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drivlikejehu

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Everything posted by drivlikejehu

  1. drivlikejehu
    I slightly misread what MLR posted, but I was correct and his analysis remains problematic. I clearly referred to 'salaries' and 'periodic expenses' in noting that the Twins could front-load a player's contract without having to amortize it. The posting fee is a one-time expense that I did not address; it would be amortized over the 'useful life' of the ultimate contract. So while MLR was correct in that aspect of the posting fee, it is incorrect to suggest the result is a problem for the Twins. They could still shift actual expenses to the current year, where there is budget room. They could still front-load the contract to leave more room for later. And by structuring the contract properly, they could still amortize a substantial portion of the posting fee in the current year. *** Edited to add - here's an example of what I meant: Posting fee: $40MM, Salary 4 years/$40MM with 2 option years Salary by year: $18MM, $10MM, $6MM, $6MM, $12MM (vesting option), $12MM (vesting option) Present value by year including amortized posting fee: $33MM, $23MM, $18MM, $17MM, $9MM, $9MM
  2. drivlikejehu
    Completely incorrect. Comments of this nature should probably be avoided without the appropriate background, because the result can be to mislead readers who don't know otherwise. Human beings are not capital assets and cannot be depreciated or amortized. Also, the 'matching principle' of expense recognition does not apply to periodic expenses such as MLB salaries. The timing of the expense is not terribly important to the Twins because they run a profit in any event. Obviously, front loading a contract may result in lower profits in the short term and higher in the long term, but unless tax rates change significantly the overall effect is minimal.
  3. drivlikejehu
    Developing players is important for every team. Pohlad is the one who said he was willing to spend to put a better team on the field. Are you saying- a) you don't believe him or you do believe him but disagree he should be willing to spend
  4. drivlikejehu
    This is a very straightforward legal question. Verbal promises are equal in weight to written promises, period. That carries down from English Common Law and remains 100% the case in every state in the US (except for the notional exception of Louisiana due to its French origins). The Twins actually put their promises in writing as well, in the form of team statements to politicians and the media. But either way, the promises were completely unambiguous. They entered into a contract with the public and have broken that contract.
  5. drivlikejehu
    The Twins could easily afford to sign him. They just won't. Not a whole lot of analysis required.
  6. drivlikejehu
    Well you need not mention Pujols and Hamilton types because I've said its understandable the Twins wouldn't go after the most costly free agents. What's funny about your list of "failures" is that they all would have been one of the best players on the Twins this year. Swisher & Bourn would each have been 3rd in position player WAR. Dempster would have been one of their best starters, and even Jackson would have been well above the team average in performance. So thank you for making my point so nicely. Note that even high payroll teams are 'top heavy,' in that a handful of players get a huge chunk of the payroll. For instance, the Tigers top 4 salaries constitute around half their total budget. Regardless, the Twins did not spend their "budget" in 2013, nor will they in 2014, nor will they in 2015, nor will they in the forseeable future (adjusted for inflation of course). Eventually they will just say that the reduced payroll is all they can afford and the Twins will be one of the lowest payrolls in MLB on a regular basis. I wonder what the excuse is going to be after several more years of cost cutting.
  7. drivlikejehu
    We know the Twins aren't going to sign Cano or Ellsbury, and even if they legitimately planned on a decent budget that would still be true. That's not really the issue at all. The Twins rarely go after second tier free agents either, and in the case of pitchers its more like never. They don't even lowball those guys- they just ignore them completely. And the third tier free agents they sign - Pelfrey types - are typically the low upside variety, rather than guys like Kazmir. It's just a hopeless and indefensible strategy that we see year after year... I just don't know of an explanation that doesn't violate site rules.
  8. drivlikejehu
    Show me the money Lebowski
  9. drivlikejehu
    The total cost for Tanaka will be somewhat high due to the posting fee, but the Twins could easily sign him and stay well under their alleged budget. There are no pitchers on the FA market that will get mega contracts, so given the Twins' budget room (again, based off their likely fictional budget) they could basically sign whoever they want. Instead the Twins are talking about Swarzak, Duensing, etc. as starting options. I just don't understand how anyone can actually expect them to improve the rotation via free agency when Ryan says over and over he won't do that. The line from the Twins is 100% clear - we have budget room and won't use it, period, end of story.
  10. drivlikejehu
    Puck is right. The poster made an appeal to authority rather than making his own case; appealing to authority as an argument makes sense in certain situations, but essentially defeats the purpose of a message board and, in any event, isn't really deserved considering how bad the Twins are right now. Besides which, I haven't seen anyone "presume to know more" about baseball than Terry Ryan. But for the very reason that he is GM, he should know more than he does about developments in the game. And topics like his attitude towards interviewers, openness to change, have nothing to do specifically with baseball at all.
  11. drivlikejehu
    This is completely consistent with everything we've seen before. Pohlad says the money is there, Ryan doesn't spend it, for whatever reason(s). The length of contract issue is one obvious canard. It doesn't matter in the least and Pohlad knows that. Only present value matters, up until the point where cash flow becomes a problem. The Pohlad family's resources far, far exceed any conceivable cash flow problem that could arise from a normal MLB payroll. Teams do not sign players to a 7-year deal thinking that year 7 is going to be great. The back end is, to varying degrees, deferred compensation for services performed in the early years of the contract. GMs have a strong incentive to make deals like this, because they want to do better in the short-term to keep their job and worry about the back-end later. Now, if Ryan objects to this strategy, and has job security that renders it irrelevant, that's fine. Just pay more up front. Players and agents have no incentive to delay compensation and so they certainly would be receptive to the idea. Having said that, Ryan isn't going to become aggressive in free agency. He has said so over and over again. Pohlad is just deflecting criticism and paying Ryan to eat it instead.
  12. drivlikejehu
    In fairness, Ryan has flat-out said that the Twins aren't going to be major players in free agency, and acquiring expensive player(s) via trade is even more unlikely. For 2015, the Twins are committed to $26.95 million. They have a $3.6MM option on Burton but the buyout is only $200,000. Some players could be arbitration-eligible but none project to get much (and may well not even be with the organization). So payroll is indeed set to drop, and probably by quite a bit. The Twins were already down to 23rd this year and could easily be 28th in 2015. Even the current level is an obvious breach of the Twins' part of the Target Field deal- but the cutting has only just begun.
  13. drivlikejehu
    His points are undeniable, as is the fact that, legally, what the Twins are doing constitutes fraud (receiving goods in exchange for false promises).
  14. drivlikejehu
    Actually, he's done pretty much exactly that, and as recently as this week! In another thread he was quoted talking about how, for a long time, other organizations looked to the Twins as a model, with the obvious implication being that the 'Twins Way' is the right way. And now he arrogantly clings to the same approach even though everyone else has moved on. His unmistakable view is that, indeed he is an awesome captain, and when his ships sink its due to circumstances outside of his control.
  15. drivlikejehu
    Here's a question - has there ever been a GM in the history of any professional sport who spent tens of millions less than his budget, for multiple years? The only rational explanation is that Pohlad ordered the budget cut until the Twins show signs of re-emergence. Ryan is covering for his boss by making vague statements like the one noted above. Understandable, but still dishonest. And regardless of the fact Ryan has only been back in the GM chair for 2 years or whatever it is, bad decisions are bad decisions. By his own admission he has failed to accurately evaluate the team. Problem areas he himself identified (e.g., medical staff) have not been addressed effectively. He foolishly held onto Willingham rather than trading him when his value was at its peak. The list just goes on and on. Someone with character would at least acknowledge, on some level, the problems in the organization.
  16. drivlikejehu
    I'll save you the trouble: this assertion is completely false. The reason is that it is much easier to pitch in relief than to start, and so while teams can put together effective bullpens on the cheap, ace pitchers are extremely difficult to find. Here's a simple thought experiment: would a team trade the Twins an ace pitcher for the Twins' bullpen? The answer is obviously no. Only Perkins has real value and by himself he wouldn't even bring back a #3 starter. It's also invalid to argue that TR is blameless because players "underperformed" an expectation that doesn't exist. The front office is responsible for fielding a team that actually will perform, not one that it wrongly thinks will.
  17. drivlikejehu
    Sure, except the inner workings of the front office aren't in the public domain. The OP just made up a bunch of random stuff, none of which included innovation or Terry Ryan's actual strategies (past or present). I mean, it's not "innovative" to want a good defense. Every team wants a good defense. It doesn't mean anything to attribute this specifically to TR. If anything TR seems to be behind the curve defensively. And even beyond all that, a distinction has to be made between philosophy and strategy. For instance, we know that Ryan loves finesse, pitch-to-contact guys. That's his philosophy. His strategy would involve the means behind acquiring finesse pitchers that are actually decent (last offseason it was short-term deals with mediocre free agents).
  18. drivlikejehu
    When I clicked on it, I assumed the post would be a joke. Instead it's just a wall of text that nowhere actually says anything about Ryan's strategy for rebuilding. For instance, even if Ryan's "strategy" was to assemble 5 solid starters, that's sort of like saying his "strategy" is to win all 162 games next year.
  19. drivlikejehu
    Success in baseball in not cyclical. That argument gets trotted out a lot with respect to the Twins but it is not really an accurate way of looking at what happens. Now, it is hard for teams with limited resources to win indefinitely. The margin for error is much lower than with the Yankees. Once a few things go wrong, it can knock the franchise out of immediate contention and precipitate a rebuild. But it isn't really cyclical so much as it reflects the fact that winning is difficult in a competitive environment. Organizations might 'sell out' to win in the short-term at the expense of future years, which again appears to be cyclical but really is just an inter-period transfer of resources. In any case, the Twins have been exceptionally bad in the past 3 seasons - far worse than even most rebuilding teams. Oakland never sunk to such depths during their 5-year rebuilding period (Beane has been GM since '98 and has never had a single season as bad as the Twins last 3). Rebuilding is hard enough, but many fans are in denial about how far the Twins have fallen, and how unlikely it is they can recover in this decade.
  20. drivlikejehu
    Every time you think Ryan can't possibly troll any harder, he outdoes himself. Analytics is important, but it's completely beside the point when it comes to the Twins. They flat-out do not care about competing, period, end of story. The front office is 100% committed to the "Twins Way" as they see it and will never change their approach under any circumstances. Ryan has been crystal clear on this point. No amount of losing will change his thinking in any way whatsoever. He's just utterly convinced that he's right and everyone else is wrong, a perception that he seems to enjoy.
  21. drivlikejehu
    I just don't care. Who manages the Twins for the next couple years doesn't matter in the scheme of things.
  22. drivlikejehu
    Jokin, I agree with you except I don't think there is another "side." For instance, the Twins had horrible starting pitching in 2012; there is no rational argument otherwise and so it's false to portay that discussion as two-sided. To the extent Ryan or someone else denies an obvious, undeniable fact, the only possible explanations are extreme ignorance or some form of dishonesty. Logically there is no other option. I'm all for devil's advocacy and what not, but this is like arguing over whether the Earth revolves around the sun.
  23. drivlikejehu
    Ryan's credibility is completely shot. His comments since he took the GM job back just do not match reality in any way, and make it hard to understand what is going on.
  24. drivlikejehu
    Here's the problem with the article: We know for an absolute fact that the front office/ownership is not prepared to make such a commitment. It is just complete fantasy to suggest it is even a remote possibility. You are talking about what could be in alternate universe - and definitely have good points in that regard - but they have no bearing on the world as it is. Most Twins fans are over-optimistic because they don't realize that even a few very talented young position players isn't enough to revive this team. So the situation is actually far worse than having to wait things out a couple more years- it is more akin to the early stages of the Pirates long drought. The Twins are a cash generation tool for the Pohlad family. Any thoughts on what could happen have to be fully compatible with that reality.
  25. drivlikejehu
    Not that it lets him off the hook for his ineptitude, but Ryan is probably taking heat on purpose to shield ownership. That's probably why Ryan was put back in the GM role to begin with - slash payroll, while using the credibility he built up back in the day to cover for the Pohlads' sucking tens or hundreds of millions out of the organization. This fits neatly with Pohlad's bizarre statement recently about being willing to spend in the short-term, which of course was meaningless because top free agents rarely agree to one-year deals. And even that was probably not true, given what Ryan is publicly saying. Every actual indication we have is that the Twins will try to rebuild on the cheap, and if that doesn't work, they will just accept losing, whether its for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, etc. The Marlins have shown how the revenue sharing system makes a strategy like that viable despite the reduction in ticket sales, merchandise, etc.
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