bean5302

I just don't see your point as valid. In my opinion, Dozier and Polanco do not have similar values. Not only do I believe Dozier viewed very differently than Polanco is now, but there was a huge amount of difference in cost and control. Dozier came with some serious warning bells and not only other teams in MLB noticed, so did the Twins. Dozier was begging for an extension and the Twins wouldn't even talk with him. That's poor asset management by the front office as they provided other teams with reason to worry about Dozier. Anyway, the Dodgers offered a top prospect (top 25-50 overall) for Dozier, Jose De Leon, but the Twins wanted another top prospect as well. Ultimately, the Dodgers traded De Leon for another short term 2B, Logan Forsythe, who was being paid less than Dozier and performing nearly as well. The Twins undoubtedly could have gotten De Leon and another good prospect for Dozier, but they weren't going to get De Leon, and another top 100 or better. I suspect the Twins were asking for Calhoun or Buehler in addition. We don't know what other teams offered, but the Twins were absolutely demanding a haul. They didn't expect Dozier to decline as much as he did over the next two seasons.

31 year old Dozier had 2 months of team control left, was making $9MM a year, wasn't eligible for a qualifying offer and was playing like dookie. So apart from 28 year old Polanco having 4 years of team control left, making $5.5MM next year, being eligible for a qualifying offer at the end of the 4 years of team control and playing at an All Star level currently, this is pretty close to the same.

As mentioned above, All Star caliber 2nd baseman with several years of cheap team control are extremely valuable. Teams looking to compete aren't counting on "prospects" to carry them. Prospects are played during the initial phases of building to find out what holes teams need to fill and teams expecting to contend aren't in initial build phases. Baseballtradevalues lists Polanco at #1 by a country mile in terms of Twins assets, which probably says more about the Twins than it does about Polanco, but Polanco still ranks as the 78th most trade valuable player in all of MLB right now on that site. Should the Twins trade Polanco? I'd say no, unless they're rebuilding. What's he worth? A Royce Lewis and Simeon Woods-Richardson type combined, plus a sweetener.

I'm not saying Nick Gordon is Ehire Adrianza's clone. I'm saying Nick Gordon fills the typical profile for a utility player. Cheap. Not somebody you think you want to start, but still has some potential upside. Able to cover a lot of defensive positions. The Twins made it clear they don't trust Nick Gordon at shortstop at the MLB level; however, they also made it clear they viewed him as a shortstop by playing him the vast majority of his time across 4,500 MiLB innings. Some utility players are viewed as defensive wizards, but not all of them. Danny Santana and Eduardo Nunez were horrible shortstops and Adrianza was mediocre. Yes. If Gordon cleared waivers on a DFA, analysts and fans would be stunned. Gordon hasn't hit left handed pitching well as a lefty, but platoon players are generally players who do not hit effectively against both righties and lefties. I don't see the Twins platooning Arraez with anybody next year. With Donaldson on the roster and Miranda pounding at the door, the need for Arraez to cover 3rd is neglible. He can't play shortstop or cover center field making Arraez a poor option for utility, not to mention he's proven to have the talent to be a starter and has a ton of trade value. Arraez is certainly not pushing Polanco off 2nd base and what a debacle it would be to move Polanco back to shortstop. Bottom line, Arraez/Polanco/Donaldson/Miranda are an incompatible, not complimentary group.

I could see the Twins dropping to $100MM this offseason and starting a rebuild because of the mess their roster is in, but not below that if the MLB proposal of a $100MM competitive balance floor goes into place. The $150MM ceiling is about where I think the Twins should be on any given average year, not their true ceiling, but that's just my opinion based on their market size and potential revenues.

I've seen Syndergaard mentioned a couple times in here. I don't see it happening. Syndergaard has made it clear as day he wants to stay with the Mets and indicates he'd accept a QO if one is made. Even though he was instructed not to throw breaking balls, throwing any pitches at the MLB level this year should have made an impact on how other teams view Thor at this point. The Mets are undoubtedly gauging his value on the open market, and Syndergaard is likely looking at 1 year contracts at this point. Could the Mets outbid all the competition for 1 year of Syndergaard if they fail to make him a QO? Sure. How much would they save? My guess is less than $3MM. Some team is at least going to give Syndergaard 1 year and $15MM meaning the dice roll when Stroman is already likely to leave would be a sign of incompetence in my opinion. Still, it's the Mets and such a move would be par for the course. When it comes to Verlander, the Astros owner is on record saying they'll probably make a QO to Verlander, but Verlander is looking for a contract of "considerable length." I'd think Verlander would decline the QO. Even on the open market, I'd think the worst Verlander would possibly do is 1 year $15MM so I'd think there's virtually no risk him in declining. I think he'll be available, but I also think he's going to be picky about where he signs. He'll want to be with a contender and the Twins finished dead last in what is shaping up to be a much tougher division going forward. For the Twins to even entertain signing Verlander, they'll need to prove they're in it to win it and that seems like a long-shot.

50. Cody Laweryson, LHP *added 2.11.20 Age: 21 2019 Highest Level: A Cedar Rapids With mid to low velocity, Lawyerson uses a nice breaking ball to get outs. His 12.3 K/9 over 46.0 professional innings shows some promise, but most of that was in Rookie ball. He needs to do the same in A Ball in 2020 to get any consideration outside of this tier. https://www.prospects1500.com/al-central/minnesota-twins-2020-top-50-prospects/ In an interview with Seth on Youtube prior to this season, Laweryson says he's a fastball/slider/changeup guy right now and the changeup was a recent addition to this arsenal. He described himself as fastball heavy and the type of guy who really needs to avoid walks. He was concentrating on developing his slider.

Rogers is a no-doubter to sign if his finger has recovered, and based on the timeline... it really should be provided he doesn't need surgery after all. Since surgery was an option, but not an absolute requirement, I'm taking a wild guess that Rogers was dealing with a pretty serious Grade III pulley strain issue. https://theclimbingdoctor.com/pulley-injuries-explained-part-2/#:~:text=6-8 weeks is the,ROM exercises after immobilization phase. Grade III – Complete A2 or A3 rupture (Most common pulley injury – A2) 3 months are recommended for a return to FULL climbing activities due to the biomechanical implications of an A2/A3 pulley rupture. Immobilization for 10-14 days is necessary to protect the pulley and after the immobilization/splinting process, you will use a thermoplastic pulley ring provided by a doctor instead of tape (more on the ring later). Passive ROM exercises following immobilization. Functional exercises will begin at the full 4 week mark, and EASY climbing will commence after a 6-8 week period from injury onset. At 3 months you can begin full climbing activities, and you’ll wear the pulley ring (or tape) for roughly 6 months after climbing begins again. In the linked website from The Climbing Doctor, it says full climbing can resume in about 3 months with taping... that was a month ago for Taylor Rogers, and full and complete recovery around 6 months. I haven't heard a thing about Rogers throwing recently. Just that he was scheduled to see a specialist in September, which should have been about where he could resume full normal physical activities. Obviously, pitching is different than climbing, but the stresses on the finger from climbing would be greater than that of a typical pitcher throwing, I'd assume. Why? Because the finger strain seems to be relatively common for climbers and very rare for pitchers. Just a guess though. If Rogers hasn't recovered from the strain, it's a bad sign he'll need to go the surgical route and now we're starting to get to the point where his 2022 is in clear danger. It's worth noting, articles on the surgery indicate it's not always fully successful in that pain can persist and range of motion can be impacted, requiring potentially another surgery. If Rogers is going to need surgery, the Twins' situation becomes a lot murkier and I'd pass on signing Rogers.

Well, that is one sure fire way to drop Polanco from an All Star player to a scrub level player, haha. Polanco's value doesn't come from his bat, which is good, but not great. It comes from his bat relative to other infielders. Assuming he was a competent defender at the positions and his batting profile: SS/C/CF = 5+ WAR 2B/3B = 4 WAR RF/LF = 3 WAR 1B = 2 WAR DH = 1 WAR Arraez has the talent to be a starting 2B, but his injury history makes it a little sketchy to rely on him there, and I don't believe his bat is as good as Polanco's at this point. Arraez really tailed off last season. I think I'd look at Arraez as a solid 2-3 WAR starting second baseman. Too good not to play every day, but not good enough to push Polanco off 2B.

Gordon should absolutely be back next year. Ehire Adrianza was rocking a career wRC+ similar to Gordon's when he came to Minnesota after being DFA'd by SF even though they had made it a point to pay Adrianza on a $600k contract to avoid his first year of arbitration. Adrianza was then claimed by Milwaukee, who also promptly DFA'd him only to have him be claimed by the Twins a few days later. Why does that matter? To me, it's illustrative of what many teams view as a utility player. Cheap. Playable when you need to fill a spot, but not somebody you want to play as a starter. Still better than rotating typical AAA talent through the roster. Gordon is young, but has no options. Sticking him in as a utility player protects his upside while not costing the Twins any competitive edge on the field. The Twins deviated from that recently, though. Marwin Gonzalez was viewed as a full time utility player. A guy who would be platooned across the team as a starter and the Twins paid through the nose to get it by utility standards with a 2 year $21MM contract leading to 2.0 fWAR (adjusted for shortened 2020). Maybe 2-3x the production of the average utility player at 20x the price. Just have to see what they do.

The Twins need top of the rotation arms and it doesn't matter where they come from. Minnesota has the back end of the rotation covered, but they have nothing in the 1-2 slots. I'd expect the cost for the favorites in the comments to look about like: Gray = 3yrs $40MM (may well resign with Rockies) Stroman = 5yrs $135MM Ray = 4yrs $100MM I'd want Stroman, maybe Greinke on a 1 year deal sub $15MM, but I think the Twins could go out and get Scherzer or Verlander on a short deal easily enough. There are a lot of moving parts at the moment so nobody can really predict how Minnesota will make moves this offseason, just things they might do.

I read an article recently that talked about the offseason before the 1994 work stoppage. Didn't really impact the signings as much as you'd expect. With the kind of information which has been talked about, it honestly benefits teams like the Twins the most. Teams with the ability to spend up to $150MM, but who are still going to fall short of a reduced luxury tax floor. A lowered floor may reign in the top spenders who push $180MM and above.

and I liked your post for this part

Yeah, the defensive metrics really require somebody to devote a lot of time to understanding not only how the metric works, but also factors which influence their accuracy. Simply taking a limited sample size of Range Factor or especially Ultimate Zone Rating and using it in a vacuum can lead to really dramatically unfair perceptions.

I'll be honest. I'd much, much rather move Sano and allow Donaldson to platoon at DH/3B while Miranda platoons 3B/2B/DH.

Of these guys, Semien would be my choice. Bleacher Report predicts 5 years and $125MM and that feels about right. Semien would be ages 31-35 in that contract and would be expected to potentially move off SS by the end of it. Semien's move to shortstop was to maximize the value of Bo Bichette rather than a mark against Semien. Semien's sprint speed was 28.6 ft/sec last year placing him in the 87th percentile for MLB players and just 0.1 ft/sec slower than Trevor Story. Bleacher Report also predicts Trevor Story at 5 years and $150MM. That feels like a signifcant overpay coming off his down year and the trend down over the past 2 years for Story, especially considering his batted ball metrics suggest Story was good, not great hitter this year in terms of exit velocity, barrel rate, etc. I certainly would not pay more for Story than Semien right now, and I wouldn't go more than $100MM for Story. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2948617-fresh-predictions-for-top-2021-22-mlb-free-agents-with-offseason-approaching You couldn't pay me to touch Baez.

Lemme shorten this down for you (Lewis). Lewis hasn't played competitive baseball for two years, had rock hands when he was playing and couldn't hit. He's got excellent athleticism and an awesome work ethic and attitude. The hopes are it can transform him but the "expectation" of Lewis turning into not only a starting caliber MLB player, but an All Star or MVP caliber shortstop, isn't warranted right now. Martin and Miranda are very unlikely shortstops. Martin lacks the speed and arm. Miranda has never played significant time at shortstop in the Twins' system and he's thought of as an average-ish 3rd baseman. That's not a huge endorsement to try him out at shortstop.

That trade suggestion makes me puke. Donaldson (3.2 bWAR) + $15MM to Milwaukee (2 years Total Salary = $13.5MM per season) Bradley, Jr. (-0.7 bWAR), Henderson (4th Rounder), Wiemer (MLB Top 200ish, rising fast) (1 year Total Salary = $9.5MM) Donaldson's metrics suggest he should have had a 4+ WAR season and a OPS/wRC+ in the 140s if not for extremely poor luck last year while Bradley, Jr. was worse than a AAA replacement player and will cost the Twins $10MM. Bradley, Jr.'s decline is not a fluke, his K rate is trending south, and while his exit velocity and hard hit rates looked good, the barrel rate, HR/FB rate, and pop up rates were all poor suggesting he was making poor contact between firing off worm burners and soft liners or fly balls. With Bradley, Jr.s extreme pull tendencies, the shift robs the would-be eyesight of all those fast grounders and turns them into outs. Again, in this day and age of baseball with the shift and over 400 plate appearance to flatten out the luck fueling his abysmal season's wRC+ 35, it's not a fluke that Bradley, Jr. had a terrible season at the plate. Maybe not wRC+ 35 terrible, but certainly far, far below average. Donaldson at $13.5MM per season would be a steal on its own. Henderson is a long shot more akin to the Twins pitcher selections of old relying on movement and control, Wiemer probably has more to offer than Wallner or Sabato, but he's certainly not something like a top 5 Twins prospect (or probably top 10 right now). I view Bradley, Jr. as a Jake Cave at this point.

I'd bring Rogers back as the closer and maybe sign a setup type guy similar to Trevor May.

Honestly, the number of teams interested in a good defensive catcher who can OPS .900 is pretty long. There's a reason a 28 year old Realmuto got 5 years and $115MM. Garver has the same issue as Buxton right now, missing half the year all the time. He just needs to put together 2 qualified seasons, keep playing like he has and Garver will be in line for a six figure deal.

Celestino's performance at AAA was very encouraging. With the Saints, Celestino's walk rate was near his career best at 11.4% and his strikeout rate was a palatable 20.4% showing a good enough eye at the plate, and while his .356 BABIP suggests he may have been lucky, the lack of good batted ball data from the minors makes it hard to tell if Celestino was just making hard contact and hitting line drives.

Agreed. AA is a big leap forward in terms of talent, but I think the biggest difference is going to be how the AA hitters barrel balls. That said, the leap from Low-A to High-A is pretty big too, in my opinion. MLB >> AAA > AA >>> A+ >> A- > Rk If Varland is able to produce similar results at AA without a significant jump in walk rate, I'd be fully confident in him having some success at the MLB level. It seems like the only thing which which derails pitchers above AA is control.

I honestly believe the league batting average is a function of the focus on drafting and developing 3 outcome hitters. It leads to more fly balls, which typically have low batting averages associated with them rather than factors which are outside the hitters control like pitchers or shifts. That's why I chose to compare Donaldson to himself rather than mention the league trend :)

Many people are down on Donaldson thanks to his good, but not exactly great performance at the plate this year compared with his $21MM payday over 2021 and still guaranteed for the next two seasons. The expectation is his legs have all but given up with him coasting into his mid 30s on a big contract as another aging star fading out. The thing is, his batted ball data says Donaldson was absolutely getting the shaft. Donaldson is actually having a career year in terms of the metrics. He’s annihilating the baseball with the best barrel rate and exit velocity of his career, he’s launching it at an optimal angle, he’s striking out less than he has since 2016 and still walking in the top 10% of all baseball. The expected markers say Donaldson should be performing at the plate like his 5+ WAR seasons of old, but the results just weren’t there. Is it luck, is it the shift, the lead plates in his shoes or high speed worm burners instead of towering fly balls coming off Donaldson’s bat? Before we get into the analytics, what were Donaldson’s results compared to his peak years from 2015-2019 and his career averages? Looking at Fangraphs data: AVG OBP SLG ISO OPS BB% K% 2021 .247 .352 .475 .228 .827 13.6 21.0 Peak .276 .382 .541 .265 .923 14.0 20.5 Career .269 .367 .505 .235 .872 12.7 20.0 The glaring issue is really the batting average which drives both the AVG and SLG components of OPS, and there’s good news in regard to Donaldson’s results on the surface here. He had the lowest BABIP of his entire career last year by 10 points at .268 with his previous low of .278 coming way back in 2014 before he turned into the MVP caliber hitter he became. Donaldson’s BABIP was also nearly 30 points lower than his career BABIP of .295. There are factors which influence BABIP from running speed to batted ball type to exit velocity and launch angles and as hitters push into their 30s, sometimes their eyes and legs show it. Swing and miss increases, walks taper off, balls don’t pop off the bat like they used to and that extra time to get to first base turns one time hits and doubles into outs and singles. Donaldson’s walk and strikeout rates remained right at his prime levels so it seems unlikely his reactions and eyes have aged. Let’s look into the rest. 2021 vs. Peak years of 2015-2019 reveals line drive rates (17.1% vs 19.1%), ground ball rates (43.0% vs. 42.1%) and fly ball rates (39.9% vs. 38.8%) are right where they should be, but Fangraphs shows a potentially insignificant increase in pop up rates (12.9% vs. 10.6%) and drop in HR/FB rate (18.6% vs. 22.4%). Pop up rate increases and decreases in fly balls which turn into home runs can come from luck or be used as a signal a player just isn’t hitting the ball as well. Is Donaldson hitting the ball as hard as he used to? Yes, actually, even harder. Using Statcast data on Baseball Savant, Donaldson’s 94.1mph average exit velocity ranked 4th in MLB and his 17.4% barrel rate per batted ball event ranked 8th in MLB. Donaldson’s 52.7% hard hit rate from Statcast (balls hit over 95mph) was good for 11th best in MLB where Fangraphs had his 40.2% hard hit rate ranked 17th across all qualified MLB hitters using the much tougher Baseball Info Solutions algorithm. The bottom line? Donaldson was an elite MLB batter in terms of walk rate, exit velocity, hard hit rate and barrel rate. He also had a near ideal 14.6% launch angle. Even looking into Donaldson’s average fly ball distance didn’t reveal any obvious changes from his peak years. Based on the advanced batted ball data and metrics, nobody could be as angry about the results as Josh Donaldson himself. He was hitting the ball like an MVP, but getting results which don’t even look All Star level. Plotting Donaldson’s batted ball data out against the rest of MLB… It's clear, Donaldson is putting all but the other elite MLB batters to shame in the way the ball rockets off the bat. Donaldson’s numbers are all obviously heads above the top 10% batter thresholds. There aren’t any accidents when it comes to ranks… and about those ranks, Donaldson’s page on Baseball Savant has enough red marks (top 10% in MLB) on it since 2015, including this year, to make you think the website was broken. That said, even if a player is hitting a ball hard, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’d be expected to produce at a high level. Hitting a whole bunch of 100mph worm burners isn’t going to do much for a player’s OPS. So how about those expected results? They’re impressive and Donaldson seems to be the victim of bad luck right across the board. If you’re still not into wOBA, .385 would probably correspond with an OPS+ or wRC+ in the mid 140s. For calculating xOPS, I used xBA + Donaldson's actual walks and hit by pitch data along with his xSLG. Actual Expected AVG .247 .266 SLG .475 .533 OPS .827 .901 wOBA .353 .385 Homers 26 30 Of course, some players simply don’t seem to track consistently with metrics. There are pitchers who routinely and significantly outperform or underperform their FIPs, for example. What about Donaldson? The graph below paints a very clear picture. His xOPS has typically been better than expected, but his xwOBA is almost always pretty close to expectations. Keep in mind that 2018 and 2020 were small sample size years for Donaldson. This past season was the first time in his career that Donaldson was way off his expected wOBA, and it was the first time his actual production was significantly below his expected wOBA. The next item up for me is always the shift. According to Fangraphs’ data, Donaldson hit .289 against the shift this season, but his overall production against the shift wasn’t great at wRC+ 81 in a somewhat small sample size. It seems like his walk rate and ISO tanked. Since we are still dealing with quite a bit of randomness in regard to Fangraphs’ shift reporting and small sample size, I don’t think there’s much to take away from it. That said, Fangraphs showed a higher shift rate deployed against Donaldson than he’d ever seen in his career by a mile even though Donaldson isn’t strictly a pull hitter. Considering Donaldson was certainly effective at recording hits against the shift, I don’t think the shift is the reason for the lack of production. Finally, how about speed? Well here’s one place where Donaldson is in obvious and serious decline. Being one of the slowest players in all of baseball can have a serious negative impact on batting average and slugging percentage. Back in Donaldson’s heyday, his sprint speed was in the 26.5 ft/sec range, putting him into a pretty solid average runner category. It’s dropped precipitously the last few years placing him as one of the slowest runners in all of MLB this year with a miserable 24.5 ft/sec. It takes about 4 seconds on average to run from the plate to first base. In 2021 Donaldson was 10 feet and 2 strides away from the bag when 2016 Donaldson or this year’s Brent Rooker would have crossed it. The gaps continue to increase on an attempt at a two bagger. Donaldson reaches 2nd base in his prime 17 feet ahead of today’s Donaldson. Doubles have to be no-doubters for 2021 Donaldson. This plays into defense, too as Donaldson’s range has fallen from average-ish to very poor this year. Fangraphs UZR indicates Donaldson was unplayable at 3B this year with a UZR/150 of -19.4 due almost exclusively to his fall off in range. Baseball Reference, as expected, graded him much better using Range Factor as the shift artificially hides how poorly Twins fielders actually perform by providing Twins fielders with more opportunities to field balls which would have otherwise slipped through the gaps. So what was Donaldson missing from his production which he should have seen? Was it the missing doubles from Donaldson scrambling down the basepaths like a car running a dragstrip dragging two flat tires? Seemingly, no. Donaldson managed 26 two baggers; maybe a tick higher than typical career expected rates. Honestly, it seems like singles and home runs are what’s lacking. Looking at the hit spray chart, I counted 11 doubles which could very well have been home runs, depending on the field where Donaldson hit them this year. Baseball Savant’s expected home runs for one thing sat at 30. That correlates with how many home runs he would have hit at the average MLB ballpark given his individual, real fly balls. If he played all his games in San Diego, he would have hit 36 bombs. Surprisingly, Target Field seems to be a poor location for Donaldson this year with just 27 expected based on his batted ball data. Considering Target Field doesn’t typically punish right handed hitters like it does lefties with that tall right field wall, I’d chalk this up to a straight up fluke. It’s worth noting a few unlucky doubles turning into home runs helps Donaldson somewhat, but his iron boots would prevent him from wheeling around 1st to stretch that single out for an extra base so some stat lines are likely to drop off from his absolute prime, which is to be expected as Donaldson navigates through his mid 30s. Let’s summarize this up. Donaldson his crushing the baseball and he had the worst luck he’s ever had in his career in multiple ways. From hits which should have been home runs to balls having eyes for pillowy soft gloves instead of green fields, nothing seemed to go right. His batted ball data is undeniably elite and he’s hitting the ball as well as he’s hit it in his entire career, but that doesn’t mean he’s not in decline. Seemingly chronic, frustrating calf injuries and age have sapped his speed to diminish his defensive value and undoubtedly stolen some extra bases or even a couple singles. The Twins are likely looking to move Donaldson this offseason, even if they have to eat some of his contract, but it may be foolhardy to sell low on a player who may well have a couple more 4-5 WAR seasons left. There are other DH options taking up space on the roster who might be less expensive to move and likely to produce less at the plate. If Donaldson crushes baseballs yet again next year, it would be unfathomable for the bad luck to continue and nothing would be crazy frustrating to watch Donaldson start a couple more All Star games wearing the wrong uniform while the Twins pay for it.

Optimistic ceiling? Probably occasional All Star, bat first, corner outfielder. A Josh Willingham, Michael Cuddyer type. The advanced stats and metrics painted some unpleasant things for him this season, but he's still got a season to make some adjustments.