Alex Anthopoulos

[Badsmerf]

I think rating GM's is becoming a hot topic. There is a lot of opinions on it. About 10 years ago I was a fan of Ryan and felt he was one of the best in the game. That opinion changed as the Twins put together teams that could win the division (the weakest in MLB not debatable), but were completely blown away in the playoffs. I don't think of that as a success. He proved good (not great) at building a farm system, but terrible at improving the team at the MLB level.

 

There are a lot of people talking about this topic right now. I think the next big innovation in baseball will be identifying top GMs.

[dgwills]

No way. When I think of Toronto recently what I remember is bad trades and picking up every player on waivers in the hopes of demoting them to AAA without another team picking them up. I think MLB was thinking of changing the rules due to how bad they abused the system. They are lucky to be where they are and are not built for sustained success. Toronto is like a bag lady picking up pennies in the alley who stumbles across gold.

[Mike Sixel]

Remember the Twins were basically a small market team with the dome.  Now they have the revenue stream to be midmarket.  I would think that even $130 million would not hurt them.  It all depends on how you spend the money.  I would work on the KC model and expect in 2 years we will have a shutdown bullpen.  Fixing catcher now is manditory and finding an ace if not Berrios will also help. 

I am looking forward to this offseason and seeing what moves are made.

Andy McPhail had no issues signing the highest paid FA pitching deal in history in the dome......

 

There are always excuses for Ryan and his unwillingness to even try to close the deal. As a fan, I don't get it.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

He definitely deserves credit for the prospects but Anthopoulos inherited Jose Bautista and struck dumb-luck-gold with the guy. A complete aberration. He made some pretty questionable trades for Reyes, Dickey. Chris Colabello became a monster through a bit of skill and ridiculous luck.

He was assistant GM when they acquired Bautista, and probably not a Rob Antony-style assistant GM.

 

Plus, how is Bautista a complete aberration when they also achieved largely the same turnaround with Encarnacion?  As well as on smaller scale, with Colabello, Valencia, Devon Travis, etc.?

 

I think some of that "luck" is assembling a coaching staff to get those performances out of players too.  For example, doesn't it feel like Arcia would be more likely to break out in Toronto than in Minnesota?  Wouldn't you love Minnesota to have that kind of reputation for successful turnarounds?

[Badsmerf]

 

No way. When I think of Toronto recently what I remember is bad trades and picking up every player on waivers in the hopes of demoting them to AAA without another team picking them up. I think MLB was thinking of changing the rules due to how bad they abused the system. They are lucky to be where they are and are not built for sustained success. Toronto is like a bag lady picking up pennies in the alley who stumbles across gold.

Really? I don't think a team can have the best lineup of this decade by picking up pennies in the ally. That is just disingenuous. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

He was assistant GM when they acquired Bautista, and probably not a Rob Antony-style assistant GM.

 

Plus, how is Bautista a complete aberration when they also achieved largely the same turnaround with Encarnacion?  As well as on smaller scale, with Colabello, Valencia, Devon Travis, etc.?

Encarnacion wasn't a bad player in Cincinnati. Sure, he broke out in Toronto but he was a decent young player for the Reds. Good acquisition, no arguments here.

 

On the other hand, Bautista broke out as a 29 year old after being a middling prospect for years. He was varying shades of mediocre/bad for the Jays for his first ~450 PAs. Do the Jays get some credit for picking him up? Sure, just like the Mets get a little credit for Dickey... But not much.

 

Colabello had a .400-something BABIP this season. If you want to credit the Jays for predicting absurd luck, so be it.

 

Valencia didn't break out with the Jays, he broke out with the Orioles. It was the Orioles who first successfully deployed him in a platoon, not the Jays.

 

Devon Travis is a 24 year old rookie with an .859 MiLB OPS. Good pick-up but hardly some kind of magical turnaround. It was a smart trade but the guy was a respected prospect and still very young.

 

Those were all good, smart acquisitions but I struggle to lump Bautista in with them. Turning a guy from a .750 MiLB outfielder into a .950 MLB outfielder as a 29 year old isn't something one can predict reliably. Maybe the Jays saw something in him... But it's more likely they got really, really lucky.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

They sent Jeff Hoffman, who was at one time considered a top 3 pick. He's like the 4th first/supplemental pick AA has traded away since he took over. Maybe they have drafted really well in later rounds but I know they don't have many first rounders left. They sent another to Houston (along with six other prospects) and the main piece in that deal was J.A. Happ (whom they flipped for Michael Saunders). Then there is the Dickey trade obviously. How good would the Jays have been with D'Arnaud, Syndergaard, and the 85m they spent on Martin?

We all grant that the Dickey trade has been bad, although d'Arnaud was actually acquired by AA in another trade.  Plus d'Arnaud missed a good chunk of time this year, so I'm not quite sure swapping him for Martin is a negative on the ledger.  The rest of the deal, yeah.

 

But it does nothing to look at the bad deals without also considering the good ones.  Obviously every team would be better off if you erase only the GM's worst moves, but the question is, what is the net effect?

 

The Donaldson deal looks incredible so far.  Anthony Gose for Devon Travis looks pretty spectacular too.  Both Reyes deals seem like taking advantage of pretty good opportunities.  Venturing beyond trades, he got a comp pick for Melky Cabrera to offset the one lost in signing Martin, and also got a comp pick (that turned out to be Marcus Stroman) for taking a chance and drafting a guy they failed to sign a few years back.

 

Once you add in his scrap heap turnarounds, I think it's fair to conclude the Jays are better off with AA's moves.

[Mike Sixel]

People get lucky. People get unlucky. The process they followed was to identify that the Sox and Yankees were down, and they went for it in that window. And it worked.

 

As for comparisons, how many 90+ loss seasons did Toronto have the last 5 years while they were supposedly making bad move after bad move? I count none.

 

Also, it will be tough to judge the medium term impact of what AA did, since he won't be there to aggressively fill in holes (or not) that his previous moves created.

[Brock Beauchamp]

It will be tough to judge AA, which is unfortunate. I'm not down on the guy, I'm just unsure he built a long term winner in Toronto. One year doesn't sell me on him as a GM, though he made some smart moves (and some bad ones) leading up to this 2015 season.

[bird]

 

I already said multiple times that the Dickey trade was bad. Call me when any of those other guys they traded away do anything in the majors, people get way too hung up on prospects.

 

 

 

Kudos to Anthopoulos and Dombroski. Those two people never get way too hung up on prospects.

 

Yes, it's all very good and well to "try" to go for it. But what happens when the GM fails? For sure, Ryan will never "think big" enough to do what those guys did.

 

I don't know the answer to this question, but have there been many (any?) instances where teams have "gone for it" and failed to, say, get into the WS, and then come right back in a year or so as a WS participant?

[Thrylos]

 

 

Colabello had a .400-something BABIP this season. If you want to credit the Jays for predicting absurd luck, so be it.

 

Hard to tell about this one.  He had a .413 BABIP in AAA with the Twins and his MLB average BABIP is around .350; so luck was probably about 40-50 points with him, which would give him a .280/.325 average OBP and I don't think that his doubles number was exaggerated (19 vs 13 previous season of .308 BABIP with Twins; remember HRs are not BIP)  That gives you a .280/.325/.520 or so slash normalized for his average BABIP.

 

Not Too Shabby.

 

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

Encarnacion wasn't a bad player in Cincinnati. Sure, he broke out in Toronto but he was a decent young player for the Reds. Good acquisition, no arguments here.

 

On the other hand, Bautista broke out as a 29 year old after being a middling prospect for years. He was varying shades of mediocre/bad for the Jays for his first ~450 PAs. Do the Jays get some credit for picking him up? Sure, just like the Mets get a little credit for Dickey... But not much.

 

Colabello had a .400-something BABIP this season. If you want to credit the Jays for predicting absurd luck, so be it.

 

Valencia didn't break out with the Jays, he broke out with the Orioles. It was the Orioles who first successfully deployed him in a platoon, not the Jays.

 

Devon Travis is a 24 year old rookie with an .859 MiLB OPS. Good pick-up but hardly some kind of magical turnaround. It was a smart trade but the guy was a respected prospect and still very young.

 

Those were all good, smart acquisitions but I struggle to lump Bautista in with them. Turning a guy from a .750 MiLB outfielder into a .950 MLB outfielder as a 29 year old isn't something one can predict reliably. Maybe the Jays saw something in him... But it's more likely they got really, really lucky.

No one is saying a Bautista breakout is something you can predict reliably, but I also don't think it's fair to say he deserves absolutely no credit.  If TR found him and had the coaches in place to facilitate his breakout, Encarnacion's breakout, a Devon Travis power surge (so far), a flukey breakout from a fringe guy like Colabello, and wisely gave contract extensions to Bautista and Encarnacion too, I'd sure as heck give TR some credit.

[dgwills]

 

Really? I don't think a team can have the best lineup of this decade by picking up pennies in the ally. That is just disingenuous. 

I would consider it hyperbole. You have to remember that they were really screwing over these young players who they claimed. These guys careers were already in jeopardy and Toronto had no intention of letting them play when they needed it most. There were players who had to sit for months (Toronto was not the only team doing this, just the worst). The Twins are not perfect. They do at least have the decency to treat their players like people.

What I see from Toronto is that they got lucky on some guys and then mortgaged there future for a short run. How did having the best lineup of the decade work out for them? They still lost to the young Royals team who is more well rounded. I would guess that is why he is looking for a job.

[bird]

 

The Rays and the Royals (the last 2 seasons) have proven that the "small market" talk was just an excuse for inability/ineptitude/caringlessness  (pick your poison.)

 

 

You don't bring up the Ray's most recent seasons, and yet you emphasize the Royal's last two seasons and without bringing up the two decades prior to that? Hmmm. I guess you picked YOUR poison. 

 

What changed for the Royals? Caringlessness? Any chance it was building for a long long time through the draft instead?

 

 

 

 

[Mike Sixel]

He's looking for a job because the new president is really the GM now and he didn't want an empty order taking job....

[Mike Sixel]

You don't bring up the Ray's most recent seasons, and yet you emphasize the Royal's last two seasons and without bringing up the two decades prior to that? Hmmm. I guess you picked YOUR poison. 

 

What changed for the Royals? Caringlessness? Any chance it was building for a long long time through the draft instead?

20 years of building, how long did it take TOR to be competitive (which they were last year)?

 

didn't it really change for the Royals when they traded prospects for good pitchers from TB? And, this year they traded prospects for Cueto?

 

At some point, even KC has learned you can't ONLY rely on your own prospects, sometimes you have to trade PRIZED prospects (Wil Meyers was a top 10 prospect) for outside help.

[Thrylos]

 

 

What changed for the Royals? Caringlessness? Any chance it was building for a long long time through the draft instead?

 

The last 2 years the Royals did trade prospects to close holes.  Something that this Twins' GM has refused to do. That's what changed.  Not the years and years of drafting high.  They were drafting high every season since the late 80s...   So that 30 some years of building through the draft came into fruition only when they brought in solid major leaguers instead of Ryanesque dumpster diving.

 

[Mike Sixel]

Successfully trading Vernon Wells (Mauer anyone) should have put him in the GM HoF, frankly.

[DaveW]

 

You don't bring up the Ray's most recent seasons, and yet you emphasize the Royal's last two seasons and without bringing up the two decades prior to that? Hmmm. I guess you picked YOUR poison. 

 

What changed for the Royals? Caringlessness? Any chance it was building for a long long time through the draft instead?

Either way, give me the Royals last 20 years over the Twins last 20 years.

[bird]

 

20 years of building, how long did it take TOR to be competitive (which they were last year)?

didn't it really change for the Royals when they trades prospects for good pitchers from TB? And, this year they traded prospects for Cueto?

At some point, even KC has learned you can't ONLY rely on your own prospects, sometimes you have to trade PRIZED prospects (Wil Meyers was a top 10 prospect) for outside help.

 

 

It's funny how the bar gets set differently depending on the subject. So, Toronto is a success story, going out in the first round after winning the division.

 

I'm on the record as saying there's more that one way to skin the cat as a GM. What Dombrowski did with the Tigers worked. For awhile anyway. And given the flurry of trades before he was fired, he may have set the Tigers up to be competitive again sooner that most people think, I don't know.

 

Dayton Moore was roundly criticized, brutally at times, including by commenters on TD. Then, his patience was rewarded, as Moose, Cain, Hosmer, Ventura, etc. started to reached their ceilings. As you say, 20 years of rebuilding, and it finally paid off.

 

When you say that KC has learned that you can't rely ONLY on your own prospects, you're obviously trying to say that the Twins don't get this idea. That's just faulty. No team refuses to supplement its roster with players it didn't draft. BTW, Shields did not help them get to the WS this year. But you bring up a good point, which is, before you can TRADE a prized prospect such as Will Myers, you have to POSSESS such a prospect ( a top ten prospect) at a position of surplus.

 

If the Twins get to a place where one final piece is all they need to propel them through and not just TO the playoffs, I think even Ryan will trade for that piece, maybe even from his farm system. Especially now with the extra wild card opportunity that didn't exist before.

 

No need to argue this last point. We all know where we all stand on this.

 

[bird]

 

Either way, give me the Royals last 20 years over the Twins last 20 years.

 

 

 

Really? OK. Knock yourself out. 

[DaveW]

 

Really? OK. Knock yourself out. 

What have the Twins done the last 20 years? One playoff series win.

What have the Royals done the last 20 years? 4 playoff series wins and 2 world series appearances.

 

Not even close.

What has stayed the same in those 20 years? Terry Ryan (minus a few years of Bill Smith)

[Loosey]

Why is this even an argument. 

 

1) TR isn't going anywhere until he decides he wants to leave/quit

2) TR won't take a lesser role and leave roster management up to someone else (See point 1)

[bird]

 

The last 2 years the Royals did trade prospects to close holes.  Something that this Twins' GM has refused to do. That's what changed.  Not the years and years of drafting high.  They were drafting high every season since the late 80s...   So that 30 some years of building through the draft came into fruition only when they brought in solid major leaguers instead of Ryanesque dumpster diving.

 

 

Let's try a different analysis of the Royal's history. First of all, the Royals traded prospects to fill holes many times over those 30 years, so let's not pretend they found some secret sauce. But yes, because their home-grown core was primed, the Cueto trade appears to have put them over the top, where Shields only came close. Good for Dayton Moore.

 

For most of those "30 years" of top ten draft choices year after year after year after year, the Royals had a spotty track record It was only in the last decade that a higher percentage of elite draft choices were eventually golden for them.

 

What changed? IMO, the biggest change is that, for almost everyone these days, a top ten pick ends up almost always being golden. Not 100% of the time, as Montgomery I think was one that didn't for them. But it has been this way now for about a decade. Most top ten choices succeed. Also, the Royals benefitted by KEEPING their choices, not by TRADING them as Mike Sixtel implies by citing an exception to this in Will Myers.

 

And thrylos, when Ryan gets to the same place Dayton Moore is, he won't be "dumpster diving" for refuse like Hughes and Ervin Santana. Let's lose that dumb term.

[bird]

 

What have the Twins done the last 20 years? One playoff series win.

What have the Royals done the last 20 years? 4 playoff series wins and 2 world series appearances.

 

Not even close.

What has stayed the same in those 20 years? Terry Ryan (minus a few years of Bill Smith)

 

 

 

This just cracks me up. Ummm, any reason you're not starting the lookback to years prior to 2013? 

 

Funny stuff.

[Mike Sixel]

the Royals weren't 1 piece away when they dealt Meyers, they were widely considered to be failures.

 

You are the one that brought up the Royals as successful at drafting and developing. What actually changed? They decided to abandon the "we don't trade prospects" rule they had slavishly followed for 20 years. That's what actually changed.

[dgwills]

 

He's looking for a job because the new president is really the GM now and he didn't want an empty order taking job....

In the interview I heard with him he said that he does not care if his next job is as GM.  Made it sound as if he just wants to stay in the player scouting/evaluating part of baseball in any capacity. 

[Thrylos]

 

 

And thrylos, when Ryan gets to the same place Dayton Moore is, he won't be "dumpster diving" for refuse like Hughes and Ervin Santana. Let's lose that dumb term.

 

The point is Ryan has not gotten to the same place Dayton Moore is.  Never.  And it is because of dumpster diving

 

Here are all the free agents that Terry Ryan signed or selected from waivers after the 2001 to during the 2006 season (allegedly when the Twins' were "sustainable competitive") "

 

David Lamb, Kurt Abbott, Brian Meadows, Michael Jackson, Alex Prieto, David Lee, Scott Randall, Warren Morris, Saul Rivera, Mike Trombley, Garrett Jones, Jose Rodriguez, David Manning, Mike Duvall, Ben Ford, David Lamb, Carlos Pulido, Everett Stull, Chris Gomez, Jose Cabrera, Shane Andrews, Mike Fetters, Kenny Rogers, James Baldwin, Ryan McGuire, Seth Greisinger,  Matt Guerrier, Chris Heitz, Greg Halman, Augie Ojeda, Peter Munro, Henry Blanco, Kevin Tolar, Aaron Fultz ,Juan Diaz, Rick Helling , Brian Simmons,Jose Offerman, Andrew Lorraine, Sean Douglass,  Terry Mulholland, Todd Dunwoody, Gary Glover, Corky Miller, Jason Tyner,  Gil Velazquez, Juan Castro, Mike Redmond,Bud Smith, Glenn Williams, Trey Hodges, Luis Jimenez, Pat Strange, Brent Abernathy,  Andy Fox, Eric Munson, C.J. Nitkowski,  Jimmy Anderson, Jason Pridie, Tony Batista, Jason Hart, Andres Torres,  Shawn Wooten, Rondell White, Ryan Glynn,   Peter Munro, Tim Raines , Ruben Sierra, Dennys Reyes, Steve Lomasney, Donaldo Mendez, Erubiel Durazo, Quinton McCracken

 

Don't know what you call it, but for me it is the definition of Dumpster Diving.

 

[Brock Beauchamp]

Either way, give me the Royals last 20 years over the Twins last 20 years.

What the Royals have done in 2014/15 is great but you're on the young side, Dave... It's REALLY hard to stomach a decade of complete and utter futility and the Royals were various shades of terrible for 17 or so of the past 20 years. I barely followed the Twins from 94-98 because it was painful to watch year in and year out... And that was half a decade with one middling season, not 15 years of UGH.

[bird]

 

The point is Ryan has not gotten to the same place Dayton Moore is.  Never.  And it is because of dumpster diving

 

 

 

I think you're wrong. Count the number of players on each roster who were drafted in the top 10 of their draft year. The point is Dayton Moore would never have gotten to the place he is without them. Ever.