Just a few days ago, I wrote about the relative lull in local sports news — and projected that big news would be coming soon.
Grading the Kirk Cousins extension and three big Twins trades
It was a big weekend of moves for the Vikings and Twins. Let's see how they did.
March 14, 2022 at 2:28PM
But even I couldn't have predicted what happened over the weekend.
Patrick Reusse and I talked about the headline moves — Kirk Cousins' contract extension and the Twins' three trades — on Monday's Daily Delivery podcast.
But let's go a step further now and give the moves a grade that will stick with them forever, or at least until I change my mind:
- Cousins extension: He gets an additional $35 million added for another season and a no-trade clause as well, making it a virtual certainty that he will be the Vikings' QB in both 2022 and 2023. The deal has two void years tacked onto it, lowering Cousins' cap number by $14 million this season and helping the Vikings get into a better financial position.
While there is some good creativity on the financial side of the deal, the move itself is extremely underwhelming. Cousins has been in Minnesota for four seasons. With Aaron Rodgers back in Green Bay for the foreseeable future and the Vikings having numerous other roster holes, this seemed like the perfect time to trade Cousins and reset expectations to compete in 2023 and beyond.
Instead, new GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and coach Kevin O'Connell arrived at a decision that maintains a mediocre status quo. The Vikings will be better in 2022 with Cousins than they would be without him, and they could be a fringe playoff team, but their ceiling with Cousins will never be high enough to win a Super Bowl.
If there really wasn't a trade market for Cousins, they should have just let him play this year at $45 million and walked away. Instead, they bought another year.
Grade: C-minus.
- Twins trade draft pick Chase Petty for starting pitcher Sonny Gray: It's always hard to lose a prospect, and Petty had plenty of upside as the Twins' top pick in the 2021 draft. But high school pitchers are a gamble, the Twins already have several pitching prospects in the pipeline and Gray is an established pitcher who immediately moves into the upper part of a thin rotation.
This was a no-brainer, especially with Gray under team control for two seasons.
Grade: B-plus.
- Twins trade catcher Mitch Garver to Texas for shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa, then deal Kiner-Falefa and third baseman Josh Donaldson to the Yankees for catcher Gary Sanchez and third baseman Gio Urshela: This sure seems like a lot of work just to get out from underneath Josh Donaldson's contract (and perhaps his general presence).
Urshela is fine as a third baseman, but the Twins still don't have a shortstop now and they have both Sanchez (who has struggled mightily to make contact in recent years) and Ryan Jeffers (ditto) as catchers.
This is a head-scratcher unless there are more moves to come.
Grade: An incomplete that will turn into a D if more work isn't turned in.
When he was hired after the disastrous 2016 season to reshape the Twins, Derek Falvey brought a reputation for identifying and developing pitching talent. It took a while, but the pipeline we were promised is now materializing.
