On The Payroll
By Fetch
With the arbitration cases all taken care of, it’s time to see the payroll the Twins are committed to, and to see if there is any money leftover to sign a 2nd baseman. I have included my projected 2010 WAR too. The projection method I use isn’t terribly complicated, so don’t worry too much about it.
Some (well, a lot) of the projections are a bit pessimistic, but coming off a horrible year it’s tough to project what JJ Hardy will do, and Kubel might be due to regress a bit. There isn’t a contract here that I would call bad, although Morneau’s certainly isn’t very good and I am against giving a dime to Delmon Young.
Now, let’s take a look at the arms
Barring some sort of disaster, the Twins are going to have a higher WAR than salary devoted to their starting pitchers. And personally, I think the projection for Kevin Slowey is a bit pessimistic. I am very bullish on him. But at the very least this proves what I’ve been saying about the Twins rotation all along: There might not be a true ace, bu there are a lot of 2/3 starters.
Other pitchers/bullpen
Not going to make a chart for this one, because it’s uncertain what will happen. A guy like Brian Duensing could be in long relief and have under a 1 WAR, or he could be a starter and be a 2 WAR type guy.
So, other than the fact that the bullpen is making 7ish more million than the starting rotation, they payroll shouldn’t be too bad at almost 90 million. The Twins could possibly save some money by trading a Jesse Crain or Jon Rauch, but I imagine they go into the season with the staff they have.
Now just to re-sign Mauer, and perhaps sign Orlando Hudson.