2010 Twins Tickets - Season ticket availability in Target Field

If you're in the Minnesota area and plan to see 5 or more games in 2010, why not join my season ticket group and take advantage of the opportunities that provides.  We're expanding from 4 seats per game to 12, so I've got a lot of holes to fill (and I'm hoping I didn't overextend!)  Seat information is below - full payment this year is due by December.  Ideally, to cut down on the number of people I need to correspond with, I'm hoping to find people to commit to 20 or more tickets.  But every bit helps, so 10 or more is doable too!

You can pick either 2 or 4 tickets to any game and you can mix up your requests between the different seating options.

See a separate blog for ongoing information - below is the original post:

Three different seat locations in 2010 - See the links below for seating charts and 3-D representations of what the view will be like from the seats.

Prices listed are season-ticket package prices, which in the Dome were $5-10 below face value.

Master seating chart

Legends Club
All tickets include access to the club amenities for that game.
Price: $55 each
Section G, Row 5, Seats 14-17
On the aisle closest to home plate
3-D View

Limited or no availability for new members to the group (joining in August 2009 and later).  While we pick games on a random basis, the priority for number of seats available goes by seniority in the group.  But get in now and there is future opportunity.

Diamond Box Seats
$38 each
Section 121, Row 3, Seats 1-4
On the aisle closest to home plate - on the 3rd base line.
Direct view of the downtown skyline - in the sun for all afternoon games.
3-D View
Just across the aisle, tickets in "Home Plate Box" cost $50
The section in front of us is Section 15 - "Dugout Box" seats that cost $69 each
Section 15 has 15 rows...then there's a dividing wall, then we're in Row 3 of the next section.  So consider this maybe about 20 rows from the field.

Field Box Seats
$29 each
Section 103, Row 7, Seats 21-24
On the aisle closest to home plate
Right field line - faces the video scoreboard.  In the sun for early afternoon during mid-summer.
3-D View

Just across the aisle, tickets in "Diamond Box" cost $38
Here we're 7 rows from the field down the right field line. The seats are turned toward the infield.

Football Pool opportunities

I run 2 football pools that are open to everyone (there are several BWB players in or have been in the past).

NFL Pool - $40 entry. Pick winners each week (no spread) and rank games 1-16. You get the number of points you put on the game if you're right. Highest total wins the week. Last year we paid 5 weekly places and the top 6 for the season. The top winner last year won $216.

NCAA Pool - $26 entry. Same idea, though you don't have to rank all the games. This year to reduce ties, we're making one game worth 3 points and three games worth 2 points (you choose which ones to put more weight on). CBS picks 15 games each week...season runs for 13 weeks.

To get in:
NFL Pool - Link and password:
http://bwfbp.football.cbssports.com/e
Our Pool password is: bwb2009

NCAA Pool - Link and password:
http://bwcfb.football.cbssports.com/e
Our Pool password is: bwcfb2009

Hurry! First games for the NCAA pool are Thursday Sept. 3rd
Correction: CBS moved back the start one week: NCAA picks start Thursday, Sept. 10

Contract Extensions - Last Minute Thoughts

I'd hoped to post a discussion of good and bad contracts that might have been signed last season to give some guidance but I both ran out of time and took a look at the list of salary increases/decreases and just froze on coming up with a ton of examples.

But - these players were the best to sign for a 2009 contract in 2008.

Tim Lincecum: 2008 Salary (and 2009 contract price): 1315; 2009: 6491; Savings: 5176
Cliff Lee: 2008: 1568; 2009: 5670; Savings: 4102
Josh Hamilton: 2008: 691; 2009: 4696; Savings: 4005
Rich Harden: 2008: 493; 2009: 4293; Savings: 3800

Now - it's doubtful that up until now Harden is living up to that high salary in the 2009 season, but it's a lot more tolerable if you bought his contract in 2008 for just 493.

Lincecum, by the way, is a great example of the possibilities of a 2-year contract.
2007 Salary: 100
2008 Salary: 1315
2009 Salary: 6491

In 2007, you would have paid 1500 for a contract covering 2008-09 (using the yearly minimums of 250 in year 1 and 1250 in year 2). If you had simply kept him on your roster without the extensions, you would have paid a total salary of 7806 for those 2 seasons. Using the 2-year contract, you just freed up 6306 over 2 seasons to spend on other players.

Beware, though...because there are always guys like Francisco Liriano. I spent 1500 in his rookie season for 2 years BEFORE he got injured (injury occurred at end of July 2006). 2006 Salary - 148 2007 Salary - 1883 2008 Salary - 694.

OK, so I paid 250 for the 2007 season and it looks like I saved a lot of money. But he sat out the whole season recovering from Tommy John surgery. And the 1250 I spent on the second year of the contract went toward the actual salary of 694.

Couple other points: Again - don't sign Stephen Strasburg or Dustin Ackley yet - or anyone else until they hit their first season of major playing time. And I'd also suggest that don't simply look for cost savings in a salary that will increase. Make sure that you think you really want that player on your roster next year, because you've got to keep him in the carry over period.

Good luck

Trades - Why are you giving the other team cash?

There's one thing that has always puzzled me when reviewing/approving trades over the last few years. Well, maybe more than one thing - but in this case I'm talking about teams giving up cash when it appears that they are giving up the established star in return for future help.

First, let me say, that I just don't tend to be a trader very often. Partly this is due to spending more time trying to run BWB than playing it and it seems like I have limited time to suggest trades or analyze requests sent to me. But, if I'm in a trade where I'm giving up a player who has a much higher salary than the player(s) I'm getting in return, I'm most often seeing part of that benefit being the salary rebate I'm getting for my original player - particularly if I'm getting prospects or backups in return. I'm less inclined to want to send back some cash to that other team.

Cash may be an essential part of the negotiation - and "buying" a player certainly is an option. But I'm referring more to a team that seems to be giving up the more established - key contributer type players - and then sends cash along with it.

An example. Let's say that I'm running the team "Minneapolis" and I'm in 4th place - 20 games out - and looking now to build for 2010 and beyond. Brad runs the team "Portland" and is just 1 game out in his division and fighting hard to win the title, but he has a big hole at 1B.

Current Cash Balances:
Minneapolis - 4500
Portland - 3000

My strategy for building for the future is to get prospects on my roster and cash ready to spend in the off season or to spend multiyear contracts by the end of July.

Brad sees Adrian Gonzalez on my roster (salary 5310) and covets his power for his cleanup slot and offers me Gordon Beckham, Travis Snider, and Dustin Ackley - 3 first-rounders from the past few years - each with salary of 100. Beckham's playing now. Snider could be back up later and maybe starting again in 2010. Ackley's a potential future stud.

Assume we're doing this in Week 14 and the cost/rebate is 44% which becomes 2336 for Gonzalez and 44 for the three prospects.

(I'm not saying this is a perfect trade...I'm just trying to find an example - maybe I'd actually want to be getting someone a little more established so I'd be getting more immediate help in 2010...but let's just go with it.)

So, we do the deal. No cash involved - and when it's all done, the cash balances are now:
Minneapolis - 6704
Portland - 796

This is good for me. I've taken a risk on future guys - given up an established power hitter - and I have extra cash for rebuilding to boot. But what I often end up seeing in these deals is a cash aspect too that Brad has attached to the trade details - let's say in this case 1500 from Minneapolis to Portland.

In this case, the cash balances after the trade are:
Minneapolis - 5204
Portland - 2296

In fact - often the cash transfer is worked out so that both teams have the same cash balance after the trade as they did before starting.

Why is that in my benefit? If I've got David Price on my pitching staff and I want to sign him to a contract for 2010 and 2011, 1500 is what that will cost. Or that 1500 will come in handy in December when I'm picking up players in the Redistribution Draft.

I also look at this as a continual competition. By sending Gonzalez to Portland this season, I may be giving him the missing link to a league title this season. By sending him 1500 in cash, I'm potentially setting him up to better defend that title and might be in direct competition with Brad for the same free agents over the winter.

I'm giving up Gonzalez and maybe won't see the full benefit of the three players for 2-3 years - if at all. I'm not necessarily concerned that Portland still has as much cash after the deal as he does before - that's his part of the risk.

There are many other side situations that come into play - and I am not looking at the back and forth that's going into trades before they are consummated, so I don't know where the negotiations are progressing. But I personally think many teams in the situation of Minneapolis are giving back too much. Maybe the Portlands of the world are just better negotiators, but I think that's because the precedent is set up around the leagues to do it.

It's a bit different when a multiyear contract is in play - there may be some cash to reimburse a team who has spent cash on the contract (though I usually see that contract as a bargaining chip). What if Portland's original cash was 2000, not 3000? Then he wouldn't have enough cash to cover this deal. OK, maybe now as Minneapolis I help him out with some cash back to help him pay for Gonzalez for the rest of 2009. OR - maybe it's just up to Portland to cut some dead weight on his roster or make a tough roster choice and cut/trade another productive player to get some cash back - that's usually the way I look at it.

And - I've been in the situation here of being the Minneapolis side of the deal and ME offering the deal and the cash - almost to make the deal too hard to turn down. Like I said, there are many situations in play...but put me on the side generally of wanting to reap the full benefits of the salary rebate if I'm giving up the more established players or I'm the team in rebuilding mode.

Multiyear Contracts - A rundown of help options.

I hope in the next few days to put up some examples of good/bad contract signings and some general thoughts. But as a quick service, there are some scattered pages on the site and on this blog that discuss multiyear contracts, particularly updated this year to try to correct some misconceptions.

It never fails, despite the comments and warnings, I will still have someone try to sign 20+ players on his roster to multiyear contracts, or try to extend Albert Pujols for 5 years. But hopefully, if you're not sure what's really going on with contracts and you take a look at some of these pages, you can get a feel for what to do and what not to do.

• The BWB Rules page regarding multiyear contracts
• BWB Primer - Chapter 8 - on Multiyear Contracts
• A blog entry from February 2009 discussing contracts
• There are several points to consider on the Contract Extensions page as reached from the Transactions page on the web site.

There are also some basic notes on the contract extension form as found on the web site.

If you're still not completely sure how everything works, after you submit your extensions:

• Go back to the contract extension form and look in the last column (Contract Total). That will display how much cash you're going to have to spend on that player's contract if you keep it as is.
• On your team's Transaction Index, below your Adds/Drops for the week, if you've submitted extensions, it will indicate the total cash needed for those extensions.
• If after looking at these two pages, you realize that you don't have enough cash to cover the contracts (you pay the total IMMEDIATELY) or your badly calculated what it would cost you, you can go back to the form and modify or delete the contract.

BWB Primer #8 - Multiyear Contracts

The BWB Primer is a series of commentaries to provide rule interpretations and hints - something a bit more than you get out of the rules. See the Primer Index for the entire series.

Now that the time has come to think seriously about contract extensions, a little further explanation on how this works.

The idea is quite simple - lock in a player for another year (or more) based on his salary this season.

There are three primary advantages to this:

1. You can sign successful rookies or other young players for significantly less money than they might make next season. Often, you can lock them in for several years at a reduced rate.
2. Established players coming off a bad season or two (and thus a reduced salary) may also see a significant rise in salary if they play at their normal level again this season. Now's your chance to grab him again for a low price.
3. You use this year's money to pay future salaries, theoretically giving you more money to work with next year. In reality, you're not going to have any money taken away from you in the off-season (unless you're over the limit in April)...and all teams get the same amount of cash in November. So if you don't spend a million bucks now, you'll still have it in December when you want to re-sign the same player for next year (however, you'll be spending that cash on the new 2010 salary, not the 2009 level). But by spending a lot less cash on a rising player now, you'll be able to better afford higher-priced players over the winter.
   

The basic formula is that you can re-sign any player for next year for the exact same salary he makes this year. The only caveat to that is the minimum contract is for 250, so those rookies you've got making 100 this year will cost you 250 to sign for next year.

For additional seasons, figure a 33% rise in salary each year after the first. The minimums go up significantly in successive years. For example, the minimum salary for the second year of a contract is 1250.

You must complete the contracts by the last transaction date in July. You must have the available cash at that time to sign the player.

If you trade a player, the contract goes with him. You don't get any rebate for any future years. However, you can use this as a bargaining chip in your trade negotiations (a cheap player signed for multiple years suddenly has more value).

----

And now the risks -

• Contracts are fully guaranteed. If you cut a player next season, you don't get any of that money back. If you cut him later this year, you don't get any future money back, but will get a rebate for this season's salary, if applicable (assuming that you paid his salary for the current season). Once a player is back in the free agent pool, the contract is gone.
• Another aspect of "fully guaranteed" is that during the off season period, you cannot expose your player in the Redistribution Draft - he must be one of the 28 players that you retain in December. Once the draft is complete, you can cut him if you want.
• You must pay the full amount of the contract immediately. Unlike real life, the money is not paid out over time. You must have the cash on hand for the full contract and it is subtracted from your balance right away. The risk here is that you could leave yourself short for late-season transactions or - if you have chosen contracts unwisely - you may limit your possible moves over the winter.
  
• Be careful of signing too early. If you sign a player in early June and he goes out for the rest of the season a few days after that, you may have ended up paying too much for him for the next season (a lot of a player's salary is based on at bats or innings pitched). You have until the end of July to extend contracts - it may be wise to wait until then.
• Your risk increases with the length of the contract. On multiyear deals, there's always the chance that you make out in the first year, but if that season is bad (or if he is out of baseball), you may have ended up overpaying for the later years.
  
• Extending minor league prospects gets you nothing. If they don't play in the majors this year, or only in September callups, or only with limited success, you're going to spend 250 on a player that will be making only 100 or slightly more next year - plus you are obligated to keep them during the Redistribution Draft.

Let me say this again - clearly - once you pay the money for future seasons in a contract you will never - ever - get that money back.

However, the multiyear contract can be an effective tool for building your team in the future. You can use them to turn around a dismal franchise or turn your team into a perennial title contender.

BWB Primer #7 - Off-season Money

The BWB Primer is a series of commentaries to provide rule interpretations and hints - something a bit more than you get out of the rules. See the Primer Index for the entire series.

Hopefully, none of you has lost enough hope that you're simply planning out for next year, but as we near the halfway mark of the season I just want to quickly explain how cash works from one season to the next.

2010 Salaries and Salary Cap
Salaries are determined by player performance. 2/3 of the 2010 salary will be based on performances in 2009 and 1/3 of the salary is the player's 2009 salary. In addition, players ranking in the top of certain hitting/pitching categories and for post-season awards will have a bonus attached to the 2010 salary - making premium players worth a premium price.

The salary calculations are shown in the rule book.

Once the salaries are complete (usually mid-November), the salry cap is calculated. Again, see the rules for the actual formulas, but the idea is to allocate so much money for the top salaries, an additional amount for mid-tier players, and an additional amount for minor leaguers. As overall salary levels themselves rise and fall, the salary cap will also change.

Cash Distribution
There's not really a hard cap on team salary - instead the "cap" is used to determine how much cash each team gets in the off season. The cash distribution for every team in a league will be the amount needed to get the team with the lowest balance up to the cap level.

For example, if Team X has the lowest cash balance in the league at 100,000 at the end of the season and the salary cap is 48 million, each team in that league will get 47.9 million. Any bonuses for playoff performance or player of the year awards will come after that.

Off-season signings
You get to keep up to 28 players from your roster. You must pay for those players immediately when you select them in December. You'll get only a 50% rebate if you cut them later in the off-season. Your remaining cash is all you'll have to sign players in the Redistribution Draft or in free agency until the season begins. Note - you do NOT have to sign a player to a contract during the season in order to keep him next season (more on that in Primer #8 regarding multiyear contracts)

Maximum cash
Just before the 2010 season will begin, any team with more than 5 million in the bank will have their cash balances reduced to 5 million. So you need to spend wisely in the off-season, but you can't hoard your cash either.

Multiyear Contracts
One way to save cash for the next year is to sign players for 2010 at their 2009 salary. This is the subject of the next chapter to come soon.