ChiSox59

FIFY: Robert CF, Moncada 3B, Betts RF, Eloy LF, Grandal C, Abreu DH, Vaughn 1B, Anderson SS, Madrigal 2B

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mitchbr01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-

Per Rosenthal. Minors deal. 29 YO RH reliever. Numbers are not strong.

If Tim got hurt, the top minor league SS is Laz Rivera who hit .248/.287/.318 in AA last season. Then maybe Yolbert Sanchez who hasn't even played stateside yet. So yah, I'd say he's SS insurance in Charlotte.

Well I guess thats some SS insurance.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/01/angels-hire-dylan-axelrod-as-pitching-coordinator.html Yes, that Dylan Axelrod.

They tried last offseason. He wasn't interested.

No doubt. Sox rotation is no for sure thing (to be clear, I didn't say it was, and wasn't really comparing the Twins to the Sox at all in that post). But at least we have a stable of young MLB ready SP. Obviously losing Gio would most likely kill the Sox 2020 chances as well....but to my knowledge he didn't struggle with elbow issues last year. Twins also don't really have anything similar to Kopech and Cease. Graterol is interesting and will likely pitch some for the Twins in 2020, but he is more than likely a pen arm.

I mean, if they lose Berrios, their pitching is really bad. That may be big if, but he had elbow issues last year and lost a ton of velo. I wouldn't be shocked if his misses time this year, and there is some internal concern about his arm. I don't think "all hell needs to break lose" for the Twins to be a .500ish team. Father time finally catches Cruz. Berrios gets hurt. Polanco, Kepler and Garver regress to the mean. They get close to nothing out of Dick Mountain and Homer Bailey. Luis Arraez was a flash in the pan one year wonder. Buxton is unable to stay on the field for more than 80 games. Obviously all of those things aren't going to happen, but its not too much of stretch to believe half of them will. Basically everything went right for the Twins last season - chances are lightning doesn't strike twice.

Donaldson is good. He makes the Twins better in 2020. He is also 34 years old, and the Twins will most likely be paying him $29M in 2023 in his age 37 season. The backend of this deal is going to hurt them - likely quite a bit. Its a strange allocation of resources for the Twins, but frankly, at this juncture in the offseason he was the guy that made the most sense to the spend the money on. There is no SP left worth paying. The Twins allowing it to get to this point is what is strange. This may be a bit of a kick in the balls to the Sox 2020 ALC chances, but this offseason was never about building a WS contender for 2020. Its about the beginning of a 6-7 year window, and this Donaldson move really does very little to negatively impact the White Sox long term outlook. And if Donaldson is unable to stay healthy the next two seasons - the only two in which you can reasonably expect him to earn his money - this deal is really going to hurt the Twins. Twins fan are excited. And they should be. Their previous forays into expensive free agents have pretty much all failed. The most expensive position player free agent in franchise history prior to Donaldson was a 3/$24M deal to Jason fuckin' Castro. So of course they're going to be excited. This move also improves their IF defense quite a bit by getting Sano off 3B, but I remain unconvinced that Donaldson is anything more than an average 3B at this point, though is 2019 defensive metrics were fairly strong. Everything will be OK Sox fans. Twins weren't just going to standby and make no moves in what is the tailend of their window. 85 wins isn't going to win this division, so let's go out and get 90 wins and see where the chips fall.

Give me Moncada over Donaldson and Madrigal over Arraez.

If he can stay healthy, this definitely hurts for 2020. But paying 35-37 YO Donaldson over $20M could be ugly. As others have said, let’s battle. Twins will score a lot of runs, but they’ll give up a lot too.

Obdel Herrera DFA'd. Quite a fall for that guy. With his contract, he'll definitely clear waivers and get released. Domestic violence charges are going to make it tough for other teams to give him a chance, but perhaps at the MLB minimum someone will roll the dic.e

Yah, looks like one of the early articles I read had bad info. My bad for passing it along. Good for Hinch. He should be able to get another job. The way it sounded early on, it was effectively a lifetime ban. Who is going to hire a guy just to have him be suspended for a year? With him seemingly allowing this to go on, but not the mastermind behind it, that seems fair.

Probably more likely that they don't really view Mercedes, and to a lesser extent Collins, anything more than emergency/occasional catchers at the MLB level. Without those two, its Zavala is really the only true catcher in AAA, tho he's certainly not great with the glove either. But I agree - I thought Zavala would be gone before Covey.