Fun Exercise.. Here's my list:

P Johan Santana $3

C Joe Mauer $5

1B Harmon Killebrew $5

2B Brian Dozier $2

3B Steve Braun $2

SS Christian Guzman $1

LF Gary Ward $1

CF Kirby Puckett $5

RF Tony Oliva $5

DH Jim Thome $3

Closer Ron Davis $1

I almost never get involved in this kind of discussion, when the measuring sticks are left entirely to each poster.  Still, here's my crack at it, where I'm going by cumulative stats but only as a Twin and with a bias toward peak rather than pure longevity.  If we are going on best single season, or fan favorites, or whatever, then it will be very different.

SP Santana $3

C Mauer $5

1B Killebrew $5

2B Carew $5

3B Castino $1

SS Guzman $1

LF Ward $1

CF Puckett $5

RF Allison $4

DH Bush  $1

Closer Reardon $2

I would always like to save a dollar but I can not bring myself to include Ron Davis in any list, even though it cost me Oliva 

Interesting list and there's definitely some value plays. My first cut at this put me $2 over which forced some hard sacrifices. But here's where I landed with this tight budget:

• P - Johan Santana $3
• C - Joe Mauer $5
• 1B - Justin Morneau $3
• 2B - Brian Dozier $2
• SS - Cristian Guzman $1
• 3B - Corey Koskie $4
• LF - Shane Mack $3
• CF - Kirrrrrrrrrbeeeeeee Puckett $5
• RF - Michael Cuddyer $2
• DH - Jim Thome $3
• CL - Jeff Reardon $2

Best value plays: Brian Dozier and Jeff Reardon for $2, Johan Santana for $3. Toughest cut for me: dropped Hrbek.

Oooh I’ll have to think and will come back to this later. Happy everyone’s included Mauer so far—while there are other excellent $5 options, I’d wager the drop from Mauer to Battey is more significant than most of the other drops from $5…

And, of course, Santana is such a value play at only $3!

I know…I’m not playing the game. But…

LHSP - Santana

RHSP - Blyleven

RP - Nathan

C - Mauer

1B - Morneau (I’d put Killebrew here if I had to, but I don’t have to)

2B - Carew

3B - Killebrew (played almost 800 games here…when in prime)

SS - Versailles (I expect this to be Correa in the future)

LF - Allison (apology to Larry Hisle)

CF - Puckett

RF - Oliva

DH - Cruz or Molitor (I could go either way)

Honestly, that’ll stack up quite well against most franchises.

Money no object, but this o

38 minutes ago, jkcarew said:

LHSP - Santana

RHSP - Blyleven

RP - Nathan

C - Mauer

1B - Morneau (I’d put Killebrew here if I had to, but I don’t have to)

2B - Carew

3B - Killebrew (played almost 800 games here…when in prime)

SS - Versailles (I expect this to be Correa in the future)

 

 

Honestly, that’ll stack up quite well against most franchises.

Money no object, but this one's got it.

4 minutes ago, Fritzderkat said:

 

Money no object, but this one's got it.

Honestly, I jumped the gun…just read the title 🙄.  But a cool concept…I’m just too lazy to go back and introduce the math.

36 minutes ago, jkcarew said:

Honestly, I jumped the gun…just read the title 🙄.  But a cool concept…I’m just too lazy to go back and introduce the math.

Leaving out the math introduces a slight element of this.

5 minutes ago, ashbury said:

Leaving out the math introduces a slight element of this.

If that’s an Elephant taking a dump, then I resemble that remark.

2 minutes ago, jkcarew said:

If that’s an Elephant taking a dump, then I resemble that remark.

Unintended Consequences dominate my life.

9 hours ago, ashbury said:

I almost never get involved in this kind of discussion, when the measuring sticks are left entirely to each poster.  Still, here's my crack at it, where I'm going by cumulative stats but only as a Twin and with a bias toward peak rather than pure longevity.  If we are going on best single season, or fan favorites, or whatever, then it will be very different.

SP Santana $3

C Mauer $5

1B Killebrew $5

2B Carew $5

3B Castino $1

SS Guzman $1

LF Ward $1

CF Puckett $5

RF Allison $4

DH Bush  $1

Closer Reardon $2

I would always like to save a dollar but I can not bring myself to include Ron Davis in any list, even though it cost me Oliva 

Youre not wrong about Ron Davis. 

3 hours ago, Fritzderkat said:

Money no object, but this o

Money no object, but this one's got it.

If money is no object this is correct. 

I am interested that SO many people picked Jeff Reardon over Aguilera and Nathan. Aggy obviously won the chip in 91 and Nathan has more 40 save seasons and overall saves than anyone in team history. 

For those who chose Reardon: what made you choose him?

5 hours ago, Devlin Clark said:

I am interested that SO many people picked Jeff Reardon over Aguilera and Nathan. Aggy obviously won the chip in 91 and Nathan has more 40 save seasons and overall saves than anyone in team history. 

 

For those who chose Reardon: what made you choose him?

Value play. Reardon was the closer on a championship squad and got the job done. Aguilera & Nathan were both better, but you had to find savings somewhere because of the $$ restrictions in this scenario. felt like the drop off to some other positions was higher. Give me another $2-4 to work with and I'm probably looking a lot harder at Aggie or Nathan.

I will give this a crack later today.  GREAT IDEA by the way!  I wonder if you could reissue this on another thread with some tweaks.  I like the format of a RH & LH SP as well as possibly a RH & LH RP.  (Ron Perranoski anyone??).  I also think certain players should be given positional flexibility with either the same value or a different value at a position.  For Example:  Harmon Killebrew 1B-$5 but Harmon Killebrew 3B $4??  Lyman Bostock should be included and have a value at both LF and CF.  Allison should have a Value in LF as should Tovar.  Carew could have a value at 1B.  Cruz SHOULD be listed at DH.  Maybe you drop Bush at the $1 slot and find a place to list Cruz.  If you added RH & LH SP and RH & LH RP would you alter the $33 salary cap limit??  What would that be?  You have to admit, what makes this exercise INTERESTING is having to operate within the proscribed salary cap.  Could any "values" be reconsidered??  As an example, Johan Santana could easily be the $5 prize SP, certainly if you included RH & LH starters.  In this current rendition of this exercise he's just a no-brainer at "SP" especially with Brad Radke listed ahead of him.  No matter what the career stats are there's no comparison between Santana and Brad Radke.  

10 hours ago, Devlin Clark said:

I am interested that SO many people picked Jeff Reardon over Aguilera and Nathan.

jmlease1 already echoed my reasoning, but just to elaborate, for me it was a principle of greatest-regret, and/or a greedy heuristic. Of course the "value" of each player is left up to individual posters, but the prices are set by your article.  For each of the 11 positions, decide a numerical amount of "regret" from having to go with the best choice versus having to settle for the value of someone else.  Among these 11, start by picking the positions you would regret the most, lather, rinse, repeat.  For me, those were CF, 1B and C.  I used Wins Above Average for their Twins career; some other metric for value, where the differences at the top would not be so large, say a numerical value for how much you love each player, would result in very different choices.  Anyway, to answer the specific question about relievers, the WAA for Joe Nathan was not enough higher than the others to exceed the regret for losing, say, Puckett, and the regret going further down the reliever list became even smaller.  Davis would have been the logical choice, but as I said before, I had some fun with it.

This greedy heuristic was key to success in one of the first analytics projects in my career, a military logistics problem, and so naturally I remember it well, and use it any chance I get.  How a baseball all-star team relates to moving military units is probably best left for another time...

• P - Johan Santana $3
• C - Joe Mauer $5
• 1B - Justin Morneau $3
• 2B - Rod Carew $5
• SS - Roy Smallley $3
• 3B - John Castino $1
• LF - Shane Mack $3
• CF -Cesar Tovar $2
• RF - Bruno $3
• DH - Jim Thome $3
• CL - Jeff Reardon $2

OK.  I'll play. 

• 3  P Santana
• 1   C  AJ
• 5 1B Killebrew
• 5 2B Carew
• 1  SS Guzman
• 3  3B Rollins
• 3 LF Mack
• 4 CF Hunter
• 4 RF Allison
• 2 DH Winfield
• 2 CL Reardon

I pained over this way too much.  Lots of really good players to choose from.  My "value" plays were Santana as a $3 pitcher, Reardon as a $2 closer, and AJ as a $1 Catcher.  Moving my closer from Nathan to Reardon saved me $3 which was enough to get me Allison and Rollins from back in the day.  My "core" if you will, were Carew and Killebrew, with a capable but cheap Guzman and AJ to bring the costs in line with the budget.  This lineup would definitely compete, but I don't know that Santana would hold up very well being the only pitcher in a 162 game season.  Not even Blyleven could do that (unless you ask him!), and he costs more!

4 hours ago, TopGunn#22 said:

I will give this a crack later today.  GREAT IDEA by the way!  I wonder if you could reissue this on another thread with some tweaks.  I like the format of a RH & LH SP as well as possibly a RH & LH RP.  (Ron Perranoski anyone??).  I also think certain players should be given positional flexibility with either the same value or a different value at a position.  For Example:  Harmon Killebrew 1B-$5 but Harmon Killebrew 3B $4??  Lyman Bostock should be included and have a value at both LF and CF.  Allison should have a Value in LF as should Tovar.  Carew could have a value at 1B.  Cruz SHOULD be listed at DH.  Maybe you drop Bush at the $1 slot and find a place to list Cruz.  If you added RH & LH SP and RH & LH RP would you alter the $33 salary cap limit??  What would that be?  You have to admit, what makes this exercise INTERESTING is having to operate within the proscribed salary cap.  Could any "values" be reconsidered??  As an example, Johan Santana could easily be the $5 prize SP, certainly if you included RH & LH starters.  In this current rendition of this exercise he's just a no-brainer at "SP" especially with Brad Radke listed ahead of him.  No matter what the career stats are there's no comparison between Santana and Brad Radke.  

This is great feedback and I may just alter the list at some point and the budget too!

4 hours ago, ashbury said:

jmlease1 already echoed my reasoning, but just to elaborate, for me it was a principle of greatest-regret, and/or a greedy heuristic. Of course the "value" of each player is left up to individual posters, but the prices are set by your article.  For each of the 11 positions, decide a numerical amount of "regret" from having to go with the best choice versus having to settle for the value of someone else.  Among these 11, start by picking the positions you would regret the most, lather, rinse, repeat.  For me, those were CF, 1B and C.  I used Wins Above Average for their Twins career; some other metric for value, where the differences at the top would not be so large, say a numerical value for how much you love each player, would result in very different choices.  Anyway, to answer the specific question about relievers, the WAA for Joe Nathan was not enough higher than the others to exceed the regret for losing, say, Puckett, and the regret going further down the reliever list became even smaller.  Davis would have been the logical choice, but as I said before, I had some fun with it.

This greedy heuristic was key to success in one of the first analytics projects in my career, a military logistics problem, and so naturally I remember it well, and use it any chance I get.  How a baseball all-star team relates to moving military units is probably best left for another time...

Interesting. For you, is the drop off between a Puckett to Hunter bigger than a Killebrew to a Morneau? I agree that you need to pick the positions you'd most regret losing out on and then going back for what's left. 

My team is

Kirby CF, Oliva RF, Carew 2B, Jones LF, Kaat P, Rollins 3B, Morneau 1B, Smalley SS, Reardon RP, Harper C and Winfield DH. The only possible change I would consider id Killebrew at first and switching others around but I'll skip that. It's a tough task but Kirby, Oliva and Carew are the best at their positions by far and Kaat is my favorite all-time Twins pitcher.

Thanks for the fun. Now on to APBA baseball to see which team wins.

28 minutes ago, Devlin Clark said:

Interesting. For you, is the drop off between a Puckett to Hunter bigger than a Killebrew to a Morneau? I agree that you need to pick the positions you'd most regret losing out on and then going back for what's left. 

Puckett was among the three with highest regret.  Again, I used Wins Above Average since we're honing in on "greatest" kinds of discussions rather than simply contributions over and above some AAA scrub.  And I used career as a Twin, rather than one single peak season, just because.  The costs you assigned were often at variance with WAA - so be it, another poster may pick a different metric than I chose, including of course no numerical metric at all.  Mauer actually had the highest regret (22 wins), Puckett and Carew were tied (18 wins), and Killebrew was also strong (12 wins).  WAA isn't very kind to Hunter, so the gap between him and Kirby is larger than some might expect.  Among the starting pitching, the top 3 were very close to each other and there was a steep dropoff to #4, making Santana the "value play" as others phrased it.  And so on - the other positions just were not high enough WAAs to make much difference by comparison.

P  Santana $3   This is a no brainer.  He's a $5 value.

RP  Al Worthington/Ron Perranoski  $1   Perranoski or Worthington belong on the list in place of Davis.  Worthington for sure has much more relevance to the Twins franchise.

C  Mauer  $5   (Future Twins HOF.  Talent drop off HUGE after Joe.  Gotta have Joe.

1B  Killebrew $5   I need 573 HR's.  Morneau a good value at $3

2B Rod Carew  $5  HOF.  Clearly the best 2B.

3B  Castino $1  Great glove, solid #8 or#9 hitter.  Save here to pay up elsewhere

SS  Guzman $1   Great Value !

RF  Tony Oliva  $5.  My all time favorite Twin and a HOF.  Drop off to Allison to save a dollar too steep.

CF  Cesar Tovar  $2  Tovar is not Puckett or Hunter (but he gets me Killebrew, Mauer, Carew and Oliva).

LF  Shane Mack  $3  Best value by far in LF group.  MUCH better than Gladden who, while being the LF for 2 World Series          is nowhere near as good as Mack.  If I could get Lyman Bostock for $2  I would and save a valuable dollar. 

DH  Dave Winfield $2   (It would depend on Where Nelson Cruz slotted in and at what value if he was available).

Total $33.  I cheated a bit with Al Worthington/Ron Perranoski but I just couldn't have a team like this and have a closer that would blow 3 saves a week!  Adding Lyman Bostock for $2 in LF and going with Randy Bush at DH still leaves me $1 short of Puckett in CF.  Molitor is one of my favorite players EVER, but just can't fit him in either.  

This was a blast and really made interesting with the values and limitations those provided!  Great topic Devlin.  

In the spirit of the Griffith family, always interested in saving a buck, from the bargain bin:

P Jim Merritt $1  (alt Dave Goltz)

Closer Mike Marshall $2 (alt Tom 'The Blade' Hall)

C George Mitterwald  $1 (alt Phil Roof)

1B Vic Power  $3 (alt Ron 'Papa' Jackson)

2B Billy Martin $1 (alt Frank Quilici)

SS Tsuyoshi Nishioka (I jest), my actual pick Danny Thompson $2

3B Eric Soderholm $1 (alt Eduardo Escobar)  

LF Mickey Hatcher $1 (alt Willie Norwood)

CF Ken Landreaux $2 (alt Ted Uhlaender)

RF Josh Willingham $2 (alt Brant Alyea)

DH ByungHo Park (laughing? again), Jason Kubel $1

$17  

Great Job Met Stadium Usher!  Lost of names that are "Blasts from the Past."