I was very worried that this wasn't going to happen for a perfectly normal but still avoidable set of reasons. The story was that Buxton's very reasonable claim of having MVP-quality upside would meet the Twins' similarly reasonable claim that Buxton was basically a part-timer and because those two claims are incompatible, Buxton's future in Minneapolis was limited to the 2022 season, if that. I'm happy that story was wrong because I think Byron Buxton is incredibly fun to watch and that's an excellent thing when it happens to your favorite team.

It turns out the thing that was more important than those reasonable claims is that the Twins understand how good Buxton is and that he realizes that this contract extension was his last chance to get one hundred million dollars without actually playing like an MVP for a full, healthy season. Not that he can't or that he's even unsure that he can. Just that it's preferable to get paid first.

Maybe the no-trade clause or the pretty substantial award incentives are interesting? The latter is kinda, at least in the sense that it's expensive. He'll make an additional $8MM for winning MVP, $7MM for second, $6MM for third, $5MM for fourth, $4MM for fifth, and $3MM for anything sixth through tenth. Again, if he's healthy then all those bonuses are plausible for any year of this deal. But that outcome would be pretty welcome by the Twins, so there you go.

I guess that's it. There's enough good players on the Twins roster that nobody has any right to be surprised if they're actually good, but they have enough serious problems that they're more likely to be bad again. That's actually a really boring spot for a team to be in, at least during the off-season. But eventually they'll play the actual games and we'll see what happens.

A good thing happened and I'm going to benefit from enjoying it. Last year was disappointing and as i mentioned above, doesn't appear likely to improve. But Buxton running down balls in the gap is fun like a movie is fun even if it's not happening for a team that's fun like a baseball team winning a lot of games is fun.

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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

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Mar-A-Lago delenda est