Pirates Prospects: Worley Back on Track

[old nurse]

I thought this was a thread on Worley ...

 

Maybe they are practicing at second guessing for 12 years from now when Worley is closing out a HOF career.

[jokin]

Exactly, and the contract value of $1.25M suggests that was the best offer on the table. According to wiki, he was used as a pinch hitter and had a few starts at DH the first two months of the year and was not the regular starter until Jeremy Giambi (not the good one) was benched on June 1.

 

With hindsight it was a bad move, but the other 29 GM's were right alongside Terry on this one.

 

And with foresight it was a bad move. The other 29 GMs were not right alongside Terry Ryan, TR had a figurative front row seat. And what he had just witnessed in that front row seat was Ortiz being future Ortiz, practically carrying his team himself to the finish line with an OPS over 1.000 over the last 3 months of the season.

 

(Tobi, check back at the article I posted in this thread, which documented the 2003 season in Boston. Ortiz lack of playing time caused him to demand to be released, instead Epstein promised he'd fix things, and sure enough, he forced Francona's hand by making a trade and clearing the way for Otiz's insertion in the lineup.)

[old nurse]

Cool article on PEDs, and how there is no evidence they help an individual, on the interwebs this week.

 

from one of those articles

 

Obviously there are a lot of caveats in play here. Small sample sizes, imperfect data about when guys start and stop taking PEDs and, of course, the flaws any projection system, even one as generally reliable as ZiPS, brings to the table.

 

Furthermore, what was done in Biogenesis might havebeen different than what done in the past. Different drugs, different effects What does anyone really know. So the known and suspected users from the part did not benefit from ando and the other roids.

[Rosterman]

This is getting a little old. I have said at least three times that not everyone of these are the fault of Anderson. However, assembling a list of people that had more success with and without is one data point. I then stated that the list of guys who had more success elsewhere is equal in size or longer. I didn't even say he is a bad coach or that he should be fired, it just seems like he has a great reputation and I would expect a ton of success stories with the Twins versus without.

 

Neshek was coming off surgery. The Twins hoped to stash him AND free up a roster spot, but someone grabbed him. Like Diamond, Parmelee and others, the Twins hoped that they could send them out and keep them, but someone else saw soemthing.

[DJL44]

Phil Hughes looks like an example in the "Anderson is a good pitching coach" category. At least he's better than the Yankee pitching coach.

[gunnarthor]

The Twins could have maximized value by retaining him- not releasing him, and then letting him continue to do for the Twins in 2003 what he did from July 1, 2002 to the end of the season. He carried the team from that point on- he OPS'd at 1.039 the last 3 months of the season, it was surreptitiously becoming "his team", much as the Red Sox ultimately became his team.

 

Actually, his OPS from July to the end of Sept was .940 and that was really mostly because of a hot two week window in July where he hit 8 home runs. Over the last two months of the season, his OPS was .795 (low obp, high slug), and he was worse in the playoffs. He was 16th on the 2002 team in WAR.

[jokin]

I don't know the contract values offhand jokin, so I'm going to trust you here. That said, he would have made far more than 1.25M in arbitration. That is specifically the point. Terry Ryan couldn't trade him as no one felt he was worth the price. When he was released, every team in baseball could have had Ortiz for the price of arbitration. None of them decided he was worth it, including I might add Theo Epstein. No one is saying that Ortiz was a good decision. What I've been trying to say is that his was very much a baseball decision, and while the Twins made a mistake, everyone else did too. (side note, Epstein said the exact same thing in an article a few years back, noting that he himself made that mistake). And let's also be clear that no one doubted Ortiz's ability to hit. Even using the Twins approach, Ortiz was a very good hitter.

 

This isn't a case of simple incompetence. Baseball's pay structure and Ortiz's injuries made Ortiz too much of a risk to justify action for every team in MLB, otherwise some one would have traded a C level prospect for him or someone would have claimed him when he went on waivers.

 

Let's also not pretend that we know how steroids impacted his development.... because that comes into play here as well, and no one other than Ortiz can honestly say what happened, especially in regards to an oft injured hitter suddenly not being oft-injured anymore.

 

I agree that Ortiz would have been awarded more than $1.25M, but not that much more. And in retrospect, it still comes back to the reality that the guy who knew the most about Ortiz, TR, made a penny-pinching decision that saved, in baseball terms, a paltry tiny fraction of payroll dollars for a period of just one season, versus the missed opportunity of 3 or 4 legitimate shots at World Series appearances. "Simple incompetence"? Perhaps not. But "baseball's pay structure" would not have crippled this team- in the form of Ryan being just a little more intrepid, rolling the dice, and playing out the string a little longer on Ortiz. Again, he knew Ortiz better than anyone else in baseball (or I guess, should have known better- how many HOF caliber players slip through a GMs hands in a long career?- it virtually never happens).

[jokin]

Actually, his OPS from July to the end of Sept was .940 and that was really mostly because of a hot two week window in July where he hit 8 home runs. Over the last two months of the season, his OPS was .795 (low obp, high slug), and he was worse in the playoffs. He was 16th on the 2002 team in WAR.

 

Some of what you said is true, and the OPS to the end of the season is dependent on when the "2nd half" was calculated.

 

But in your slamming Ortiz for his WAR value, since this was in context to the second half of the season, when Ortiz actually began playing regularly, your WAR quote is immaterial. Furthermore, he only played 14 games in the field, so of course his WAR value is affected relative to everyday defensive position players. Given that handicap, by fWAR, Ortiz was 3rd on the Twins position players in the second half. His second half OPS+ was 146, highest on the team, second place was Jacque Jones at 143. The Twins played .602 ball from July 1 on with Ortiz playing regularly, before that date, they were playing at a .568 percentage. (As I stated, the Twins were in the process of "becoming" his team, but as his playoff performance showed, it hadn't quite "become" his team yet, as would later happen in Beantown).

[Thrylos]

What does that have to do with no clubs claiming Ortiz when they had the chance?

 

Claiming him? They did not have the chance. The Twins did not offer him arbitration and he was a free agent with the ability to play for whomever he wanted to play. He wanted to play for the Red Sox and eventually both sides made it happen. A huge factor for his choice was his buddy Pedro Martinez who worked hard to make it happen. I would suggest to everyone who is interested about Ortiz' side of the story on what happened while with the Twins and how he got to Boston to read his book...

[Guest USAFChief]

Here is a pretty good recap of the situation:

 

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/41989/how-david-ortiz-became-david-ortiz

[Richie the Rally Goat]

If the Pirates do to Worley what they did to Liriano, there would be no valid excuse to keep Rick Anderson around. Maybe people might start realizing that the Twins' starting pitching has been stinking all these years because of the pitching coach...

Damning

[tobi0040]

Phil Hughes looks like an example in the "Anderson is a good pitching coach" category. At least he's better than the Yankee pitching coach.

 

The bar with Hughes should not be his 4.48 career ERA or his 5.19 ERA last year, it should be his career ERA out of the new Yankes stadium, which is around 4.10, or slightly better given Target Field is about the best park he could be in. He is at 3.61 now but it has only been 47 innings.

[tobi0040]

Here is a pretty good recap of the situation:

 

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/41989/how-david-ortiz-became-david-ortiz

 

Is anyone shocked that we basically picked a cast off SS who did not stick around here at all over a HOF caliber DH?

 

That winter Ortiz became eligible for arbitration. On Dec. 17, the Twins designated Ortiz for assignment to make room on the roster for shortstop Jose Morban, who had been selected from Texas in the Rule 5 draft. (Morban was waived in March.)

 

"I would've liked to have found a home for him," Ryan said. "We exhausted every avenue, but in essence it turned out to be an Ortiz-for-Morban type of thing." From the Pioneer Press:

[Brock Beauchamp]

The bar with Hughes should not be his 4.48 career ERA or his 5.19 ERA last year, it should be his career ERA out of the new Yankes stadium, which is around 4.10, or slightly better given Target Field is about the best park he could be in. He is at 3.61 now but it has only been 47 innings.

 

I think it's only fair if we give at least a small nod to Anderson for coaching a pitcher to success if we're going to dig at him for the same happening to another pitcher who leaves.

 

And I'm no Anderson fan. He's the one guy on the coaching staff who I wouldn't think too long and hard about retaining.

[kab21]

I think it's ironic that many people are concerned with how many DH types the Twins currently have that can actually play the field not horribly but wanted the Twins to keep two tubby guys that shouldn't even own baseball gloves on the same roster. That article might make it sound like it was Morban for Ortiz but rosters become a mess when there are two DH only guys on them.