Brock Beauchamp

Same here, but we all know the situation that played out this offseason. The Twins had one legitimate trade piece from their pool of position players: Brian Dozier. They spent a month trying to trade the guy and it didn't work out. Dunno whose fault that was but it didn't work out. Once that attempt fell flat, what options remained? They could have traded Santana but that doesn't help their pitching staff, it actually weakens them. They could have traded a prospect or two but, again, it's unlikely that would help in 2017. Meanwhile, the former front office left Falvey with a raging cluster**** of a roster. They have five-ish marginal young arms and a few established vets, one coming off injury. They retained another marginal arm, probably as a safety net. I don't blame the front office for what happened with the rotation this offseason because it was a bad situation. My hope is that they aggressively pare down the bad situation throughout the season, something we didn't see with the Ryan front office. If Santiago is awful, release him. If Duffey even hints at looking bad, demote him and get him bullpen innings. If May flounders, relegate him back to the pen. If Gibson is terrible, consider an outright release. While I can't blame the new front office for inheriting a bad situation, I will blame them if they don't take action to clean out what caused that bad situation as quickly as possible.

Are they, though? They had one legitimate shot to improve the rotation: Jose De Leon. That didn't work out and we don't know who to blame for that non-move. Given the complete lack of options in free agency, I can't blame this front office for preferring to run with the likes of Gibson, Berrios, May, Meija, Duffey, et al. In my opinion, those guys have the same chance of success as anyone on the free agent pitching market and they're all cheap and controlled (excluding Santiago). I'm a bit disappointed in the complete lack of action in the bullpen, though. But I'll wait it out and see if they have a plan for Opening Day.

I have enough shares to make a difference to me - 70 or 80, I think - but I decided to hold out for their earnings report. After that, there's a good chance I'll bail if I can decide *where* to bail. Well, about half of those shares, anyway. I'm not ready to give up on Apple entirely. Not yet, anyway.

I meant top 50 overall prospect. Pitching slipped in there somehow.

That's why I added "Final judgment on De Leon will take time." at the end of the statement. But a bad start to his career at 24 years old drops his stock and it drops it a lot. De Leon is somewhat old-ish for a top 50 pitching prospect graduating to MLB. http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/top-100-prospects/#qfCshjziGkwLKoQD.97 On BA's preseason prospect list from last season, only three prospects in the top 50 were 24 years or older. Seven in the top 100 were 24 years or older. Plenty of people have questions about Berrios because he pitched 55-ish bad innings as a 22 year old.

Fair enough, that's why I typed the bolded. I hoped it would convey my general point that De Leon's 2017 was not the be all, end all of his career. "If De Leon is a negative WAR player in 2017 or back in the minors, Falvey was (likely) right. Final judgment on De Leon will take time."

I try not to discuss the bullpen, per therapist orders.

I think De Leon's performance in 2017 very much matters, as he's entering his age 24 season and will likely spend most or all of 2017 on an MLB roster. To put it differently, does Jose Berrios' 2017 matter? Of course it does, and Berrios is a full two years younger than De Leon. If either player stumbles badly in 2017, does it mean their career is over? No, definitely not... But if a 24 year old pitching prospect posts 100+ really bad innings, that prospect's future is rightly called into question. As for Dozier, his 2017 performance isn't about drawing fans (well, probably not, anyway), it's about establishing future value. Another 5 WAR season out of Dozier and we'll no longer be squabbling whether he's the 7th or 9th best second baseman in the game, we'll be arguing whether he's the 2nd or 3rd best second baseman in the game. The only knock on Dozier right now is that he's coming off a career year. If he storms out out of the gate in 2017, that's no longer in question and no one will be able to deny he's one of the best middle infielders in all of baseball. And that means Dozier is worth a hell of a lot, even if he's down to 1.5 years of controlled service time.

Well, if we're looking at it from the Dodgers' perspective, we have to include potential outcomes from Forsythe. They have different outcomes where they could be wrong, which actually may be more likely to happen, as Dozier is a consensus superior player to Forsythe.

One thing I think we all can (or at least should) agree on: This is the first test of Falvey and Levine. The trade, for good or bad, did not happen. Now we get to see if they were right or wrong. - If Dozier is a 5 WAR player in 2017 (or on his way at the break), Falvey was right. - If De Leon is a negative WAR player in 2017 or back in the minors, Falvey was (likely) right. Final judgment on De Leon will take time. - If Dozier is a .700 OPS player in 2017 (or on his way at the break), Falvey was wrong. - If De Leon is a 4 WAR player in 2017, Falvey was wrong. Of course, there are combinations that muddy the situation (a good/good or bad/bad outcome) but overall, the scouting and decision-making acumen of Falvey and Levine should make themselves apparent in relatively short order. That will not definitively declare whether they're awesome or terrible at their jobs but they'll be the first real indications of what to expect in coming years.

It would require Santana to repeat, Gibson to not be terrible again, and for May and Berrios to be somewhere around league average. I'm... not confident in predicting that to happen.

For the record, in no way am I projecting De Leon as a #4. I'm questioning whether the Twins view him that way, which is very possible when you consider De Leon's makeup versus what Falvey built in Cleveland. We simply don't know. There are so many moving parts and different takes in these situations and we just don't have the data points on Falvey or Levine to make anything resembling an accurate call with any kind of certainty.

I agree that bickering over the definition of #2/#3 is pointless but there's a pretty sizable gap between #2 and #4, which is what we're seeing with De Leon. Really, my point is that the Twins might view De Leon as a #4 guy, which explains why Dozier is still with the Twins. We simply don't know. And any way you shake it, if a team is offering what you perceive to be a #4 starter for Brian Dozier, you pass and take your chances with Dozier's 2017 and hope for the best.

I believe teams make their own luck to an extent but if it was a repeatable skill, pythag and BaseRuns wouldn't yo-yo up and down from season to season. But that's exactly what happens every year. You roll out a team with the same manager and core and they're +6 pythag one season, -4 pythag the next.

I look at this roster and see a team that could win 60 games or a team that could win 80 games depending how I squint at them. As is often the case with a team full of second- and third-year players whose performance has been middling. Sometimes, a bunch of those players click and the team surprises the hell out of everyone. Sometimes, those players bomb out of MLB or stumble for another year and you get a 100 loss season. Most of the time, a few players succeed, a few fail, and the team is bad but not terrible. The Twins aren't the 2011 Astros, where they threw the rookies to the wolves and racked up losses. In fact, will the Twins even leave Spring Training with a rookie on the roster (excluding the pen)? Most of their players are entering the "put up or shut up" phase of their careers, somewhere between 400-1000 PAs.

We have no idea the Twins are wrong. De Leon is (likely) not an ace. People can't even agree if he's a #2 starter. My problem with most of this Dozier trade discussion is that we're projecting our analysis of De Leon and accepting it as fact. Here's what we actually know about De Leon: 1. Scouting reports are somewhat mixed on the guy. Some (Cameron) are really bullish on him, projecting him to possibly be a #2 starter. Others dismiss him as a #4 guy whose stuff won't flourish in MLB. Lots of analysts are somewhere in between. Overall, he's a (mostly) consensus top 50 guy but there's a significant difference between a #2 and a #4 starter. 2. The Dodgers were willing to trade De Leon but it appears they labeled other prospects untouchable. That could be a matter of 2017 roster construction or it could be that Friedman simply doesn't like De Leon that much and viewed him as the most expendable piece of the system. 3. None of the above matters one lick to the Twins, who have their own value set for both Dozier and De Leon. Given Falvey's accolades for Cleveland pitching success and his tendency to go with live arms who touch mid-90s, it's possible (maybe likely) the Twins were moderately down on De Leon, a guy who sits 91-92.

I think you missed the most important part of whether the Twins lose 100 games or not: Are they unlucky again? Because not only would it require many of the things you listed to fall under 63 wins again, it'd require another dose of pretty awful luck and sequencing. Pythag had the 2016 Twins at 97 losses. BaseRuns had the 2016 Twins at "just" 91 losses. It's pretty hard to lose 100 games in back-to-back seasons unless you're trying to lose 100 games, as the Astros did in the early 2010s. Had the Twins liquidated Santana and Dozier (and to a lesser extent, Kintzler, Gibson, et al) for MiLB talent, 100 losses would look more likely but they didn't do that.

I'd try like hell to trade the guy but I don't trade out of fear of a guy walking after his contract expires. If a year of Dozier is more valuable to the team than what he nets in trade, then keep the guy. I'm generally not a fan of letting a player walk without some kind of compensation but sometimes it's the most logical move to make.

If Dozier posts another 35+ homer season, the market will adjust. Right now, it can be argued 2016 was an outlier season. Two 2016 seasons and it's no longer an outlier. And if no one will bite on Dozier after he smacks 75+ homers over two seasons, then you keep the guy and find a different way to improve the rotation. The on-field product matters to every team. If Dozier is more valuable than the return, then you keep the guy.

I have no idea if I'm right, more that I have no idea what to expect.

That's likely way up their list of tasks to accomplish in the next 12-24 months but even that won't seriously constrain payroll through 2020. Even those big extensions usually pay in gradually increasing numbers through what would have been arbitration seasons. While a Buxton/Sano extension would like pay them $25m+ per season, those numbers wouldn't kick in until 2021-2022.

They're already well under past payrolls (somewhere around $15m under, IIRC). Then you get to remove a full quarter of that payroll when Mauer exits. The median MLB payroll is somewhere around $140m, I believe. The Twins could enter 2018 with just $75m on the books. What do they do at that point? I have no idea. And they won't have to worry about arbitration for quite some time. For every guy that gets a pay raise in arb, you drop another guy like Santana or Hughes through 2020.

I'm not so sure of that part. Again, we have no track record for Falvey or Levine as decision-makers. Levine was part of an aggressive front office, Falvey not so much. Going into 2018, the Twins will shed Santiago, Perkins, and a few other players... But more importantly, they'll be entering the last season of Mauer's giant contract. Which is why I'm giving the front office something resembling a free pass right now. We're seeing a tiny fraction of the picture and we don't have an established baseline to project their future plans.

Yeah, I tend to agree, which is why I'm mildly disappointed in the offseason. But we have no idea what Falvey and Levine plan to do on Opening Day. I think we're mired in the mindset of the Terry Ryan years and projecting his flaws onto the new front office. Maybe they didn't pick up a reliever because they plan to aggressively push guys like Chargois, Melotakis, and Burdi to Minnesota either out of Spring Training or sometime in May. Or maybe they already have Duffey slotted into the pen and haven't told anyone. That's half of a bullpen right there, not including the guys they have on the roster or wildcards like Perkins. Lots of options there and we haven't seen how this front office moves on pitching. Are they aggressive, Terry Ryan, or somewhere in the middle?

It's possible that's the case. It's also possible they don't really care about 2017 and plan to just throw **** at the wall and see what sticks while they reorganize the entire franchise. If anything, I lean toward the latter. They know they have something resembling a free pass in 2017 and plan to first straighten out scouting, analytics, coaching, etc. and then worry about the actual on-field product in Minnesota. The biggest question mark for me is where Falvey and Levine feel the organization is today. That changes the entire dynamic for 2017 and beyond. Are the Twins 90% of the organization they envision or 50%?