Three-Bagger: Kennys, New Guys & What The Hector

Vargas got caught in a numbers crunch. Arcia got caught in a numbers crunch. How many more players will be caught in this numbers crunch. Do the Twins know who they have, who they should be looking at, whom they should be trying to trade for...say, more future depth and numbers crunch then. 

At some point bad play plus losses means you go beyond Boshers and Santiago and Grossman and such and do give moe mileage to rookies, or even rookies further down the on ramp. What you have on the field now is not doing it!

Vargas got caught in a numbers crunch. Arcia got caught in a numbers crunch. How many more players will be caught in this numbers crunch. Do the Twins know who they have, who they should be looking at, whom they should be trying to trade for...say, more future depth and numbers crunch then. 

 

At some point bad play plus losses means you go beyond Boshers and Santiago and Grossman and such and do give moe mileage to rookies, or even rookies further down the on ramp. What you have on the field now is not doing it!

Arcia was cut by two teams. What romantic notions that somehow,  some way Arcia  will reinvent himself from a hitter that gets himself turned into an out by swinging at everything into a patient hitter is folly.  Using his name and Vargas in any context together as similar  is a gross disservice to Vargas. Vargas was  not let go so you can quit the sorry lament for Vargas

I absolutely HATE playing the patience card....however, (and maybe I am totally beaten down and delusional), but this playing time crap doesn't bother right now.  Because I have this fantasy the Twins are cleaning house with a GM that totally overhauls the way they do business.  A couple more months, and this horrendous nightmare will be done!!

What if they get the wrong guy, what then". .

So, just bench the young guys you need to learn more about? So you can win, what, this year?

Is it really an either/or, though?

There are nine spots every day....so either they figure out how to rotate players, or they bench players. So far, they are benching players, so Plouffe and Mauer can play. For a terrible team, that seems like doing the opposite, imo.

The young guys on the team (Sano, Polanco, Kepler, Rosario) seem to be getting plenty of at-bats, so I assume the "benched" player is Vargas. It definitely sucks to lose him for a few weeks, but if Antony is shopping Plouffe to the contending teams right now, putting him in the lineup everyday makes sense. If he's not being shopped, then demoting Vargas obviously becomes much more difficult to defend.

So, just bench the young guys you need to learn more about? So you can win, what, this year?

I have to say, I hate the idea of auditioning guys at the MLB level.  What do we really expect to learn about a guy in a few September starts?  By call-up results, we should have a pretty strong core of Parmalee, Hermann, and Albers right now.  

Vargas is pretty close to being whatever he is at this point.  Plouffe has only a slight chance of being on the team for even one more season, but still probably has a better chance of contributing to the team's next 3-5 years than Vargas, Walker, or Palka who may well never stick in the League.  

The place to evaluate talent for an organization is the minor leagues.  Only fans and big league coaches/managers have to wait for call-ups.  The Twins' best prospects have had only marginal success, but somehow we expect marginal minor leaguers to become All-Star big leaguers.  

If you want to look at a couple months of sporadic play and at bats in order to plan your roster going forward, that's fine.  I'll take the scouting reports and years of minor league data, please and thank you.  
 

That's the point -- Vargas shouldn't be getting sporadic play, he should be starting most games in MLB right now.  We shouldn't have waited until August to play Polanco.  Etc.

 

There are limits to minor league data and scouting reports, and questions that only regular MLB play can help answer.  Odds are Vargas doesn't stick in MLB regardless (like most prospects), but if the primary cost is spotting Plouffe or Mauer (or perhaps Escobar or Polanco) in the outfield during a lost season, it behooves the Twins to take the opportunity to find out, no?

 

What's the benefit of the alternative approach?  More PAs for Grossman and Santana?  Keeping Mauer happy?  (Although good management could get player buy-in.)

Well, if Vargas probably won't stick, who cares?  What will we possibly learn about Vargas that we don't already know?  And I like Varg.  I think his defense at first is underrated.  I think when he shortens his swing he's down right formidable, and the Twins major complaints have been work ethic, taking instruction, and other things that typically involve simple maturity.  I'd find a way to keep him.  The Twins have this way of refusing to get rid of former prospects, so I don't think you have to worry about him getting cut.  The alternative of getting more PA's for Grossman or Santana (as well as more MLB evaluation of O'Rourke) is a reasonable , yet less sexy alternative.  Santana was always a more well-thought-of prospect than Vargas.  Ditto Grossman.  Both have just as much of a chance to stick with the team going forward, if not more.  So I would argue that we're doing a lot of evaluating.  We sent down the guy with options so we could continue evaluating.  Sitting your vets for non-health AND non-performance reasons doesn't really benefit anyone.  It's true there's only so much you can learn from a minor league history.  But there's a fine line.  Vargas playing 5 days a week in AAA vs. Vargas playing 2 days week in the MLB...  I dunno.  It's a fine line.  The Twins decided they'd be better able to continue their evaluation if he got more regular time in AAA.  
 

Now, if you want to say you don't trust our minor league evaluations, and so you want to evaluate for yourself or allow our MLB staff to evaluate the stock, fine, but presumably the big league staff okay'd the demotion too.  Which means you don't trust our minor league scout or our major league staff, and so when you say "we" need to evaluate the player, you really mean...  who's left?  

All season I've said we have an organization-wide problem with prospect evaluation and to some extent valuation.  But with all-due respect, I still trust their evals and values more than Spycake's and even Jham's.  No offense.  Although the race is actually a lot closer than it ought to be.