Welcome to the Wednesday edition of The Cooler, where sometimes we agree to disagree. Let's get to it:
*The Twins brain trust, led by Derek Falvey and Thad Levine, made several long-term contract offers to young core players this offseason. They weren't able to land two of their biggest fish — Eddie Rosario and Jose Berrios — but they did ink two significant players to five-year deals: Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco.
Kepler's deal is worth at least $35 million for those five years (with a team option for another year at $10 million), while Polanco will get $25.75 million over the same span (with team options for two more years at $22.5 million combined).
These types of deals are usually win-win at a certain level. Young players get financial security without the year-to-year haggling that comes with arbitration or eventually free agency. Teams get cost-certainty and the possibility of a discount if players outperform their contracts.
Two months into those five-year deals, both Kepler and Polanco are showing strong signs that they might, indeed, outperform those deals. Even in a stacked lineup, both are standing out.
Polanco is second in the American League with a .335 batting average and his .988 OPS easily leads all MLB shortstops. Kepler is fresh off winning player of the week honors. He has a 10-game hitting streak, during which he's cracked four homers and driven in 16 runs — including two big ones Tuesday to break a scoreless tie in an eventual 5-3 win over Milwaukee.
Kepler turned 26 in February, and Polanco will turn 26 in July. They had previously established themselves as everyday players, but they had enough cold stretches to go with hot stretches that their ceilings were uncertain. But now they look like more than that — and the Twins stand to benefit from that continued trajectory through prime seasons of their careers.
Rosario and Berrios, by the way, cannot be faulted for betting on themselves. Both are having monster seasons, and they stand to make even more money down the road.
