Phillies - Twins trade 3/8

Yeah this will need some serious work to comply with the retained salary obligation rules

I'd say +10 Phillies assuming this deal fits the legal standard...Twins are essentially trading a $39 million Goldy for a $19-21 million Hoskins with all the retention plus Twins are taking on another $11 million on bad contracts on top of it so that's even less of a savings overall. Going from Altherr to Williams is an upgrade in terms of team control and salary but not enough to offset the very minimal savings it's getting overall on Goldy-Hoskins. And Goldy's only 30, it's not like he's going to fall off a cliff during the life of the contract playing 1B so Hoskins better be for real and a star in the making for this deal to be close to worth it for Twins. 

I'd originally judged this more harshly till I remembered the Phillies were shifting Hoskins to the OF.  I do think Hoskins going to the outfield should help Twins cause OF > 1B in terms of value in this league, just was initially surprised to see there wasn't as much salary savings as you'd figure trading a Goldy.

hillies send:
Rhys Hoskins, $960K, 2022
Nick Williams, $600K, 2022
Matt Andriese, $7.2MM, 2021-22P (Paid Minors)
Andrew Susac, $4MM, 2021-22P (Paid Minors)

Twins send:
Paul Goldschmidt, $38.9MM, 2021-22P, +coverage amounts of $18.7MM in 2018, $20MM in 2019, $20MM in 2020, $20MM in 2021
Aaron Altherr, $3.8MM, 2019-20P
Wade Leblanc, $600K, 2018-19T (Paid Minors)

MIN Reasons:

Love Goldschmidt but he was almost 20% of my salary cap so moving him for Hoskins ($960,000) + a small OF ugrade w/ Wiliams (+ his $600k as opposed to Altherr's $3.8 mil). Hoskins should end up with dual eligibility at 1B/OF and projects well going forward.

After saying all that, my primary focus remains cutting salary, upgrading pitching, and adding prospects. I lose SBs with Goldschmidt but feel that Hoskins will hit 30+ HRs this year and the Phillies will be a better team this year (so an opportunity to score more runs and have more RBIs).

I end up taking on $6.8 mil of bad contract in Susac + Andriese so, yes, that's a hit for my team. But w/o any decent pitching, it really doesn't matter. You look at several of the top teams and there is no way to compete w/osome adequate pitching. Losing a big expensive bat for a cheaper good bat is acceptable when looking at the long haul IMO. I gain +18.9 mil in 2019 after all these deals so have to keep making hard decisions that work within the rules and conditions of the league. (When your team sucks, it is difficult getting it to unsuck).

But, I'm excited about the possibility of getting better. Was very easy to work w/ Paul.

Since I traded him away to the former Tigers... haha

+17 Phillies

I hated this deal at first, but after I looked more into it I convinced myself it's closer than I initially thought if you only look at production. I mainly don't understand why the Twins were willing to keep as much of Goldy's salary as they did. With the withheld salary and the salary dumps of Susac and Andriese, the Phillies are essentially getting Goldy for $7.7MM through 2021, which is a steal. Susac and Andriese have the same term on their deals as Goldy, so the Twins won't get any extra cap relief before the end of the Goldy contract barring trade. To top it all off, the Twins have limited their flexibility to withhold salary in deals for the next few years, they'll have to give up extra assets to get other teams to return players with withheld salary prior to making any deals where they want to withhold salary themselves. The same applies for buyouts.

Hoskins and Williams are promising and definitely accomplish the Twins' goal of adding prospects/young players. However, they're both arbitration eligible, so their salaries won't stay as low as they are right now unless they don't perform. Fantrax projects them to be the 10th and 62nd best outfielders this year (who knows how accurate that is, but let's assume they stay exactly at those rankings for the duration of their contracts for the sake of argument). If they stay at those rankings, their 2021 salaries would be $5.6MM and $1.04MM, almost completely nullifying the savings on Goldy.

I guess if the Phillies keep Goldy for the 2021 season and he accepts the player option for 2022 (and I don't see him turning down $38.9M lol), Philly may have a cap issue, but that's years down the road.

In terms of production, this deal is ok if you believe in Hoskins. I'd rather have Goldschmidt because I've seen him do it, but it's not terrible to pick up two young promising outfielders. However, I think the cap implications are very one-sided in favor of Philly.