ThejacKmp

It's not old. It's true. Go look at their drafting or better yet, Google it. Epstein states pretty unequivocally that it was his strategy. The Twins have devoted a lot of draft capital to developing pitching because they don't have the money to go buy a Lackey and a Lester and also resign an Arrieta. If the Twins are going to be good for an extended period of time (that should be the goal) they can't do things the Cubs way. That's just a fact. The Twins aren't a tiny market team but they're also not a big market team. They don't sign big free agent pitchers and it's likely a good thing - one bad signing could cripple the team's growth. Plus, signing . . . James Shields? . . . wouldn't make the Twins a good team. If you want to be the Cubs and not invest in pitching, you need to be able to sign three or four elite pitchers. That ain't the Twins.

Mike Trout was taken 25th overall. 24 teams passed on him and regret it. Hard to blame the Twins for that since MLB drafting is the least predictable of the major sports. Hell, the Nats would take a do over for that draft and they took Strausburg.

You’re comparing apples and oranges here and I’m also not sure that your conclusions are as clear as you try to make them. To whit: The Cubs took the following: 2011 HS hitter, 2012 HS hitter, 2013 Coll hitter, 2014 Coll hitter The twins took the following: 2011 Coll hitter, 2012 HS Hitter, 2013 HS pitcher, 2014 HS hitter 1.) In 2011 the Cubs picked 9th and the Twins picked 30th. Kind of hard to compare a top 10 pick with a dregs of the 1st round pick. If you look 1987 to 2013 (ignore the past few years because guys are too young and before 1987 because draft rules changed) guys picked #30 make the pros 55% of the time and of those who do, they produce an average of 6.2 WAR. Guys picked #9 make the pros 75% of the time and those who do produce an average of 10.6 WAR. So it’s hard to blame a team for having a worse pick at #30 than the team that drafted #9. Not sure why you’d even include 2011 in your decidedly arbitrary sample. 2.) As for 2012, I’m pretty sure that if the Cubs called up the Twins today and offered to trade 2012 1st round picks, the Twins wouldn’t have time to laugh before hanging up the phone. Albert Amora is a nice enough player but his minor league numbers are nowhere near Buxton’s – he profiles as a 4th OF or defensive CF (OPS in low .700s in upper minors, no track record of stealing bases, limited power). And I’m not sure he’s a good example for your point either – he has fewer MLB at-bats than Buxton and his OPS+ of 89 is below average (and without the minor league success that makes Buxton intriguing). So the Twins got their guy to the pros first and he seems more likely to be a long-term core piece. 3.) As for 2013 and 2014, college hitters make it to the pros the fastest of any draft picks so comparing the current status of two college hitters vs a HS pitcher and a HS hitter is pretty disingenuous. Stewart and Gordon both look poised to be in AA or AAA next year, right about on track for players drafted out of HS. Schwarber and Bryant are great picks (important to note that the Cubs picked before the Twins both years so the Twins had no shot at either guy and perhaps would have taken them if they were available) but you can’t say that Stewart and Gordon might not be better in five years. Comparing HS and college prospects in the short-term is bogus. 4.) Well okay, even if Gordon is an all-star, Stewart isn’t going to be as good as Bryant. But that’s the other part. The Twins aren’t the Cubs and can’t take all hitters and then just buy elite pitching – they’re in different markets. The Twins have consistently had to use high picks on pitching, the most unpredictable of gambits while the Cubs have the luxury to focus on elite position players, a much more predictable resource. Kohl Stewart looks like the biggest bust of the 8 (Levi Michael was a 30th overall pick, hard for me to include him as a bust since it’s a coin toss guys drafted where he is are MLB regulars) but that’s not surprising since he’s a HS pitcher. It's a gamble the Twins have to take if they're going to build a playoff rotation. Overall, I think this is a bogus way to look at the draft. You are grading very different types of fruit (where picked, age etc.) on a single scale because it gives you the result you’re looking for.

1.) Santana has a team option of $14 million. That is no barrier and presents only opportunity for the Twins. I imagine most of doubt the Twins will be picking up that option as Santana will be 36. 2.) Hughes seems to have a decent chance of ending up in the bullpen by the end of his deal. Might not be the worst thing as he has had success there. 3.) To be honest, Duffey also profiles like a guy who might be excellent in the pen and not as good in the rotation (shaky third pitch). There have been rumblings from scouts ever since he was drafted. He'll get his chances to start in the next 2.5 years but I don't see him as a real hard barrier to any promising young guy if he keeps pitching like he does. 4.) Gibson will be a prime trade candidate over the next few years. He's got team control but if the Twins start getting young guys who are cheaper and ready, he could very easily be dealt. And if he's the pitcher he's been over the past few years (#4 starter?), I don't see him being a huge barrier. I guess overall I'd just say that if any of these guys block the young guys (assuming they succeed of course) it will be because the vets are pitching well. That's a nice problem to have.

Well, not going well but not for the obvious reasons. He got mono so they shut him down for a month. Too much making out for the Aussie sensation I guess.

This doesn't mention the Thorpedo. I know he hasn't pitched in a game since 2014 at this point and that's not ideal but the kid is still only 20. He's throwing now and if he gets a few starts in Cedar Rapids this year and has a good spring, he could be looking at a full season in A+/AA where he's 21 the whole time. He'd need a ton of success to be a September 2018 call up for the Twins but he deserves some mention with Romero when we talk about 2019 Twins opening day pitchers (Berrios, Gonsalves, Romero, Thorpe, Stewart/Jay/Jorge? A boy can dream!). Tons of upside and a really nice K rate in the low minors.

I couldn’t disagree with this more. There’s no way you can say 2015 is “clearly” a blip because we don’t know what the future is, we need more data. To demonstrate let’s go to believable-pretendland: In 2017 Berrios establishes himself as a top-of-the-rotation star and Duffey and Gibson rebound to become above average #2/#3 starters. Santana and Hughes fill out a rotation that keeps the Twins in games and ends up a Top-10 rotation. The bullpen bounces back as May is a dominant late-inning guy again and a combination of smart reclamation projects and young power arms makes the late innings a good time to be a Twins fan. On offense, Sano hits 40 HRs and is a top-5 MVP candidate. Kepler doesn’t have a sophomore slump and Buxton starts hitting in the .260s and cuts down on the Ks. JRM is an average catcher, Mauer has a bit more luck with BABIP and is an OBP machine. Polanco, Rosario, Escobar and Park/Vargas all are solid contributors and make the Twins a tough lineup 1-9. A playoff-hunt 2017 gets the Twins hungry for 2018, when an infusion of young starting pitching talent (say Gonsalves, Jorge and Romero) along with Gordon/Vielma and some solid supporting depth in the OF set the Twins up to be a serious contender for the next 5-8 years. That’s not an unreasonable scenario. If this happens, 2015 will be viewed as a harbinger of the future: the Twins started to promote the players who would make them competitive and took a run at a playoff spot. It took a few years to get everything to fully gel but it's clear that in in 2015 the pieces started assembling for the next dominant Twins era and we got a taste of the sweetness to come. Now before people go off, I get that there is an equally/more plausible negative picture. But that’s not my point, my point is you can’t say what 2015 is until you look at it in a broader context. As another example, I remember having a big argument with my roommate’s girlfriend in 2008 when Bush was leaving office.* She was incredibly liberal and I was more of a liberal libertarian. She kept insisting that Bush would be viewed as the worst president ever and I kept saying, “You don’t know the future and can’t say that. What happens next will color how we view Bush.” And I think the last eight years has shown that I was right to say let’s wait. Bush isn’t going to end up on Mount Rushmore but he seems incredibly liberal compared to the Republican candidates of the past 8 years – I bet she wishes he were the nominee now! The U.S.’s struggle to contain ISIS and the continuing presence of terrorist attacks make Bush’s failures in that arena of foreign policy more understandable. Domestic politics have gotten more partisan and make the Bush era seem like the Good Old Days - he was ready to talk a compromise on immigration reform etc. Bush isn’t going to win Best President ever but he’s likely settled in to something around the middle of the pack, likely where he belongs. The point is that you need the context of the next 5-10 years to even begin making reliable judgments on what something means in a presidential legacy. Same thing with the Twins. We can’t tell what 2015 will mean until we know what happens to Buxton, Sano, Duffey and Berrios in the future. If they pan out, it was a taste of things to come. If they don’t, it was a sad moment of what-could-have-been. *I certainly don’t want to argue politics here so let’s not do that. This is just an example in non-baseball terms.

I think I confused you with the guy I was replying to - because you replied to me and seemed to continue his argument. He'd said: "Everyone who has been a core player of the 99+96+96+79+9x teams, should be treated as part of the problem. If Dozier, Mauer, Plouffe, Suzuki etc are not part of the problem, who is? The kids?" That's what my post was a reaction to and I think the metaphor fit. I think we mostly agree. Dozier should be shopped this offseason because a controllable piece is coming up behind him and Dozier will have good value if a team needs a 2B.

Yeah. Sometimes trades work out and sometimes they don't. We're too end-result focused. The Twins trades made sense at the time and just because pitching prospects are volatile doesn't mean that the trades were bad. You hope that team doesn't lose heart and is willing to make the same trade again in the hopes it pans out better. The Royals had a trade that worked out well (in unplanned ways too, no one expected Wade Davis to become the best reliever in the game) but that doesn't mean there's some inherent difference between the Royals Way and the Twins Way. Both did their homework and rolled the dice.

Not saying unlucky. I'm saying that the Cubs are not a fair comparison to the Twins. They have the resources to not worry about drafting pitching and focus on the much more projectable position player talent and then buy pitching later. They didn't worry about drafting the Stewarts and Jays because they don't need to develop their own pitching (any that happens in later rounds is just a bonus). That's a really smart development plan but it's not really something any team can emulate. The luck comes in with why the Cubs are so good so quickly. Arrieta was a nice lottery ticket (much like Johan a decade ago) and he fast forwarded the Cubs development a year or two early (last year was a shock for most people, that year was likely expected to occur this year or next). As a Cubs-are-my-#2-team fan (and that's not a new bandwagon thing I feel the need to point out, my mom's family is from Chicago and I've been a Cubs-are-my-#2 fan for 30 mostly rough years) I'm very happy about it. I just don't think there's some big lesson for the Twins in the Cubs success. Your last question is both fair and unfair. It's fair to say that there is accountability for prospects in trades not working out. The Twins didn't make great selections with their trade picks (though Revere's lack of development and Span's up-and-down injury history hardly make the trades total losses) and should get some blame for that. But we also forget that trading for prospects is a crapshoot. You can do everything right and still come up short. So we should temper the blame a bit - they were both pretty good trades on paper and the thought behind it is not to blame just because it didn't work out.

Hard to compare to the Cubs - they're just a different market with a different owner and do things so fundamentally differently. Epstein gets a ton of deserved credit but it's a lot easier to do a rebuild when you know you can basically ignore pitching and depend on the owner to buy it when your position players start to coalesce. The Cubs got lucky with Arrieta but if they hadn't, the likely would have been in on David Price this past offseason. It's a super awesome way to rebuild but it's not really something that the Twins FO has available to emulate.

It's a metaphor and I think it works - you're arguing that the Twins get rid of anything that was a part of the team the past 5 years because it is part of the problem and I'm saying that it would be like cutting off your arm because your foot is broken. Some discretion is required. No one is saying "Don't trade Dozier." If you get a good deal, do it. What we're saying is that saying, "Dozier has been with the Twins for the past five years so he's part of the problem and needs to go" is crazy-talk. Brian Dozier has been a good player for the Twins but because no one player can carry a baseball team, the Twins have been bad. We may very well need to trade him but him being part of the Twins bad stretch has nothing to do with that decision. I guess I'm not sure where you get that the Twins have had a partial rebuild. They've been rebuilding for a half decade. They haven't bottomed out like the Astros did but if you go by that model than no one ever rebuilds; the Astros approach was pretty revolutionary and we don't know yet if it's repeatable. We'll see in three to five years when the Braves/Phillies/Reds come out the other side of the tunnel. Not all rebuilds work out like the Cubs and Astros did, some have sputtering starts. The Cubs got lucky with Arrieta and have the financial muscle to go buy pitching, freeing them to focus on drafting position players only; their rebuild is hardly a template for the Twins to follow as its more geared towards the Yankee/Boston/LA crowd. The Astros have had things work out a bit better after bottoming out much harder; they've had some of their draft picks come to fruition a bit earlier. Wait two years and you may like the Twins rebuild better - the Astros made some expensive trades for a closer and for Carlos Gomez that should come back to hurt them long-term. The Twins have played it slower and that may turn out to be the best approach. I guess my main question would be what tradable assets did the Twins have and not deal? Mauer has been a toxic asset every since his catching career ended. Plouffe has never had a ton of value and Dozier has more value at the end of this season than he would have had the past several years. The Twins had no quality P, SS or C veterans to trade and have frankly done well flipping bit guys like Hermann and Nunez for value. In the OF, the Twins flipped Revere, Span and Hicks for young prospects over the past few years, just like what other rebuilding teams do. I guess I don't see any players the Twins have clung to over the past five years that they should not have. The problem is just that the Twins haven't had good players. That makes a rebuild slower.* * Plus, we all forget that the Twins had a nice season last year, chasing a wild card into the last series of the season. This year has been tough but we should remember that what happens over the next few years will either make 2015 or 2016 an aberration. It's way too early for us to tell which of those it will be so we should temper our negativity and pessimism.

I don't know that you'll ever see Buxton in the middle of the lineup. His speed is always going to play towards the top of the lineup.

Yeah. I'm encouraged that Buxton has been killing AAA pitching. I know there's a jump up to the majors that he's got to pass but the fact that he consistently kills in AAA make me think he'll eventually get it.

I don't think there'd be a "trade Dozier" movement if the Twins didn't have the surplus at 2B. I think this is less of a youth movement thing and more of a "if we're going to trade, let's go for 5 or 6 years of the young cheap guy over 2 years of the older guy" thing. There's never a guarantee with prospects but the Twins are actually fairly okay in the middle IF. Vielma and Gordon are getting closer to coming up so even if Polanco hits a wall (which would be a surprise) you'd think one of them could shift over relatively easily. Sometimes you've got to make moves from a position of strength. They don't always work but you gotta make 'em.

Shaitan is a really aggressive moniker. Well played. I'd prefer not to package top prospects. I like getting more of the Berrios/Jay/Gonsalves types. The more of those you have, the more likely you are that several develop and you get a Mets thing with young controllable pitching. I'm not sure where I see surplus for the Twins as far as top prospects go. Vielma and Gordon are too young for me to feel comfortable choosing one as the SS of the future and putting all chips there. Vargas/Park don't have enough value and are not top prospects obviously, much like most guys at the corners in the IF. The OF is the one place but with Buxton, Rosario and Kepler I don't have enough confidence to start trading the guys who would step in if those guys don't pan out. Palka/ABW/Granite haven't really shown enough for me to feel set in OF. Maybe Kiriloff but I'd rather see him develop some more before trading him right after drafting him. That's why I'd love to see Dozier dealt high for multiple high-upside pitching prospects - something like a Jay/Jorge type and a couple of nice A ball arms. It wouldn't make the Twins better in 2017 but I don't think the Twins are one pitcher away anyways. 2017 is time to get back above .500 and adding a little boost to the pitching coming up in 2018 would be nice.

I think the only way I'd understand what you're saying is if you're talking about kind of a team leadership piece. Then Dozier would be a key part of that. But though the Twins have had tons of problems the past 5 years, I've never had the feeling that the team quit or that there were chemistry issues. The main problem for the Twins has been that they have too many bad players each year. Their starting pitching has been a disaster due to some bad drafting in the late 2000s and some injury misfortune. The bullpen has been bad too and the Twins have had some pretty big issues at corner OF and catcher. But through it all, the team has competed. Even when everyone hated Gardy it was never about motivating the team, it was about developing players and in-game decision making. Not sure I get your point.

If I am getting sick a lot, I don't start lopping off body parts willy nilly because they must be part of the problem if they've been around for the sickness. Instead, I try to identify where the problem areas have been and go about fixing those. Dozier has been up and down but 2B has been pretty low on the list of problem areas for the Twins the past five years. Bigger areas have been SP, C, OF. This is like putting Jack Kevorkian in charge of diagnosing your health problems. You end up dead.

I'd actually prefer some multiple nice high-upside low minor league arms - guys who can give a boost in mid to late 2018. I think those are the types that teams looking for a 29 year old second baseman are more likely to be willing to deal as they go all in. I know the Twins have gotten burned before on that with Meyer and to a lesser extent May but losing Dozier doesn't significantly weaken your team since Polanco looks MLB ready and I'd rather see the Twins gamble then get a #2 MLB pitcher (I can't see a situation where a team with a #1 pitcher is looking to deal him for an old 2B so I think a #2 with a few years of control left is more likely if you go "who can help the 2017 Twins").

I like this but the problem is that teams who trade away top caliber starting pitching don't tend to want a slugging 29 year old second baseman. Maybe the Mets? White Sox aren't trading Sale in division but otherwise they're the quick rebuild types.

I tend not to read everything in these (though I love them). I scan through checking for names I'm interested in - Palka and the relievers in AAA, Gonsalves/Stewart/Jorge/Jay in A/AA, Garver and Nick Gordon etc. I've definitely added Kirilloff to my list these past few weeks.

That's a pretty small sample size too. He hasn't been that good before 2016. Not to say that those numbers don't matter but "slash lines say it all" is a bit of a small picture view. In the same way an Eduardo Nunez might not be so good next year, Grossman has a solid chance to fall back to earth. I don't mind him competing for the 4th OF job in spring training but unless Palka and ABW look not ready, it makes no sense to go with Grossman. He's pretty terrible defensively and his upside is decidedly limited - important for a developing Twins team. The question that works against him is, "What is Robbie Grossman's role on the next great Twins team?" Pretty sure the answer is ball boy. Holding out for "great value" is insane. No team is going to value Grossman based on a half season of value. The Twins should get to spring training, use Grossman as an emergency OF plan and then hope that some team will give them anything for him.

RUSSELL MARTIN: JRM Murphy is cheap, Martin is being paid $16 million a year and you expect a lot more. Being as good as Kurt Suzuki since May 1st isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. Obviously this is one year and Russell Martin could turn it around. But the evidence behind that isn't great and I’d bet that a lot of teams wouldn’t want to take Russell for the last three years of the contract if he passed through waivers – that’s a lot of risk for the money at that age. The reason for that isn’t just Martin, it’s free agent catchers in general. If you go back to 2011 (as far back as I could go online) and look at catchers who signed deals 3 years and longer, Russell Martin beings to look like a best-case scenario: - McCann (5 for 85 starting in 2014) has taken an immediate drop off from the .800+ OPS he put up to start his contract. His 5-HR-pop props up his OPS and he’s been relatively durable but he’s trending down in average and OBP pretty quickly. With three years left on the deal, to get rid of him the Yankees will likely have to eat a large chunk of the $34 million+ he is still owed. We’ll maybe see that this winter or next summer since Sanchez seems ready. - Carlos Ruiz (3 for 26 starting in 2014) has put up OPS’s of .717, .572 and .722 in the three years of that deal. He’s also caught 110 games, 86 games and 42 games those three seasons and is in the Suzuki camp of not getting any interest at the deadline. - Jarrod Saltalamacchia (3 for 21 starting in 2014) was so bad he was released after one year of the deal and is a career backup since. - Miguel Montero (5 for 60 starting in 2013) has one year with a .754 OPS and the rest under .700 including his current campaign – a .632 OPS isn’t the worst but as his batting average is .190, it seems reasonable to assume that the OBP is a bit inflated as he hits in front of the pitcher most days. He’s not a bad catcher and the contract hasn’t been awful by any means but he’s certainly not a ringing endorsement of the merits of the free agent catcher. It’s also important to note that Montero signed his free agent deal at age 29 (like Ramos will) so a few years younger doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t the risk of a marked drop off. AS FOR RAMOS: I’m not sure where you’re getting that Ramos is going to get 4 years. Everything I read said 5 years and $60 to $70 million – he’s at a position of scarcity and he’s on the open market after a career year, someone is going to give him 5 years to try to get him away from the Nationals. Maybe the market drops out on him but I really don’t see it happening given the paucity of other options. Where are you getting four years? It seems like he would do at least as well as McCann/Martin etc. You are correct that he’s going to be 29 when he signs the deal but that doesn’t make it much less scary, especially with his injury history. A 5 year deal takes him through his age 33 season. And again, the difference is that while Ramos is having a career year this year, he’s only averaged 86 games a year over the past five years and only exceeded 100 twice. He’s a year off of a .616 OPS year (in his longest campaign to date of 128 games). You could argue that the injury history means he has less miles on his legs but you also could see them as signs that he’s brittle. Catchers don’t tend to be healthier and better as they age. All of which brings me back to my original point that Wilson Ramos is a bad target. The history of free agent catcher signings provides a number of warning signs and the “successes” are decidedly guarded – Russell Martin has a chance to be the best of those and even he’s not trending in the right direction. The Twins would be making a pretty ill-fated gamble going after Ramos, especially since a Ramos signing isn’t going to suddenly make them a contender.

You can quibble over word choice with play vs. catch but the point remains. Catchers catch more than 40% of the time and AA is well past the time to be coddling guys due to injury. Garver not catching 60-80% of the games is my biggest concern with him. Something doesn't add up and it's either Garver's catching performance or the Twins developmental plan. As is, the idea of him catching every day in the majors in September or next year is laughable. How is he going to do in the majors what he isn't doing in AA?

At some point he's going to need to catch every day if he's going to play in the majors. If you aren't doing that at AA, I have to think there's something else involved. I'd get if it was 60-40 in Garver's favor but it's the opposite. The guy needs to catch. It's either that the Twins aren't comfortable with his defense or they've stupidly packed too many catchers in the upper minors. I think it's the latter but am worried about the former - Garver is less exciting as a rich-man's Josmil Pinto. It's time for Garver and Turner and JRM to be on different levels where they can play every day.