It's encouraging that he's still a good defender. It's not just that having his glove would help, but it kind of makes it feel like he's just aging slightly better. I'm not sure if I've explained that quite well, but maybe that just means it doesn't really make sense and I'm saying it to convince myself.

I'm starting to realize that the money thing is the way I feel most differently about baseball now than 10-25 years ago. Granted, the Twins were on a much tighter leash with money back then. And it was kind of a fun way to think about the game according to a secret set of rules (be cheap) that confined your team and made their winning more interesting or virtuous or whatever. Particularly because they were going to be cheap regardless of how I felt about it, so why not make it work for me emotionally. But I don't really bother to think about team payroll at all. The process by which the ownership and front office would decide seems so alien to any on-field product - except in the very narrow sense that there's probably some end to fan's patience if ownership and front office keep refusing to invest in a team that shows potential. But I'm not really sure that matters *that* much.

So, now I just kind of shrug it off as somebody else's money. Though this is the most shrugging I've had to do in awhile. He's getting paid a lot and my sort of despair/optimism about the clear finitude of the Twins competitive window (2020-2021, maybe 2022) sort of casually ignores the fact that the Twins farm system is pretty well stocked. Maybe not the upside of the group that made up the current roster but way more depth - and not without upside too. Royce Lewis was up to top-5 in baseball recently. Though for some reason I'm not as interested in him as I was in Buxton, Kepler, Sano, etc. If there's any one option that I thought was better than signing Donaldson, it was using Lewis in trade to get Arenado or Bryant. Am I remembering right that you're a Cubs fan? What's Bryant's... deal?

Also, I am sorry for missing your post on the other thread. I put up this assuming it was the only post and kind of overcommitted.

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"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad