Apologize to Bill Smith Thread

[Danchat]

 

If this disaster of a bullpen wasn't enough to overcome Ryan's crippling conservative nature, I highly doubt a 16 year old who he would have to spend $3 million on would.

I can think of one example. It's not a great one, but it should definitely qualify as an aggressive move.

 

TR signed Kendrys Morales mid-season to a 1 year $12M (prorated) deal. It happened after the date for the loss of draft pick for compensation, so any team could have signed Morales. TR stepped up and signed him. Too bad the one aggressive move he made never turned into anything...

[Captain Hindsight]

 

People can live in denial about it, but there is no question in my mind that Sano would be marveling some other bunch of fans if Ryan was in charge back then.

 

Every time he crushes the ball I thank Bill Smith again.

 

How are people living in denial about it? It is pure conjecture. It is like saying, you can live in denial about it, but the Twins would have drafted Trout if Ryan were in charge.

[ashbury]

I thought Smith did a pretty okay job with everything that didn't involve MLB trades.

Also talent evaluation in Japan....

[DaveW]

Also talent evaluation in Japan....

Too soon

[TheLeviathan]

How are people living in denial about it? It is pure conjecture. It is like saying, you can live in denial about it, but the Twins would have drafted Trout if Ryan were in charge.

Easy, same way I could say I'm sure if Ryan was in charge we would have never swapped Hardy for Hoey. Conjecture can be very well informed by past evidence and tendencies.

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

we aren't 100% sure it was exactly 4MM, it might have been low enough to keep them under the MLB approved budget. We'll find out in a few months or so.

 

And, if he did go over budget, but only did it for 1 player, that's a really, really, really bad way to do it, imo. If you are going over, you have to go over for 2-4 players, since you are penalized next year for going over.......let's hope they are just under, or have a deal worked out with guys that can't yet sign that look elite......

 

It was low enough to keep them for encuring any severe penalties.  They won't be reduced to only 200k signings next season as they were over their budget by less than 5%.

[Boom Boom]

If you can say that Smith made moves (mistakes) that TR would never have made, then it also follows that Smith could have made moves (successes) that TR wouldn't have. The two GMs have had different team-building approaches. If they didn't, then what would be the point of banishing Bill to Ft. Myers and re-replacing him with Ryan?

 

We can't say for sure whether or not TR would have signed Sano. The best answer is "maybe." We know for a fact that Bill Smith outbid some other teams to sign Sano to the biggest international free agent money the Twins have ever spent. IMO, that makes Smith much less of a GM failure than he is purported to be.

 

The spirit of the thread was not to bash TR. It was to give credit to Smith where credit is due.

[Twins7]

Should be noted that Ryan never got the chance because HE stepped down from the GM role, right before the tough decisions re: Santana etc had to be made.

Smith was truely dealt a losing hand from day one, and unfortunately took a lot of heat for it. As I mentioned in post 2, it's because of Smith that the Twins future looks bright (a guy like Sano will do that)

Well, also that 2012 draft that netted us Buxton, Berrios and Duffey...

[Mike Sixel]

 

It was low enough to keep them for encuring any severe penalties.  They won't be reduced to only 200k signings next season as they were over their budget by less than 5%.

 

so really, he stayed in his budget again, right?

 

As for the draft, the best thing Ryan ever did for the draft was making sure the team was awful for 4 years in a row, so they got earlier picks.

[KGB]

 

so really, he stayed in his budget again, right?

 

As for the draft, the best thing Ryan ever did for the draft was making sure the team was awful for 4 years in a row, so they got earlier picks.

 

The first year, we have to give Smith partical credit for the awful team - helping us get Buxton and Berrios.

 

I don't think Smith is a lifelong talent evaluator like Ryan is, but I do think he should get credit for getting the Twins more involved in the latin market signings.  I believe that was one of his roles prior to taking the GM position.

 

So I'll also thank him for Sano.

[bird]

 

Easy, same way I could say I'm sure if Ryan was in charge we would have never swapped Hardy for Hoey. Conjecture can be very well informed by past evidence and tendencies.

 

 

And usually conjecture is based on the conjecturer's point of view and biases. Information takes a back seat on this topic. We're dealing with uninformed speculation here. We agree on that.

[mikelink45]

Smith was not a good GM - that is a given, but even when someone is not good at the entire job it does not mean that they cannot be good at a portion of the work and Smith did an excellent job with the signings.  It's just too bad he did not know how to hold his own on trades.  Ryan on the other hand is slow to move and too in love with the crafty old veterans.  Sabremetrics have to enter the Twins GM world. 

[Kwak]

 

Also talent evaluation in Japan....

You omitted:  Gardenhire was responsible for dumping Hardy--'team needed more speed';  Smith wasn't hired or promoted to scout, evaluate, or develop talent;  player personnel director was "contacted" to "get Gardenhire a SS".  Smith performed his role as "yes man" so the "real baseball people" could construct the team.  Smith's role was never to evaluate players--that was the responsibility of "real baseball people".  If Pohlad (or the rest of the executive committee) wanted "a real baseball person" as GM--they could have done so!  It was well known that Smith wasn't one.  Smith didn't "promote himself" to GM.

[TheLeviathan]

 

And usually conjecture is based on the conjecturer's point of view and biases. Information takes a back seat on this topic. We're dealing with uninformed speculation here. We agree on that.

 

Except it's not "uninformed" - it's very informed.  But we can still disagree.

[drjim]

Since we spent some significant time debating how the Twins got Sano and whether that was only because of Smith, thought this might be a worthwhile read.

 

http://www.1500espn.com/sportswire/The_story_of_how_the_Twins_landed_top_prospect_Miguel_Sano090515?t=2

 

Of course it doesn't answer the question, but does show all the leg work was done outside the GM's office, would have been a question of whether Ryan was wiling to ask Pohlad/St. Peter for money above and beyond the budget. Considering they seemingly were enthusiastic to approve the request, hard to believe that Ryan wouldn't have done it. But again, don't know.

 

Another take away from the article, in my mind, is the reputation of the Twins front office. Again confirms that they are among the most respected front offices in baseball from outside sources and that directly contributed to them landing Sano. That counts for something, right?

 

Ryan and the front office certainly have their weaknesses/blind spots, but I've always thought this was was an underrated strength of the organization (and on a side note, one of the primary reasons I enjoy being a fan of the team and give them the benefit of the doubt-perhaps more than they even deserve). Maybe some minor issues in the short term for bigger gains long term. Despite all the advanced analysis, etc. baseball is still at its core a people business.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

Of course it doesn't answer the question, but does show all the leg work was done outside the GM's office,

I don't think anyone has ever doubted that.  It's not the GM's role to do leg work.

 

But even TR's own quote in that article suggest it would have been an unusual move for him:

 

 

"We've invested a lot in him and we had to jump through hoops to get that guy signed. It was complicated," Ryan said "Competition, you know, everybody was in on Sano. It got complicated because of age, question marks ... Fred [Guerrero], and Radcliff and Billy [smith] and the people responsible for signing him stayed with it, stayed with the agent, with the kid. There were a couple teams right at the end where they chose us. And I think it was because of trust."

 

How often has TR gotten involved in any kind of open competitive bidding? Even his bigger FA moves recently have generally been "strike early" moves. Meanwhile, we know Smith did with Sano and Kepler in 2009, was trying to rent Cliff Lee the next season, dealt Ramos, Ladendorf, etc. at deadlines. And solicited competitive bids for Johan too.

 

The ultimate problem was that Smith's aggressiveness was probably more due to naivety than smarts. Still, it was definitely something he was bringing to the table that Ryan so far hasn't, and I see no problem giving him some credit when it worked out (while also noting it didn't work out more often than not ).

[howeda7]

Agreed. Bill did some good things and some bad (Nishioka). He was not demonstrably worse than TR despite the narrative.

[DaveW]

Bill Smith was a lot of things, but naive was not one. I know a former Latin American scout for the Twins who said Bill Smith was very hands on and extremely knowledgable when it came to the international markets.

 

He didn't "luck" into signing Sano, it was a great play and great strategy plain and simple.

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

 

Since we spent some significant time debating how the Twins got Sano and whether that was only because of Smith, thought this might be a worthwhile read.

 

http://www.1500espn.com/sportswire/The_story_of_how_the_Twins_landed_top_prospect_Miguel_Sano090515?t=2

 

Of course it doesn't answer the question, but does show all the leg work was done outside the GM's office, would have been a question of whether Ryan was wiling to ask Pohlad/St. Peter for money above and beyond the budget. Considering they seemingly were enthusiastic to approve the request, hard to believe that Ryan wouldn't have done it. But again, don't know.

 

Another take away from the article, in my mind, is the reputation of the Twins front office. Again confirms that they are among the most respected front offices in baseball from outside sources and that directly contributed to them landing Sano. That counts for something, right?

 

Ryan and the front office certainly have their weaknesses/blind spots, but I've always thought this was was an underrated strength of the organization (and on a side note, one of the primary reasons I enjoy being a fan of the team and give them the benefit of the doubt-perhaps more than they even deserve). Maybe some minor issues in the short term for bigger gains long term. Despite all the advanced analysis, etc. baseball is still at its core a people business.

 

My two takeaways from this are that Ryan was a little more involved during the interregnum than I realized, and that the Twins, doing things the Twins Way, paid off in spades with acquiring Sano. Bravo.

[sane]

Milone and Jepsen for Sam Fuld, Chih-Weii-Hu and Alexis Tapia didn't hurt either.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Agreed. Bill did some good things and some bad (Nishioka). He was not demonstrably worse than TR despite the narrative.

Oh, I think it's pretty clear he was worse than Ryan. I don't see how that's debatable. Smith did some things pretty well; the draft and international signings. He also picked up a few nice FAs that helped the 2010 team enormously.

 

But his MLB transactions with opposing GMs were varying shades of disastrous. They weren't just kinda bad, they were "OMG WHAT ARE YOU DOING" bad.

 

Santana for Gomez + junk

Garza/Bartlett for Young + junk

Capps for Ramos

Hardy for Hoey

 

Getting Hardy for Gomez was a nice move but any goodwill he earned from that was washed away with the Hoey deal. He was put into a tough spot with Hunter and Santana but that still doesn't mean he gets a pass on not making a good deal with the Mets.

 

And Nishioka... Well, we all know the results of that blunder.

 

Ryan's conservative nature is frustrating but at least it means he never pulls off any one of those trades, all of which hurt the team both in the short term and the long term. Smith took risks, which is sometimes the right thing to do... but his risks were often ill-conceived and they really hurt the team going forward.

 

Fun fact: Trevor May's 2014-2015 seasons are worth more WAR than the return on Santana, Young, Capps, and Hoey combined.* Everyone else was under replacement value with the Twins, which negated the wins brought by Gomez.

 

*this was very quick eyeball math, feel free to dispute this claim... either way, it's close.

[Mike Sixel]

In fairness, Ryan didn't sign or trade Santana, leaving Smith to do that work. Or, he could have offered him arbitration.....would that have been worth what they got?

 

The Garza trade was the exact trade people here praised Ryan for doing with Span and Revere. I am told I can't judge the Meyer Span trade on the outcome, only what people knew at the time, and that the process matters more. So, ya, they picked the wrong guy, but you can't say it is the process with Ryan, and the outcome with Smith and be fair on how we are judging them.

 

btw, none of this means I think Smith is better or worse than Ryan, all I'm asking for is that when we do compare them, we are fair in how we talk about them.....

 

there is no excuse for the Capps or Hoey trades, none.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

The Garza trade was the exact trade people here praised Ryan for doing with Span and Revere. I am told I can't judge the Meyer Span trade on the outcome, only what people knew at the time, and that the process matters more. So, ya, they picked the wrong guy, but you can't say it is the process with Ryan, and the outcome with Smith and be fair on how we are judging them.

The process in the Garza trade was broken and I hated the trade when it happened. Young was a talented but undisciplined hitter and was exposed at the MLB level, doubly so when you factor in he was a horrible defender. Garza was a good young starter on a team who was in the process of losing their Cy Young head of the rotation. Add in the Bartlett/Harris part of the deal and it was face-palm worthy.

 

And swapping young MLB players is a lot different than trading an arb-eligible guy for a prospect in A ball. There's obviously a lot more risk and unknowns in the A-ball player. In an MLB-for-MLB player swap, you shouldn't see one team receiving 20+ WAR while the other receives negative WAR from the traded players. That's not bad luck or good process, bad results... That's just a horrible deal with flawed thinking behind it.

 

The Twins received roughly -1 WAR from Young and it wasn't because of a wild variable such as injury. It was because Delmon Young wasn't a very good baseball player.

 

Also, Bartlett was a 3 WAR player his final year in Minnesota.

 

That trade still pisses me off.

[DocBauer]

I was excited, at least initially, by Smith as he was less conservative in his approach.

 

He was more aggressive in signing current players, (though that didn't always work out so well)

 

And he didn't seem as "timid" towards making a trade. (though I think he acted or over-reacted too quickly at times)

 

If the Young trade had worked out, (and let's be honest, all signs pointed initially to his being a very, very good player), and if Nishioka had either worked out, or at least not just stunk up a 5 mile radius, Smith's entire tenure might be much better remembered. (and might have even lasted longer)

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

If the Young trade had worked out, (and let's be honest, all signs pointed initially to his being a very, very good player)

Eh, I don't know about that. Young had a lot of talent but some pretty glaring flaws as well. The Twins shouldn't have overlooked his defensive ability and they should have spotted a potential issue with his plate discipline, or complete lack thereof.

 

Simply put, the Rays were working with tools completely unknown to the Twins at the time and they hoodwinked them into taking a flawed player who put together pretty pedestrian numbers over his first 1 1/2 seasons (around a 90 OPS+, though he was just 22-ish). I could forgive a straight up Garza/Young trade but tossing in Bartlett (~6.5 WAR in the same playing time as Young) made it a terrible, horrible, awful trade. The Rays once again hoodwinked Smith & Co. into taking Harris, a middle infielder who couldn't play a middle infield position.

 

Whenever I think of that trade, I can only imagine how many times Friedman had to mute the line to tell his stat guys that if they kept laughing so loudly, they were going to put the entire deal at risk.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

Bill Smith was a lot of things, but naive was not one. I know a former Latin American scout for the Twins who said Bill Smith was very hands on and extremely knowledgable when it came to the international markets.

He didn't "luck" into signing Sano, it was a great play and great strategy plain and simple.

Yeah, my "naive" comment wasn't really directed at the Sano signing. But most of his MLB moves looked pretty naive -- swapping Hardy for Nishioka (and perhaps Hoey for Crain/Guerrier), Capps for Nathan, Young for Hunter, etc. Lots of times he gave up real value to get a worse player on the team than the guy he was ostensibly replacing. Even if most of these ideas didn't originate with him, if he was letting Gardy, Antony, and others dictate nonsensical roster moves, that's a naive way to GM.

 

The international amateurs he signed obviously didn't cost much of anything or get swapped for anyone, so they were fine moves.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

I could forgive a straight up Garza/Young trade but tossing in Bartlett (~6.5 WAR in the same playing time as Young) made it a terrible, horrible, awful trade. The Rays once again hoodwinked Smith & Co. into taking Harris, a middle infielder who couldn't play a middle infield position.

Yup. It would have been one thing to not like Garza, view him as expendable, etc., and swap him for Young.  I didn't necessarily like Young, but it's an aggressive move for a recently well-regarded prospect yadda yadda yadda.

 

But we had to give up a lot more (a controlled starting SS) for that privilege!  And once we gave up Bartlett, it forced us to bet on Adam Everett not being toast (we lost on that one) and eventually had to give up a recent 2nd rounder (Ladendorf) to patch the position with Cabrera, then a still-young Gomez for Hardy, then even perhaps forcing a sketchy international move in Nishioka and a not-implausible draft-for-need in Levi Michael... arg, why do people keep bringing this stuff up?  

[ashbury]

Milone and Jepsen for Sam Fuld, Chih-Weii-Hu and Alexis Tapia didn't hurt either.

We won't know for 2-3 years but I am more than a little anxious about the Hu component of this.

[DaveW]

We won't know for 2-3 years but I am more than a little anxious about the Hu component of this.

agreed.

 

I liked getting Jepsen, I just think they gave up too much. Deal from a position of strength in the org (OF etc) not from a position of weakness (SP)

[howieramone2]

 

so really, he stayed in his budget again, right?

 

As for the draft, the best thing Ryan ever did for the draft was making sure the team was awful for 4 years in a row, so they got earlier picks.

Actually this is a sound strategy for a mid-market team and pretty much the same formula followed by the Astros and Luvable Losers. The system rewards those with the worst records with the best picks. Fools gold is attempting to compete when you can't, where you miss the playoffs and don't get the better picks year after year. Even the Evil Nation spent 500 Million one off-season and missed the playoffs.

 

I'm not sure it will ever happen on this board without a culture change, but the baseball world recognizes Terry Ryan's sound strategy.