This year it is more difficult, at least at this time of the year, to see a similar commitment, but it looks so far like they are betting on the return to success of Mauer, Morneau, Span, Liriano, Baker, Blackburn and Capps. If most of them do not have a good year, it won’t matter what the payroll level is, the Twins will end up in last place in the division again. If they do have rebound years, the Twins will be in the mix for a division title and also in a position to make the deals needed to improve the starting rotation by the trade deadline. In that circumstance, the current payroll projection is an advantage because there is plenty of room to get the needed pieces.

All of that is why I’m not yet ready to get too bent out of shape about the decrease in projected payroll. We are going to have to see how the season plays out to find out how committed the Twins are to winning this year. In the meantime, given the realities of MLB as it is now structured, and the Seattle journalist has it mostly right, I also want to see that the Twins management is continuing to invest in the future. The recent signing of the 16 year old Silva is a good sign.

Uh – the only thing every team having higher payroll limits will do is raise the salaries of players. The players don’t get better just because they are paid more.

” I’m a Republican, after all!”

Well that explains it.

The article that Nick linked to, by Geoff Baker, is spot on. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/marinersblog/2017206419_how_the_myth_that_cost-effecti.html

As long as the fan base is so willing to just accept what the teams say are their “payroll limits” without question, owners have really no incentive to improve the competitive levels of their teams.

I have no objection to team owners potentially making profits. I’m a Republican, after all! But I don’t believe owners should have profits locked in and guaranteed, regardless of the quality (or lack thereof) of their product. The Pohlads are essentially saying, “We need to take our cut off the top of gross revenues, so that means we will insist on cutting payroll this year, just in case few fans show up at games.”

Owners have no skin in the game at all and they never will, because no owner that is even suspected of being so competitive that he might consider using personal wealth to make sure his team is competitive will ever be allowed by the other owners to join their fraternity (see Cuban, Mark).

Many fans agree with TT. They don’t want to keep hearing about the financial realities of MLB. They don’t care that the Twins clearly COULD improve their rotation and their bullpen enough to make them very, very likely to compete for the AL Central title. They’re willing to just accept the front office’s public line about how they can’t spend more than $100 million.

Howard Sinker said it right in his post a while back. It’s not “can’t”, it’s “won’t”. There’s a big difference. If continuing to point that out is monotonous, so be it.

Actually the question is whether “allocating enough payroll” can make a team a contender. There are any number of examples where high payrolls didn’t make teams contenders and where low payrolls didn’t prevent them from contending.

Regardless of how much the Twins spend, some fans will always make the argument that they should spend more. All you have to do is look at last year’s budget. It was the highest in team history and there were vociferous complaints about their dumping salary by letting Hardy go and not signing the bullpen guys who left as free agents.

The complaints happens every year and it will happen every year off into the future. You could just re-run the same post with the same arguments every year. The complaining is a monotonous drone for which there is no solution.