JR Graham Traded To Yankees

[Mr. Brooks]

Thanks for the info. The 60% split salary is interesting.

 

A player can't be optioned then immediately DFA'd, though:

 

"A player on Optional Assignment to the minors must be "Recalled - Not to Report" before he can be Designated for Assignment. The player continues to be paid and the player accrues MLB Service Time for the entire period of time he is Designated for Assignment during the MLB regular season."

 

http://www.thecubreporter.com/book/export/html/3535

 

I agree that the 10 day window should be shortened, but I still think you exaggerating the effects. Putting extra roster/time requirements on DFA acquisitions would only make it easier for them to slip off the 40-man roster. I suspect if you gave these guys the right to declare FA, most probably wouldn't -- it would be very difficult to be a fringe player and be a FA mid season, especially if you come with higher salary requirements. Teams will be more willing to quickly make room for a waiver claim (or trade) acquisition, than a marginal free agent. Teams may also pass on claiming a player or trading for him, essentially pressuring him to opt for free agency so they can acquire him at better terms and according to their schedule.

 

Again, the process should be sped up, but I think it is a stretch to say it "hurts careers" versus the alternative ways to be removed from a roster.

Yep, there is absolutely no reason, in the day of smart phones, the Internet and email, that the period needs to be 10 days.

Like always, baseball is as slow as molasses to adjust.

[stringer bell]

I just read the mlbtraderumors.com account of the Yankees acquisition of Graham. He was still in DFA limbo? So, this would mean that the Twins either had to trade him for the best deal available or let him be claimed by the team that would take him that had the worst record. Am I right on this?

 

I don't know if it changes my view on the whole transaction at all, but I thought he had made it through without being claimed.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

Graham was blocking plenty of players last year, guys like Meyer, Berrios and more could have taken his bullpen spot and contributed.

 

Keeping Graham on the 25 man roster all season long, then trading him one month into the season is just another(minor) example of TR's inability to run a ball club these days.

this, giving the big league low leverage innings to an actual prospect with a real chance to succeed rather than taking a flyer on a guy off the scrap heap could have made all the difference in the world to 2016 and beyond.

[stringer bell]

I realize I'm refuting different posts at the same time, but...from Sconnie above Graham is "a guy off the scrap heap" and apparently not an actual prospect. I don't know--he throws hard and was given a new role where two pitches would be enough, so IMHO despite his age Graham was an actual prospect. It is interesting that Gilmartin is also held up as evidence of the Twins ignorance. He definitely isn't a hard thrower. Graham and Gilmartin were both claimed and asked to do something they had almost no experience doing--pitching out of a major league bullpen. Gilmartin the relative soft tosser succeeded, while Graham's result were mixed at best.

 

Also, losing Zach Jones is put on the management team as if the Twins just let Mariano Rivera go for a bag of balls. I think Graham has a better chance of pitching for the Yanks than Jones has of pitching for the woebegone Brewers (how can a Twins fan call another organization woebegone?) and I don't think either one of them will make the Twins regret their loss.

 

My point here is that the one transaction of trading JR Graham shouldn't be an indictment of the Twins. There are more data points to look at and Liam Hendriks, Chris Colabello, Aaron Hicks, John Hicks, and John Ryan Murphy are all more damning than JR Graham.

[Mr. Brooks]

 

 

Also, losing Zach Jones is put on the management team as if the Twins just let Mariano Rivera go for a bag of balls. I think Graham has a better chance of pitching for the Yanks than Jones has of pitching for the woebegone Brewers (how can a Twins fan call another organization woebegone?) and I don't think either one of them will make the Twins regret their loss.

 

 

Nobody is claiming he's Rivera.

 

We are to the point that management's mistakes can only be criticized if they are epic in scale?

 

Whether or not Graham or Jones ends up being good is beside the point, in fact that would be the hindsight that is always used to defend this organization.

They let go 2 prospects, for nothing (they will get cash for Graham), for no reason (someone pointed out on page 1 or 2 the various other 40 man solutions, not to mention plenty of non prospects on the 40 man), after protecting him all last season and over the winter.

[Riverbrian]

I can't get excited about this either way. 

 

Graham never impressed nor bothered at me at any point. 

 

I Believe Rule 5 selections are a crap shoot and they threw the dice and I hope they do it again in the future. 

 

If I had to guess... I have no way of knowing if my guess is correct or not... so it's just a guess. 

 

I think it's possible that Graham may have ended up being a simple causality of:

 

"We've lost a lot of games and we have to do something now" Fever

 

or

 

"Let's get on the same page" Therapy 

 

Regardless... This organization has a total system failure to worry about. Sundance not being able to swim doesn't excite me that much. 

 

It's the Fall that will kill you!!! 

[Kwak]

 

Nobody is claiming he's Rivera.

We are to the point that management's mistakes can only be criticized if they are epic in scale?

Whether or not Graham or Jones ends up being good is beside the point, in fact that would be the hindsight that is always used to defend this organization.
They let go 2 prospects, for nothing (they will get cash for Graham), for no reason (someone pointed out on page 1 or 2 the various other 40 man solutions, not to mention plenty of non prospects on the 40 man), after protecting him all last season and over the winter.

Only in your mind was Graham a "prospect"--the Twins (and many TD posters) use a much less polite description of him.

[Mr. Brooks]

Only in your mind was Graham a "prospect"--the Twins (and many TD posters) use a much less polite description of him.

Then why did the Twins use a 40 man roster spot to protect him over the winter?

[DJSim22]

 

Then why did the Twins use a 40 man roster spot to protect him over the winter?

 

We needed that extra inning + to determine he was "crap!"

 

 

[Thrylos]

 

Then why did the Twins use a 40 man roster spot to protect him over the winter?

 

Um.  Remember, those are the same people who got rid of probably their best catcher on the 40-man roster (J. Hicks) to accommodate David Murphy's ghost.  And the same people who are currently wasting 40-man and 25-man spots on Mastroianni.

 

Clueless.  Keeping borderline pitchers and living on a prayer regarding the 2016 pen, instead of (let's say) trading for Craig Kimbrel.

[Mr. Brooks]

Well I'd say be careful of tiny sample sizes.

 

Graham wasn't great last year, but I think the goal was to keep him healthy, and hide him for a season.

Mission accomplished.

 

Then, he dedicated himself to getting into great shape over the off season, and did so, losing 30 pounds.

 

The Twins liked him enough to again protect him over the winter, after carrying him on the 25 all last year.

 

They made it through the hard part people!!!! That was, stashing him on the mlb roster for a season.

Now, he had minor league options, and plenty of worse trash than him on the 40 man roster.

 

But now they give up on him after 8 milb innings and 1 mlb appearance? That is such a tiny sample size, that it might as well not exist.

 

The Twins had 67 pitches last year of 97mph plus, Graham had 32 of them.

 

The guy can throw it, he should have been given more than 10 or 11 innings to show it, period.

 

He won't go on to be Mo Rivera, I get that, but I believe he WILL be a good mlb reliever, and I would like one person to give me a logical reason why we needed to give him away, instead of just saying over and over that it doesn't matter that we did.

[stringer bell]

Command and secondary pitches will determine if Graham has a major league future.

[ashbury]

Command and secondary pitches will determine if [insert prospect name here] has a major league future.

Said, every pitching coach or scout, ever.

[mikelink45]

 

Sure, but you can say that about almost any player from any year that you're close to a playoff slot, right?  Seriously, what did we need, 2 or 3 more wins to make it to the post season last year?  So pick any 2 or 3 losses, find a player who caused us to lose that game, and say "if only player X wasn't on the roster/wasn't in the lineup/wasn't playing X position we'd have made the playoffs."

 

There are 162 games, and more than 40 players who are eligible to play in any given year.  There are a lot of things that don't go right every season, even when we win.  The criticism you've lodged carries very little weight under the circumstances in which professional baseball is played.  It's simply not a proximate cause all by itself.

I usually do not debate when people disagree with a statement I make, that is the fun of these forums, but in this case I think that the point you are making would be different if JR was not being intentionally hidden on the roster during a year that actually meant something to the Twins.  You can talk about all the other players who were called up or chosen for the roster, but none of them had to be retained for a reason other than that was who the Twins thought was the best person for that 25 man spot.  We might disagree on the choice, but it was not a mandate with the other players. 

[TheLeviathan]

I could care less that we lost Graham. I care about the broken process that lead us here.

 

And the fact that it's becoming more trend than fluke.

[alarp33]

 

I could care less that we lost Graham. I care about the broken process that lead us here.

 

And the fact that it's becoming more trend than fluke.

 

Exactly. It's mind boggling that people are defending how this was handled.  In July and August they were willing to play a man short so they could keep this guy, and by early May he was removed from the 40 man - even though his spot wasn't needed and there are plenty of waivable guys on there. 

[Brandon Warne]

 

Tiny sample size. Even a full season is pretty small sample size for a reliever, let alone a month.

To be clear, I don't have a problem moving on if they decided he'd never pan out.
My problem is throwing away Zach Jones first.

 

No disagreement here.

 

 

[Brock Beauchamp]

I don't care much about losing Graham.

 

But I do care that this team continues to appear directionless.

[Loosey]

My problem with this is if the Twins really did like him last year they could have found a way to keep him in the organization and open up a 25 man spot when they realized they were in contention.  I doubt Atlanta would have needed much in return for the Twins to keep him and stick him in AAA.  I mean he just got traded for a "PTBNL or cash" less than a year later. 

[deanlambrecht]

 

I usually do not debate when people disagree with a statement I make, that is the fun of these forums, but in this case I think that the point you are making would be different if JR was not being intentionally hidden on the roster during a year that actually meant something to the Twins.  You can talk about all the other players who were called up or chosen for the roster, but none of them had to be retained for a reason other than that was who the Twins thought was the best person for that 25 man spot.  We might disagree on the choice, but it was not a mandate with the other players. 

 

Well sure, but that's how it works with Rule 5 guys.    Every team does this to a great extent.    So while that modifies the equation I was discussing, I think it still holds as standard practice.

[Thrylos]

 

I don't care much about losing Graham.

 

But I do care that this team continues to appear directionless.

 

appear?

[Brock Beauchamp]

appear?

I was being polite about it.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

My problem with this is if the Twins really did like him last year they could have found a way to keep him in the organization and open up a 25 man spot when they realized they were in contention.  I doubt Atlanta would have needed much in return for the Twins to keep him and stick him in AAA.  I mean he just got traded for a "PTBNL or cash" less than a year later. 

Not only that -- they could have stashed him on the DL for a good portion of last year.  (They did DL him briefly, but not until August 26th when it was practically meaningless with the rosters expanding in 5 days.)

 

If they have such little confidence that they would cut him for no appreciable gain right now, then why did they insist on keeping him as part of a beleaguered bullpen during a pennant race first?

 

I remember Graham coming in with the bases loaded, 7th inning to face A-Rod on August 18th, protecting a 3 run lead.  Mind-boggling by itself, but even moreso if the team didn't even want him once his Rule 5 restrictions were gone.  What exactly were they doing with him?

[ken]

_{This might be a sign they are making decisions.  Graham wasn't lighting us the league (I see the Yankees sent him back to AA) and instead of compounding the mistake of last year, they traded him.} 

 

_{When you look at the relief pitchers on the 40 man roster and the players who will need to be added soon, if he wasn't part of the Twins future, the best move for everyone was getting rid of him.  Isn't that exactly what many are asking we do with some of our veterans?}

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

Well sure, but that's how it works with Rule 5 guys.    Every team does this to a great extent.    So while that modifies the equation I was discussing, I think it still holds as standard practice.

A lot of teams don't make Rule 5 picks.  And most teams that find themselves in contention don't roster a non-contributing Rule 5 pick all season.  What exactly is your point?

 

Simply put, the Twins screwed up by rostering Graham all season if they had so little confidence in his future that they'd cut him this quickly.

 

The Angels probably screwed up too by rostering Taylor Featherston all season -- they only fell 1 win short of a playoff game, and they likewise dealt Featherston this spring for "cash or PTBNL" (presumably a modest amount of cash, probably equivalent to a waiver fee).  Although at least the Angels weren't bringing Featherston into key game situations in August, like the Twins did with Graham.  And at least they tried to immediately add a player to replace him on the 40-man roster, unlike the Twins just now with Graham (the Twins still rocking 39 guys on the 40-man roster).

[alarp33]

 

_{This might be a sign they are making decisions.  Graham wasn't lighting us the league (I see the Yankees sent him back to AA) and instead of compounding the mistake of last year, they traded him.} 

 

_{When you look at the relief pitchers on the 40 man roster and the players who will need to be added soon, if he wasn't part of the Twins future, the best move for everyone was getting rid of him.  Isn't that exactly what many are asking we do with some of our veterans?}

 

No one is sad about the loss of JR Graham.  The confusion/ anger is how the talent evaluation is so bad that they felt he was worthy of a 25 man spot during 2015 while in a playoff chase, and a 40 man spot this winter. 

 

The 40 man and players who needed to be added soon were largely the exact same last year, and in November, when they felt he was worthy of keeping

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

_{This might be a sign they are making decisions.  Graham wasn't lighting us the league (I see the Yankees sent him back to AA) and instead of compounding the mistake of last year, they traded him.} 

That's fine, but it still admits a pretty massive, obvious "mistake of last year".

 

And they have yet to replace Graham on the 40-man, and the guy most likely to take the spot in the near future is Buddy Boshers.  (And we still have other dead weight on the 40-man too, so it's not like Graham was blocking Boshers anyway.)

 

Why the rush to cut him right now?  They seem awfully certain that Graham is hopeless now.  And coming from the brain trust that believed Graham was a present-day bullpen asset as late as August 18th last year, I'm a little skeptical of their decision-making process...

[deanlambrecht]

 

A lot of teams don't make Rule 5 picks.  And most teams that find themselves in contention don't roster a non-contributing Rule 5 pick all season.  What exactly is your point?

 

Simply put, the Twins screwed up by rostering Graham all season if they had so little confidence in his future that they'd cut him this quickly.

 

The Angels probably screwed up too by rostering Taylor Featherston all season -- they only fell 1 win short of a playoff game, and they likewise dealt Featherston this spring for "cash or PTBNL" (presumably a modest amount of cash, probably equivalent to a waiver fee).  Although at least the Angels weren't bringing Featherston into key game situations in August, like the Twins did with Graham.  And at least they tried to immediately add a player to replace him on the 40-man roster, unlike the Twins just now with Graham (the Twins still rocking 39 guys on the 40-man roster).

 

 

My point is that it's not accurate to pin the failure to reach the playoffs on the performance of a single player.    My subsequent post was a follow up to indicate that it's still not accurate to do so because of a player's Rule 5 status. 

 

Hell, last season alone, if one were to pin our failure to reach the playoffs on a single player, wouldn't Glen Perkins be a better choice to make than Graham?    How about Mauer?    Suzuki?    Hughes?    Santana (80 game suspension!)?    Nolasco?

 

We had many players on our roster who contributed to our failure to reach the playoffs last season.    So did every single team that failed to reach the playoffs.    Guess what?    Even teams that reached the playoffs had middling performances from certain players - performances that mirrored the poor performances that we had.    Pinning failure to reach the playoffs on a single player is simply a poor gauge of why any given team failed to reach the playoffs.

 

Edit to add...

Let's build on the Rule 5 argument with a specific example.      (Statistically this isn't valid, but for our purposes here its an incredibly illustrative comparison.)   

 

In 2000, the Twins took Johan Santana in the Rule 5 draft.  That season he saw 30 games & 86 IP, and pitched to a 6.49 ERA.    His other pitching stats were similarly poor:   http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/santajo02.shtml.    The following season was definitely better, but still not great, when he logged exactly 1/2 as many games and IP.   

 

The team failed to reach the post season both of those years.    Do we pin that on Johan Santana, or on the team's decision to keep him on the roster despite the poor production?

 

Now, Rule 5 selections are always fraught with risk, but if they weren't valuable no team would ever make one.      And they are sometimes wildly successful.    For example, in addition to Santana,  other teams have successfully used Rule 5 to draft Josh Hamilton, Joakim Soria, and Jared Burton (the Reds, and later picked up and very successful with the Twins).

[Thrylos]

 

_{This might be a sign they are making decisions.}  

 

Let me put those decisions into perspective:

 

It is like someone finding out that unless they undertake major intervention right now will have a couple weeks to live and the first thing he/she does is gets his/her haircut.

[ken]

 

Let me put those decisions into perspective:

 

It is like someone finding out that unless they undertake major intervention right now will have a couple weeks to live and the first thing he/she does is gets his/her haircut.

And we should put this discussion into perspective - we have 6 pages of discussion on a minor transaction and we are comparing the Twins start of the season to a "major intervention"

 

But if you only have a couple weeks to live - in the words of Fernando - "It's better to look good than to feel good"   so go get that haircut.