http://www.platoonadvantage.com/2012/01/peter-abraham-is-not-plagiarist-but-he.html

As far as I can tell there was no “hard slot” in the new player agreement. Each team gets a budget for signing players and there are penalties for going over it. The Twins have three extra draft choices, but one of those is a second round pick and the other two are supplemental first round picks. Their own first pick is going to get a lot more than those other three combined.

Signing bonuses aren’t part of the major league payroll costs in any case. The higher than usual costs may put some pressure on other parts of the budget, but I would bet its not very significant on this year’s payroll.

I don’t think that is realistic. Unlike bloggers, “professional journalists” get paid to produce an audience on an almost daily basis and are judged by how well they do that. They are not in the least accountable to their audience for anything other than keeping them interested long enough for advertisers to sell their products.

As for the budget. I think the Twins have made it pretty clear they aren’t going to share the details of their finances with the public. Unless they want to grandstand at a public news conference, there isn’t much point in asking. And grandstanding it not likely to win them any friends.

As I have pointed out before, it is doubtful the Twins manage their budget strictly on an annual basis. Its perfectly plausible they spent MORE than 50% last year and that they are going to spend less than that this year. In fact, given the state of the team each year I would hope that is the case. Last season the Twins looked like a team ready to compete in the playoffs. This season they look like a team that will be lucky to make the playoffs unless they are healthy. I want them prepared to spend extra in the first instance and to husband their resources in the second. If Mauer and Morneau come back like gangbusters, they will have the financial resources to add the pieces they are still missing. If they don’t, they will have money for the future.

TT, I think your first comment, at its root, contends that bloggers should be held to the same standards that I suggested traditional media people be. That’s a great theory, but probably not altogether practical. Justified or not (and I think it is), most of us hold professional journalists to a higher standard than we do the blogging community whether we’re talking about objectivity, sensitivity or simply subject matter IQ.

But I do agree that anyone who can’t accept criticism with a sense of humor and at least usually do so without getting extremely defensive probably should refrain from publicly expressing their opinions using any communication medium that lends itself well to immediate, and occasionally caustic, feedback. That goes for bloggers and tweeters, as well as professional sportswriters and columnists.

That said, we all want to be liked. We may say we don’t care if people like us, but by and large, we do care. Most of us have just figured out by now that we’re never going to make everyone like or agree with us. Some of us also enjoy the give and take of a debate more than others do.

bennyc50, I really don’t think it’s all that unusual that fans of a given player (especially a QB) celebrate his accomplishments, while being less vocal when he plays poorly. If the Vikings ever have another QB that plays well regularly enough to warrant that kind of personal support, we’ll see the same sort of thing in Minnesota (just as we did during the ups and downs of Favre, Culpepper, and pretty much every other QB back to Tarkenton). I don’t like Aaron Rodgers’ fans either, but I don’t rant about them just because they think he walks on water, despite the fact that he arguably benefits from a much better supporting cast than Tebow does.

Yes, ESPN and others are exploiting the Tebow thing. But why would we expect otherwise? It’s like asking a dog not to bark. Exploitation of a story that generates viewers, listeners and readers is what ESPN and other outlets do.

JBIowa, it’s true that we can all “unfollow” those who disagree with us. But if there’s one thing I believe strongly, it’s that all of us need to be more open to hearing others’ viewpoints… whether it’s about politics, social issues, or even sports. I believe that so many people being so entrenched in their beliefs and opinions that they refuse to hear, much less listen to, other viewpoints is a real problem.

This actually circles back a bit to TT’s second comment. I’ve been alive more than half a century and, in that time, I’ve changed my opinions on a lot of issues. I’m not one who’s big on second guessing GM decisions, etc., after the fact. I don’t think I’ve even jumped on Bill Smith for the Santana trade because I thought Santana painted him in to a tough corner and Terry Ryan didn’t exactly handle the situation well before he left the GM chair. The point is, time and circumstances change and it’s not only expected that our viewpoints evolve, but it’s a good thing.

So I continue to listen to the right and the left. I listen to ownership and players unions and professional media and bloggers and those who comment on blogs (at least this blog!). I listen to Yankee fans explain why it’s good for baseball that they generate twice the revenue anyone else does. And I listen to Dave St. Peter when he says the payroll needs to be slashed.

But I do believe it should be part of the media’s role to challenge those in power positions when they make certain contentions. And if mainstream media won’t do that, I think it’s good that bloggers do. Let’s use the payroll as an example.

The Twins say they need to cut payroll from $115 mil to $100 mil. Since they have contended that they budget about 50% of revenues for their major league payroll, the public can logically assume their revenues had been about $230 million and that they project them dropping to $200 million.

Doing the math, it’s tough to imagine ticket sale revenues dropping $30 million this year, so what’s the story?

More to my point here, why isn’t any member of the professional media even digging for the story? I’m not asking for anyone to be Woodward & Bernstein here, but unles I’ve missed it somewhere (and I would hope it would have been discussed broadly enough that it would be tough to miss), I don’t recall reading or hearing anyone even pursuing the question enough to get a “no comment” from the Twins.

Maybe it’s revenue sharing dollars. Maybe it’s how MLB shares their national broadcast rights or their international advertising dollars. I have no idea… and I don’t have access to the people who can answer those questions.

But the professional media does have that access and all I’m asking is for them to do some digging to try to get us an answer.

Instead, virtually from the moment Terry Ryan mentioned that the payroll would be south of $100 million, it was just accepted. The “story” was just about what the payroll would be and which players would fit in that payroll.

I really can’t believe that anyone is afraid of alienating the Twins by asking questions they’d rather not have asked. It’s impossible for me to believe that the Twins would blackball the Star Tribune or Pioneer Press or ESPN1500 because they were asked for some detail about their projected revenue dip.

If we don’t know the answers because the Twins refuse to provide details about their projected revenues, they are entitled to make that decision as long as they are prepared to accept the public backlash, whatever that may be. But if we don’t know the answers because the media won’t even ask the question on our behalf, they’re letting the public down, in my view.

I have the right to that view and thanks to the wonderful social media world we live in, I have a means of expressing it, including by occasionally jabbing at the media, as well as the front office.

My favorite Pat Ruesse column was one where he tore apart Twins management for some decision they had made. It might have been letting David Ortiz go, I don’t remember. But he acknowledged that he had written several columns at the time advocating exactly the decisions he was now criticizing. His defense were words to the effect “I am just a scribbler, these guys are baseball professionals who should have known better.”

Some writers are at honest with themselves that being right has nothing to do with their success. They only need to be interesting. It would be nice if the bloggers out there would acknowledge that same reality. They might WANT to be right, but that has little to do with whether people read them.