bean5302

The Twins were between a rock and a hard place with Enlow. Protecting him and potentially losing a different player in rule 5 as a result. If Enlow winds up busting, and a different rule 5 pick leaves and does well, the Twins will face criticism again. It's the front office's job to protect players they've evaluated as having the talent and drive necessary to make an impact at the MLB level. Time will tell if they do a better job than they have at talent recognition.

This topic has been previously covered. I don't think it's nearly as polarizing as you do. The case for Ortiz and steroids is one of the weakest out there and only the most hard core anti-steroid writers will consider it IMHO. Nothing from Canseco's book. No positive tests from 2003-2016. No known BALCO scandal ties. No known Biogenesis scandal ties. Ortiz played 85% of his career and his entire Red Sox career after testing and penalties were implemented. Ortiz will be in the Hall of Fame. He won't be a first ballot guy, I don't think because his overall WAR numbers aren't good enough for that, but he was one of the most prolific hitters in baseball after the year 2000. Ortiz has compiled more than 50 fWAR and 55 bWAR in his career. For a full time career DH (Ortiz completed only 166 of 2,408 games in his career at 1B)? That's a very rare bird.

I don't have anything personal against Niko Goodrum, but I'd rather play Palacios. I find it hard to believe Palacios hasn't warranted at least being looked at as a utility infielder. Goodrum is a known quantity, he's a 30 year old (by the start of 2022) utility infielder who can't hit. He's not exactly a black hole on a roster, but he doesn't add anything, either. Over his last 504 plate appearances and 2 years, he's generated 0.3 fWAR and 0.1 bWAR with a .632 OPS.

The Twins haven't exactly treated highly regarded Asian league players well in my opinion. So why would a player from an Asian league look at the Twins as a potential landing spot? The Twins were quick to bench and demote Park with an injured wrist and never really gave him a good look after. Gardy was publicly critical of Nishioka right off the bat, and it can certainly be said Nishioka didn't play well, either he nor Park even got 300 plate appearances in MLB.

It wasn't an arbitration contract, but the Twins have made similar moves under Falvey like eating $2.5MM on Anibal Sanchez in 2018 before cutting him on March 11, less than a month after he signed. If the Twins are willing to eat $2.5MM, they'll also be willing to eat $200k if they cut Cave before the season. I don't think it's even a bad look for the Twins as I'd be surprised Cave would be able to get an MLB contract from anybody right now. I think it's basically just free money for him right now.

Considering how the Twins treated Nishioka and Park, it'd be a cold day in hell before I'd come out of Korea or Japan to sign with the Twins.

No. As a rookie Buxton produced 0.1 fWAR. Then 1.5, then 3.6, then -0.3, then 2.7, then 1.2 before this past season... where again, until the last 10 games of the year, he was like 2.5 fWAR.

Management fees vary, as you say. I based it on 5% of the rental value at $800/mo per apartment, which worked out to about 10% of the payment which seemed nice and easy. Given the size, I'd actually expect it might be a bit more than that. Regardless, when we're at $60,000, arguing over a few hundred or even a couple thousand isn't going to turn the tide. Typically, utilities are not included in units and MLB didn't say utilities had to be covered, but even if I were to add utilities (water, sewer, gas, electric, garbage), it would still be $45,000 cheaper. Maintenance, groundskeeping and common area cleaning is required and that can definitely cost some money so now maybe $38,000 cheaper assuming the players had to pay nothing at all. Not sure that's the case. Even though players don't have to be on the lease, are they going to have costs deducted? It didn't really say, I don't think. Not sure how the apartment complex would operate during the offseason, whether it would be filled with short term leases or what. I didn't take into consideration the potential value of having $77,000 of revenue during the offseason. The whole thing is moot since MLB teams cannot use hotels/motels except when apartments, rental houses and host families are not feasible.

Oswaldo Arcia is only 30. That's crazy to think. I really felt like getting DFA'd by the Twins was going to light a fire under him. He had a huge year on a MiLB contract with the Diamondbacks, but he was jogjammed behind other talent and didn't get a shot at the MLB roster that year. Then it was off to Japan where he performed poorly for a single season. For a guy who seemingly had so much talent to fall so far and so hard.

Well, I suppose the things which matter to us are a lot different. Different objectives lead to different conclusions, haha.

"Suck for Luck" was real. Teams weren't even putting their best players on the field.

As I recall, the way Palacios got to his consistent .800+ OPS months shifted around in regard to batting average or power, etc, but the end of the day was a pretty steady OPS. It's hard to take much away from a single month because a nasty 10 or 20 game run of luck can blow numbers to pieces.

If Buxton knew he'd be healthy, have a great year and the CBA would work out well for the players, I'm sure he'd elect not to sign an extension right now. There are a lot of things Buxton might consider at the moment. The same reasons it's so very hard to figure out what a fair offer or his trade value actually looks like.

If you think Buxton is so awesome and important, why would he only bring a couple fringe prospects?

Buxton has produced less than 2.0 fWAR per season across his career. He was under 2.5 fWAR until the last 10 games of the season this past year. A player like that doesn't make the difference between retool and rebuild. What they replace Buxton with will make the difference.

A lot of professional sports owners are real estate specialists. Buying a mid size apartment complex isn't going to be a big deal. It's easy and cheap. It's also virtually guaranteed to be "feasible." Hotels/motels are only allowed on a very exception basis based on what I read above. Apartments, Rental Homes (like AirBnB or VRBO) and Host Families must all be exhausted before considering hotels. There are no leases the players can sign which would include sub-leasing. Apartment owners would not be able to have the tenant's (player) name on a lease. Of course, hotel ownership and management is your expertise and I'm not even about to pretend I'm as knowledgable as you are on the subject. I might be opinionated, but I try not to be an ignorant and arrogant jerk at the same time. Let's say MLB teams could go to motels and say I want to book 16 double rooms in your motel for 6-7 months. Let's compare the finances over a single year. Motel 6 vs. a $1.5MM apartment complex. The apartment complex with an I/O at 3.25% is going to be $3,312.50/mo * 12mo = $39,750 per year. In addition, we'll budget 10% of that for property management, bringing the total to $43,725. Now, what's a motel for 16 rooms per month in Cedar Rapids, IA (Kernels)? Let's say it's Motel 6. The motel owners are going to give a 30% discount off their already published rates ($39/night) at $27/night. Now add in taxes and fees and figure $35/night. 16 rooms, 30 days = $16,800/mo * 6 months = $100,800. So the MLB team would save nearly $60,000 annually by buying an apartment complex, and they'd have way more control, but also way more responsibility for the property. Any tax benefit from the more expensive hotel rate would be more than offset by depreciating the property value on the apartment complex or deducting improvements. Motel 6 comes with perks too. It's super easy from an accounting standpoint and it's staffed, comes with security cameras and key log reports of entry/exit, but again, hotels/motels can only be utilized on an exception basis. It's cheaper to own the apartment complex than all options except maybe host families and teams would have more control over an owned property, plus they'd be able to concentrate their players in a single location for logistics and be able to set rules more effectively. Property management would be handled by a different company (possibly affiliated with the owner already) reducing that burden of owning the apartment, and of course, it's allowed to own an apartment complex in the rules whereas it's probably not allowed to use a motel/hotel service in most cases. When it's all said and done, I can only speculate what owners or team front offices might be thinking. I could be completely and totally off base when valuing certain things. I can't even manage to agree with the baseball team on baseball related decisions, haha.

I don't disagree with you in regard to spending money always making for a competitive team. It does increase the likelihood the team is competitive. I'm also not encouraging a hard salary floor or a hard salary ceiling. Just a luxury tax system like baseball currently has. Hard floors and caps are bad for teams because it takes away all flexibility and can lead to teams being forced to make unexpected, but catastrophic decisions to their roster. Mediocrity does improve raw revenue vs. being very bad. Mediocrity provides hope. Hope brings fans to the game improving ticket sales and engagement. Hope gets fans to tune in and leads to larger TV contracts. Looking at team revenue's the worst teams will have the lowest revenues. The best teams will have the highest revenues. Revenue sharing does get mixed in there to help smooth that out so from a "net" perspective, there might be more truth to what you're saying.

Not trying to win does not equal actively trying to lose as far as I'm concerned. Those are two entirely different concepts, but I think it's really semantics in a lot of ways. Many MLB teams are not trying to compete for years at a time. The rebuild philosophy is incredibly unpopular with fans but extremely popular with franchises because rebuilding is more successful than a traditional approach when it comes to fielding a championship team. The Dodgers and Yankees don't have to rebuild. The Royals? They had losing seasons for 17 of 18 years from 1995-2012. They began a rebuild for the 2011 season and made it to back to back World Series' in 2014-2015. That is not a coincidence. The trade off of assets by the Royals led to a few names like Lorenzo Cain, Alciedes Escobar, James Shields and Wade Davis. Big names which led to 14 WAR for the 2014 World Series team and 10 WAR for 2015 with Shields departing for the Padres. The World Series appearance in 2014, bolstered by great young talent and the saved money from trading away big assets allowed Kansas City to go big (for them) in free agency which led to the Royals becoming the 2015 World Series Champions. Rebuilding works. Fans hate it. It's not good for MLB as a whole, but it is good for an individual small/mid market team owner. It's a valid strategy to allow small and mid market teams a better shot at the World Series. The traditional method involves trying to spend near the maximum the club can afford and fielding a mediocre team hoping that a group of home grown prospects have a breakout in a very short window to supplement the already good, short term asset entrenched players. This means the up and coming players must mesh with the existing players. Having all DH's (like the Twins) doesn't work here. Finding a sort of balance which smoothes out the process, where owners are compelled to put a competitive product on the field, but not prevented from rebuilding is the best option, IMHO. A salary floor does this. The Royals still start the rebuild in 2011 by trading Greinke and Betancourt, but they sign a couple aging 1 year guys to bring the payroll up, but without any kind of long term drag on the team's finances. You never know when a has-been veteran pitcher on a one year contract will show back up with a career year and help you into a World Series Championship.

I'm not super enthusiastic about Taylor. Comes with a QO, his defense at SS has been below average across his career (-4.9 UZR/150 career) and he's age 31. His contract predictions seem to generally be in the 4 year $15MM AAV range. Taylor's bat is solidly a bit above average, but he does strike out quite a bit for his mediocre power numbers. Nick Ahmed is the reason the Diamondbacks didn't have Escobar playing SS, but it's become pretty apparent he can't hit. I'm not exited about trading for a guy who produced 0.0 fWAR this year and is under contract for 2 more years and nearly $18MM. Wendle is chronically under-utilized? Not buying that. With just 3 plate appearances more in in 2021, he'd have been qualified in 3 of 4 years. In 2019, he broke his wrist and had another stint on the IL for a hamstring. He's not been asked to cover shortstop a whole lot, averaging about 10 games a year there, but he has graded out well on the defensive side of things. The problem is he's not been projected as a shortstop. Wendle saw a big drop off in sprint speed now at age 31 and his arm was rated as questionable at SS though his small sample size seems to be allowing for a stellar error rate. Unfortunately, his error rate at 3B is pretty poor in far more opportunities. Wendle is year 2 arbitration eligible, projected to make $4.0-4.5MM and he'll be in his 3rd year of arbitration in 2023. It's tough to say how the Rays value him. How good is Wendle? Probably not good enough if the Twins are looking to compete, but not truly cheap if they're looking to rebuild. Of the three, if I had to pick one, it'd be Wendle, but I'd rather find talent elsewhere.

The expense of buying an apartment complex isn't that bad. $100-200k per room. If a team were double-bunking, they could probably buy an entire 16 unit apartment complex for like $1.5MM in most places and cover the team roster. While affiliations do change from time to time, the MLB clubs could just swap ownership as the cities with affiliations rarely change. The most complicated part of the process would probably be clearing the entire complex of the existing tenants so it would be easier to operate. Maybe I'm misremembering something, but I actually read the fine print at a hotel stay on a business trip as I was bored. Stays of 30 days or longer were not allowed. The person was required to check out and check back in. When I did some searching it looked like it was designed to prevent people from establishing residency at the hotel and residency rights so the hotel wouldn't have to go through the eviction process? I haven't researched well enough to back up my position. I just went with what I remembered.

Manfred works for the owners. He's the owners' representative. Tony Clark, who hasn't performed well, is the players' representative. I think Manfred's attempts to shorten the game (which the players continue to try to block), his attention to umpiring and his concerns with the entertainment value of MLB have all been fine. MLB has been pretty fair and generally consistent in regard to player punishments. The commissioner of baseball is not all powerful. He answers to the owners as a collective. He's infinitely better than, say, Gary Bettman.

Like over his last several years? Last year Palacios' bat was pretty consistent. May, June and August were all great with OPS' over .800. July wasn't as great, but hardly terrible for a single month at .667. Palacios did slump hard in the final couple weeks after being platooned and having his playing time reduced a bit.

I have a hard time why a team wouldn't take Palacios in a Rule 5 selection. He was one of the best hitting shortstops in AA last year and his defense was good after he shook off the rusty glove he was using to start the season. Detroit grabbed Goodrum a couple years ago. Then again, I felt like Levi Michael would have been picked when he was first exposed after a pretty nice 2014 campaign. When it comes to Vallimont... the stats tell me he doesn't know where the ball is going and that rarely translates to being highly effective in the high minors when batters can lay off borderline pitches at higher and higher degrees. I probably would have protected Enlow like the Twins did. So much potential upside and the Twins believed enough in him to really go out and get him on his draft day paying him dramatically over-slot to get him to sign. Jake Cave? I don't see the attraction to putting him on the roster. Guys like him are a dime a dozen and I'm not convinced Nick Gordon can't completely replace him already. Those are the roster filler guys before the season starts and you've got all the starters and plans worked out. No real need to sign them this early when roster crunches are happening.

MLB teams are not going to want to use hotels/motels for coporate housing. Even cheap hotels would wind up being $2,000/mo with all the fees which are tacked onto rates and hotels/motels won't generally allow people to stay there more than 30 days at a time due to renters rights laws. I suspect small/medium sized, inexpensive apartment buildings will be purchased by the teams at this point since the players themselves are not allowed to sign leases. I'd imagine the owners of the MLB clubs are already in the process of finalizing this. Concerns over being able to make food seem fairly unwarranted.

The bottom line you're saying Berrios is a wasp and not a honey bee?