From Oswaldo to Kennys to Sano to Park etc.....

[Twodogs]

I think the Twins have taken the wrong approach to building the Twins.  If you look at some of the players on the 40 man roster, you are looking at a bunch of guys who have 20 homerun potential, but most of them are poor defenders and they all strikeout way way way too much.  Basically I think trying to play like the Boston's of the world is the wrong approach.  I mean those teams are always going to outspend the twins, so they will always have overall more power production than the twins will have.  The FO is trying to put together a power producing hammering team that will force runs in with bombs all over the place.  Problem is, overall, the twins will always have less monster players than the teams like the Yankees because the Yankees will always out spend the Twins.  So for the Twins to try and assemble a power producing team, they will for the most part, have, 2nd tier power hitters, I know he is past his prime, but I am just using as an example, The A-rods of the world will not be coming to Minnesota to mash 600 homeruns, just isn't going to happen, instead the Twins get the Buyeng Ho Parks, the Oswaldo Arcias of the world, guys with tremendous power potential, but also have a lot of flaws in their games.  Plus the Twins play in a park that isn't homerun friendly.  So why try and compete with those teams on their field.  Hey I mean just because all of the neighborhood dogs are barking up some tree doesn't mean that it is the only tree to be barking up, nor is it necessarily the best tree to be barking up. 

 

So the Twins have players such as

Dozier

Plouffe

Vargas

Arcia

Sano

Park

Walker

All of these guys are taking up spots on the 40 man roster, imagine for a second that there wasnt a DH????  What in the hell are the Twins going to do with all of these guys??  They are all average to below average to maybe even poor fielders.  Yes it is true, everyone of them could hit 20+ HR in a year.  In fact if all of them hit 20 HR's in a given year the Twins would have 140 HR's out of them, that isn't even one run per game based on HR's, but now you look and they all average 150 K's per year and that would be over 1000 times someone wont be on base, 1000 time a runner wont be moved over, 1000 times that someone wont be driven in, etc.....  Then go and figure that they are poor defenders and that is a lot of stress on a pitching staff that cant afford Clayton Kershaw either.  So when we talk about pitching, the Twins are always going to have to have at least 3/5ths of the rotation as a pitch to contact type of rotation, yes they could potentially develop a Berrios to be like a Johan Santana, but even with Santana the Twins still had the Brad Radke's of the world and those guys did quite well when they had Torii Hunter, Jacques Jones, etc.... running around out in the OF catching everything hit in the park.  Imagine what would have happend to Brad Radke with an OF of Miguel Sano in Right, Oswaldo Arcia in Left, and Danny Santana in Center.  Radke would make Nolasco, Santana, and Milone look like All-Stars with that Twins defense, which I am sure has probably been deployed a few times this year.  I think it's probably too late, because they are so far into this mess that they will need to try and make this crap pile work somehow, but if 5 years ago, they would have taken a different approach instead of trying to keep up with the Joneses, today the twins could have been catching people off gaurd. 

 

Imagine if the Twins would have put together a team like the early to mid 80's St. Louis Cardinals??  A team built on speed and defense with occasional power hitters sprinkled into the lineup.  Imagine a franchise that has guys like this.

 

Ozzie Smith  600 career stolen bases

Vince Coleman 700 career stolen bases

Wille McGee 350 career stolen bases

Tommy Herr 200 career stolen bases

Lonnie Smith 350 career stolen bases

Terry Pendleton good hitter with 20 HR capability

Jack Clark Legit Power Hitter

Kieth Hernandez good hitter with some pop

There are others too like Van Slyke, etc... 

 

But I think you get my point.  Back in the 80's you had guys like Ricky Henderson, Ron LeFluer, Tim Raines, Vince Coleman, every team had at least a few guys that could run and some teams like the Cardinals had a bunch.  I'm not making generalizations, but usually if those guys were fast they were also pretty solid defensively.  If you also think back to that era, each team had a couple of catchers whose only job was to call a game and keep the running game under control, to have a catcher that was hitting around the mendoza line wasn't usually a concern if they could throw out Ricky Henderson a few times.  Now fast forward to todays game, a bunch of slow plodding power hitters, a David Ortiz mecca, you also have had guys like Mike Napoli catching who probably would have a hard time throwing out the garbage let alone a guy like Ricky Henderson in his prime.  So baseball right now is a prime target for a team that can put pressure on the other teams defense by running.  Yeah Vince Coleman wasn't much of a power hitter but if he swiped 70 bases, isn't that kind of like hitting 70 doubles??? 

 

Last part of my thoughts are this.  The giant monster hitters are in-vogue, they are commanding huge salaries, I mean look what the Twins had to pay Park and he hadn't even played a game in the bigs yet.  The slick fielding fast guys are probably a lot cheaper in todays game to get ahold of, they aren't putting up the numbers that everyone is watching in the newspapers and the magazines and they aren't showing up on sports center.  So the Twins can scout speed and defense pretty easily, and those guys probably won't be nearly as expensive as the Parks of the world.  A lot of speed would put pressure on teams that are not used to that kind of game right now, that kind of defense would make our pitchers look better than they are, which I am sure would make those pitchers happy too.  You sprinkle a couple of big hitters in the lineup like Sano, Dozier and Park and then have 6 other guys with a skill set such as a Wille McGee and you have a playoff team every year.  I mean back in the 80's?? who were St. Louis's pitchers??  Ken Forsch, Danny Cox, Joe Magrane, John Tudor.  Not exactly the types of guys that cause a small breeze in the park because of so many swings and misses.  So would it have been a good idea to copy the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1980's??  No, everyone had those types of players.  I feel now is the time to have done it, when it's not really the popular thing to do.  I mean isn't that really what Billy Beane did in Oakland with Moneyball in the early 2000's??  He did something that no one else had done, or even really thought of at that time.  Now everyone does that, looks at On Base Pct. so now there isn't really any advantage to spend all of your time on that.  The Twins need to bark up a different tree if they want to build a playoff contender, either that, or out spend the Red Sox, the Yankees, the Dodgers and the Cubs with the current formula in place. 

 

Right now, it doesn't surprise me the the Twins pitchers have done a little better with Kepler, Buxton, and Grossman out in the outfield.  I think that is a small start to something better than Oswaldo running around out there. 

[S.]

 

The FO is trying to put together a power producing hammering team that will force runs in with bombs all over the place. 

The lineups they've been trotting out would beg to differ:

 

1. Eduardo Nunez 3B
2. Robbie Grossman LF
3. Joe Mauer DH
4. Brian Dozier 2B
5. Trevor Plouffe 1B
6. Eduardo Escobar SS
7. Max Kepler RF
8. Kurt Suzuki C
9. Danny Santana CF

 

1. Eduardo Nunez ® 3B
2. Danny Santana (S) LF
3. Joe Mauer (L) 1B
4. Brian Dozier ® 2B
5. Max Kepler (L) RF
6. Byung Ho Park ® DH
7. Eduardo Escobar (S) SS
8. Juan Centeno (L) C
9. Byron Buxton ® CF

 

1. Eduardo Nunez DH
2. Joe Mauer 1B
3. Robbie Grossman LF
4. Brian Dozier 2B
5. Trevor Plouffe 3B
6. Eduardo Escobar SS
7. Max Kepler RF
8. Kurt Suzuki C
9. Byron Buxton CF

 

Etc.

[Thrylos]

You lost me at Tommy Herr...

 

(Different ballgame back then.  They don't quite steal bases like they did way back then.)

[Twodogs]

 

The lineups they've been trotting out would beg to differ:

 

1. Eduardo Nunez 3B
2. Robbie Grossman LF
3. Joe Mauer DH
4. Brian Dozier 2B
5. Trevor Plouffe 1B
6. Eduardo Escobar SS
7. Max Kepler RF
8. Kurt Suzuki C
9. Danny Santana CF

 

1. Eduardo Nunez ® 3B
2. Danny Santana (S) LF
3. Joe Mauer (L) 1B
4. Brian Dozier ® 2B
5. Max Kepler (L) RF
6. Byung Ho Park ® DH
7. Eduardo Escobar (S) SS
8. Juan Centeno (L) C
9. Byron Buxton ® CF

 

1. Eduardo Nunez DH
2. Joe Mauer 1B
3. Robbie Grossman LF
4. Brian Dozier 2B
5. Trevor Plouffe 3B
6. Eduardo Escobar SS
7. Max Kepler RF
8. Kurt Suzuki C
9. Byron Buxton CF

 

Etc.

No you are exactly right, lately they have been sending out guys like Kepler, Buxton and Grossman.  Guys that can run a little bit better than Sano and Arcia and Willingham and on and on.  But Kepler and Grossman were definitely not in the lineup plan at the beginning of the season.

[Twodogs]

 

You lost me at Tommy Herr...

 

(Different ballgame back then.  They don't quite steal bases like they did way back then.)

That is my point exactly, They don't, as a result people are less likely to be able to stop it in today's game.

 

And most people in 2002 or whatever got lost when Billy Beane put Hatteberg at 1B.  Now everyone knows why, but back then, it wasnt the way you do things.  Now you wont sneak up on anyone trying to out On base percentage people, they are all doing it now.  So try something different, something that isn't being done.

[Jham]

I almost started a thread about modern moneyball and traits might be undervalued by the current market.  Of course, the market is so stats-based now, that you'd have to come up with something not being measured, like leadership or intangibles, or something overlooked.  I couldn't come up with anything, so I never started the thread.  However, your approach of reviewing traits the market has given up on is very intriguing.  We'd have to see if things like stealing bases or covering ground on D have shifted in $$ and changed their value in generating or eliminating runs.  Of course, the review would have to be post-moneyball era only and would require searching out the correct base for comparison since poor-throwing catchers and plodding power hitters would be negate each other.  On the other hand, if the league has changed that much, the few speedy players left like Dyson or Billy Hamilton should steal 150 bags a year.  It bears looking into.  Some teams probably already are.  Some probably already have.  And if teams are researching it or implementing it, they wouldn't release their stats.  So we'll see if anyone tries it.  Worth looking into.

[GMinTraining]

Better athlete than advertised IMO - Not to mention that he was an All American 1st baseman in college.   He has something to work with defensively IMO.  [AAA REPS]

 

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