Brock Beauchamp
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Everything posted by Brock Beauchamp
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I don't think it's reasonable to expect a payroll much higher than $120m, which is the baseline I'm using. -
Look at the Royals roster. Then look at the Tigers roster. Now look at the Twins roster. It would take two Zack Greinkes and a Elvis Andrus to make this team competitive in the American League. Sure, they might limp into competitiveness in July but unless something miraculous happens and they get lucky with nearly every player on the roster, this team's ceiling is mediocrity.
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You're not reading my posts very closely, are you? I'm not saying the Twins shouldn't spend the money, I'm saying they shouldn't spend the money on one player.
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You're assuming that Greinke will still be effective in 2016. That is far from a given. In fact, odds are that he won't be anything special at that point. Maybe effective but not a star player. History hasn't been kind to top-shelf pitchers as they pass 30 years of age. I would have preferred to see the Twins go for Dempster and Marcum (or something of that ilk) over a shorter term than going all-out on a Greinke or Sanchez (I was once in the Sanchez camp but good god... not at that price). Pitchers are far too fickle to dedicate that kind of money if you want to win in the long-term, especially if your team is several shades of awful right now (which means that by the time it's good, that top-shelf pitcher is probably on the decline).
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Who is toeing the corporate line?
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So no matter if it's a good idea or not, they should sign Greinke because they can? I don't understand your point. I'm as irritated as anyone about the current state of the payroll (and this offseason in general) but diving into an arena where you're dedicating 40% of your payroll on two players just because you can when the team is coming off a 96 loss season is a bad idea. I'd much rather see the Twins take a cautious, though not completely risk-averse, approach to free agency. 3-4 year deals on mid-range players to complement a strong farm system. That's how a team can win over the long haul without crossing their fingers and hoping that one guy doesn't go down and ruin their next three seasons. Pay a guy $9m a year and you can win after that player goes downhill or gets injured. It's nearly impossible to do the same thing when a $22m player goes down.
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All those guys are going to have to be replaced by somebody and in many cases, that will mean diving into the free agent market to replace them. Not all of Buxton, Sano, Rosario, Meyer, May, et al will pan out. Every team needs to round out a roster with free agent acquisitions and if you drop 40%+ in two guys who are probably going to peak and decline at nearly the same time, you're looking at a recipe for disaster. Right as that group of prospects is (hopefully) coming around and producing at an above-average rate, you've plunked a huge amount of your payroll into 32+ year old veterans who could be injured, ineffective, or both. Baseball history hasn't been terribly kind to franchises who front-load their payroll on 2-3 star players. Too many things can go wrong with that strategy. And again, I'm not saying they shouldn't be playing in the FA market. But they should be doing it on shorter, less expensive contracts that don't absolutely crucify the team if something goes wrong. Willingham was a great pick-up. I was all for going after Dempster, Marcum, or another mid-tier pitcher. There's an entire middle ground of free agency that won't kill the team over the long-term if something catastrophic happens. Does anyone have a link to an article that outlines just how badly teams have done over the past several years when they allocate 40-50% of their payroll on 2-3 players? I've read a few of them in the past few years but can't remember where or when, exactly.
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That's still a very small sample size. Just because it's not as unwieldy as defensive metrics doesn't mean it's reliable week-to-week, especially for part-time players.
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But they're still variables, unaccounted variables at that. And in small sample sizes, those are generally disastrous when trying to parse data.
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Right now, it has no impact. In 2016, it's much harder to say what kind of impact it might have. Greinke could be Barry Zito at that point, Mauer could be using a walker to get around, and the Twins could be on their way to throwing away 40% of their payroll for 1-2 seasons. Even if the Twins want a guy like Greinke, 2013 was not the season to do it. Greinke adds a handful of wins, which still puts the Twins somewhere in the "mediocre" range. You're throwing away the best seasons of a top-shelf pitcher on a team that isn't ready to compete in any way, shape, or form. By the time the Twins have enough pieces to make a run, there's a good chance that Greinke is on the decline (as evidenced by that pretty awful list of free agent pitchers who declined pretty rapidly after age 30).
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Sure, a lot could still go wrong with those guys but at this point, I think it's pretty hard to complain about those choices. Both guys have been good all the way through the minors and should be productive Major League players in the next 12 months.
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Darvish is only making $9.5m this season. He's not on the highest paid per year list. How is payroll flexibility not hurt by signing Greinke? You're dedicating $45m on two players through most of this decade. Even under the best of financial circumstances, that is 1/3rd of payroll on two guys. Greinke doesn't magically go away in 3 years. That contract sticks around through the entire decade and if you take that kind of risk on a starting pitcher, there's a good chance you spend the end of the decade jettisoning guys like Sano, Rosario, Meyer, or Buxton because you can't afford Mauer, Greinke, and two other star players.
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I'm still not terribly concerned with the offense. The guys are healthy, which is what's most important. They've played a lot of games in absolutely awful weather. I'll start worrying about it if the weather warms and they continue to be as bad as they are now.
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This is the area in which the Twins should be playing, in my opinion. Enough money to get a quality player but not so much money that you hamstring your payroll for 4+ years.
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It can't be accurate from week to week. It just can't. When a player is often playing only once a week under one umpire, that umpire's zone is going to distort results much of the time. Like defensive metrics, there are simply too many variables in pitch framing to use small sample sizes, even if those samples occasionally "look good" over the short term. The umpire has his zone (which we all know, varies wildly from umpire to umpire and from day to day) and the pitcher influences how many strikes/balls is called as well. Both of those factors are entirely ignored in pitch framing metrics. Hell, I don't even trust pitch framing metrics over one season yet. A good pitching staff (which a player is generally going to catch for an entire season) can distort results pretty badly, one would think. In a perfect world, you'd want multiple seasons from multiple teams to draw a meaningful conclusion about the catcher.
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There's simply no reason to think that. Right now, here are the highest paid starting pitchers who are signed with teams whose farm systems they didn't play for: Johan Santana CC Sabathia Cliff Lee Roy Halladay Carlos Zambrano Barry Zito There's a hell of a lot of failure there and not a lot of success. Sure, Greinke might be great for four years and then taper off. But chances are he'll be great for two, good for two more, and then descend into pretty bad. The Twins can't afford to be saddled with that kind of risk.
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If you throw good offers at Marcum, Dempster, and Saunders, you'll get one of them. Of course, it hinges on offering more money than everyone else. The bottom line is more important than playing in Fenway Park to most of these guys. You won't get every free agent, but you'll get some of them. What you can't do is offer Ryan Dempster a one year, $6m deal and then complain that nobody wants to come to Minnesota. I'm not saying that the team does that with every player but there is some pretty solid evidence that they've pulled that trick in the past.
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For me, it's a sliding scale. To Yankees fans, winning the World Series is about on par with Twins fans seeing their team make the postseason. And while the Yankees may get 3-5 good seasons from A-Rod and Sabathia, at some point they're going to be saddled with 2-4 more years of absolutely awful play at an absolutely ridiculous price. Again, I'm only referencing people who suggest that the Twins should have pursued Greinke or Sanchez. Those deals rarely work out for the "winning" team over the long haul and the Twins can't afford to be saddled with two aging players making $45m a year. But that doesn't mean the Twins should avoid the free agent market entirely. There was no good reason not to go after a Marcum or Dempster this offseason on a short contract at a reasonable price.
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Ah, right. I always get those two seasons flipped for some reason. And to be clear, I'm not advocating completely avoiding the free agency market. I didn't like what the Twins did this offseason and I still don't like it. But you can't expect this team to buy their way out of suckitude.
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And without Jeter, Cano, Pettitte, Posada, and Rivera, the Yankees don't win in 2008 (which is their only WS victory in the past 12+ seasons). Every time the Yankees try to build a team around free agency, they fail to win the World Series. They did it from 2001-2007 and now they're doing it again. Building a team from free agency and trades means you're generally getting decline-phase players at an exorbitant price. That's not a recipe for success. And if the Yankees can't do it with what amounts to basically an unlimited budget, the Twins sure as hell can't buy their way into the playoffs after 99 and 96 loss seasons.
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Mauer's Caught Stealing Percentage
Brock Beauchamp replied to Brock Beauchamp's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
Huh. I didn't think of that. It's very possible. -
For people who make the argument that the Twins should spend their way out of being awful, please take a look at these three teams: - 2012 Miami Marlins - 2013 Toronto Blue Jays - 2013 Los Angeles Dodgers In the past two seasons, three teams have blown open the payroll and gone hog-wild to win in the short-term. In three out of three chances (obviously, this season is far from over), it has blown up in the front office's face. You can't build a championship team using only the free agent market. The Yankees have been trying to do it for years but the only seasons they've actually won, it has been on the backs of home-grown players. Sure, they complement those players with heavy use of the free agency market but it's almost impossible to win using only the free agent market (and you tend to wipe out your farm system at the same time by making short-term trades that end up not making much of a difference).
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Anyone who thinks Smith is the worst GM ever hasn't paid attention to some of the true disasters of baseball over the years. His signing of Miguel Sano keeps him out of "worst ever" territory. Smith did a lot of things right. He attacked the international market and did a very good job of signing impact players. His drafts were a mixed bag. He hit on Hicks and Gibson, missed on Wimmers and Michael. His trades were mostly bad but the Hardy move was extremely savvy. Unfortunately, that was coupled with offloading Hardy for a malfunctioning 98mph pitching machine. Trading Santana to the Mets was bad; offloading your best young cost-controlled pitcher in the same offseason was inexplicable and truly stupid. And Nishioka was several forms of atrocious. Overall, he was a pretty bad GM but there were some real gems mixed in with his blunders.
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Lineups: Twins: Brian Dozier 2B Joe Mauer C Josh Willingham LF Justin Morneau 1B Chris Parmelee RF Trevor Plouffe 3B Oswaldo Arcia DH Aaron Hicks CF Pedro Florimon SS (Vance Worley P) Red Sox: Jacoby Ellsbury CF Shane Victorino RF Dustin Pedroia 2B David Ortiz DH Mike Napoli 1B Daniel Nava LF Jarrod Saltalamacchia C Will Middlebrooks 3B Stephen Drew SS (Clay Buchholz P)
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