High on the fretting list for Twins fans is the contract status of several key players. Who knows how many passionate followers are losing sleep over whether center fielder Torii Hunter and second baseman Luis Castillo will be back after this season, or whether pitchers Johan Santana and Joe Nathan are gone at the end of 2008? First baseman Justin Morneau and outfielder Michael Cuddyer, are free agents following the 2009 season.
I asked team president Dave St. Peter to offer fans advice about the challenge the organization faces in retaining most of its best players as expiring contracts approach. “Be patient,” St. Peter said. “Things have a way of sorting their way out. I think this organization has proven that over time we can maintain a competitive team. …There’s no question we have very difficult decisions to make. Our players will have difficult decisions to make. It takes two to certainly make these things go but at the end of the day I think there’s a rush to judgment and people tend to panic.
“One thing that I think that the Pohlads deserve a lot of credit for is they make sure the leaders of their businesses don’t make decisions until they have to make those decisions. We’ll address those (decisions) as they come.
“Certainly we believe that the future of this organization is very bright and that we will find ways to maintain the nucleus. Does that mean everybody will be here? I don’t know. I am not saying that. But there’s been a lot of good players that have gone on to play for other organizations over the last several years. Yet the Twins have found ways to continue to be competitive and I expect that will still be the case here as we move into the new ballpark.”
The Twins begin play in their new warehouse district ballpark in 2010 and club revenues will expand. St. Peter said the increased revenue, though, won’t have a significant impact on budgeting for the years leading up to 2010 because the Twins will still be playing in the Metrodome.
“Our payroll has probably increased as much as any team in baseball over the course of the last five or six years,” St. Peter said. …“We’re still playing in the Metrodome, probably the worst revenue facility in major league baseball and yet we’ve got a payroll now that’s north of $70 million. If you had told me that five years ago I would have told you, you were crazy but we’ve been able to drive the payroll really thanks to ownership.”
St. Peter expects to have a payroll in 2010 that is average compared with other major league teams. “Payroll has never really been the driving force here for the Twins,” he said. “It’s all about making good baseball decisions. If that means the payroll is going to go up, it’s going to go up. If it means we can stay competitive where we’re at, we’ll stay where we’re at. The roster will dictate the payroll, versus the payroll dictating the roster. We’re trying to put players out there to be in a position to help us win. We’ve proven we can certainly do that with a payroll well below the league average.”
With so many contracts to be addressed and mega money involved, only the most optimistic observers think the Twins will retain all their star players. All are capable of strong production in the future, making them attractive to other teams on the open market, and two of them, Santana and Morneau, could negotiate some of the biggest money in baseball’s free agency market. Talk is commonplace that Santana’s next contract will total over $100 million.