Brock Beauchamp

Absolutely. Because you don't have to give up a prospect to sign a guy in free agency. Prospects are a very limited resource. Money is not nearly as limited and it's pretty easy to shrug off $20m over three years. It's not so easy to shrug off trading an Aaron Hicks or JO Berrios.

Yes, because we all know how Cuddyer was a defensive ninja out there in right field.

I think you just described the left side of the Yankees infield. So... Left side of Yankees Infield > Playing the Yankees Mind, blown.

I don't think it would have taken that much to pry Willingham from the Twins. Alex Meyer is a good haul in return for almost any player. If I was a GM, I wouldn't have offered JO Berrios for 2012 Josh Willingham. Too much contract, too much risk for regression. And if you can't get good (not great) upside low minors guys for Willingham, you just hold off and take your chances.

Really? I could have sworn Cuddy was a year older. Hrmph. Instead of admitting that I was mistaken, I'm going to accuse Michael Cuddyer of actually being from the Dominican and lying on his birth certificate. There you go. I am the first Michael Cuddyer Birther. The line queues up behind me. Don't be the last one on the bandwagon.

Hey, I would have loved to see Willingham traded last July but I think there were some really good reasons not to trade him given the market at the time. He was over 30, had 2 1/2 years on his contract, and was in the middle of a career season. At that point, JR had some tough decisions to make. If the offer is too low, you don't just offload Willingham for junk because he is a valuable player and this team certainly doesn't need salary relief. If the offers are crap compared to the value he brings the Twins, you keep the guy and try again later in hopes that the market will come around on him as a player. Ryan did it with Span and it worked out pretty well for the Twins. It's hard to believe that he wasn't hoping for the same result from Willingham but injuries have caused his value to plummet. So, the question I would ask myself is "Was risking Willingham's health from July 2012 to July 2013 worth the (inference by me) difference between a C-level and D-level prospect in hopes that a healthy 2013 and one less year of a contract will help deliver a B-to-B+ prospect?" And the answer to that question is "hell yes". I know that if I was a GM, no way in hell would I have offered a B-level prospect for 2012 Josh Willingham. And if I won't make a deal, I certainly won't assume that other GMs out there, who have far more information than myself, would offer more than that. It's a bit presumptuous to assume that other GMs are kinda slow and can't see what is pretty obvious to everyone with a brain, and that is "Josh Willingham is incredibly unlikely to repeat the first half of 2012 and has 30 months left on his contract".

I know. It sucks. But I think you hold your nose, watch Buterrmann for a few months, and then re-evaluate the back-up catcher in the offseason.

There's a huge difference between 2012 Ryan Dempster/Shane Victorino and Josh Willingham. I'm pretty sure you know what it is just as well as I do. I almost edited that post to say "some players" instead of just "players". Go ahead and just mentally slip that word into that sentence. Some players are highly sought after in July. Others are not. Given the abundance of aging outfielders with crappy defense on the market every July, it's not surprising that Willingham wasn't the darling of the market. There was a fair amount of risk with trading for Willingham and if I was a GM, I certainly wouldn't have offered much for him. Would you?

I think the Twins have to trade Doumit at this point. Josh's value is minimal, almost zero. The Twins simply have too many lumbering bodies to keep them all on the roster and Ryan is the odd man out.

Say you were an MLB GM in July of 2012. How would you have viewed Willingham? Because this is how I would have viewed him: 1. He's 32 years old 2. He's having a career year 3. He's an injury liability 4. He is signed for 2 1/2 more seasons At that point, I say to Terry Ryan "I'm taking a big risk by trading for this guy so here's my lowball offer. Don't like it? Don't care, then I'll go pick up one of a half dozen OFers with shorter term contracts who can be had for a D-level prospect." It's possible that Ryan felt loyalty to Willingham. It's also just as likely that other MLB GMs are not mentally retarded and didn't offer the moon for the reasons listed above. What is more likely? 1. Terry Ryan is overwhelmed with the spirit of Independence Day and irrationally overvalues his players but comes to his senses every November or 2. Teams don't offer much of value in July

Well, there was the part where Johan keyed a giant cartoon penis on the hood of Bill Smith's car. But yeah, other than that, totally amicable.

I think I pretty clearly explained that with Occam's Razor, Levi. Also, I'm not the one assuming anything. I replied that it's possible he was offered value and didn't take it. But answer this question: Why would Ryan feel loyalty to Josh Willingham, a veteran free agent of four different MLB franchises, but not hesitate to trade Denard Span, a guy Ryan himself drafted and a guy who was so loyal to the Twins that he signed a team-friendly longterm deal, and did not hesitate to trade Ben Revere, an all-around great guy who has spent his entire professional career with the Twins? Does not compute.

I understand your point and I agree with it but I have to admit that banging on the payroll drum is getting a little tired, jokin. It doesn't need to be brought up in every thread that involves a Twins player. No matter whether the Twins spent that extra money or not, Willingham is younger and has offered more production than Cuddyer has in Colorado. Money aspects aside, that means it was a good, smart acquisition by Ryan. You're making the assumption that Ryan was offered something of real value for Willingham. It's possible he was. It's also possible that he wasn't. Ryan did not hesitate to trade two outfielders this offseason. It stands to reason that had he received a quality offer on the third, he would have made that deal in a heartbeat. I think it's pretty clear that Occam's Razor applies to Willingham. Ryan traded Denard Span, a very good outfielder because it brought back Alex Meyer. He then traded his only other centerfielder, Ben Revere, because it brought back Trevor May and Vance Worley. It's unlikely that Ryan so prized Josh Willingham that he refused to trade him while his two younger centerfielders were completely expendable.

I don't think this should change anything except that the Twins will be shopping one less vet in July. The Twins still have too many OF/1B/DH bodies. One or two of them need to go and the logical choices start with Doumit and Morneau.

Yes. Without a doubt. 2012-13 Salary: Cuddyer: $21m Willingham: $14m 2012-13 WAR: Cuddyer: 1.9 Willingham: 3.6 That swap was and is a no-brainer. Great move by the Twins and the type of move they should be making eleven out of ten times. I said it at the end of last season and it still stands: Willingham came close to earning all $21m of his contract last season. He was an extremely valuable player, especially on the Twins, who always seem to need a potent RH bat. Any production he provides in 2013 and 2014 is just icing on his cake of a 2012 season.

"Not a lot" would be my guess. Definitely not much at the deadline last year, as teams aren't going to fall over themselves to pay for a guy they could have signed four months earlier and is having a career season. In that situation, I think the contract length actually hurt Willingham's value. Offseason, hard to say. Lots of outfielders on the market, lots of choices.

the clap > watching the Twins play the Yankees That's what snepp keeps telling me, anyway.

Sigh. Twins: Brian Dozier 2B Joe Mauer DH Ryan Doumit C Justin Morneau 1B Trevor Plouffe 3B Oswaldo Arcia LF Aaron Hicks CF Clete Thomas RF Pedro Florimon SS (P.J. Walters P) Yankees: Brett Gardner CF Ichiro Suzuki RF Robinson Cano 2B Travis Hafner DH Zoilo Almonte LF Lyle Overbay 1B Chris Stewart C Luis Cruz SS David Adams 3B (CC Sabathia P)

I use 28 days a lot for a few reasons: 1. It's readily available after two clicks on BB-Ref 2. It's roughly a month, which is a good chunk of recent games 3. It's readily available after two clicks on BB-Ref I don't see the fuss. The stat lines that bother me are the "in the past 84 days, Player X has blah blah blah" because it's obvious the poster chose that particular 84 day cutoff to suit his or her point. I almost exclusively use the 28 days split or a complete month (if we're close to the end of the month) because it's easy and unless I go into the game logs, I don't know if it's biased for or against the player.

Yes, it's terribly inconvenient that Parmelee continues to... hit. I've been in this thread almost every day for the past 7-10 days.

More encouraging, but also more cherry-picked. When I pull my "recent OPS" stats, I don't specify parameters to make a player look good or bad. I grab one month (or, if using BB-Ref, 28 days) and go with that. Chris went 2-3 with a walk on May 23rd. His first decent game in two weeks.

I'll stop doing that when people stop saying "he needs to start hitting". I'm not randomly posting Chris' OPS every time he has a good game. I'm responding to people who believe that he's not hitting (and therefore deserves less playing time), despite the fact that his OPS is above Doumit's, on par with Willingham's, and not that far behind Morneau's. Nowhere in this thread have I indicated that Parmelee is an .833 hitter. In fact, the only "predictions" I've made regarding Parmelee involve words like "stop-gap", ".750 OPS", and "role player". And my only point is that he needs to play every day, in the same spot in the lineup, for a month so we know for sure.

.833 OPS over the past month of play. This team has nothing to lose by playing Chris every day. Get him out there. His peripheral stats are pretty good. He's walking 10% of the time, which shows good discipline. His LD rate is over 22%, which means he's taking good hacks at the ball. His BABIP is around .270, which means he's on the unluckier side of things. There is a lot to indicate that he will become a solid role player on the team. Given the pathetic play of the veterans and the fact that the Twins are not competitive this season, I'm still waiting to hear a good reason why Parmelee shouldn't be playing.

Completely unsustainable and therefore irrelevant when talking about whether to keep Morneau. It's nice that he's been so RISP-y this season and driven in a bunch of runs but looking at someone who has gotten lucky and saying "we should keep him because he's lucky" is not a sound way to run a baseball franchise.