Falvey's Drafting & Development Results

[Richie the Rally Goat]

 

I don’t feel that way and that’s fine. We can disagree. I think we’ve been perpetually stuck as a hopeful 85 win team if everything breaks right for the last 5 years. 

I believe Falvey has been quoted something pretty similar.

[Vanimal46]

 

I believe Falvey has been quoted something pretty similar.

Huh? Link?

[chpettit19]

 

Agreed, but to bean’s rather curt/arbitrary point, every analysis has to be scoped in order to be relevant. There hasn’t been more comprehensive analysis than MLR’s, but even MLR’s is limited in scope and still so broad it’s really hard to come to any sort of conclusion.

do a comparative to scope, evaluate, set a grade/standard, do another comparative evaluate, wash, rinse, repeat to develop a kpi dashboard and by the time you are done, Falvey was fired 5 years ago and data sets are stale.

Oh, I'm not telling anyone not to set parameters or scope. But welcome to the peer review part of the process. If you're going to put your work out there and make claims that it's reached solid conclusions you better be prepared for people to take a critical look at it. And be able to defend it with accurate data and better responses than "I can't take you serious and these are all strawman arguments." If you can't defend your position with better arguments than that, your scope probably isn't great. 

[Riverbrian]

 

To say a team is failing to draft and develop players because the drafted WAR is not 50% is crazy.  I agree that you cannot build your team through just FA, and the Twins have not done that.  Much of their team is done through trades and drafting.  On the current roster, about half were drafted by the team.  However, that does not mean the rest were FA.  Many were from trades when they were in the minors.  In our pitchers on the current roster. Ober, Varland, Sands, and Jax were only ones we drafted.  However, Ryan, SWR, Alcala, Duran, were guys traded for as minor league guys and developed in our system. Lopez, Paddock, and Topa were all traded as MLB guys, using players developed by the Twins.  Specifically, Arraez, Rodgers, and Polanco, all of which trades have been decent for team. 

In terms of hitters similar about half were drafted by the team.  There are a few that came in FA, but outside of CC none were major FA signings.  Castro was a DFA guy they unlocked to be a valuable player. 

I am not saying Falvey is perfect, but judging a GM just by drafts is a terrible way to judge.  They should be judged by the team they build, and if you can continue to have guys ready to fill in that is a good thing.  You will never find a single GM that hits on every draft.  Sometimes using those picks to help the current roster is good.  

This is a great post. Very sensible in my opinion. 

You are correct... the current Twins 40 man roster contains 20 players who were homegrown. 

That's a high number in comparison to the rest of the league. Colorado leads with 24, Cleveland and San Fran have 21. The Twins rank 4th in the homegrown player on the 40 man roster list. 

There are 3 primary ways to build your roster... Homegrown, Trade or Free Agency.

For discussions and the setting of a benchmark purposes. If a club uses all 3 avenues equally... It would be 13 Homegrown, 13 Trade and 13 Free Agents for 33%. 

Now if a team isn't typically inclined to be free agent players in the market. Think lower budget teams because they typically don't spend money...  they are not going to sign 33% free agents.

If free agency doesn't reach 33%... this is a zero sum game. Homegrown or trade will have to rise in percentage. 

Most teams do not reach 33% free agents. Only 7 teams to be exact. 

Texas leads the way with 19 free agents. 

Toronto and San Diego 15 free agents. 

Philly 14 free agents

The Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers and the Yankees have 13 for exactly 33%. 

In the case of the Twins. 7 players are listed as free agent signings. (France, Correa, Castro, Bader, Vazquez, Coulombe, Stewart). That's 17%. Which means that 83% will be divided up between home grown and traded for. With the Twins... 50% is homegrown, 30% trade, 17% Free Agent and 1 waiver claim (Tonkin) hanging on the 40 man. 

[Riverbrian]

 

Agreed, but to bean’s rather curt/arbitrary point, every analysis has to be scoped in order to be relevant. There hasn’t been more comprehensive analysis than MLR’s, but even MLR’s is limited in scope and still so broad it’s really hard to come to any sort of conclusion.

do a comparative to scope, evaluate, set a grade/standard, do another comparative evaluate, wash, rinse, repeat to develop a kpi dashboard and by the time you are done, Falvey was fired 5 years ago and data sets are stale.

As usual... a solid post from the Goat. 

MLR's research is good work and it has value that everyone should pay attention to. It does tell a story but not the whole story. He would have to complete the analysis with all 30 teams to properly compare and contrast.

Not knocking his research at all but I have a suspicion that he will find that some unsuccessful teams also have similar percentages (just lower WAR totals) because it stands to reason that almost all small market teams are going to have very low percentages of WAR in the free agent column since they don't play significantly in the free agent column and that will cause the percentages to rise in the other columns to compensate for free agency not being a viable source due to small market budget.  

What his research does show me is that the teams that he has highlighted have been good at what they do. They are developing and development pays off in different forms. In the end, it doesn't matter if they are developing young players who produce significant WAR coming from the draft room or if they are developing young Kluber's that they acquired as prospects from someone else. Young Prospects acquired using players that they developed into valuable trade pieces that interest other teams to keep the pre-arb train rolling.

Either way... It's all talent identification and development of the player identified.   

Right now the Twins don't seem to have faith in what they are developing. They strip mined their developing young left handed hitters for parts which simply limits their value as players with the club and limits their value as trade pieces if they want to go another direction. They didn't have enough faith in their development of McCusker because they just exhibited more faith in Clemens (Loved his home run yesterday and the one in Boston) by giving the 29 year old Clemens the available roster spot instead.

We seem to be on a bit of a lull on the offensive side of the ledger and I'm basing that on their actions and the low number of pre-arb players on the roster.    

[Mike Sixel]

 

As usual... a solid post from the Goat. 

MLR's research is good work and it has value that everyone should pay attention to. It does tell a story but not the whole story. He would have to complete the analysis with all 30 teams to properly compare and contrast.

Not knocking his research at all but I have a suspicion that he will find that some unsuccessful teams also have similar percentages (just lower WAR totals) because it stands to reason that almost all small market teams are going to have very low percentages of WAR in the free agent column since they don't play significantly in the free agent column and that will cause the percentages to rise in the other columns to compensate for free agency not being a viable source due to small market budget.  

What his research does show me is that the teams that he has highlighted have been good at what they do. They are developing and development pays off in different forms. In the end, it doesn't matter if they are developing young players who produce significant WAR coming from the draft room or if they are developing young Kluber's that they acquired as prospects from someone else. Young Prospects acquired using players that they developed into valuable trade pieces that interest other teams to keep the pre-arb train rolling.

Either way... It's all talent identification and development of the player identified.   

Right now the Twins don't seem to have faith in what they are developing. They strip mined their developing young left handed hitters for parts which simply limits their value as players with the club and limits their value as trade pieces if they want to go another direction. They didn't have enough faith in their development of McCusker because they just exhibited more faith in Clemens (Loved his home run yesterday and the one in Boston) by giving the 29 year old Clemens the available roster spot instead.

We seem to be on a bit of a lull on the offensive side of the ledger and I'm basing that on their actions and the low number of pre-arb players on the roster.    

This has been my issue with mlr, they ignore that the plan doesn't work for Colorado, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, etc. 

It's the execution of the plan that matters. And to your point, this team seems, seems, not to trust it's own execution. 

[Riverbrian]

 

It's the execution of the plan that matters. And to your point, this team seems, seems, not to trust it's own execution. 

On the offensive side it sure seems that way. 

On the pitching side... No Bundy's were signed for two years running now so it ain't all bad. They seem to have more confidence on that side of the ledger at the moment.    

With the Ryan regime... I think I reached my frustration point of being ready for someone new in the GM chair when the club was losing 90 plus games 6 out 7 years from 2011 to 2016 and the farm wasn't spitting anyone out that could help turn it around and the vets we were utilizing had very little trade value if we wanted to switch to a rebuild. Apart from Mauer... Brian Dozier was basically our top dog and when he used up his service time and dealt to the Dodgers for not that much. Raley has turned into an OK player but we threw him back to the Dodgers before he could be that OK player and when Dozier hit the free agent market... the rest of the league showed what they thought of our top dog during that stretch. 

Escobar got us Duran and that has worked out very well. It took the new regime to pull the trigger on that deal. Ryan wasn't selling at the deadline. From there... Twins development brought us an elite closer... but... again... that's development on the pitching side. 

Who are our primary trade pieces now? If we needed to rebuild who would fetch the most value. Ryan and Ober are the two if I had to guess. Both on the pitching side. The front office has done some good things, but development on the offensive side has to improve.   

[Major League Ready]

On 5/14/2025 at 7:03 PM, Richie the Rally Goat said:

Agreed, but to bean’s rather curt/arbitrary point, every analysis has to be scoped in order to be relevant. There hasn’t been more comprehensive analysis than MLR’s, but even MLR’s is limited in scope and still so broad it’s really hard to come to any sort of conclusion.

do a comparative to scope, evaluate, set a grade/standard, do another comparative evaluate, wash, rinse, repeat to develop a kpi dashboard and by the time you are done, Falvey was fired 5 years ago and data sets are stale.

I was not trying to determine which teams were the best at drafting and development.  The idea came from discussions here about the relative merit of various forms of acquisition.  For example, many people here were big advocated of trading prospects for established players.  The scope included all acquisition methods to provide a meaningful comparison.  The scope including all methods illustrates quite clearly what methods have contributed the most and it also shows which strategies certain teams prefer over a period of time.  These are statistics just like BA or OBP and it’s about as factual as batting average.  If you look at all of the data it also shows teams that have been successful with a very different set of acquisitions methods, just much less frequently.

The scope was limited in that I only looked at teams in the bottom half of revenue.  I didn’t think how the Dodgers or Yankees built rosters was particularly relevant to what strategies would be the most productive for the Twins.  The Dodgers for example are going to have a very different distribution favoring free agents that is simply not feasible for the Twins.

I limited the scope to players that were at least modestly impactful. I chose to use 1.5 WAR for position Players and SPs and 1.2 WAR for RPS.  I used the same standard to identify players acquired in trade.  If a player had produced 1.5 WAR in any season they were considered to be an “established player”.  One could argue this is not an established “impact” player but I purposefully conservative with this definition. 

If you look at all of the detailed data, there are some very certain trends that make it fairly easy to draw some conclusions.  There are also some anomalies that show the wide variety of outcomes possible in MLB which in some ways explains the wide variety of opinions..

[Richie the Rally Goat]

3 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

I was not trying to determine which teams were the best at drafting and development.  The idea came from discussions here about the relative merit of various forms of acquisition.  For example, many people here were big advocated of trading prospects for established players.  The scope included all acquisition methods to provide a meaningful comparison.  The scope including all methods illustrates quite clearly what methods have contributed the most and it also shows which strategies certain teams prefer over a period of time.  These are statistics just like BA or OBP and it’s about as factual as batting average.  If you look at all of the data it also shows teams that have been successful with a very different set of acquisitions methods, just much less frequently.

The scope was limited in that I only looked at teams in the bottom half of revenue.  I didn’t think how the Dodgers or Yankees built rosters was particularly relevant to what strategies would be the most productive for the Twins.  The Dodgers for example are going to have a very different distribution favoring free agents that is simply not feasible for the Twins.

I limited the scope to players that were at least modestly impactful. I chose to use 1.5 WAR for position Players and SPs and 1.2 WAR for RPS.  I used the same standard to identify players acquired in trade.  If a player had produced 1.5 WAR in any season they were considered to be an “established player”.  One could argue this is not an established “impact” player but I purposefully conservative with this definition. 

If you look at all of the detailed data, there are some very certain trends that make it fairly easy to draw some conclusions.  There are also some anomalies that show the wide variety of outcomes possible in MLB which in some ways explains the wide variety of opinions..

I was intending to compliment your work, while pointing out the challenge in answering the question of “How do I know if a GM is good?”. You limited your scope intentionally. Bean limited their scope intentionally. Scope must be limited, no one can distill the ocean.

[Major League Ready]

1 hour ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

I was intending to compliment your work, while pointing out the challenge in answering the question of “How do I know if a GM is good?”. You limited your scope intentionally. Bean limited their scope intentionally. Scope must be limited, no one can distill the ocean.

I get exactly where you are coming from and that's why I pointed out I was not trying to evaluate front offices.  Frankly, I think it's the general nature of sports fans to conclude the front office sucks unless the team is absolutely dominant.  We also simply don't have the access to acquire the inputs required for such an assessment.   

[Riverbrian]

3 hours ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

no one can distill the ocean.

Eventually, I'm going to steal this quote from you and claim it as my own.

It'll be like Mike Sixel's "It's a dial not a switch". 

I'll take the same path to my theft. I'll give you credit for a while so everyone can see that I'm giving proper credit for the source. Then eventually, I'll just stop giving out the credit and simply use it more often and it will be mine. 

Just a heads up.  

[Squirrel]

16 hours ago, Riverbrian said:

Eventually, I'm going to steal this quote from you and claim it as my own.

It'll be like Mike Sixel's "It's a dial not a switch". 

I'll take the same path to my theft. I'll give you credit for a while so everyone can see that I'm giving proper credit for the source. Then eventually, I'll just stop giving out the credit and simply use it more often and it will be mine. 

Just a heads up.  

Your editor will know. She always knows. And if she sees it, she will correct you. 😂