Go get Verlander

[AlwaysinModeration]

I hadn't posted my stance on this thread, but I think I did somewhere else along the line. And I'll always revisit my stance, but in this case I'm not changing it.

Acquiring Verlander was a move I'd have been in favor of if I were an Astros fan. They have a strong team and because they have a realistic chance of winning the WS this year the time was right to make such a move.

In the case of the Twins, acquiring Verlander at an equivalent of the price the Astros paid is a move I would have opposed. Beyond that, beating out the Astros for him would have required paying more than what they did. And beyond that, he would have had to approve the trade which would probably have required contractural incentives. After all that, it would have only slightly improved our minuscule chances of winning a WS this year.

I'll also repeat that I want the Twins organization to compete for a WS championship every year for the rest of my life. At this stage of the process I think it would be wrong for Falvine to commit resources to Verlander, especially with the number of young emerging players on our team that I want locked in to long term contracts.

And, I won't forget to mention, at this point in the 2017 postseason I'd much rather see Verlander pitching for the Astros than any of the three evil empires they are competing against.

I agree with everything you wrote in this post. And this is coming from someone who wanted them to trade for Verlander in August. You argues persuasively and convinced me.

 

One thing I will note though. The principle of finding ways to acquire elite players is completely sound. Terry Ryan never ever went after elite players. He didn't go after big free agents. He didn't go after elite players in trades. He mostly went after average players. If you aim for mediocrity, you have a good chance of achieving it.

 

Going after an elite arm has already paid off for Houston. It could have worked out for the Twins. The main thing I hope going forward if for Falvey and Levine is to see them going after as many elite players as possible.

[The Wise One]

 

I agree with everything you wrote in this post. And this is coming from someone who wanted them to trade for Verlander in August. You argues persuasively and convinced me.

One thing I will note though. The principle of finding ways to acquire elite players is completely sound. Terry Ryan never ever went after elite players. He didn't go after big free agents. He didn't go after elite players in trades. He mostly went after average players. If you aim for mediocrity, you have a good chance of achieving it.

Going after an elite arm has already paid off for Houston. It could have worked out for the Twins. The main thing I hope going forward if for Falvey and Levine is to see them going after as many elite players as possible.

Shannon Stewart was an elite player before joining the Twins

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

The Twins couldn’t match the trade with their minor leaguers but a Buxton or Berrios would have trumped the Astros offer.

Yeesh. It's hard to see the Twins being a better team after making that trade. You've basically replaced a 3-4 WAR player with a 4-5 WAR player (if you squint).

 

Except the player you gave away has 4-5 years of control versus 2-3 years of control for the player you acquired.

 

That's bad baseball management, the kind of move that should get a front office fired.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Shannon Stewart was an elite player before joining the Twins

No, he wasn't. He was a pretty good player, one who crossed 4 WAR all of once in his career.

 

Brian Dozier - a borderline elite player if you're generous about the title - has virtually the same career fWAR as Stewart and he hasn't even hit free agency yet.

[ashbury]

Shannon Stewart was an elite player before joining the Twins

No, he wasn't. He was a pretty good player, one who crossed 4 WAR all of once in his career.

Measured another way, lifetime he got exactly one courtesy vote, good for 1 point (Ichiro won that year with 289), in MVP balloting prior to coming to the Twins, and he was on no All-Star teams. If he was elite, he slipped under a lot of radars.

[The Wise One]

 

Measured another way, lifetime he got exactly one courtesy vote, good for 1 point (Ichiro won that year with 289), in MVP balloting prior to coming to the Twins, and he was on no All-Star teams. If he was elite, he slipped under a lot of radars.

 

 

No, he wasn't. He was a pretty good player, one who crossed 4 WAR all of once in his career.

 

Brian Dozier - a borderline elite player if you're generous about the title - has virtually the same career fWAR as Stewart and he hasn't even hit free agency yet.

Yet in Toronto he would be consistently in the top 30 of outfielders. If you want to set the bar so high level of player for complaints of what the Twins management did or did not do it becomes a meaningless argument.People can make the point that the Twins did not trade future good players for current great ones. Long term it would be doubtful if that is an effective way to build a team. Ryan traded an All Star catcher, got a future All Star closer, a future All Star starting pitcher, and guessed really wrong on the third piece. That is the direction trades seem to work out the best

[ChrisKnutson]

You can talk Archer, Verlander, Lynn, Cole all you want, but if the Twins are going to make trades there's only 2 pitchers that make the most sense. And that is going all in and trading for Jacob DeGrom and Brad Hand.

 

Both the rotation and the bullpen (pitching in general) have been a huge problem for the Twins, and trading for these two would change how we view our pitching entirely. Along with changing the views of others our the league and industry, gaining respect and showing that the Twins are forreal.

 

We have the prospects, change of scenery candidates (Pressly) (Vargas), etc. And for the players we trade away we can make up for it with the money we would've spent on free agents by either signing free agents (obviously), signing HUGE international prospects, or extending our core players. IMO, the Twins' group of core position players is so strong that it makes our systems' position players expendable (Wade, Gordon, Palka, Granite, etc). The only two position player prospects I'd prefer the Twins to hold is Rooker and Lewis.

[Mr. Brooks]

You can talk Archer, Verlander, Lynn, Cole all you want, but if the Twins are going to make trades there's only 2 pitchers that make the most sense. And that is going all in and trading for Jacob DeGrom and Brad Hand.

 

Both the rotation and the bullpen (pitching in general) have been a huge problem for the Twins, and trading for these two would change how we view our pitching entirely. Along with changing the views of others our the league and industry, gaining respect and showing that the Twins are forreal.

 

We have the prospects, change of scenery candidates (Pressly) (Vargas), etc. And for the players we trade away we can make up for it with the money we would've spent on free agents by either signing free agents (obviously), signing HUGE international prospects, or extending our core players. IMO, the Twins' group of core position players is so strong that it makes our systems' position players expendable (Wade, Gordon, Palka, Granite, etc). The only two position player prospects I'd prefer the Twins to hold is Rooker and Lewis.

Guy's like Vargas and Pressley have almost zero trade value.

We also don't have a lot of the high ceiling type of prospects that teams move top talent for.

 

Getting a guy like DeGrom would probably have to start with either Buxton, Sano, or Berrios.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Guy's like Vargas and Pressley have almost zero trade value.
We also don't have a lot of the high ceiling type of prospects that teams move top talent for.

Getting a guy like DeGrom would probably have to start with either Buxton, Sano, or Berrios.

Yes. DeGrom would require a package I'd be unwilling to pay. It would either cost a quality MLB player plus prospects or a complete looting of the farm.

 

I'd much rather see the Twins aim for someone with a reasonable price tag and some upside, like Cole. With this offense, the Twins don't need a shutdown rotation, they simply need a not terrible rotation.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

Shannon Stewart was an elite player before joining the Twins

BBRef and Fangraphs both had him 3 to 4 WAR per season for the few seasons in Toronto preceding his stint with the Twins.

 

Not exactly “elite” but very good

[Guest]

Shannon Stewart was an elite player before joining the Twins

He had an elite batting stance, an elite way to wear his stirrups and an elite toss to shortstop when he caught a fly ball with nobody on base. Also, it really helped when he brought that "Row the Boat" theme with him from Toronto.

[USAFChief]

Huge missed opportunity. Huge.

[AlwaysinModeration]

Huge missed opportunity. Huge.

But there’s no way to know if Verlander would have been able to help the Twins in a crucial game against the Yankees.

[AlwaysinModeration]

Shannon Stewart was an elite player before joining the Twins

Setting aside the quibbling over how elite Shannon Stewart was or was not, I will grant you this one.

[Platoon]

We can discuss this until hell, or MN freezes over, but the Twins can't/won't spend the kind of mega bucks it takes to land a Verlander type pitcher, nor is our roster depth of the talent level that will allow a trade of that magnitude. Unless, of course we want to move Buxton, Berrios, and Sano. Add to that the fact that Mpls has never been a destination city for MLB players. It boils down to draft and develop. Then if you get a truly competitive team with the need for a fill in, you maybe can find a year end top flight mercenary to finalize your roster. There are all kinds of metrics in baseball, and the Twins revenue stream, and the geographic location of the Twind Cities are two of them.

[drjim]

Never gets old:

 

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/258208796839657472

[Squirrel]

Huge missed opportunity. Huge.

Assuming the Twins made no inquiry (yes, they were rumored to not be one of the teams in on Verlander, doesn’t mean they didn’t inquire) and/or assuming you know that the response was positive to move forward into a more serious discussion about a trade, including we had an acceptible price the Tigers would agree to that didn’t include Buxton, Sano and/or Berrios AND Verlander agreed to waive his no-trade clause to come here, and the Twins decided otherwise, I concur. But until/unless you can give me all those details without leaning assumptions based on a certain opinion regarding the inabilities of our FO, I remain uncertain one way or the other.

[drjim]

Assuming the Twins made no inquiry (yes, they were rumored to not be one of the teams in on Verlander, doesn’t mean they didn’t inquire) and/or assuming you know that the response was positive to move forward into a more serious discussion about a trade, including we had an acceptible price the Tigers would agree to that didn’t include Buxton, Sano and/or Berrios AND Verlander agreed to waive his no-trade clause to come here, and the Twins decided otherwise, I concur. But until/unless you can give me all those details without leaning assumptions based on a certain opinion regarding the inabilities of our FO, I remain uncertain one way or the other.

I can't speak to whether or not the Twins pursued him (I doubt it was much, if anything), but it was reported multiple times that the Twins weren't on Verlander's list of teams he would accept a trade to.

[Squirrel]

I can't speak to whether or not the Twins pursued him (I doubt it was much, if anything), but it was reported multiple times that the Twins weren't on Verlander's list of teams he would accept a trade to.

Well, then, there’s the answer. If true he wouldn’t waive his no-trade to come here, there was no missed opportunity.

 

Also, and this is really a quibble or difference of semantics on my part, pursue for me is different from inquiry. Pursue is beyond inquiry. Not sure how others mean it, but that’s how I read it, for the sake of communicating clearly.

[Blake]

 

Never gets old:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/258208796839657472

The president follows baseball? Been a while since we've had one of those. Kind of cool. Although, in retrospect, since President Trump was a pretty good player as a youngster, I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise.

[Squirrel]

The president follows baseball? Been a while since we've had one of those. Kind of cool. Although, in retrospect, since President Trump was a pretty good player as a youngster, I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise.

Pretty good? I thought he was great!

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

Links please

 

Doesn't hurt to repost them

 

It was also reported that the Tigers were shopping Verlander long before the trade deadlines and long before he was actually traded. Wouldn't have hurt to start a discussion with the Tigers.

[jimmer]

 

Pretty good? I thought he was great!

Like Castro...

[jorgenswest]

The Twins have two young players that could have topped the deal that the Tigers received from the Astros. Berrios and Buxton. If you are arguing that the Twins should have topped the deal with the Astros in order to acquire Verlander, you have to also be OK with letting go of one of those two.

 

It would be great to acquire Verlander and acquire him at a bargain that would involve a package of several prospects. The reality is that the top prospect in the deal wins the deal.

[jimmer]

 

The Twins have two young players that could have topped the deal that the Tigers received from the Astros. Berrios and Buxton. If you are arguing that the Twins should have topped the deal with the Astros in order to acquire Verlander, you have to also be OK with letting go of one of those two.

It would be great to acquire Verlander and acquire him at a bargain that would involve a package of several prospects. The reality is that the top prospect in the deal wins the deal.

Not only would they have had to top the offer Houston made, but then they would also have to pay him 20M a year for the next two.

 

And even more importantly,  Verlander had to approve the trade himself.

 

Again, these 'I told you so' posts after he pitches another great game is exactly what caused the closing of the Hicks/Murphy trade thread.  

[notoriousgod71]

 

Never gets old:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/258208796839657472

 

This is stupid.

 

At the time of that tweet Verlander had an ERA of 5.82 in the 2006 postseason and 5.31 in 2011.

[USAFChief]

Pretty good? I thought he was great!

Just ask him.

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

have to pay him 20M a year for the next two.

 

No offense, but this is what makes your side look unserious in this discussion. I cannot think of a better way to spend 40 million the next two years than on a Cy Young pitcher still near his peak with something to prove.

 

Guys like this don't hit the trade market every day, and the Twins sat it out.

[USAFChief]

As I see it, this thread is a perfect synopsis of why the Twins can never seem to get over the hump.

 

"Too expensive." "Too old." "Save the prospects!" "He might not want to come here." Yada Yada yada.

 

Some teams see opportunity and seize it. Damn the costs, fortune favors the bold.

 

And some teams find excuses.

 

There was a PERFECT situation for the Twins in Verlander. Almost too good to be true. The exact thing everyone agrees is needed, at reasonable cost for not too many years.

 

And I doubt they even kicked the tires.

 

I can't understand why people are ok with that.

[mickeymental]

 

Just ask him.

someone did. an excerpt from pulitzer prize-winning author Michael D’Antonio's book, the truth about trump:

 

“I was always the best athlete. Something that nobody knew about me. …I was the best baseball player in New York when I was young. … But I also knew that it was very limited, because in those days you couldn’t even make a lot of money playing baseball. … Everybody wanted me to be a baseball player. But I was good in other sports too. I was good in wrestling, I was very good at football. I was always the best at sports.”