Brock Beauchamp

There are definitely guys who could be cut from the 40-man but honestly, I don't see it as a pressing need in September of 2013. Give Sano the offseason to rest and get ready to potentially start the 2014 season in Minnesota. On the other hand, it wouldn't break my heart to see him on the 40-man roster in a week, either. I'm okay with either decision, really.

I'd go one step further and make room for him. Willingham and Doumit need to be on the block this winter. Trade at least one of them because the team simply does not have the room for Hicks, Arcia, and Buxton right now and it's a huge waste to let guys like Doumit and Willingham ride the pine most of the time.

Miguel Sano, maybe... But I'm not sold on creating potential 40 man issues when you can punt on the decision until next March. But Buxton, no way... Moving a guy from A+ to the MLB is a good way to crush his confidence and screw with his head. Promote him aggressively, sure... But promote him intelligently. A, A+, AA, then AAA or MLB depending on how he does in AA. Making moves based on what will placate a fan base is a good way to dig the franchise a deep hole and get yourself fired. I'm still convinced this is going to be the ultimate outcome of the Shields/Myers trade. The Royals are hamstrung (hey look, Myers has a 131 OPS+ in Tampa), they're going to miss the playoffs, and Moore is not going to be the GM for much longer because of impatience, methinks.

Are you kidding me? First, I said "nearly identical", not "identical". Second, I pointed out that some stats show that Anderson got arguably "better" results, like WAR. First you come into the conversation using FIP to "prove" your point, which doesn't even adjust for league. You may as well have entered this conversation using ERA and wins. Then you tried to use Lohse's 2012 season because you didn't even realize Duncan wasn't the pitching coach that season. If you want to argue the difference between a FIP- of 96 and 102 in different leagues and different seasons, have at it. You're not going to find many experienced statheads to take that bait because it's pointless and well within the boundaries of "mediocre" and "don't care". If WAR is telling you a guy had marginally better seasons under Anderson and FIP- is telling you that guy was marginally better under Duncan, guess what? The guy was pretty much the same under both coaches. It doesn't matter and arguing otherwise is an exercise in futility because advanced metrics are not perfect and they are not exact. After all, no one can even decide how WAR is calculated. Hell, FanGraphs even says on their site that FIP should be used as a predictive tool. But I'm sure you knew that and read this on the FG site: As for Hicks, don't grossly misrepresent my point. I said "if Hicks keeps hitting, he will get votes based on his counting stats". You know damned well that's what I said. Guess what Hicks stopped doing? Hitting. I'm done with this conversation. If you want to keep arguing something so entirely pointless and in such an ill-informed manner, you can say it to empty space. I have better things to do.

I really don't care about Arcia's numbers this season. He's a 22 year old that posted a 1.000 OPS in AAA. What he needs is reps in a MLB uniform. I wouldn't get too worked up about his 2013 if he stumbles a bit. This isn't a situation like Hicks where he posted *pretty good* numbers in AA. He has flat-out raked at every level. I remember debating his Jason Kubel Lite comps before this season, saying that Oswaldo was the better hitter in the minors. I think that answer is pretty clear now. He's 22 and posting a 104 OPS+ in the majors. That's pretty impressive.

Feel free not to comment. I think counting stats are stupid but for some reason, I enjoy the batting title chase. It probably has something to do with a childhood of watching Puck chase Boggs so many years.

You believe that the return offer has a zero chance of becoming a productive MLB player and his future role consists of "40 man roster annoyance".

Hard not to like the kid after reading that article. He seems like a head-down worker who is focused on making it to the MLB roster and nothing else.

I don't care about the money but I do care that one has marginal upside while the other does not.

Yep. It'd be great to get a prospect for Justin but if we're in a situation where another team won't offer anything more than org filler that might become a 40-man roster issue in a year, what's the point? Or maybe JR is being stubborn and asking for too much. We simply don't have enough information to make an accurate assessment. I was pretty bent after the trade deadline came and passed but after seeing the end result of the Butera/Sulburan trade, I'm going to give Ryan the benefit of the doubt here. As you said, the most important skill of a negotiator is the ability to say no and if people aren't offering value, you stand pat. Ryan proved that he's willing to part with players if it's a good deal for him.

1. Dave Duncan was not the pitching coach in 2012. That's my point. Lohse magically improved after Duncan left, hence my "if you're arguing that Anderson is a failure, then don't you have to argue the same for Duncan?" 2. Why are you including Reds and Phillies seasons? My statement clearly said "Lohse's best Duncan/Anderson seasons". And my list was accurate and I didn't include Lohse's split Twins/Reds season. Care to revise this statement now? My point is that Lohse remained a marginal pitcher for many years after leaving the Twins, despite spending several of those years under who was, at the time, probably the most widely-regarded pitching coach in MLB. FIP and FIP- are hardly perfect stats. The difference between 95 and 105 is marginal and that's what mediocre pitchers do over time. They don't pitch 100 FIP- and ERA+ year in and year out. They bounce around a little and the difference is little more than white noise over the course of a career. Lohse had up and down seasons (but overall, still mediocre) seasons with Anderson. He did the same with Duncan. Including split seasons is relying too much on SSS to even bother with them, as they are influenced by ballpark changes, division changes, facing new hitters, and a host of things that require believing FIP and FIP- are 100% accurate, which is more than I'm willing to give either statistic. Arguing that Lohse was better under Duncan is like arguing the difference between a 2.2 and 2.5 WAR. Waaaaaay too far within the margin of error to prove anything (and if we want to go down the WAR rabbit hole, Lohse's 3.4 WAR under Anderson in 2003 is better than any season he posted under Duncan).

And I'm sure that moving to the National League had nothing to do with the decrease in FIP. But I'm positive that someone making snotty responses would fully take that into account before responding to my post. If you had bothered to use FIP-, a stat that actually adjusts for league, Lohse's five best Anderson/Duncan seasons go like this: Duncan, Anderson, Duncan, Anderson, Anderson. He was a mediocre pitcher under Anderson. He continued to be a mediocre pitcher under Duncan. No matter how you shake down the stats, they tell you the same thing if you're trying to look at it objectively.

The Wire. It's consistently better than the Sopranos and doesn't have as many lulls in story arcs. I was entirely sold on The Wire after the first 90 seconds of the first episode. It's absolutely hilarious. Both are good, though.

This is what baffles me the most. You can field a room of competent mathematicians for less than half a million dollars a year. The Twins paid Drew Butera $700,000 this season. It's absolutely ludicrous not to test the waters and see if there's truth to this cybermetrics stuff. Give it a whirl for a half decade. All it will cost the team is half of Kevin Correia's 2013 salary.

Twins Daily interviewed him. He is the only guy. I'm going to guess that you don't work with computers a lot. There is more to analyzing hundreds of thousands (probably millions, actually) of data points than clicking "find a jewel in the rough" button and waiting for it to magically churn out a player name. There is a reason why the Rays have a team of people working on this stuff. It's not easy and it's not done in mere moments, particularly if your task is to create better and more accurate metrics that no one else is using.

It has been my opinion that the baserunning and fielding has been in a general decline since TK left in 2001. I have absolutely no stats to back that up, though. As for pitching, Anderson has gotten some really good performances from many relievers over the years, relievers that didn't continue to pitch effectively after leaving the team or failed to pitch effectively before joining the Twins. A good example of the latest is Jared Burton. Starters are a little more difficult to quantify because honestly, the FA starters the Twins have acquired over the years have been several shades of awful. But Eric Milton fell apart after leaving the team. Carl Pavano was nothing special before joining the Twins, where he had a decent partial season, one very good season, and another decent season before collapsing from old age. Don't get me wrong, I'm not giving Anderson all the credit for those pitchers... I believe most of a player's success is from the player. But the pendulum swings in both directions and it's not hard to find examples, both good and bad.

It's not an insane request to ask a knuckleball reliever not to throw the pitch in critical situations. The chance of a passed ball/wild pitch is too high. Of course, this also limits the effectiveness of said knuckleballer, which begs the question "why was he relieving at all?" Even the Mets expected little or nothing from Dickey. This is as clear-cut of a case of a guy coming out of nowhere as I've seen in baseball. I fail to see the point in laying blame for the Twins failing to stick with a guy who had been passed over by every front office in baseball multiple times. It sure is easy to predict the future when looking through the rearview mirror. There are some legit points in questioning the Liriano move. There are legit questions in asking why the Twins let Lohse go to the Reds for a bag of balls because even the most pedestrian of starting pitchers hold a lot of value. What I don't see is a benefit from second-guessing a move that 95% of us agreed with at the time as the collective Twins fanbase yawned and/or said "meh" when Dickey was released.

Close enough to be irrelevant.

If you're making this argument, then you have to make the argument that you believe Dave Duncan was a bad pitching coach. He had Lohse for four years with nearly identical results to Anderson. Anyone here want to take a swing at that argument?

I'm no Anderson defender but you're climbing out on a limb with this post. Garza, while good, is no Cy Young talent. He has received exactly zero CYA votes in his career as far as I can tell. And yes, trading him was stupid. But it was Bill Smith's stupidity, not Ryan and this is about Anderson, who got good results from Garza in his full season with the Twins. Kyle Lohse was a bad trade but he stumbled through mediocrity for five years (and three different teams) before breaking out in his last season with St Louis. There should be some sort of statute of limitations on blame here. And Dickey, well... *shrug* Nobody saw that guy coming, including the Mets and the other three teams that had him at one point or another. A small fraction of forum posters I saw even cared that he moved on to another team.

Yep. Give him an offseason to rest, get ready for MLB pitching in 2014, and then reserve judgment for May/June of that season. If he continues to struggle through the first half of 2014, then we should be concerned.

I liked Punto's hustle. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it's faster to run to first than leave your feet and dive at the bag.

I've never seen Carroll slide head-first after hitting a routine ground ball.

Well, he's throwing hard and that's a good sign. He's generating swings and misses, another good sign. I think this can be chalked up to watching a guy learn how to pitch while simultaneously recovering from surgery and possibly facing a bit of dead arm. Let's not forget that this kind of performance isn't uncommon and Gibson has a lot working against him right now. Matt Garza came into the league late in the season, pitched the same number of starts, posted a 5.5 ERA, struck out 6 per 9, and walked 4 per 9. He turned out fine and while he was younger than Gibson, he wasn't coming off surgery at the time, either.

Great post.