Article: Acquiring Talent the Twins Way: Terry Ryan vs. the AL (part 3 of 3)

[Willihammer]

You can view the page at http://twinsdaily.com/content.php?r=2372-Acquiring-Talent-the-Twins-Way-Terry-Ryan-vs-the-AL-(part-3-of-3)

[troyhobbs]

I don't think TR will change. Many of his supporters will justify that and use the Rays and A's as examples of winning without spending but the Twins are not them and talent costs money. If they're not committed to putting talent around Mauer why keep his huge salary on the payroll to continually lose 95+ games? The thought of lopping off another $25 million of payroll has to arouse Ryan at least a little bit. I thought Target field was supposed to make the Twins more competitive with the big market teams? They stink.

[Boom Boom]

At least we can take comfort in knowing that the meager WAR that free agents have given the Twins was acquired cheaply.

[Otto von Ballpark]

Did you run the numbers with all of MLB? The Twins are competing with the NL for this talent too, and that would avoid the issues with the limited MIL and HOU data in your sample.

 

I still think you should move Santana out of the trades category -- that is probably skewing the numbers. It was trading down in the draft. I think 2003 was the only other recent draft that featured a similar swap and it was between two nobodys, so I don't think you have to worry about it affecting other clubs results.

 

You can browse the results for yourself easily at Wikipedia:

 

Rule 5 draft results - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia