. Will he be the best player in the game at age 37? Will he even be a catcher by then? It’s literally impossible to know the answer to these questions (but it’s not that difficult to guess that the answers go something like: “No,” and “Maybe”).

But let’s just try and project what Mauer would be worth over this time period.

According to FanGraphs, since his first full season (2005), Mauer has been worth* 3.5, 6.1, 3.0, 5.8, and 8.2 WAR; in dollars: $12M, $22.4M, $12.2M, $26.2M, $36.8M.

* Remember, FanGraphs WAR takes into account that he’s a catcher, but does not take into account how good he is at being a catcher. In fact, their glossary page says this about measuring catcher defense:

If you think Joe Mauer’s catching abilities and leadership are worth one win, just add one win to what we display as his win value here. Quantifying catching defense is something that we just haven’t figured out yet, and so we’re not pretending that we have. Consider it an opportunity to fill in the blanks.

And yes, I do think it’s telling that they specifically mention Mauer as being more valuable than their WAR values state. For the purposes of this column, however, I am not going to inflate Mauer’s value beyond what is stated on the FanGraphs page.

The problem is … those WAR numbers don’t actually tell us all that much. Is he a 3 win player like he was in 2005 and 2007? Or a 6 win player like 2006 and 2008? Or is he a legitimate superstar, 8+ win player like 2009? All these numbers come before his prime; great players tend to peak around 27-29, and the truly great players’ skills diminish slowly through their early thirties. (Plus, you can’t plan for good seasons and bad seasons throughout a contract; you have to value a player at his “true talent level,” pay for that, and then basically hope he meets or exceeds that level in as many years of the contract as possible.)

If we put Mauer’s “true talent level” at around 7 WAR, and assume that he maintains that talent through age 30 at which point he will start to decline at 0.5 WAR per season, his value would look like this over the next ten years:

7 7 7 7 6.5 6 5.5 5 4.5 4

for a total of 59.5 WAR over the life of the contract.

To translate that into dollars, though, there are a few things to consider. First is that for the last several years, 1 win above replacement has been right around $4.5M on the free agent market … but this winter that has plummeted to the point that teams are only paying $3-3.5M per win on the open market.

Additionally, Mauer is not currently on the open market; the Twins can expect to get a (small) discount for extending him a year early, a year during which he could very well get injured and lose a shit-ton of money (this is standard procedure for all contracts). Beyond that, players on long-term contracts like this sacrifice about 10% of their fair market value in return for the security of the guaranteed contract. And both of those adjustments come before the possibility of a hometown discount — I don’t expect there’ll be much of one, but it’s possible.

So if we’re paying $4.5M per win like teams have been doing for years, that 59.5 WAR over 10 years will cost $267.75M, minus the 10% for security and fudging downwards a bit for extending early … around $230M, making Mauer one of the highest paid players in the league and giving him the third largest contract in baseball history (after ARod and ARod).

On the other hand, if the Twins are using the 2009-2010 offseason as an opportunity to spend less per win on Mauer’s contract, say $3.5M per win, then the deal would cost just $208.25M, and adjusting downward for security and moving early, it’d get down to the $180-190M range.* If the Twins used the current free agent climate to negotiate this lower price, it’d be a remarkably savvy move from a front office that hasn’t been known for that for some time. (And has never been known for shrewd contracts as much as player acquisition.)

* It’s worth pointing out that there will presumably be deferred money in this deal, which further reduces the total value in “today’s dollars.” I don’t know enough about baseball economics to estimate how much of the contract will be deferred and how much it will effect the real value of the contract. So I’m ignoring it here. Just know that deferred money generally means that the contract is worth less than the number of dollars on the bottom line, so you should watch out for the word “deferred” anywhere in reports about his contract.

Of course, these are just the rumored details. Other reports insist that the Twins aren’t going as far as 10 years on a deal. If, as some reports say, it’s just a 7 year contract, we’re looking at just 46 WAR,* putting it in the range of $140-190M range (depending on whether we’re valuing wins at $3.5M or $4.5M).

* I lopped off the final three years on the above projection of Mauer’s value.

On one level, I want Mauer in a Twins uniform until his career ends. On another level, I felt the same way about Torii Hunter and Johan Santana and other players before them; those feelings went away shortly after they signed contracts that the Twins clearly couldn’t afford, which will be paying them top-dollar even after they’ve declined to the point where they’re not even close to worth the money any more. I certainly don’t want to be paying Joe Mauer $20M+ to be a 36 year old former-catcher with bad knees and a balky back.

Long contracts always carry a ton of risk for the team. In Mauer’s case, the Twins are essentially backed into a corner where they must take the risk; that dynamic did not exist in the Hunter & Santana negotiations. Mauer is the hometown hero, the Golden Child, the Baby Jesus of baseball in Minnesota. He, personally, is a big reason the Twins even have a new stadium to move into; if he’s not on the team in 2011, the fans are going to be furious enough that they may well stop coming to the stadium, and the team knows it.

And frankly, the fact that it’s Mauer’s people that are leaking the information about the contract tells me that the Twins just may have done enough this offseason to convince Mauer that they’re dedicated to building a team around him. Both Morneau and Nathan have recently come out and raved about the roster, saying they’ve never seen anything like this in their time with the Twins. Undoubtedly, Mauer has seen the same things.

Maybe I’m just getting swept up in the giddiness of tracking a rumor as it lives and breathes on the internet, but I’m getting more and more confident that we’ll see a deal before Spring Training, and we can all rest a little easier.

Joe C is reportingthat the Twins are hot on the trail of free agent DH/Twin Killer Jim Thome.  When I first read this story I was confused.  The Twins already have a DH who cannot hit lefties.  What would we need Thome for?  He made $13 million last year,  so how much of a pay cut can be expected? Would he really be willing to accept a bench role?

Aaron Gleeman opines that he platoon at DH with Young while Kuble takes most of the reps in left. I wouldn’t mind seeing that happen, Thome hits righties too well to be a bench player. While Young is pretty terrible at everything. The biggest question at this point has to be his price tag. The Twins payroll already looks to be in the $90 million range with gaping holes in the infield. Would Thome accept a pay cut down to the $1 million range? I don’t know which AL teams have a hole at DH, but it seems like a team like the Yankees or Red Sox can give Thome more money to do the same job. 

I like the thinking that the Twins need to upgrade their bench, but I don’t think the price on Thome will come down to the point where it is worth it to sign him as a bench player.  If they are committed to giving him the bulk of DH at bats against righties, then I think they should go for it.  Given the current payroll level and glaring holes elsewhere, maybe we are better off going after someone like Ryan Garko as a bat off the bench.  Any money we have available should be put towards a second or thirdbaseman.

What do you guys think about Jim Thome in a Twins uniform?