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St. Peter: Don’t Panic Over Contracts
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.
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