Did the Twins Give Up on Brent Rooker Too Soon?

He returned Pagan and Paddack in trade, that's not "giving up on him". There are only 40 roster spots, they can't hang onto everyone forever. I suppose they could have traded for him when Oakland got him on waivers for nothing but there are dozens of other players who went through waivers unclaimed and then improved enough to help their team win. Adolis Garcia was let go by two different teams on waivers. Is "Did the Twins make a mistake by passing up Adolis Garcia on waivers?" the article tomorrow?

There are plenty of mistakes made by the front office but this isn’t one of them. Due to options roster spots etc you sometimes have to decide on guys before you would like to. Combine that with the fact that some guys just don’t become effective players until they are older and this situation will come up. We may well be in the same boat with Larnach and Kiriloff soon. My biggest criticism of this situation is the drafting philosophy behind selecting Rooker. He like Wallner Sabato etc are one trick ponies that offer no defensive value or speed and athleticism. It shows in the big club today: below average defense and no speed or ability to create runs other than the long ball. 

30 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

Yes. Choosing to keep Larnach over Rooker was an obvious mistake as far as I'm concerned. I've expected Rooker to be a very good valuable hitter for a long time now, but he needed an opportunity. The Twins' treatment of Rooker ruined his reputation as a prospect and it took landing with the Oakland A's for Rooker to finally get a lengthy look in the lineup. I don't think he'll keep hitting quite as well as he has this year, but I bet the Padres and Royals are wishing they gave Rooker more plate appearances and ignored Minnesota's evaluations.

I don't think it's probable Rooker will continue to improve at this point, but he could settle in at a 3.0 WAR DH or if somebody puts him back into the field, a 4.0 WAR corner outfielder with rough defense.

In general, giving up on a 24-year-old high-K slugger in favor of keeping your 27-year-old struggling, defensively challenged, high-K slugger with dwindling options would be terrible process.

Of course the Twins knew Rooker still had potential.  The Padres and Royals did too.  Give Oakland credit, I'm sure there was some good coaching and adjustments that contributed to his success, but this is not some sort of egregious evaluation mistake.  This is a player finally putting it together a few years after their prospect status faded, after working with who knows how many coaches over that time. Happens quite a lot in baseball, for some guys, but not for everyone.  Happened in a good way for the Twins with Castro.  There is no team that knows how to figure out when it will happen a year or two down the line or when it won't happen at all.

Also, I can believe Rooker could be a 3 WAR DH but cannot believe he would be more than a 2 WAR outfielder with the same batting line.  He was not just a rough outfielder but legitimately among the worst outfielders I've watched on a regular basis in the majors.

19 minutes ago, Linus said:

My biggest criticism of this situation is the drafting philosophy behind selecting Rooker. 

Are you saying Brent Rooker wasn't worth drafting? That's a hot take considering his success the past two seasons.

He had a good runway to prove himself.  Maybe he wasn’t mentally tough enough until he was traded and saw things slipping away.  
I would be glad to get the same return for Kirriloff, Larnach, Austin Martin, (fill in several other failed to stick prospects) right now.  Very sad this team cannot deliver support from their own farm system to even fill corner outfield spots with significant contributors other than Castro.

6 minutes ago, gunnarthor said:

But it ended up not working out. It happens. Good luck to Rooker from here on out. 

Would you trade Paddack for Rooker right now? I'm not sure I would.

20-20 hindsight is always pretty darn good.

Liked Rooker when he was here, including all the warts.  Seems the Twins have needed a big right handed bat forever.  Now I don't know how he hits lefties, assuming he does he would fit nicely in their current lineup.  

But at the time, I didn't dislike the trade.  Have always felt that Paddack could be a very good starting pitcher and we are now seeing that to be true.  As far as guys traded away who are doing very well, there are lots of them.  Check the box scores every morning and see that Rortvedt has been playing about half the games for Tampa and was hitting over .300 until a couple days ago.  I recall his D was very good, so that's one I was very sad to see go.  After a much injured season in New York, Ben has become the player many of us thought he would be.

As this is an article that really is about judging the Front Office's trading acumen, my concerns are more related to their inability to understand the risk related to bringing in injured pitchers.  Seems it began with that reliever from the Giants at the trade deadline a few years ago and continued with Mahle, Maeda, Paddack and the recent Polanco trade.  Their inability to stay away from damaged goods seems to me to be an organizational problem that needs fixing.  Am of the opinion that they would have been better off holding out for a good prospect starting pitcher who was close in the Polo trade rather than four guys who may never play an inning for the Twins.

There are players all over MLB that failed with their first team and succeeded with a second, third or fourth team. That is baseball, there is just not enough spots to keep everyone. Plus, this helps keeps teams competitive and gives playes big league jobs.

1 hour ago, DJL44 said:

Are you saying Brent Rooker wasn't worth drafting? That's a hot take considering his success the past two seasons.

No I’m saying I don’t agree with drafting one dimensional players as often as the Twins do. 

1 hour ago, roger said:

20-20 hindsight is always pretty darn good.

Liked Rooker when he was here, including all the warts.  Seems the Twins have needed a big right handed bat forever.  Now I don't know how he hits lefties, assuming he does he would fit nicely in their current lineup.  

But at the time, I didn't dislike the trade.  Have always felt that Paddack could be a very good starting pitcher and we are now seeing that to be true.  As far as guys traded away who are doing very well, there are lots of them.  Check the box scores every morning and see that Rortvedt has been playing about half the games for Tampa and was hitting over .300 until a couple days ago.  I recall his D was very good, so that's one I was very sad to see go.  After a much injured season in New York, Ben has become the player many of us thought he would be.

As this is an article that really is about judging the Front Office's trading acumen, my concerns are more related to their inability to understand the risk related to bringing in injured pitchers.  Seems it began with that reliever from the Giants at the trade deadline a few years ago and continued with Mahle, Maeda, Paddack and the recent Polanco trade.  Their inability to stay away from damaged goods seems to me to be an organizational problem that needs fixing.  Am of the opinion that they would have been better off holding out for a good prospect starting pitcher who was close in the Polo trade rather than four guys who may never play an inning for the Twins.

I disliked the trade not because of Rooker, I actually liked that aspect of the trade because there was a huge glut of big bat/no-glove types that this FO targeted. But it was because of letting Rogers go (I'd prefer signing Rogers to an extension). We had a shaky BP even with Rogers & w/o him having Pagan & Duffy as designated closers would be disastrous. Paddack was damaged goods (if they had their hearts on Paddack all they needed was to wait a short time when he'd blow out his arm & have SD pay us for taking him) but because they didn't wait we got almost 2 wasted years from Paddack & a nightmare year from Pagan. I also question this FO quirk of signing damaged goods.

Trading Rooker made total sense for both the team & Rooker. He wouldn't have gotten the time needed to prove himself if he stayed here. OAK had the luxury of being more patient with him & I'm glad they did.

1 hour ago, Jocko87 said:

I think part of their attraction to college players, pitchers especially, is that they hopefully hit their peaks during arbitration years and its not as big a loss if they lose them to free agency at 31-32.  Best years cheapest.

If a high schooler gets to the league fairly quickly, they also get really expensive quickly.  There will be exceptions they will pay for, hopefully a Jenkins, but in general its pretty good practice for keeping a payroll manageable.

I think this is true and also there is much less uncertainty scouting college players. They are older and playing against better players. They also have analytics available for college players while high schoolers are going to have to be scouted the old fashioned way. 

2 minutes ago, DocBauer said:

So, I guess, based on the question posed, 3 teams should have hung on to him longer, yes?  I just don't know how you look in to a crystal ball and always get these decisions right.

Especially when hanging onto these players for multiple years means losing baseball games waiting for them to figure it out (if they ever do). There is only so much room on the roster for players who might be good in the future. At some point (and age 27 is usually a pretty good indicator) you have to go with the players who are performing right now.

18 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

Rooker's defense is not -30 UZR/150 in the field so I'm thinking you just don't understand positional value adjustment. Also, I suspect you never watched Rooker on a regular basis in the outfield because he never played on a regular basis for the Twins. Rooker had the equivalent of 2 months of consistent outfield play for Minnesota in his career. He did look a lot like Wallner out there in terms of instincts, though. I'd expect Rooker to settle in at -10 runs-ish per full season in the corners. Positional adjustment to corner outfield is +20 runs. 

Fangraph's positional adjustments for DH vs COF are -17.5 vs -7.5 runs per 1450 innings.  Baseball reference uses -15 vs -7 per 1350 innings.  So for a full season the difference in positional adjustments between DH and COF is only 8-10 runs, not 20.

Rooker has played 904 innings in LF/RF in his career.  He has put up -16 DRS, -7.4 UZR, and -14 OAA.  Let's call it -12 defensive runs.  That's around -18 runs prorated to 1350 innings and about -19 prorated to 1450 innings. 

So add 8-10 for the difference in positional value between DH and COF and he's still been around 10 runs worse playing the outfield vs DHing.  That's about -1 win.

The part that made it hard for me at the time was just because he was right handed and the organization had and continues to have a dearth of righty bats. Plus he did look real good until he broke the wrist. I'm guessing it took time to get that right. 

Right handers hit same sided pitchers better than left handers do. So now we have many mediocre short siders to cover for all our lefty bats that the org doesn't trust against left handers.