75% of the season is complete, how do the Twins finish?

[Dodecahedron]

Like a lot of us, I voted 20-21. 

I think I was duped.

[TheLeviathan]

1 hour ago, insagt1 said:

I don't worry one bit about draft position in baseball. The talent pool is huge. Prospects are hit or miss all over the landscape. You can just as well get the ace with the 70th pick as not. Twins need to play hard to win every game.

You cannot "just as well" get talent like you describe.  Having better draft position is demonstrably better odds for draft success.  This isn't an opinion.

Of course they should play hard and if playing a young team leads to wins and worse draft position?  Fine.  Disappointing to have such an awful season not land a premium draft position, but fine.

[Irishman]

Would it be smart if the Twins shut Buxton down for the rest of this season?   Any thought?

[yeahyabetcha]

5 minutes ago, Irishman said:

Would it be smart if the Twins shut Buxton down for the rest of this season?   Any thought?

He needs to play to prove he is healthy.  That would improve his trade value this off-season.

[Major League Ready]

12 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

You cannot "just as well" get talent like you describe.  Having better draft position is demonstrably better odds for draft success.  This isn't an opinion.

Of course they should play hard and if playing a young team leads to wins and worse draft position?  Fine.  Disappointing to have such an awful season not land a premium draft position, but fine.

I have no real data but it seems like most years there are 3-5 really standout draft prospects.  There are 4 really horrible teams this year and I would rather have a little bit worse draft position than to be in their position in terms of likelihood to compete anytime soon.  No doubt we have some holes to fill but replace Cave and whoever is playing CF with Buxton and Kirilloff and we have a good offense.  Pitching is not going to get great overnight but one good free agent signing and a couple of prospects panning out for once and we look good for the next several years.

[insagt1]

2 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

You cannot "just as well" get talent like you describe.  Having better draft position is demonstrably better odds for draft success.  This isn't an opinion.

Of course they should play hard and if playing a young team leads to wins and worse draft position?  Fine.  Disappointing to have such an awful season not land a premium draft position, but fine.

actually decades of history suggests that draft position doesn't always breed success. You would think it would but the roadway is littered with top draft picks that never made it. You'd think the odds favored the higher draft picks but that just isn't often the case. Naturally sometimes it is...but my only point on this is you play hard to the end and let the draft take care of itself. I despise any sniff of 'tanking' simply to get a higher pick. Its wrongheaded and goes against every grain of the purpose of pro sports. A few years back when the Sabres clearly were tanking, their fans actually started cheering for the visitor so they would finish ahead of Buffalo. It was uncomfortable. It was frankly awful.

Anyway we both agree the Twins should play hard to win and except for when they play the Yankees, they usually do!

[insagt1]

2 hours ago, Irishman said:

Would it be smart if the Twins shut Buxton down for the rest of this season?   Any thought?

No--he must p;lay either to justify an extension or to enhance trade value. In both cases, he has to prove he can play for an extended period without going on the IL.

[a-wan]

3 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

You cannot "just as well" get talent like you describe.  Having better draft position is demonstrably better odds for draft success.  This isn't an opinion.

Of course they should play hard and if playing a young team leads to wins and worse draft position?  Fine.  Disappointing to have such an awful season not land a premium draft position, but fine.

I do think unlike the NBA and NFL, lower rounds of the MLB draft do provide a higher chance of grabbing high end talent later. But it would be a nice to get a higher pick after this cluster of a season.

[RpR]

The Yankees handed the Twins their buttocks and about the only team the Twins can probably beat in the next month is Cleveland so it looks rather dire.

[old nurse]

There are about 16 games left with teams with something to play for and the rest are the no way playoff teams. The games with the now way playoff teams  should be a toss up. against the winning teams they should be losing more than they are winning 

The wining streak of series was encouraging until the Yankees. The old comic hero's line of "It's clobberin' time" always seems to hold true when the Yankees play the Twins. Maybe the group players with their first time playing in Yankee stadium had an effect. You know, the stadium is hallowed.  Maybe the clubhouse attendant in Yankee stadium switched a clothing item and something something was squeezed too much.

So much for the excuses of why I might be wrong with my guess of 20-21 because  15-26 is too low

[TheLeviathan]

11 hours ago, insagt1 said:

actually decades of history suggests that draft position doesn't always breed success. You would think it would but the roadway is littered with top draft picks that never made it. You'd think the odds favored the higher draft picks but that just isn't often the case. Naturally sometimes it is...but my only point on this is you play hard to the end and let the draft take care of itself. I despise any sniff of 'tanking' simply to get a higher pick. Its wrongheaded and goes against every grain of the purpose of pro sports. A few years back when the Sabres clearly were tanking, their fans actually started cheering for the visitor so they would finish ahead of Buffalo. It was uncomfortable. It was frankly awful.

Anyway we both agree the Twins should play hard to win and except for when they play the Yankees, they usually do!

No one argued that draft position = guaranteed success.  What it guarantees is that you get to pick your players before other teams can.  That isn't just a first round advantage, it's an advantage you hold in every round.  So, yes, the baseball draft does allow for some 30th round steals, but draft position helps increase your odds in that round too.

As a fan, we were subjected to months of absolutely awful baseball.  One of the few payoffs for that is draft position.  This team, in a two week stretch in August and by wailing on the Orioles, may have parked itself at 12 instead of 5 or 6.  That is significant and next year when the draft rolls around it's going to sting a bit.

[gunnarthor]

17 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I find it a stretch to call 2018 a total system failure, though. They had a bad April and never played great after that point but weren't bad, either. At the end of the season, they were ~6 games below their 2017 record, which is definitely a disappointment but hardly the implosion we saw this season, where they were expected to compete for the division and were literally the worst team in baseball for six weeks or so.

A total system failure is when a team wins 15+ games fewer than expected, not when they win five fewer than expected. That’s just a disappointing season.

The 2021 Twins are going to have to play pretty well to not finish 15 or so below their over/under and 20 games is a real possibility, especially if they keep doing things like losing three in a row to New York. 

This is a good example of what I'm worried about! ??

[Number3]

Now 48 games left. A split would get them 78 wins believe it or not. Also would love the make up game with the Yankees mean something. As far as Buxton is concerned, play him now. He has to show that he can play 40 games and be productive. I would bet that he manages to get dinged up again. I would love to be wrong.

[Brock Beauchamp]

29 minutes ago, gunnarthor said:

This is a good example of what I'm worried about! ??

Oh, this year was a total system failure, no doubt about that. They not only played themselves into an insurmountable hole, they haven't bothered to actually play *well* for a prolonged period since that time, either.

[a-wan]

13 hours ago, RpR said:

The Yankees handed the Twins their buttocks and about the only team the Twins can probably beat in the next month is Cleveland so it looks rather dire.

Except going into NY the Twins had won series against Chicago, Tampa, and Houston, in addition to the Cleveland series. Can you not always jump to a hot take?

[insagt1]

5 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

No one argued that draft position = guaranteed success.  What it guarantees is that you get to pick your players before other teams can.  That isn't just a first round advantage, it's an advantage you hold in every round.  So, yes, the baseball draft does allow for some 30th round steals, but draft position helps increase your odds in that round too.

As a fan, we were subjected to months of absolutely awful baseball.  One of the few payoffs for that is draft position.  This team, in a two week stretch in August and by wailing on the Orioles, may have parked itself at 12 instead of 5 or 6.  That is significant and next year when the draft rolls around it's going to sting a bit.

fair enough. I'm open to all points of view on this.  I'm sure somebody out there could post the lets say top 5 picks over the past 25 years and see where they ended up.?

[ashbury]

4 hours ago, Number3 said:

Now 48 games left. A split would get them 78 wins believe it or not.

Check your math. That would be a 172-game season.

[Number3]

1 hour ago, a-wan said:

Except going into NY the Twins had won series against Chicago, Tampa, and Houston, in addition to the Cleveland series. Can you not always jump to a hot take?

If the Twins can get close to 80 wins this year after literally giving away a bunch of games and trading away their best starting pitcher and best hitter it would give reason for optimism next year. Simply showing up for the next 48 games accomplishes nothing.

[TheLeviathan]

1 hour ago, insagt1 said:

fair enough. I'm open to all points of view on this.  I'm sure somebody out there could post the lets say top 5 picks over the past 25 years and see where they ended up.?

Lots of top 5 picks fail.  I'd still rather pick before 25 teams than before 18 of them.

[Rosterman]

Eventually gonna have a staff of pitchers on pitch counts or showing inexperience, a perfect September callup team but all the players are callups.

 

[RpR]

4 hours ago, a-wan said:

Except going into NY the Twins had won series against Chicago, Tampa, and Houston, in addition to the Cleveland series. Can you not always jump to a hot take?

It is as much psychological as performance related; had they at least split the series with NY, there is one more game left I know, they psychological bump that would have given them could have worked wonders even with Baldelli as manager and pitching that is mediocre on a good day.

With Donaldson not playing third and Simmons in a slump and an apparent contest to see how many players can bat below .220 it is what it is and it isn't much; bring in a bunch of rookies as sooo many here think is so important, and it will get worse.

The owners want/need fans in the stands, fan will come to see a competent major league team, not a AAA team playing at AA level.

Money ball is not a bunch of math geeks running computations, money ball is fans in the stands.

[ashbury]

9 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

No one argued that draft position = guaranteed success.  What it guarantees is that you get to pick your players before other teams can.   

FWIW, here is a different way to look at it. Suppose you finish with a record that gives you the very top pick. You make that one pick. After that, all your succeeding picks come immediately after the team that achieved the best record. Thus after the first pick, your selection is a player that a very successful team chose to pass on (and also the successful team just before them, etc).  That #1 pick will likely be a stud, and he'd better be - because after that, the rest of your draft is essentially like the big boy teams except they get to go first. Having a higher draft position helps in the first round but can be viewed as a slight drag in the rest of the draft. To a declining degree this affects the spots in the draft after the first.

[TheLeviathan]

1 hour ago, ashbury said:

FWIW, here is a different way to look at it. Suppose you finish with a record that gives you the very top pick. You make that one pick. After that, all your succeeding picks come immediately after the team that achieved the best record. Thus after the first pick, your selection is a player that a very successful team chose to pass on (and also the successful team just before them, etc).  That #1 pick will likely be a stud, and he'd better be - because after that, the rest of your draft is essentially like the big boy teams except they get to go first. Having a higher draft position helps in the first round but can be viewed as a slight drag in the rest of the draft. To a declining degree this affects the spots in the draft after the first.

I sincerely hope you weren't harmed in this brazen stretching attempt.

Higher draft pick affords priority and access by the nature of the exercise.  That player you imply a smarter team takes in front of you?  You could have them first, before that team.  Whether it was pick 1, 12, or 29.  That's the access advantage.  And it exists at every round because you pick from a larger pool than everyone after.  That value exists independently of a team's ability to maximize it.

[ashbury]

2 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

I sincerely hope you weren't harmed in this brazen stretching attempt.

Higher draft pick affords priority and access by the nature of the exercise.  That player you imply a smarter team takes in front of you?  You could have them first, before that team.  Whether it was pick 1, 12, or 29.  That's the access advantage.  And it exists at every round because you pick from a larger pool than everyone after.  That value exists independently of a team's ability to maximize it.

Be as dismissive as you wish. The alternate analysis is sound and provides a useful second perspective. The very best case, getting a #1 pick, resolves into getting one absolute stud if you pick well and then are lucky, and then afterward you draft the same as the #30 team except offset by one. If continually selecting next after someone like Freedman in LA and his evaluators doesn't faze you, great, it still means the only significant difference between#1 and #30 is that very first pick (and the trivial very last pick of that year's draft). And for any team picking lower, the difference has to be even smaller. It's not worth getting super excited over, when pondering whether we get #5 or #11.

[TheLeviathan]

3 minutes ago, ashbury said:

Be as dismissive as you wish. The alternate analysis is sound and provides a useful second perspective. The very best case, getting a #1 pick, resolves into getting one absolute stud if you pick well and then are lucky, and then afterward you draft the same as the #30 team except offset by one. If continually selecting next after someone like Freedman in LA and his evaluators doesn't faze you, great, it still means the only significant difference between#1 and #30 is that very first pick (and the trivial very last pick of that year's draft). And for any team picking lower, the difference has to be even smaller. It's not worth getting super excited over, when pondering whether we get #5 or #11.

Pick 1 had a much larger player pool than pick 30.  Pick 31 has a much larger available player pool than 60.  So on and so forth.  This isn't hard.  This isn't controversial.  It's merely not the contortionist act you're attempting.  Analysis that isn't relevant and isn't informative ought to be dismissed.  It's distracting at best, disingenuous at worst.

You will always have to select after those teams, pointing this out isn't "sound analysis" it is literally redundant information irrelevant to the point.  It is simply an indisputable fact that picking higher in the draft affords you more opportunity and options.   That has value.  Again, how a team leverages that value is up to them.

[Mike Sixel]

On 8/21/2021 at 4:14 PM, Nine of twelve said:

What you left out is that a difference of 3 positions in the MLB draft is essentially meaningless.

Not even a little true at the top. The value difference is very steep. 

[Mike Sixel]

Here is a great study on the value of picks....I can't believe anyone is arguing picking earlier isn't valuable. 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-update-on-how-to-value-draft-picks/

[TheLeviathan]

39 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

Here is a great study on the value of picks....I can't believe anyone is arguing picking earlier isn't valuable. 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-update-on-how-to-value-draft-picks/

You'd think such a chart wouldn't be necessary.  Nevertheless, I appreciate it.

It clearly fails to account for how scary the Dodgers GM is or the vaunted Bullhorn of Draft Perfection the Yankees use that reverberates a dozen picks in their wake rendering all ability to compare picks to their appropriate round an impossibility.  To such things I'm afraid even fangraphs is powerless.

[ashbury]

1 hour ago, Mike Sixel said:

Here is a great study on the value of picks....I can't believe anyone is arguing picking earlier isn't valuable. 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-update-on-how-to-value-draft-picks/

Good data. It lines up nicely with what I was summarizing above.

[a-wan]

6 hours ago, ashbury said:

FWIW, here is a different way to look at it. Suppose you finish with a record that gives you the very top pick. You make that one pick. After that, all your succeeding picks come immediately after the team that achieved the best record. Thus after the first pick, your selection is a player that a very successful team chose to pass on (and also the successful team just before them, etc).  That #1 pick will likely be a stud, and he'd better be - because after that, the rest of your draft is essentially like the big boy teams except they get to go first. Having a higher draft position helps in the first round but can be viewed as a slight drag in the rest of the draft. To a declining degree this affects the spots in the draft after the first.

That maybe slightly logical if everyone was picking from the exact same list, and player value was truly only on spot picked. The best team passing up player B to take player A, makes player B less valuable than A, only in a vacuum reality where it is always that pick 32>33. But really your point is ludicrous.