The Winter Meetings are set to begin next week, and teams around baseball are bracing for the free agency floodgates to open and chaos to ensue. Juan Soto signing somewhere seems to be the domino everyone is waiting to see fall, as that will trigger a handful of contingency plans that get the market moving.
Well, not for the Minnesota Twins.
Once again it appears that ownership is putting the Piggy Bank on the top shelf and out of the front office's reach. The team's payroll is expected to be around $130 million, most of which is already accounted for after arbitration which means there's hardly any wiggle room for the Twins to add the players it very badly needs to complete the roster.
Instead it seems the strategy will be leaning on in-house talent with any external moves being the typical low wattage lottery tickets the team is forced to buy each offseason. Fans are still holding out hope that things will change and the Twins will at least be somewhat active in free agency, but The Athletic's Aaron Gleeman is the bearer of bad news.
Twins insider gives the most depressing update ahead of Winter Meetings
Gleeman was fielding a question about the possibility of the Twins adding Paul Goldschmidt in free agency, something he admits would be a good move but caveats it with an obvious hangup. The Twins simply aren't going to spend money -- not now and not as long as the Pohlads are owners -- which he sums up perfectly with a zinger that doubles as depressing fact.
"If he ends up being available for a Santana-level one-year deal, the Twins should absolutely be interested, but that’s true of most of the better-known free agents about whom I received questions. Unless something changes on the payroll front, the Twins aren’t merely shopping for good values; they’re picking through the clearance rack," Gleeman wrote.
This the lot in life for Twins fans, who seem doomed to always be on the outside of the department store window but never allowed to actually play with any of the toys. Gleeman's mailbag also included a question about the chances Minnesota goes after Christian Walker, who is an even better fit than Goldschmidt but even more expensive.
Neither are likely to be signed, which is beyond frustrating given how simple it seemingly is for the Twins to fix their problems.
If the team had added just a few bit more to the payroll last year, a historic collapse in September might have been avoided. A lot went wrong down the home stretch of the season, but a lack of resources very much contributed to what happened.
Had the Twins meaingfully added to the team and not bought up a bunch of low stakes fliers, there's a decent chance the team doesn't crash out of the playoff race the way it did. Instead, the team was on 2021-levels of embarassing stuff by relying on guys like Cole Irvin and Steven Okert in must-win situations.
Spoiler alert: The Twins did not win.
The fact that no lessons were learned from this is truly depressing. Fan morale is already nearing and all-time low, if it's not there already, and another winter of unserious behavior is going to only make things worse both on and off the field.
Frugalness is cornerstone of the Pohlad era, and sadly it seems that's not going to change until someone else is in charge of the team.
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