Why we need to trade Josh Willingham this offseason.

[Guest USAFChief]

You may become the Royals or Pirates(2012 notwithstanding)...anyone want that??

 

This is a untrue criticism to rebuilding. The Pirates and Royals sucked for years due to absolutely awful decisions in the draft and at pretty much every level of baseball. these two teams finally got it in the last 3-4 years when they spent megabucks in the draft and internationally. Now they both have great farm systems but that wasn't the case for the decades that they sucked. if you want a better comparison to the Twins then it would be the Cubs or the Mets. Expensive losers but luckily the Twins aren't saddled with any long term awful contracts. If you pay attention to baseball you'll notice that both of these clubs are slashing payroll and rebuilding their farm systems.

 

Imo the do anything to get to 80 wins plan could set this franchise back years in the rebuilding process.

 

I think it's more true that the Pirates and Royals sucked for years due to a combination of things, the most important of which is: rebuilding a franchise is hard. Trading away all your major league players to "rebuild" doesn't guarantee you'll be "rebuilt" at some point in the near future. In fact, the most likely outcome is you'll be doing the same thing in a few years...trading away your good major league talent in some new GM's new five year rebuilding plan. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

If the rebuilding process came with some guarantee, it's an easy decision to make. It doesn't. Given the Twins current major league roster, the ability to spend $120M next year if they choose, some FA pitching available, and some potential redundancy at 1B/OF that can be dealt for ML pitching, there's an argument to be made for trying to win in 2013 that's at least as strong as the argument for giving up on the next couple years. In fact, I would argue the 2013 team, with the right moves, has a better chance of competing than expecting everything to come up roses in 2015 with the current minor leagues plus whatever prospects you add by dumping everything of value.

[diehardtwinsfan]

You may become the Royals or Pirates(2012 notwithstanding)...anyone want that??

 

This is a untrue criticism to rebuilding. The Pirates and Royals sucked for years due to absolutely awful decisions in the draft and at pretty much every level of baseball. these two teams finally got it in the last 3-4 years when they spent megabucks in the draft and internationally. Now they both have great farm systems but that wasn't the case for the decades that they sucked. if you want a better comparison to the Twins then it would be the Cubs or the Mets. Expensive losers but luckily the Twins aren't saddled with any long term awful contracts. If you pay attention to baseball you'll notice that both of these clubs are slashing payroll and rebuilding their farm systems.

 

Imo the do anything to get to 80 wins plan could set this franchise back years in the rebuilding process.

 

I think it's more true that the Pirates and Royals sucked for years due to a combination of things, the most important of which is: rebuilding a franchise is hard. Trading away all your major league players to "rebuild" doesn't guarantee you'll be "rebuilt" at some point in the near future. In fact, the most likely outcome is you'll be doing the same thing in a few years...trading away your good major league talent in some new GM's new five year rebuilding plan. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

If the rebuilding process came with some guarantee, it's an easy decision to make. It doesn't. Given the Twins current major league roster, the ability to spend $120M next year if they choose, some FA pitching available, and some potential redundancy at 1B/OF that can be dealt for ML pitching, there's an argument to be made for trying to win in 2013 that's at least as strong as the argument for giving up on the next couple years. In fact, I would argue the 2013 team, with the right moves, has a better chance of competing than expecting everything to come up roses in 2015 with the current minor leagues plus whatever prospects you add by dumping everything of value.

 

Pretty much this.... I'm all for rebuilding if that is what the team thinks should be done, though the new CBA really takes away the Twins ability to improve the odds of a good crop of milb talent come 2015/16 timeframe, as they have limits as to what they can spend. There's a lot of reasons to think they can compete in 2013. The offense is there now, and there's plenty in the pipline, with the only positional weakness being up the middle. Their problem is pitching, pitching, and more pitching. Other than Diamond, not one of the FillerDs should be relied on for the rotation next year, and I really think they should be planning on starting one of Gibson/Hendriks in AAA as well. That means they need to fill 3 spots. Blackburn is a given even though he shouldn't be. I'd argue they need to sign/trade for 2 decent starters and get 1 starter on a prove it contract.

 

I suspect Ryan might be able to flip Span for something, though it's looking more and more like his best bet is going to be a #3 starter.

[TheLeviathan]

Trading away all your major league players to "rebuild" doesn't guarantee you'll be "rebuilt" at some point in the near future. In fact, the most likely outcome is you'll be doing the same thing in a few years...trading away your good major league talent in some new GM's new five year rebuilding plan. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

If the rebuilding process came with some guarantee, it's an easy decision to make. It doesn't.

 

You've got a strawman and a ridiculous notion here. Nothing comes with a guarantee and no one is suggesting that. Hell, the Angels are in a dogfight for the playoffs after adding CJ Wilson, Albert Pujols, Zach Grienke, and a wunderkid to their already solid roster. The notion that FA can be any more a silver bullet than rebuilding is just foolish.

 

No one is guaranteeing rebuilding will work, but there are some valid reasons to defer to that strategy. When you build around young talent you give yourself a longer window of opportunity. The team next year has many, many question marks and is coming off a season in which it was one of the worst in baseball. A couple FA pitchers could help a ton, but they won't fix everything. And to me, it's all about focus. If you focus your FA work towards the future - spend away. Go get someone that will be here and contributing for the next 5-7 years. But if you focus on putting your eggs in the 2013 basket I think you will horribly waste an opportunity down the line.

 

Think about it this way - the Twins had two waves of good young players that put them in contention. Their hesitation to ever add to that mix hurt the team. But you have to have that intact core before you can go outside the organization and fix all your ills. Putting aside the hypocrisy of "Don't trade Hammer and punt 2013, but trade Span and Morneau" - Span's team friendly deal will simply not be enough to garner a significant piece. (Hell, look how bad Sanchez failed for KC and Span doesn't even have that kind of value) Morneau is making 14M and has had basically one stretch where he looked great again. Trading from this supposed "glut" A) isn't going to fetch much immediate impact and puts even more pressure on Hammer and Doumit to defy 6-7 years of career norms for staying healthy and producing.

 

The Twins potentially have a core they can compete with for a decade coming very soon. That same group could fail miserably, but the group we have right now is not a core to build around or invest assets into - we KNOW that much. Willingham will not be a longterm solution - but Revere, Plouffe, Dozier, Hicks, Parmalee might be. My opinion has always been - build with an eye towards what will be the most sustainable and durable. 2013 offers little of either.

[ericchri]

I was curious about something in regards to Span, in large part because I happen to have on my shirt with his name on the back today, and due to the frequent discussions about trading him (and how much value he actually has).

 

I don't offer this statistic up as anything other than a statistic that surprised me. According to baseball-reference, Denard Span is currently #13 among position players in the AL in WAR at 3.5. Josh Willingham is the next highest Twin at 3.0 (#21), with Joe Mauer at 2.6 (#28).

 

Please commence arguments about how good a statistic WAR actually is... :-)

[kab21]

Imo the do anything to get to 80 wins plan could set this franchise back years in the rebuilding process.

 

First of all, I haven't seen anyone saying the Twins should "do anything" to get back to immediate contention next year. But I'd certainly argue that the team should look for young players that can help right away and put some of their freed up payroll into pitchers that can make an impact. The alternative is to have the Pohlads pocket the $20 million rather than spending it in free agency, and trading away all veteran assets for prospects. Maybe a nice theory until you look at the job this organization has done of evaluating young talent in recent years.

 

The Twins aren't in a position like the Pirates and Royals because they have no tradable superstars. They have guys like Span, Willingham and Morneau that they can probably move for B-prospects. That's not a great recipe for rebuilding, especially when the kind of lesser prospects you tend to target are almost always some variation of Pedro Hernandez and Eduardo Escobar.

 

I'm all for signing a FA pitcher until it becomes 5/80M deal for an early 30's average pitcher. That's the problem with FA. The EVIL Pohlads might pocket a little money in the short term but they retain payroll flexibility for future teams.

 

Nobody has suggested trading Willingham or Span for some variation of Pedro Hernandez or Eduardo Escobar. There is no deadline to trade those 2 since they are signed for multiple seasons but it's time (was time) to make them available to pick up some legitimate MiLB talent.

[Ultima Ratio]

Kab, the pirates were a farm team for the past 10-15 years. Every good and decent player was traded for prospects whom were traded if they too became good/decent and in the final years of arbitration. Just to name a few. Freddy Garcia, Niger Morgan, Jason Bay, Aramis Ramirez, Brian Giles, Jason Kendell (in his prime) and many more. The reason is because the GM in those years -- and still now -- was told to dramatically lower payroll. Low payroll makes it hard to keep good players and so goes the tale of a crappy baseball team for the past 20 years. GO BUCS!

 

You don't really understand why the Pirates were awful for so long. They had one of the lowest MLB payrolls and they were also really cheap in the draft bypassing the BPA for signability several times. Combine that with making awful decisions at the MLB level and you are left with an org that eventually has to trade the few good players that they produced. They were simply a complete failure as an organization that never had a rebuilding plan until recently when they started spending megabucks in the draft.

 

Did you even read my post?

 

Very low payroll (yep, also can't sign top guys), selling every good player (even when you get tops guys), 15-20 years (without top guys) = bad team for 20 years until now (now they have top guys and have paid to keep a couple). There, I've condensed it.

[kab21]

Did you even read my post?

 

Very low payroll (yep, also can't sign top guys), selling every good player (even when you get tops guys), 15-20 years (without top guys) = bad team for 20 years until now (now they have top guys and have paid to keep a couple). There, I've condensed it.

 

I guess I interpreted it as a defense that the Pirates have been rebuilding for the last 20 years. They never built or rebuilt anything in that time.

[Ultima Ratio]

Did you even read my post?

 

Very low payroll (yep, also can't sign top guys), selling every good player (even when you get tops guys), 15-20 years (without top guys) = bad team for 20 years until now (now they have top guys and have paid to keep a couple). There, I've condensed it.

 

I guess I interpreted it as a defense that the Pirates have been rebuilding for the last 20 years. They never built or rebuilt anything in that time.

 

Now you've got it

[PopRiveter]

If we trade him in the offseason, the buyer gets two years of his service at a reasonable cost. If we wait till trade deadline next summer, buyer only gets one and a half years. His value is higher now even if he produces at the same rate next year, which is questionable.

Wrong. He becomes more valuable when a team realizes they are in it at the deadline and injury or an unproductive season from a single regular outfielder has them convinced that Willinghammer pushes them over the edge. 30+ year olds are at their lowest value in the offseason because they have to be compared with the whole free agent market and a team's own entire cast of milb hopefuls. If they were going to trade him, it should've been this last deadline. Now, if you want to maximize his value, you are probably best to just let him keep outperforming his contract.

[twinstalker]

...Second' date=' perhaps Willingham is not worth all that much to teams in the hunt. I don't doubt that Terry Ryan might fail to recognize a good offer, but I also can see where the best he was offered was someone like Tony Cingrani...

 

Ryan blew it by not shopping this guy and taking advantage of his best year (at age 33!)...[/quote']

 

You kind of contradict yourself here by theorizing that the offer maybe wasn't enough, but then bashing Ryan for not taking it. How do we know what Terry Ryan was offered for The Hammer? What if it was a slightly better package than what we got for Frankie? Would you have supported trading him for a couple of replacement-type players with chances to be starters? Unless someone has hard, indisputable proof that TR passed up quality pitching in July, we all need to stop savaging him. After all, it's not like TR can just choose whoever he wants in a deal, the other team has to say yes too.

Understandable, because "in the hunt" wasn't meant to be typed. I must have been on poor autopilot. "In the hunt" should be "making offers" and my thought process was that the Reds were a team talking to him for another player (Span, tr: we want Cingrani, reds: you can't have him, though you could for JW, tr:not enough). From everything Ryan said, he didn't shop Willingham and gave no encouragement to teams putting out feelers. I am saying he might not have gotten enough of an offer for Willingham (which I believe), and that's probably because he didn't get any offers for him or maybe only one or two "feeler" type offers. You need to shop your best trade bait, hit it hard. You don't just wait for the phone to ring, and we all know that wrt Willingham, that's the best he did.

 

So...he needed to trade JW, and he probably wasn't offered enough if he was offered anything. I think that's pretty consistent, if my first statement wasn't. And it represents prettying bad GMing.