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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Sunday, September 02, 2018
At least he’ll only have one option left at the end of the year. With his play this year I can’t see him winning his grievance. While Buxton, a Platinum Glove Award winner in 2017, will be eligible for salary arbitration for the first time this winter as a so-called “Super 2” player, he will fall 13 days shy of the service time threshold that would give him three full years in the majors. Barring a successful grievance from Buxton’s agents, B.B. Abbott and Al Goetz, the Twins now gain an extra year of club control over Buxton for 2022, his age-28 season.
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1. haven Posted: September 02, 2018 at 06:37 PM (#5737779)not sure what amends the twins need to make
To recap: Buxton actually showed signs of being a major league hitter last year, went on the DL in mid-April with migraines, broke his toe while on rehab assignment, got called up despite the toe still being broken, went back on the DL for the toe after playing on it for three weeks, then for his trouble got demoted based on hitting .200 during the rehab assignment. He promptly injured his wrist, went on the DL, came off, then went right back on. Now that he's healthy and hitting, you'd think an organization whose priority was on-field considerations might want to get the guy who is 11 healthy games removed from being their Opening Day center fielder a month of play to keep the season from being a total loss. But that's not what the Twins are.
Of course, if they had not screwed around with him, they wouldn't be giving up all hope of controlling him beyond that season.
The guy has a 79 career OPS+. I doubt they're worried.
Given his injury/hitting woes history, I'd be looking to get 3 hot months out of him, and then trade him before he breaks, or forgets how to hit, again.
Don't know that this should apply to the Twins. Minneapolis is pretty big (#16 of metro area) and wealthy (#7 by p.c. income).
OK, but why would anyone assume Buxton's last year is going to line up with a rebuilding phase for the Twins? My point was that if he becomes good, they'll have no need to dump him to avoid paying his arb salaries (like Tampa, Miami, and Oakland do all the time).
This is weird. #16 is below average for a major league franchise.
Mid-market teams can run $150M payrolls with ease. Modern MLB is awash in money.
The fact that they have the cash flow to pay a player $X does not mean they will in fact pay that player $X or should pay him $X. For general business situations this is the Amazon phenomenon. In the baseball-specific case marginal production is worth more in other cities, sometimes a lot more. If the player is mediocre and expensive, then there's little reason to keep him around because suitable low-cost replacements are available, thanks to the reserve clause. If the player is good and expensive, then his surplus value is much greater in New York, LA, and a host of other cities, and those clubs can and frequently will compensate mid-market teams accordingly.
By my count, they're #11 when going by one-team towns.
This decision has at least as much to do with the health of the 2018 Twins as the health of Buxton, which is to say it isn't going to benefit either of them enough this year to offset the value of another year of control later on. If he was some young kid and picking up a hundred at bats would help his development, or they were still looking at a wild card spot and six weeks of defense might help make a difference then they'd do it, but Byron is Byron and 2018 is dead to the team, so the front office is just letting things heal and pushing his arb off for another year. Just business as negotiated in the last CBA. If it's different next time they'll exploit the prevailing interpretation accordingly.
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