by jiminy

Boy, if his only hope of getting the job is a splashy trade, he has no hope. He doesn't have anybody very exciting to offer, so there's no way of getting anybody very exciting back.

Regarding their prioritizing of relief pitchers, on the face of it, it does seem odd. But it could be justifiable if they think the reliever has a much, much better chance of panning out than the available starter -- modest risk, modest reward often beats low risk, high reward. (And of course some relievers actually might make it as starters, like Jay, though I agree that's rare.) They also might just value relievers more than we do. Perhaps you're right and they're wrong. Or perhaps they're right. KC convinced me that a shutdown bullpen can cover a multitude of sins in the starting rotation, and at a much lower cost. Yes you can get relievers like Jepsen cheaply, but it's not so easy to buy the Royals' bullpen on the open market. If three of the 500 relievers they drafted in the past few years reach that level of success, those drafts will have been worth it.

I think it's a fair point to evaluate picks based on positional availability on the open market. And without looking at any data it does sound right that decent corner outfielders are the easiest guys to pick up without breaking the bank. So it's fair to argue that top picks should be spent on positions of scarcity, or positions of extremely high price on the open market. All that said, it does not necessarily mean you should draft starting pitchers in the first round. I agree top starting pitchers are the hardest thing to buy on the open market. But: 1) TOP corner outfielders are really expensive too. Yes you could buy Denard Span. But you could not buy Giancarlo Stanton. 2) Starting pitchers may have the highest reward but also the highest risk. Would you rather have a pretty good chance at a pretty good outfielder, or a very, very low chance at a very, very good starting pitcher? You could make a case for either, but also make a case that either makes sense. 3) Another variable you have to take into account is the dropoff by round based on position. It could be that starting pitching prospects, once you get past the elite few like Strassburg, don't tend to pan out at a significantly different rate based on the round they were drafted, and hitters do. I don't know this, but I wouldn't assume it's all the same. And it does fit what I read anecdotally: pitchers are all a long shot. So why waste a high pick on someone in round 1 who doesn't have a significantly better chance of making it than someone from round 3, if the hitting prospects drop off much more quickly? 4) You are never really choosing between positions in the abstract, you are choosing among a PARTICULAR set of pitchers and a PARTICULAR set of hitters. Certainly you should take positional scarcity into account -- which it looks like the Twins did by prioritizing the catcher position -- but ultimately you have to pick the player you think is better, or has a better chance of becoming better, regardless of positions. The Twins were reported before the draft to be prioritizing starting pitchers and catchers. The fact that they chose a hitter doesn't mean that wasn't true. It just means they weren't wowed by any of the pitchers available at 15 enough to pass on a hitter they liked better. I have no doubt there were several pitchers they ranked higher, who they would have chosen if they were available. But they were gone. If they picked by position alone, passing on a better prospect out of some slavish dedication to drafting by position, we'd all be justifiably furious. At some point, you have to trust your scouts. And we have no choice but to trust them too, and hope they're right. Basically, all I'm saying is, one can agree with every one of your points -- and personally I do -- and still choose an outfielder because there are other variables involved, too. Position is just one variable among many. And it's NOT the most important one. Talent is.

Hard not to worry about a guy whose power depends on a long swing and who has subpar handspeed, which might mean that he's closer to his ceiling than a less polished youngster who didn't have a baseball coach for a dad. But more to the point, that's ALL I know about him, meaning I really know nothing of substance, and will wait and see with the usual mix of hope and trepidation.

What I don't understand is, Why not have Plouffe and Sano just swap positions right now? Plouffe has played the outfield before. Would it really lower Plouffe's trade value that much to remind people he has positional flexibility? I can imagine three legitimate reasons for starting Plouffe at third over Sano at the start of the season. But they are all fading: 1) Plouffe was the better third baseman, and they were trying to win now. That rationale is obviously moot. 2) They think Sano has no future at third. If that's the case, his positions are DH, 1B, and outfield. With the unexpected acquisition of Park, that left outfield. So they parked him there until Mauer got injured or Park got sent to the minors, neither of which happened. And the team is so bad there's no real harm in letting Sano learn a new position up here, where he can face major league pitching. If that's the thinking, fine, I guess. But his transition is not going so well and should perhaps be reconsidered. 3) They still want Sano at third long-term, but felt the need to puff up Plouffe's trade value by keeping him the starting third baseman. And hey, it's possible holding out till there were injuries at third on the Mets and KC worked. But if this is the plan they better unload him quick before Sano breaks something, like a bone, ligament, or the outfield wall. If a trade happens soon, their patience may still pay off. As stated above, Plouffe's value in the off-season was obviously zero, based on the Freese contract. Maybe it's more now. But I still don't see the downside of a positional swap now. There are even some advantages. For instance, suppose Sano flops at third. Wouldn't you rather find that out BEFORE you give away his only replacement? Sure, you'd then have to play Plouffe in the outfield, not sit him on the bench, or his trade value would diminish. But so what? Is it really that important for Grossman to play every day?

I agree with the people who said that finding out of May and Meyer can be parts of a future winning rotation is one of the most important issues to resolve. And a lost year is the perfect time to find out. What people often forget however is how how much of a strain that could put on an already struggling bullpen. The knock on May was he often couldn't make it six innings, and Meyer often couldn't make it three. If those problems continue who picks up the slack? It's a real concern. One answer might be, Hughes and Nolasco. If they get bumped to the bullpen, they could be the guys who mop up when May and Meyer leave early, which could be often. It may or may not be good for Meyer and May to take their knocks in the majors instead of working on specific pitches in the minors. I don't know. But if Nolasco and Hughes aren't long term answers, it's worth a try. If Hughes is still looked at as a potential rotation guy on a winning timea, it might benefit him to move to the bullpen a while anyway. But Nolasco they should probably only start to build up his trade value. On the whole I have no problem with letting Nolasco and Hughes start a little longer, if the reason is to give Meyer time to develop. I don't necessarily agree that the only way to develop a young player is to throw him out there in the majors and let him sink or swim. I don't think that worked for Gomez, Buxton, Meyer, etc. But if major league service time IS what they need, this is the perfect opportunity to do it.

Thanks for a much appreciated ray of sunshine amidst the clouds!!! If--sorry, when--the other prospects get back on track, we can add one more position of strength to our future (fantasized) playoff contender than we had last year! We've gotten a bitter lesson this year in the dangers of focusing on upside and ignoring downside. But surely the lesson is not to stop dreaming at all! So let's see... In a few years, the dream team consists of: CF: Buxton RF: Kepler LF: Rosario/Arcia/Walker 3B: Sano SS: Gordon 2B: Polanco 1B: Park C: Free agent SP: Berrios, Duffey, May, Meyer, Jay RP: Burdi, Chargois, Reed, Bard, Melotakis, Hildenberger, Rogers Is that lineup good enough to win the World Series? Probably not. But boy, is it CHEAP!!! Leaving plenty of dough to supplement them with genuine free agent STARS who could push the team over the top. If this team ever starts to win again the owners will owe us, bigtime, from their subsidized stadium windfall. If we can get above .500 on homegrown talent alone, once we get all the expensive, mediocre veterans off the books, I hope the lesson is, don't mess around with expensive, mediocre veterans any more, just to try to be "respectable." Pool all that Nolasco/Hughes/Santana money into buying a smaller number of genuine stars, to support the talented youth. Hey, it's my fantasy, and in this future, the vaunted farm system is finally bearing fruit. We don't need five expensive, mediocre pitchers, and five expensive, mediocre hitters. We need two ace pitchers, two shut down relievers, and two or three big, scary hitters. And the payroll is above the league median, so we buy them. And not to prop up a thin, shabby team. They're the big guns on a well-oiled machine, manned at all positions by talented, up-and-coming youngsters. Wake me up in three years when we're there!

this season, so far, you're right, the trade's a wash. Both sides are getting zero. But it's too soon to judge. In two years, if the Twins have a starting catcher, and Buxton starring in center field, it will have worked perfectly. If Buxton never learns to hit and Hicks is starting for the Yankees, and Murphy washes out, it will have been a disaster. If neither does anything, it will be, as you say, irrelevant. But it will take a few years to know for sure.

Fair enough. I concede that Plouffe, Dozier, and Escobar were not projected to be THIS bad. So in that sense, they have underperformed. I agree. I also don't think they'll stay this bad. I think they're better than they've shown. I overstated it if I said no one has underperformed at all. Let me try again. As a whole, the projection systems you mentioned predicted a losing team. Yet Twins fans, myself among them, chose to focus on the potential upside of each player. Dozier, for the first half of last season, was a monster. Yes his second half was horrendous but if he returns to form, imagine how good he could be with a whole season of pre-all-star-break production! That is nice to think about, sure. But it's not the way a GM should construct a team. Rosario, was seen as a proven commodity by the Twins and given a starting job, despite a sub .300 OBP and monumentally bad plate discipline. His OPS was buoyed by a record number of triples. There was not a lot of upside to his batting approach, and a lot of downside. Did he underperform? I would say, not really. Escobar I thought had proven something -- his first full year of starting had produced starter quality numbers. He underperformed my hopes, certainly. But would any GM other than the Twins consider him a sure thing? Plouffe has always been up and down. I'm not shocked by his start, and won't be shocked if he brings his production up around average. But the hopes for this team were based on best-case scenarios. No one should feel betrayed when the lottery tickets didn't all hit, or make excuses for the GM who crossed his fingers and hoped too. A case could be made that with so many high draft choices going for relievers, this was not the time to clog the pipeline with three and four year contracts for veteran relievers, especially since their careers tend to be so volatile anyway. And especially if you know you're not going to win now so you can afford to wait a year to see if any of the youngsters work out. But that's a very different thing from saying, the bullpen, as constructed, has underperformed or disappointed. Jepsen is who he always was, mediocre. Perkins is who he always was, an injury risk. The rest are just warm bodies. No surprises there. Like I said, the GM himself pointed out the bullpen as the biggest area of need, and he did nothing, so he can't plead surprise now. His one gamble, Abad, worked out! So did May! Nobody let him down. He just decided to hope he could get by for a year until Burdi, Charguois, and those guys arrived. He gambled and lost. But it was always the most probably outcome. speaking of Jepsen, the Twins do have a habit of overvaluing recent performance, or near recent performance, and building their plans around that continuing. Jensen was okay, but he really came through last year, so we can count on that continuing! Same with the extensions for Hughes, Pavano, all the way back to Blackburn. They see something they like, and they read too much into it. Like that Danny Santana had proved he earned the shortstop job, because of his good attitude about moving to the outfield without complaining. Or that Rosario had proved he could handle big league pitching because of an empty BA. Maybe these guys will all have a resurgence. But at this point, I'm starting to wonder, is Buxton another Hicks? A tools, high draft pick, who if he only learns to hit will be an all star? Is the pipeline a pipe dream? I'm not giving up yet, but this year has shaken my faith. Which will make their great second half even more enjoyable, if it happens! Now that the playoffs are out of the picture, I think we'd all be happy with a second half above .500. That's not impossible, if things go right -- Buxton, Kepler, etc. could all take off -- and they could have a decent young pitching staff anchored by Berrios, Duffey, May, and Meyer. But that won't take them much above .500. To really win it all, they need to be in on the bidding on someone like Greinke next time. Pool all the money from Nolasco, Santana, and Hughes, and lump it into one all-star, to bring the young talent up to the upper echelon. I still have hope of a winning team. But I won't have hopes for a win-it-all team until I see something like that.

the thesis of this article seems to be that the Twins have talent, and everyone agreed they had talent, they have just underperformed. But your position rundown doesn't back that up. their catcher, you point out, is miscast as as starter and is simply doing what he's always done. That's not underperforming. That's the GM incorrectly overvaluing someone. Their solution was Murphy. They seem to be wrong about him, at least so far. But you can't call that underperforming. That's misevaluating. Shortstop, third base, second base, and left field are all positions where the incumbent showed patches of starting-caliber play but the bulk of their career was subpar. You can call it underperforming that the wishful thinking didn't bear fruit. But no projection system concluded that because Rosario, Escobar, Plouffe, and Dozier had patches of good production that they had established a new baseline. Everyone but Twins fans and management saw their body of work and assumed they would regress. And they did. That's not underperforming. That's overvaluing. Buxton simply did what he did last year. Deciding that a guy who skipped AAA and it showed, both last year and in spring training, will miraculously change isn't something you're entitled to be disappointed by. He's still one of the youngest players in AAA, now that he's back where he belongs. Having your backup plans being Santana and Mastroianni does not show much reality-based predictive capacities. Sano has slumped a bit, but not beyond what you would expect for a guy his age, and with his off-season habits. Perkins has been injured twice in the past two years. I guess you could call it underperforming to get hurt earlier this year, but you can't call it a total surprise. The GM publicly announced that bullpen was his biggest concern at the beginning of the off-season, and he was right. But no one can act surprised or let down when his own prediction came true. The starting pitching pipeline does have talent in it: May, Meyer, Berrios, and Duffey could be the core of a good, young pitching staff. I don't see how you can blame them for letting us down, though, when none of them were put in the rotation. Where in this article is your evidence that the Twins were not let down by the GM, but by talented players who let him down and underperformed?

Agreed. But I'm not arguing that the trade was good or successful. I'm saying that if it does turn out to be successful, the value of the two players to the Twins will be far from equivalent, regardless of the fact that their batting stats were similar last year. The intent of the Twins is to replace a future bench player, in Hicks (assuming Buxton matures), with a starting catcher, who hits and fields BETTER than he did last year, and fills a dire need, since catcher is a position for which they have literally no one with major league ability just one year from now. Assuming it works out, they will go from replacement level or lower production at catcher, to a rising star (that's the goal), without giving up anything at the centerfield position, since that will be filled by Buxton anyway. That's all I'm saying. If Murphy fails to ever hit again, sure, the trade was a flop. If he hits as good as last year, he's an upgrade -- with no downgrade in centerfield.

It's about the future. The Twins saw no one but the fading Suzuki at the catcher position. They foresaw Buxton displacing Hicks in centerfield. So they traded someone they had no place for in the future, for someone they desperately needed. It makes no sense to compare their hitting stats and say they are equivalent. Hicks had not lineup spot so would have very few at bats. Catcher had no one at all lined up to start next year. Also, they clearly hoped Murphy was a young, improving player on the upswing who could grow into a starting role. And because they thought Buxton was a future star, they hoped upgrade two positions at once with the trade. The plan was to go from Suzuki and Hicks -- a fading veteran at catcher with no viable replacement, and a soon to be benched veteran in centerfield -- to two young, rising starters at both positions in Buxton and Murphy. It may not have worked out as they hoped, at least not yet, but that was the plan. That's why the two alternate futures envisioned are not equivalent at all, despite the similarity of the two tradees' stats. You buying that? You acknowledge that people trade from a position of surplus to trade for a position of need, but then say you don't see how that improves the team if their stats are the same. The difference is, one has no avenue to getting at bats, because there's a better player blocking him. The other fills a desperately needed hole, where not only is nobody blocking him, there's not even someone as good as him available at all, so it's an upgrade.

It's not that simple. Letting a flawed young player work on his game at the major league level because you're not going to win anyway is fine, in theory. But what about the bullpen??? Meyer is a time bomb. There is no single player in the entire Twins organization more likely to flame out and have to be relieved in the third inning. That may not be a problem for his development. But every time that happens, there is a cost -- and not just in that game, but in the next several games. You just can't do that to a team on a regular basis. And right now, Meyer just can't be trusted. He could drive the entire pitching staff off a cliff. I just don't get this blaming of management for his inability to be consistent. This was the concern from the day they got him. He has great stuff, but can't master it with any consistency. If only he could get it all under control, think how great he will be. I'm not saying it can't still happen. But the fact that it hasn't is not the Twins's fault. Did jerking him around prevent his development? I'm just not seeing that. They gave him chance after chance as a starter. He would have good stretches, then blow up. They gave him so many chances, and he failed so many times, that he completely lost his confidence. Switching him to the bullpen was an act of mercy. He needed to pitch his way out of it, and he couldn't do that pitching three innings every five days. And it helped. He got to pitch more often, became effective again, and regained his confidence. Not consistently effective, but more often than not. And in the bullpen, if you blow up, it's not a crisis. You get yanked, and get back on the horse the next day. Once they put him in the bullpen, they kept him there all year so as not to jerk him around. That didn't mean they'd given up on him, but that they wanted what was best for his development. So what to do this year? I would be fine with giving up on him and leaving him in the bullpen, where his regular meltdowns aren't a career killer, and his periods of great pitching can be maximized. Between May and Meyer, May deserves a rotation slot at least as much as him. But I am also fine with saying, he still has potentially dominant stuff, now that his curve is working, let's let him start again and see if he matures. With tall guys, it takes a while. REally, the only fault I find is bringing him up from the minors too soon. Three games is not enough to prove you've solved a lifetime of inconsistency. But there were some injuries, and they needed him. I'm sympathetic to the argument that sitting on the bench several days, pitching in relief once, and starting once, was not the optimal way to ease a weak pitcher into a comfortable role. But that doesn't make it their fault that he failed. If he was as good as you all think, and as ready, he wouldn't have failed. Far better pitchers than he have been eased into the big leagues this way. Did that ruin Johann Santana? Of course not. He proved he deserved a more expanded role. Meyer did the opposite. But that doesn't mean pitching in relief once ruined him. All it did was expose that his three good games in the minors didn't mean he was a new man. And that while his fastball and curve are ready, his changeup is not. The injury replacement urgency passed, so they are sending him back down to work on getting all his pitches up to the major league level. This may not have helped him, but if pitching once in relief ruined him, he was not the ace you hoped. Other than that one relief appearance this season, though, I think their plan is fine. Last season, he needed relief from his constant collapses as a starter, and it worked. This season, they are showing confidence in his long term potential by letting him start again. If he can master ALL his pitches for a sustained period in AAA, then, and only then, give him another shot at the majors. But until then, don't risk the entire bullpen on this guy until he shows more consistency.

I can live with multiple young guys having slow starts, and this turning out to be a developmental year. A bummer, but the future is still bright. Whether Rosario, Buxton, Sano, and Park work out their problems up here or down in the minors doesn't really matter, ultimately, as long as they do eventually. What would bother me would be if they gave the resulting at bats to Murphy instead of Arcia. If he's on the team, and there's a lineup opening, he should be playing, not some veteran stop gap. If they know they don't want him they should have cut him. If they think he has enough potential not to give up on, they should be playing him whenever they can. I have nothing against Murphy but there is no way he is part of the long term solution. If the playoffs are not in the picture, and they are just developing young guys, that should include people like Arcia and Vargas, too, not stop gap veterans. I have no problem with signing Murphy -- at this point, their entire outfield and starting DH are question marks -- as long as he's last in line after anyone with a future here.

It's nice to see an optimistic take on Santana. I'd kind of given up on him. But he's young enough and volatile enough that you can make a case it's too early too think he's stabilized. And if you think his upward trend last year and this spring is sustainable, I'll keep an open mind. I'm not that optimistic -- despite his recent power surge, those plate discipline numbers are so horrendous that it suggests he'd need a wholesale change in approach to fix things. That doesn't happen all that often. But he's young and talented so who knows. Arcia seems to have finally bought that he needs to change his approach, so maybe he can too. For a utility guy, a young, fast athlete with major league experience in both the infield and the outfield is nice to have around. p.s. I think there's a typo in paragraph five, where you say Rosario instead of Santana -- kind of threw me because you'd just been talking about him -- no big deal though, I figured it out.

Under. While their run differential suggests their record was deserved, underlying peripherals suggest it wasn't, and the run differential was produced by lucky bunching of hits both offensively and defensively. That's what they say over at fivethirtyeight anyway, and those guys are never wrong. They do acknowledge that when a team consistently outproduces its peripherals, it probably means something. But another reason for holding back on the Royals is their recent success has been built on incredible health. That could be a genuine team trait -- they are a young and athletic group -- but nobody avoids injuries forever. But the main reason I'm going with the under is the AL Central has gotten really good. There's not a patsy from top to bottom. There won't be many easy days for anyone in this division. The Twins are the best they've been in years and they could be the weakest team in the division--but they're gonna be tough. They don't have a glaring weakness anywhere in the rotation or the lineup -- and if someone does flop, they are as well positioned to plug holes and keep on rolling as any team in the league. Sure, Nolasco had a rough two years but he was hurt--he's no Kevin Correia or Livan Hernandez. But if he sucks, so what? Duffey and Berrios may be their two best pitchers, and they're not even on the team yet. Their bullpen might not scare people but they have two or three years of power-arm draftees lined up for a crack at the majors. Their AAA team could probably outpitch their starting rotation four years ago. If the Royals want to take two of three from the Twins they'll have to earn it. And then they'll have to move on to the Indians' league-best rotation, the thunderous bats of Detroit, and the restocked White Sox. Ninety wins could win this division. But whoever wins it's going to be a dogfight. I wouldn't be surprised if the Royals won the division, or even the World Series again. Which would be fine with me. I love seeing fellow mid-market teams succeed, and I love seeing any AL Central team crush the other division champs. Except the White Sox, of course.

But he hasn't demolished AAA pitching. He hasn't even faced it. We don't know if he can hit an AAA curveball. All we know is he can't hit them in MLB. Seems like it might be worth letting him learn and prove that he can in AAA first.

About the TV contract -- I believe it is undervalued, but it's not the management's fault. My memory of the negotiations was the Twins were holding out to create their own cable network, like the Yankees. This would have provided a major new revenue stream indefinitely. They were undercut in these negotiations by public pressure, including some government officials, who complained bitterly over the temporary TV blackout imposed by their opponents. This was done to undermine public support, and it worked. But it was a bitter example of short-term thinking overpowering long-term thinking. The Twins had a vision for a much better long-term model that would have maximized TV revenue forever. And they weren't allowed to hold out for it. I guess you could say they should have held out anyway and taken a huge PR hit, alienating their fans, and being turned on by government, but I don't think that's fair. And my memory is the state was even going to legislate that they get the games back on TV asap. My memory is vague though. Anyone who remembers this better than me please speak up. But my impression is, they took the long view, and the smart view, and were hung out to dry. Caving to FOX is now hampering their ability to compete and will continue to do so for many years. I'm not saying they don't have the resources to compete -- with the new stadium and revenue sharing they have plenty to field a much more expensive payroll and still turn a profit. But since the discussion touched on local TV revenue, I think this is one you can't hang on them.

Thanks for this! I don't think I've ever seen this point before and it totally changes my perception of this oft-stated stat!

The thing that's different about Meyer is his prospect star hinged upon him becoming something other than he was. His problem today is command and walks. His problem when they got him was command and walks. His stuff was so good, people couldn't help thinking, imagine how good he could be if he could command his pitches! But he couldn't. And he still can't. So what's the lesson of that? Not that people can't improve. They do. They learn new pitches, like Johan Santana. But do they ever really learn control? They must, since people keep hoping, even expecting them to. But do they, really? No one is coming to mind. Ryan, I guess, was a late bloomer. But he had literally the best fastball in the game. He could afford a few walks. It took him years to get his ERA down, though. I feel like I've seen a million cases of people with bad control not panning out. I don't feel like I've seen magical late career improvements very often, if at all. Not in control, anyway. It's like in the NFL, when people draft boneheaded quarterbacks with strong arms, thinking, imagine how good he'd be if he only knew where to throw it. That doesn't work very often either. My point is not to be pessimistic. On the contrary. It's to say that Meyer's problems don't necessarily present a warning about those other guys, except in the most general sense. None of them are being asked to do something they can't do, or haven't done already. Just to get stronger and be able to do it longer and for more innings. And that, thank goodness, happens all the time.

I have more regrets about May in the bullpen then Meyer. May actually has some success as a starter. Meyer has never dominated for a full season even in the MINOR leagues! His control problems have always been the big, obvious hurdle to success. And he has just not turned the corner. He came into 2015 as a top prospect, based on the assumption that his control problems would improve -- and he had his worst control problems ever. This is not to say he won't ever solve this. But he has had years and years to do it and hasn't yet. There is no reason to assume promoting him will make those problems go away (they tried that too). I like Meyer in the bullpen because if he starts to fall apart, you can just yank him and throw him back out there the next day. As a starter, you have to wait five days. If it's a short start, he doesn't hardly get to pitch at all. The bullpen is better for him, because he can get back on that horse and get back to work. And it's better for the team, because if he pitches great for a few innings, the team benefits from a great short outing, and if he flops, you nip it in the bud without creating a crisis for the bullpen to solve. I think there is a much stronger case for someone like Chapman to start. He is really good, and you could triple his innings. May, over the course of his career, tends to do much worse the third time through the lineup. These problems seemed to be diminishing in his last stint as a starter, so he deserves another chance. With Meyer, though, using him in short doses is just the safer route at this point. It lets you maximize his good innings, while minimizing his bad ones. If he truly works out his mechanics, or whatever was preventing him from consistent command, sure, give him another chance. But in the meantime, if he has value in the pen, make the most of it. It's probably the best chance for him to improve anyway. Win-win. It's also his best chance to reach the majors. Would you risk a two inning start and demand seven innings from the bullpen? I wouldn't. But I'd happily bring him in for as many strikes as he can muster before he starts missing the plate. That would be fun to watch, with much less downside.

I don't think it's reasonable to charge Park's entire posting fee to this year. I think it should be prorated over four years. The entire commitment was 24.85 million over four years. To me, for budgeting purposes, that looks like 6.21 per year. Counting the entire posting fee this year makes his cost look like 15.85 million this year and 3 each of the following four years. I would instead consider his cost each year to be 6.21, and this this year's payroll (so far) to be about 110.

I'm quite worried, personally. There's nothing inevitable about success in the minors translating into success in the majors. In Buxtons's case, there were very specific things he couldn't do last year, and it seemed like pitchers took advantage of them. Until he learns how to handle those pitches, he'll just keep getting out. It's not just a matter of time. He has to change. He has to start being able to do something he has never been able to do before. That doesn't scare you just a little? I'm not pessimistic, I actually think he probably will adjust. But it's no sure thing. Plate discipline is one of the most stable things in the game. You rarely see people just suddenly be able to hit outside curveballs, or lay off them, or whatever. I'm hopeful Rosario will improve his plate discipline, too. But it would be a pleasant surprise, not an inevitable next step. Buxton's minor league numbers are very good, but another writer pointed out that his power numbers are to a certain extent really speed not power, and his on-base percentage could be based on minor league pitchers who don't know how to take advantage of his weaknesses. If you have one weakness--just one--big league pitchers will focus on that. Look, he wasn't the number one prospect in baseball for nothing. He's obviously got talent, and the best evaluators in the game think he will handle big league pitching just fine. But Delmon Young was the top prospect in the game once, too. Sometimes you just are who you are, and potential just stays potential. I understand the optimism, and I share it. But I also have a lot of fear. His debut did not go as well as Sano's, and it wasn't that small a sample size. And hey, even Sano is not a sure thing yet. I like his chances better than Buxton's, though. At least for 2016.

If Mauer regresses to his career mean numbers, that would be the best news of the year!

I think this is a really interesting point. Most of the focus has been on his offensive decline late in the season. That's certainly glaring: a drop from .841 to .631 in OPS 1st to 2nd half last year, and from 19 HR to 9. But what if this decline was health related? What if he was playing banged up? Wouldn't that affect his fielding as well? Before I tried to interpret the decline in his season by season fielding stats, I'd want to see them broken down month by month, or at least 1st half vs. 2nd half. If he fielded well in the first half of the season and then declined, I'd speculate it was health related and be optimistic he could rebound. If not, I'd speculate the three year arc was meaningful. Anyone know where to find split stats for fielding? Either way, a few more days off seems a wise precaution.