ThejacKmp

Tradeworthy! Plouffe should be playing til the end of the month to build his trade value (he's hitting at least so he's doing his side of the bargain) and then if the Twins can't unload him, he should play minimally in September. Of course it's because he has an option. That's life when you're a guy on the fringe of the 25 man roster. Money is always going to matter at some point. Plouffe could have been designated for assignment but the Twins are rightly hoping someone will give them something at the deadline (Plouffe would be a decent right handed bench bat for a contender and since he can play 3B and 1B has a bit more versatility than most bench bats, especially important for an NL team). Even your biggest Joe Mauer hater doesn't really advocate releasing Joe at this point. So that left Vargas. It's 10 days, we should chill. He'll be back up September 1st and will likely play more in AAA in the meantime. I'm sure they told him its not based on performance so it can't hurt his confidence.

Because that's a really really soft .955 OPS. It's based on 85 at bats. In 285 at bats in AAA his OPS is .788. This screams small sample size. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to see Vargas go - he's a switch hitter with pop from both sides of the plate. I'd love to see him as a bench player for the Twins next year when Plouffe being gone (one way or the other) puts Sano at 3B and leaves that 1B/DH picture a bit less crowded (well, still Park/Mauer/Vargas but that's a bit more open). But to say that he's earned a closer look is a bit much - he's not some elite prospect who is going to be a future star. Right or wrong, Mauer isn't getting benched. Even though he is not the Joe Mauer of old, fans still get excited when he comes up. He still is a fan favorite (though not a TD favorite). When you have a bad team, they're not benching a guy who puts butts in seats.

I think the fact that Arcia was designated for assignment by the Rays negates him being a better option than those two. I don't love Grossman and Santana but Arcia provides very little. Power is nice but you have to do more.

Wins mean nothing. Bad argument.

It there's one thing you can pick up from watching Twins prospects the past 5 years, it's that you don't know who will pan out and who won't. Not having a redundancy in the minors is insane. Every team drafts SS and CF like crazy because those guys often move to other positions. I'm not sure who you're referencing with the "already had a SS" narrative but if it's Polanco, it's the perfect example of why you keep taking SS. Though the MLB crunch at 2B and 3B has Polanco playing SS to finish out this lost season, he does not profile to be able to play the position long-term. That's why you get Gordon and Vielma and all the other SS you have - you don't know who is going to stick at SS and SS is where you get the best athletes. What???? Taking CFers means that they won't turn out???? That doesn't even make sense if you're in middle school. And Span, Revere, Hicks and Buxton are hardly an indictment of the Twins drafting. All four have made the majors and you have a borderline all-star in Span, an average CF in Revere, a top prospect in Buxton and a useful platoon OF in Hicks. That's not a failure in drafting - go look at how many first round picks don't make the majors before complaining about that. Well yes, it is an opinion on who the best available player is - we all wish that there was a magic 8 ball that you would shake and it would tell you who that was or that the Twins had harnessed time travel and used it to see who would be good. Alas, that is science fiction. P.S. Go look at catchers drafted after the Twins first round picks. You would call those mistakes too. That's why teams take the best available player - there's no projecting with certainty in baseball so they take their best guess.

Agreed about Arrieta. Just saying that the Twins aren't a team that would be able to resign Arrieta if they found him. (And they'll resign him unless he's hurt, they've got so much money pouring in. If they don't it'll be because they sign Kershaw or some other big name instead). I think you've missed a lot of the track of this discussion. No one has argued that the Twins shouldn't be expected to be good, just that it's pretty insane to try to judge the Twins by looking at them in comparison with the Cubs. They're just two teams that are in very different positions as far as market and resources go. The Cubs have some shortcuts available to them that the Twins don't have. I always hated when people compared the early 2000s A's and Twins because the A's were smarter but at least it was a fair comparison. This one really isn't. If the Cubs didn't have Lackey and Lester, they'd be the Twins from 2007 - a steal in Johan Santana (Arrieta) and some fun young bats. But Lester and Lackey (plus Chapman now I guess) really show you what the Twins can't do.* *Note that this is in the constrains of the Pohlad budgets. I can go off on how cheap the Pholads are (but not spell the name right) and how much they are the source of the problem. People blame TR but he worked the way he did for a reason, a lot of the blame is misplaced.

Um, Nick Gordon has a .745 OPS playing SS in high A where he is 2.7 years younger than the people he’s playing with. He’s a top 100 prospect for Baseball Prospectus (#62) and Baseball American (#53). I think he’s a doing pretty well. Kohl Stewart is in AA ball (3.3 years younger than competition) holding his own. His K rate is not amazing and he’s looking more like a back-of-the-rotation starter but he’s far from a bust and uncertainty goes with drafting high school pitching. It was a good pick at the time and that doesn’t change because you have hindsight. Let’s also remember that the team you insist on comparing them to (the Cubs) picked before the Twins both years. So the Twins never got a shot to take Bryant or Schwarber. Let’s not criticize them for it. In fact, the only year that the Twins got to pick ahead of the Cubs in your little sample (2012), they clearly made the right choice. Finally, if the Twins were a wild card team next year, would you call 2015 a false positive? Let’s not call things before the die have settled. You say the kids from those drafts haven’t had an impact yet but you’re calling this one before the game has reached the third inning. With Berrios, Gonsalves, Buxton, Rosario, Garver, ABW, Granite, Duffey and any number of relievers still developing, you can’t call those drafts busts yet. Have some patience.

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.