Twins make offer for Chris Archer

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

I agree with the original signing grade, but would give a B for the extension. Most extensions come after a good year, which it did, and 3 years for 39M was reasonable for both sides. Injuries are part of the game, and I refuse to downgrade a player, for what is part of the game. Also, I'm not big on hindsight.

3/42* sounds reasonable, but the biggest problem was it didn't take effect for 2 years. For all the consternation about long-term guarantees for Darvish, we effectively promised a much more suspect Hughes $14 mil per year 3, 4, and 5 years into the future, when we didn't even have to (we still controlled him with 2/16 remaining on the original contract).

 

The extension got a lot of love here, but you are pretty quick to dismiss the "board consensus" on a lot of topics and this would be a good one to question. I think fans were so tickled to finally experience one good SP season, and pleased that our initial 3/24 contract was wise, that we didn't properly consider the effects of tearing up the remaining 2/16 and replacing it with 5/58.

That said, F- is far too harsh. D or C grade on the extension is about right -- it wasn't a great decision, but it hasn't really hurt the team that much.

 

* it's actually 3/42 rather than 3/39 because the extension bumped up his pay on his original contract too

[Mr. Brooks]

I have to disagree on this. Signing Cobb or Lynn makes this team quite a bit better when you consider what we currently have for starters. No question about it in my mind and both those starters are better than #4s.

But does it make them better enough to win a WS?

To me, no, not even close. By this time next year Gonsalves and/or Romero could be as good as or better than those guys.

We need a guy at the top, IMO, to anchor ahead of Berrios, Romero, Gonsalves and Mejia if we want a reasonable chance of cashing in this 3 or 4 year window we're entering.

[amjgt]

One asset that I haven't seen brought up, that the Rays would probably see some value in, is our Competitive Balance pick (#75 overall)

[GP830]

 

One asset that I haven't seen brought up, that the Rays would probably see some value in, is our Competitive Balance pick (#75 overall)

Can one trade competitive balance picks? I thought draft picks were not tradeable. 

[Twins33]

 

Can one trade competitive balance picks? I thought draft picks were not tradeable. 

"Unlike other Draft picks, Competitive Balance Draft picks can be traded. However, they can only be traded during the regular season and cannot be dealt simply in exchange for cash. Additionally, a Competitive Balance Draft pick can be traded only by the club to which it was awarded. In other words, the picks may be traded no more than once."

 

http://m.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/competitive-balance-draft-picks

[cmoss84]

 

But does it make them better enough to win a WS?
To me, no, not even close. By this time next year Gonsalves and/or Romero could be as good as or better than those guys.
We need a guy at the top, IMO, to anchor ahead of Berrios, Romero, Gonsalves and Mejia if we want a reasonable chance of cashing in this 3 or 4 year window we're entering.

I am going to sound like a broken record...many of you are underestimating Lynn and Cobb. They are really solid 3's.

 

I agree with you that we need a front line guy. 

 

However, we are going to be lucky if one of, let alone both, Gonsalves/Romero are as good as Lynn or Cobb. Three's don't grow on trees. I guess I look at Gonsalves and Romero as 4/5 guys and will be pleasantly surprised if they are any better than that. 

[Oxtung]

 

Where did your nine heads in a row comparison come from? Fine, change 70 out of 100 to 60 out of 100 and the chances of it happening is still much lower than flipping nine out of nine.

 

Random variance that led to a career FIP/ERA discrepancy would likely be a couple of years that influenced the overall number, much like your "flipping nine heads in a row" comparison. A brief period of extreme luck in either direction that influences the overall number. Because if you extend past a single season, you change some assortment of defense, catching, quality of opponent, and perhaps team/league, not to mention the luck/unluck component needs to stay identical to what it was the previous season. That's asking a lot.

 

But we don't see that with Nolasco. What we see is a consistent underperformance of FIP in nine out of 11 seasons (and the overperformance seasons are marginal in comparison, never more than 0.18 runs), with the underperformance gap being 0.30 runs or more in a whopping eight out of those nine seasons (again, across three teams, three divisions, and two leagues).

 

At that point, you need to either admit FIP is missing something (mostly likely quality of contact, IMO) or that Ricky Nolasco is one of the unluckiest men on planet earth.

 

Which one makes more sense?

My 9/9 tails was never meant to convey anything other than statistical variance happens. You could change that to 5/5, 3/3,12/12 or whatever you're comfortable with. It makes no difference to my point. Statistical variance is expected when you have a large data set.

 

You have yet to show that Nolasco does not fit within that statistical variance. You threw out an absurd number, 1 out of 43,000 times, implying that Nolasco's career is extremely unprobable. But is it? A few anecdotes tell us next to nothing.  

 

Just over the course of Nolasco's career there have been 724 pitchers that have thrown >200IP (or one full seasons worth). There have been 250 pitchers that have thrown 600 IP (full seasons for half of the years). There have been 115 pitchers that have thrown 1000 innings. 

 

This discussion isn't really germane to the Archer discussion. If you want to continue this further then let's move it to it's own thread.

[amjgt]

 

"Unlike other Draft picks, Competitive Balance Draft picks can be traded. However, they can only be traded during the regular season and cannot be dealt simply in exchange for cash. Additionally, a Competitive Balance Draft pick can be traded only by the club to which it was awarded. In other words, the picks may be traded no more than once."

 

http://m.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/competitive-balance-draft-picks

 

Sounds like a [cough cough] player to be named later, to me

[GP830]

 

"Unlike other Draft picks, Competitive Balance Draft picks can be traded. However, they can only be traded during the regular season and cannot be dealt simply in exchange for cash. Additionally, a Competitive Balance Draft pick can be traded only by the club to which it was awarded. In other words, the picks may be traded no more than once."

 

http://m.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/competitive-balance-draft-picks

Thank you!

[Danchat]

 

Nolasco was marginal his first year. He was 5-1 in the second after a month, then missed the rest of the year, until a late start. He was marginal in the 3rd, before Rob Antony earned his place in Twins history, by dumping him on the Angels at the trade deadline. I don't downgrade players, due to injuries, I agree with the C.

Sure his record was 5-1 but his ERA was at 5.51 right before he hit the disabled list. His 5 wins came in that month of May where the Twins went nuts with runs... 

 

I'm happy they were able to get Busenitz by trading Nolasco away, but the Twins ended up paying Ricky $12M a year for the equivalent of 2.5 years of a #5 starter, and even that's generous.

[USAFChief]

"Unlike other Draft picks, Competitive Balance Draft picks can be traded. However, they can only be traded during the regular season and cannot be dealt simply in exchange for cash. Additionally, a Competitive Balance Draft pick can be traded only by the club to which it was awarded. In other words, the picks may be traded no more than once."

 

http://m.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/competitive-balance-draft-picks

This post is an example of one reason TD is a great place.

 

Straightforward answer, with source, to great question.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

Sounds like a [cough cough] player to be named later, to me

I wonder if that wouldn't be allowed? After all, it's not a player yet, just a pick. Maybe as a "future consideration"? Or maybe that would be prohibited too.

 

There is a practical consideration for this -- it's possible for a team to forfeit this pick for signing free agents, right? Although an alternate "future consideration" could be agreed upon for such a possibility.

 

I know there is also a restriction on trading international bonus money outside the current period, and that seems pretty strict.

[old nurse]

 

I don’t find a 0.18 difference very compelling.

But I think you’re right that some pitchers seem to pitch outside the parameters recorded by FIP, I’m just not sure Archer is one of them.

If you have a crappy bullpen for every 180 innings your starter pitches every 2 runs they let in ups the ERA by .1.   The other direction, if your catcher  with pitch framing gets you 5 extra strikeouts, saves you from just one BB and one fat pitch belted out for a HR a year your fip goes down .15. The most likely  cause of fip over performing ERA on a consistent basis would be some pitchers do not pitch as well with runners on base.  That shows up in bwar.  bwar has not liked Archer the last 2 years. By GSv2 over the last two years Archers outcomes are that of an above average pitcher, not a great one.

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

Yes there would be. Statistics actually demands there will be. Ever flipped a coin 100 times? At some point it is going to land same side up a bunch of times in a row.

 

 

Nobody is saying ERA is primarily luck driven but we are saying it takes into account things a pitcher can control and things they can't control. Among the list of things they can't control is the park they play in, is a 4.00 ERA from Coors field the same as a 4.00 ERA at Petco Park? When a flyball is hit to Buxton is that the same as Denard Span? Defense matters. In addition to the onfield differences there will also be statistical variation; sometimes a ball drops and sometimes it doesn't. If Sano gets a pitch over the heart of the plate he can tattoo a ball but if it's hit right at the 3rd baseman does that mean the pitcher did something amazing or did he get lucky? Some years that's going to happen more than others and that will affect a pitchers ERA even though there has been no discernible skill change.

 

So, is ERA entirely luck driven? No. Are there components a pitcher can't control? Yes. Is one of those things statistical variation? Yes. Will there be pitchers whose statistical variation consistently overperform their true talent? Yes. Statistics demands it.

 

Bock is right that I'm looking at the long term. If you were to run these models using SPC, you'd see too many points that fell into the "out of control" aspect of things, which cannot happen without things that FIP misses. To be clear, I don't mind FIP, but I also don't think it's the end game here. It misses things. Rookies, for instance, often see results much worse than FIP... FIP tells us they have promise, but they got those results for a lot of reasons. FIP, for instance, assumes that the hard liners off the wall are just luck driven, but a few feet higher and it's in the pitchers control. That doesn't work in my opinion. FIP assumes defensive metrics are good. Those are even more skeptical.

 

Is it a decent metric for future performance? sure. Is it missing something? yeah. Could Archer be one of those guys that FIP overrates? I think that's a fair question.

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

One asset that I haven't seen brought up, that the Rays would probably see some value in, is our Competitive Balance pick (#75 overall)

 

I'm kind of curious about the international dollars we have left... not sure if they jumped in on the Atlanta guys or not.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

If you have a crappy bullpen for every 180 innings your starter pitches every 2 runs they let in ups the ERA by .1.   The other direction, if your catcher  with pitch framing gets you 5 extra strikeouts, saves you from just one BB and one fat pitch belted out for a HR a year your fip goes down .15. The most likely  cause of fip over performing ERA on a consistent basis would be some pitchers do not pitch as well with runners on base.  That shows up in bwar.  bwar has not liked Archer the last 2 years. By GSv2 over the last two years Archers outcomes are that of an above average pitcher, not a great one.

bWAR is essentially ERA (well, not exactly, as it also includes unearned runs, but close enough).

 

Saying bWAR doesn't like Archer is basically saying Archer's ERA hasn't been very good, which is kinda the argument multiple people are having over ERA vs. FIP.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

FIP, for instance, assumes that the hard liners off the wall are just luck driven, but a few feet higher and it's in the pitchers control. That doesn't work in my opinion. FIP assumes defensive metrics are good. Those are even more skeptical.

To add to this, it's extremely common to see *really* bad pitchers with an ERA +2.00 runs or more over their FIP for this very reason (Berrios' rookie season is a good example).

 

Which is really my point: I think FIP assuming that contact is similar across the board works for most pitchers... but there are a few where it seems to break. For example, we're starting to see evidence that IFFBs are sometimes pitcher-controlled... yet that's still contact. FIP assumes it's a constant, the same as a line drive.

 

That doesn't mean FIP is garbage, as it works for the vast majority of players; it's just something to keep in mind before treating the stat as gospel.

 

Here's a really good article from 538 on pitcher-controlled contact:

 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-baseballs-exit-velocity-is-five-parts-hitter-one-part-pitcher/

[laloesch]

 

But does it make them better enough to win a WS?
To me, no, not even close. By this time next year Gonsalves and/or Romero could be as good as or better than those guys.
We need a guy at the top, IMO, to anchor ahead of Berrios, Romero, Gonsalves and Mejia if we want a reasonable chance of cashing in this 3 or 4 year window we're entering.

 

That's a HUGE IF and because Santana is likely not to reach 200 innings he's likely a free agent at seasons end so we could be down a starter.

[Otto von Ballpark]

That's a HUGE IF and because Santana is likely not to reach 200 innings he's likely a free agent at seasons end so we could be down a starter.

We would still have a team option on Ervin for next year, regardless.

[kab21]

 

It probably doesn't help that all the guys we're talking about - Kepler, Gordon, Romero - are not at the height of value.  This is probably as low as Gordon has been.

 

It's just not ideal.  But I'd be more willing to venture down this sort of non-ideal path if I thought it really ticked the club forward.  I'm not convinced it does.

Trading a lot for Archer might not be ideal but the Twins rotation right now is AWFUL. At this point a not ideal move is going to have to be made otherwise the Twins will have wasted a year (2018) of an otherwise promising young team.

I am not convinced that the other possible moves (like Lynn or Cobb) improve the rotation enough to have any postseason (beyond a one game playoff) illusions. 

I would do Kepler, Gordon and Romero for Archer and Span in a heartbeat. Gordon is a position of depth. Kepler has possible replacement even if he has more potential. Romero can only hope to be as good as Archer. Span isn't nearly as bad as people think he is and would be a fine RF filler for a year. If they can make a deal without including Lewis then I am interested.

[gunnarthor]

I think the Archer fWAR/bWAR is a bit too polarizing. I don't think either number is correct - bWAR doesn't give enough credit for all those innings, fWAR is too forgiving overall. He's a good pitcher and I do want him. But I don't want to give up some of these rumored packages. The last couple years we've seen Archer give up more HRs and become even more fly-ball prone. That's not ideal. I'm not sure I'd want to give up on Kepler this early. For whatever reason, his babip the last two years has been surprisingly low. He had an amazing season at AA just a few years ago. He should be better than what we've seen. Maybe the answer is just having Molitor platoon him. I dunno. But there is an argument where Kepler, by himself, is the better player over the next four years so I think the Twins are probably right to not overpay for Archer.

[AWOLNATION_11]

I've said it before, if the Rays are truly motivated to trade Archer I just don't see the Twins being the team that comes up with the best offer.   Nearly every team in baseball will be interested in him on that contract.  

[Otto von Ballpark]

I think the Archer fWAR/bWAR is a bit too polarizing. I don't think either number is correct - bWAR doesn't give enough credit for all those innings, fWAR is too forgiving overall. He's a good pitcher and I do want him. But I don't want to give up some of these rumored packages. The last couple years we've seen Archer give up more HRs and become even more fly-ball prone. That's not ideal. I'm not sure I'd want to give up on Kepler this early. For whatever reason, his babip the last two years has been surprisingly low. He had an amazing season at AA just a few years ago. He should be better than what we've seen. Maybe the answer is just having Molitor platoon him. I dunno. But there is an argument where Kepler, by himself, is the better player over the next four years so I think the Twins are probably right to not overpay for Archer.

I don't think trading Kepler for perhaps the best SP on the market (even if a lot of that is peripherals and potential) is "giving up on him."

 

Also, as a corner OF, Kepler is already at a disadvantage compared to SP Archer. He may be able to best Archer in WAR but I am not sure that would make him the "better player", his production might be easier to replace (at least in part), perhaps even by platooning.

[gunnarthor]

 

I don't think trading Kepler for perhaps the best SP on the market (even if a lot of that is peripherals and potential) is "giving up on him."

Also, as a corner OF, Kepler is already at a disadvantage compared to SP Archer. He may be able to best Archer in WAR but I am not sure that would make him the "better player", his production might be easier to replace (at least in part), perhaps even by platooning.

Probably an "eye of the beholder" thing. I don't think Archer is as good as you do so I do think it's giving up on Kepler b/c if he gets better, he's clearly the better player. Yes, this team should improve the starting rotation but it has improved its bullpen and we should expect Berrios to make a stop forward and we'll have decent depth at AAA this year (May, Slegers, Romero, Gonsalves, Jorge to start?). Going from Kepler to Granite or Grossman is a problem.

 

Apparently, the two teams couldn't come to an agreement so it's a moot point anyway.

[nicksaviking]

 

Probably an "eye of the beholder" thing. I don't think Archer is as good as you do so I do think it's giving up on Kepler b/c if he gets better, he's clearly the better player. Yes, this team should improve the starting rotation but it has improved its bullpen and we should expect Berrios to make a stop forward and we'll have decent depth at AAA this year (May, Slegers, Romero, Gonsalves, Jorge to start?). Going from Kepler to Granite or Grossman is a problem.

 

Apparently, the two teams couldn't come to an agreement so it's a moot point anyway.

 

I don't know how much longer Kepler can continue to not hit lefites before his value goes to that of your garden variety platoon corner player, which is typically next to nothing.

 

If TB wants to give something good to take that chance, I'm more than willing.

[rghrbek]

 

3/42* sounds reasonable, but the biggest problem was it didn't take effect for 2 years. For all the consternation about long-term guarantees for Darvish, we effectively promised a much more suspect Hughes $14 mil per year 3, 4, and 5 years into the future, when we didn't even have to (we still controlled him with 2/16 remaining on the original contract).

 

The extension got a lot of love here, but you are pretty quick to dismiss the "board consensus" on a lot of topics and this would be a good one to question. I think fans were so tickled to finally experience one good SP season, and pleased that our initial 3/24 contract was wise, that we didn't properly consider the effects of tearing up the remaining 2/16 and replacing it with 5/58.

That said, F- is far too harsh. D or C grade on the extension is about right -- it wasn't a great decision, but it hasn't really hurt the team that much.

 

* it's actually 3/42 rather than 3/39 because the extension bumped up his pay on his original contract too

Agreed.

In addition, this is a pitcher who, as a starter, had one average to good year with the yankees, and was often injured.  He truly had a good season for the Twins, but to extend him that far out was irresponsible.  For now the grade is a D (he has not done anything positive the last two years), if he can help us this year, obviously this can go up.

[gocgo]

I really like Archer...that said, I'm not wild about trading for him.

 

Simply put, if I'm TB and I have a really good pitcher on a really friendly contract, what is my incentive to trade him?  Well, to improve the team for the future of course.  How do you do that?  You get more than you give up.  TB is going to ask an awful lot.  Reports are that they would have to be "blown away" by an offer to trade him.

 

So, if you're the team that blows them away, you've given them more than what they are giving up.  You know.  Kinda like Matt Garza, Jason Bartlett, Eduardo Morlan for Delmon Young, Brendan Harris, and Jason Pridie. 

[snap4birds]

 

I think the Archer fWAR/bWAR is a bit too polarizing. I don't think either number is correct - bWAR doesn't give enough credit for all those innings, fWAR is too forgiving overall. 

I was going to try to answer this argument by using Game Score as a tie-breaker.  But now I can't find a source for that....I thought Baseball-reference used to have it....

 

I guess resume the fWAR/bWAR/ERA/FIP/SIERA/WHIP/W-L arguments  

[jorgenswest]

There are two positions that seem viable.

 

- Empty the prospect bank to acquire Archer.

 

- Let someone else empty their prospect bank.

 

Someone will offer a Lewis type plus another top 100. I am leaning towards trading 6 years of Lewis plus 6 years of another for 4 years of Archer but have more reservations as I read the responses. Of course I am all in if a deal can be made without Lewis. History suggests that the Rays will not need to listen to that offer.

[Otto von Ballpark]

For as much value as everyone says Archer has, no one has ponied up for him yet. Not that that means Tampa will give him up for less, but I wouldn't be surprised if remained in Tampa at least until the deadline, if not into next year -- there isn't much urgency to deal him unless someone finally offers that elite prospect package.