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drivlikejehu

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Everything posted by drivlikejehu

  1. drivlikejehu
    I've said all along he may as well play out the year. That was my point - there is no disagreement there, I am not "giving up" on him, etc. Now, I do doubt he can hit. I certainly would not assume he will dramatically improve, because we should rarely, if ever, assume that for any player.
  2. drivlikejehu
    You didn't respond to my post. Your actual point of view is totally unclear except that it's different than mine. Here's another try: How long would you start Hicks while his OPS remains below .650? Through 2015? Through 2016? You keep acting like its a 100% guarantee he will turn it around. That's just false. It's not an opinion, either, it is a fact. We do not know whether Hicks will turn it around and therefore cannot count on him to do so.
  3. drivlikejehu
    I guess the issue is this: at what point does he actually have to produce? When Buxton comes up, do you put him in a corner spot even if his OPS remains well below .700? Is there an actual disagreement or do you just want to express your optimism?
  4. drivlikejehu
    You can't look at the batting components separately. Increasing his batting average may require a change in approach that reduces his walks. This may happen whether he likes it or not, because pitchers are increasingly going to just serve up hittable pitches and force him to swing. The problem is that Hicks does not make good contact. He doesn't actually swing and miss all that much - 7.1% this year, which is OK. But the results on his balls in play are horrible, and were last year too. A little tweak here or there is not going to be enough. Something big will have to change that allows him to hit the ball hard, or he will wash out. He absolutely cannot be counted on at this point.
  5. drivlikejehu
    Even with a .339 OBP, Hicks is below replacement level offensively. That's hard to do, and tells us just how badly he struggles to make good contact. If you mean that, including defense, he could be less horrible than Colabello or Kubel... well you're right, he may already be better because of how awful those two are. Twins outfielders as a whole this year are far below replacement level. They are the worst in the Majors by an immense margin. If that is your standard, then certainly Hicks can remain a starter. But if you want a productive outfield, Hicks has no place in it.
  6. drivlikejehu
    He's not going to hit 30 homers.
  7. drivlikejehu
    I think the author's argument is that, if you're going to patch the OF together, and have a low-strikeout flyball staff, then patch it with guys who can catch the ball. The Twins' missteps with Bartlett and so forth are obviously very well-worn territory on this site, but the article was for general consumption on ESPN. What is with people talking about Hicks in a corner outfield spot? That is not going to happen.
  8. drivlikejehu
    No, just no.
  9. drivlikejehu
    Ugh. Just enjoy his unsustainable start and hope for a decent prospect at the deadline. Don't ruin it.
  10. drivlikejehu
    They are based on objective, comparable information. Every year, there is huge amounts of talk regarding adjustments players are making, new pitches, new approaches, etc. Most of the time it is noise. But again, the issue here is just not understanding what the system is and what it is trying to do. For any individual player, there may be information that could potentially improve a projection. But that defeats the purpose of objectivity and consistency. That's why the correct use is to start with the baseline provided and consider whether other factors may result in exceeding or falling short of the projection. Switching the order of that process is human error that does nothing to diminish the projections. Also, it's not true they are all "secret sauce." The formula for Marcel (Tom Tango) is published, among others. It is true you can basically replace their use by just studying a player's historical performance. That's not very efficient though.
  11. drivlikejehu
    1. False. Many people have commented on either buying or having options on free agent years, which would start at age 32. 2. Irrelevant semantics. The issue is whether he would be worth the market rate based on his current production (which would be pretty high) years down the road. 3. Irrelevant indictment of team management. The fact they could screw up on separate transactions has no bearing on any individual decision. 4. Dozier is already under contract, per the reserve clause. He can't go anywhere. If he wants financial security, I'm fine with that too. I just don't see the point in paying him double what he is really worth, based on the mechanics of arbitration and his current age. The Twins cannot possibly compete if they follow that philosophy... they would run of money very quickly.
  12. drivlikejehu
    Except that the projection models aren't "broken" because they do not attempt to consider unusual changes in player ability. A good projection tells us what to reasonably expect. That's all. It's a starting point. The fact that some people don't understand a tool, or use it incorrectly, has zero bearing on its validity.
  13. drivlikejehu
    There are a variety of projection systems and massive amounts of discussion out there with respect to methodology. They are all based on the players' past performance... The differences have to do with adjustments that are made based on historical data (e.g., differences in how players at different positions age). A player with a big breakout or collapse season will obviously veer a lot from the projection, which is really more of an expectation baseline than a true prediction.
  14. drivlikejehu
    When there is no clear BPA, I prefer a position player due to pitcher injury risk. It's a tough situation because high-ceiling arms are difficult to acquire, and the injury risk only increases the need for depth... and the top of the first round is an obvious place to add that kind of talent. It is possible the Twins think Nola is better than the consensus view, though pretty much everyone does rank him fairly high.
  15. drivlikejehu
    I don't buy him as a solid regular at SS. But he's fine as a stopgap, and if he proves to be more than that, great. I just don't expect it to happen.
  16. drivlikejehu
    Correia has negative trade value (no one would pay him his current salary, assuming they would roster him at all). He has no significance to the future of the club. I don't really care if they give him another start or two but I would have tried to trade him in the off-season, and having failed that I would have seen enough by now.
  17. drivlikejehu
    What they said was too vague to really get much out of it. In the minor leagues they probably don't study the opposing pitcher nearly as much, due to the limited information that is available and the fact development takes precedence over wins and losses. So what confuses me isn't so much what he did in the minors - how is preparation even remotely voluntary in the Majors? Particularly in the case of a young player, wouldn't he just be told to do it, and if he didn't, demoted immediately? It's the back and forth aspect that makes no sense to me. I mean, it would be one thing if he was doing well. But he's been bad for his entire MLB career. And if there are these professionalism questions, that makes the lack of off-season attention to the OF even worse... gross incompetence is an understatement.
  18. drivlikejehu
    I'm not "writing him off." The topic is how to approach Dozier from a contract standpoint. It's an economic question - since the Twins have limited resources, the allocation of those resources needs to be as efficient as possible for the club to compete. They can't afford to throw millions at players just to be nice. The Twins are the ones that have Dozier under team control through his prime. If he wants an extension, that's fine - he has no leverage and the contract should reflect that. But my guess is that his agent doesn't want that deal - his job is to try and get the Twins to overpay. Four years, $16 million guaranteed, and a team-friendly option? OK. Five years, $35 million? Obviously not.
  19. drivlikejehu
    So what? Why does this matter at all? Dozier either is, or is not, likely to be worth big bucks at age 32+. The correct answer is not likely. Possible, but not likely, and not worth tens of millions of dollars that could go elsewhere.
  20. drivlikejehu
    Brutal. Nicely done.
  21. drivlikejehu
    Dozier will most likely never be better than he is right now. It is extremely unlikely he will be this good at age 32. Willful ignorance of trends involving thousands of players won't help turn around the organization.
  22. drivlikejehu
    I have a feeling Hicks is not going to be the Twins starting RF in 2015.
  23. drivlikejehu
    So what's he going to do, quit baseball? The rules are the rules. His "bad feelings" aren't a downside. The Twins have him under contract through what, 2018? They don't need to plan 2B for 2019 - they have enough problems already. The chances of Dozier turning into one of the game's elite players is close to zero. That's the only scenario where an extension makes sense.
  24. drivlikejehu
    This notion just baffles me. It makes absolutely zero sense under any circumstances. I'm sure his agent wants a nice extension - he knows that getting the Twins to overpay now is the best move for Dozier's finances (and the agent's of course). The reality is that Dozier has zero leverage... the Twins can keep him through his prime with no downside to the club.
  25. drivlikejehu
    This is clearly wrong. We have a lot of information - far more than would typically be available with respect to the management of a company (even an issuer with additional SEC disclosure requirements). MLB's composition allows for clubs to be compared directly in a way that companies cannot be, without significant analytical adjustments. Clubs all have the same basic structure. Their approach to making money can vary by market, but their baseball objectives are essentially the same- to win. Clubs go through 'rebuilding' phases and what not, but even then the club's ultimate purpose is to contend for the championship. MLB is a closed system with a relatively small number of variables. Moreover, the structure of the system is public information and easy to understand. There is no real mystery about how the 40-man roster system works or how waivers are processed. The results are also easy to analyze- wins and losses, of course, but player-level performance is much easier to gauge than is often the case with respect to employees in a professional setting. The "we don't know" cop out is just a defense of the front office built on false assumptions. We absolutely have enough information, for instance, to say that it was a mistake for Bartlett to make the 25-man roster out of Spring Training. We can see that most every, or every other club has better high-minors OF depth, and thus we can say that the Twins failed to provide adequate depth. The list of course goes on.
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