Power Potential: An introduction

While doing research for the Abreu trade article, I pored over salary numbers and payrolls, and a few things jumped out at me. I bounced over to the contracts on the Giants page, and was stunned by the ammount of money that Bonds, Alou, Finley and Durham were making. Their contracts for this year according to ESPN, 20, 7.45, 7 and 7 million respectively, for a total of 41.45 million. With Schmidt as a free agent at the end of this season, that gives the Giants' a payroll next year of around 40 million. Sabean might be dumb enough to pick up Finley's option for 7, and Durham might exercise his player option, but with all these contracts coming off the books, the Giants are going to have a tremendous ammount of flexibility.

The idea here isn't to predict which players teams will resign, but to look at their finance / talent position going into next season.

I was also looking at the Twins payroll and roster. Radke's 9 million will be gone, along with Hunter's 10.75. Stewart is gone for 6.5; several other players have options that may or may not be picked up. This will leave the Twins with only about 40 million committed, although, like the Giants some of this will disappear as contracts ramp up. The point remains that the Twins will also have a lot or room to redefine their team this winter.

The other advantage these teams both have is that they have some good young players coming along, especially in the rotation.

The Twins and Giants will provide the two archetypes for this series, big market teams that have a solid core and many millions to spend, and smaller market teams with a lot of cheap, young talent who clear some big contracts.

I'll profile the outlook for such teams in this series, so keep you eyes peeled for who's got power potential.